Of the childhood of this Lady Margaret little or nothing is known, but in all probability it was spent like that of her young cousins, the Greys. In the writer’s life of Lady Jane Grey, mention is made of a certain Mistress Huggins, who foolishly boasted that she had heard it repeated about London that the Duke of Northumberland intended to marry his son, Guildford Dudley, to the Lady Margaret Clifford. The publicity thus given to his schemes seems to have induced the duke to change them; and shortly afterwards, Northumberland made an effort to secure the heiress for his brother, Andrew Dudley, instead of Guildford, who, as all know, married Lady Jane Grey. Luckily for both parties, however, the project fell through; and the Lady Margaret thus escaped the fate that overwhelmed the Dudley family.
Lady Margaret is next heard of as one of the ladies of the bedchamber at the court of Queen Mary; and in 1555, with Her Majesty’s consent, she was married, in Westminster Palace, with great pomp, to Lord Strange, eldest son of the Earl of Derby. Mary was too ill to attend her cousin’s wedding, but the two Ladies Grey, and the queen’s unpopular consort, Philip of Spain, were present, and a great banquet was held in Westminster Hall in honour of the bride and bridegroom, after which the king displayed his prowess to much advantage in a tilt in the Spanish style.
Although the Lady Margaret very often and imprudently asserted her prior right to the Throne over her cousins, the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey, she does not seem to have given umbrage to Mary Tudor, and continued, until that queen’s death, to take precedence of all the great ladies of the court, her aunt, the Lady Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, and her cousin Margaret, Countess of Lennox, alone excepted. Nor was her position greatly altered after Elizabeth’s accession. Her husband, Lord Strange, enjoyed the “Great Eliza’s” favour until his death, but he seems to have entertained little affection or regard for his wife, whom he left to her own devices.
The death, in 1570, of the Earl of Cumberland, the Lady Margaret’s father, brought her a great accession of wealth; and the subsequent demise (in 1572) of her father-in-law, increased her rank, for her husband then became Earl of Derby and titular King in Man. After this event, Margaret’s husband, who had been living separated from her, seems to have become more friendly, and the illustrious couple removed to Latham House in Westmorland, where they kept up almost royal state. It was not until after Elizabeth’s systematic cruelty had broken the hearts of the Ladies Katherine and Mary Grey that she seems to have conceived it possible that the Lady Margaret Clifford’s claims might, like those of Lady Katherine, threaten her sovereign security. She had received Lady Margaret’s eldest son, Fernando Strange, into her household, and had treated him with much kindness—he was, it is significantly asserted, very good looking—but at the same time the wily queen kept a strict watch on his movements, lest the male heir of Lady Eleanor should display the least inclination to encroach on her prerogatives. Fernando, however, never gave her the least cause for uneasiness. In 1594 he met with a singular and sudden death, wherein witchcraft was mixed up with a good deal of mystery of a very suspicious and purely political kind.
Towards the middle of the year 1578, Elizabeth—for some reason or other which has never transpired, but not improbably at the suggestion of Lord Derby, who was then high in her favour, and who heartily detested his wife—began to look upon Lady Margaret with disfavour. The poor lady had been suffering from a sort of low fever, and was recommended to try the skill of a certain Dr. Randall, a famous physician, who was also popularly held to be a wizard. Elizabeth sent spies to Latham, and was soon informed that the Lady Margaret and her soothsayer were conspiring by magic arts against her, and were also entertaining Jesuits, and other suspected persons.
Acting upon these evidently trumped-up charges, Elizabeth ordered both the doctor and his patient to be conveyed to London. In less than a week, the wizard was arraigned, tried, condemned, and hanged. The countess was handed over to the strict custody of one of her kinsmen, a Mr. Seckford, who resided in the then fashionable suburb of Clerkenwell and held the office of “Master of Requests”—a position which, if the duties at all fitted in with the title, must have entailed a great deal of hard work, in an age when about half the aristocracy spent their lives in petitioning or requesting mercy or other favours for their imprisoned relatives. For all this, the gentleman seems to have been interested in what we should call the building or house-property business, for the Lady Margaret’s numerous letters are full of references to the many houses, not only in Clerkenwell, but even at Hampstead and Hackney, which he desired to sell or to let. He seems to have treated the poor lady very kindly; and, so far as possible under such circumstances, she lived comfortably enough; but she was never allowed to go out unaccompanied, and then only within the precincts of the gardens or to make purchases in shops in the neighbourhood. In her correspondence she frequently mentions a court jeweller named Brandon, presumably an illegitimate son of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. This tradesman was in favour with Elizabeth, who employed him in mending and mounting her innumerable watches, jewels, and clocks, and he appears to have been on almost friendly terms with the queen, and with the Lady Margaret, who, if the above supposition is correct, was his cousin once removed. He may have interceded for her with the queen, as Walsingham, Cecil, and Hatton undoubtedly did, but without the slightest result. The Lady Margaret remained a close prisoner, precisely as the Ladies Grey had been, being quartered with Mr. Seckford until her death, though not always at his house in Clerkenwell, for she generally spent the summer months at Hampstead, in a mansion rented by her from the said Mr. Seckford. It seems she was never allowed to live with her very unfaithful husband, which was probably not considered a very great deprivation by him. Elizabeth, with whom he was in high favour, had appointed him Lord High Steward of England, Judge for the trial of the Earl of Arundel for treason, and Lord High Chamberlain of Chester. When he died, in 1593, Lady Margaret was given a sort of holiday, being allowed to attend his funeral at Ormskirk in Lancashire; their union had been blessed with four sons and a daughter. On the Earl of Derby’s death, his son, Fernando, assumed that title, as well as that of King in Man, but did not enjoy these honours long. In the spring of 1594, he was suddenly taken ill, and died in a few hours. As already hinted, a suggestive air of mystery hung over his end. Some time in that year, he was seized with fearful and sudden intestinal pains which were popularly attributed to the occult practices of one Dr. Hacket, in whose house was afterwards found a small waxen figure said to represent the young earl, and stuffed with hair of the same colour as that of the supposed victim. Accordingly as this wax image was maltreated, so, in the opinion of the credulous, did the person it resembled suffer, and since it was stuck as full of pins as any pincushion, there could be no doubt as to the cause of young Strange’s prolonged torments and terrible death! Hacket was, of course, after having been duly tortured, hanged as a wizard. The Lady Margaret survived her eldest son by two years, dying, in 1596, at the house in Clerkenwell, which she had rented from Mr. Seckford before his death. She is buried in St. Edmund’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, near her aunt, the Lady Frances. After the death of Earl Fernando, the title of Earl of Derby and King in Man passed to Lady Margaret’s youngest son, Lord William Stanley, who married a De Vere, youngest daughter of the Earl of Oxford, by his wife, Cecil’s second daughter. This William Stanley was the father of that loyal Earl of Derby who was beheaded by Cromwell after the battle of Worcester, and whose wife, Charlotte de la Tremoïlle, has been immortalized by Sir Walter Scott, who introduces her into a short but marvellously effective and impressive scene in Peveril of the Peak.