A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Clifford, Anne
CLIFFORD, ANNE,
Countess of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery, was sole daughter and heiress to George, Earl of Cumberland. She was born at Skipton-castle, in Craven, January 30th., 1589. Her father died when she was only ten years old; but her mother, a daughter of the Earl of Bedford, educated her with care and discretion. She married, first, Richard, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset, by whom she had three sons who died young, and two daughters. After his death, she married Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, by whom she had no children, and with whom she lived very unhappily. She erected a monument to her tutor, Daniel the poet, and another to Spenser; besides which she founded two hospitals, and repaired or built seven churches. But the singular act of her life is the letter she wrote to the secretary of state, after the restoration of Charles the Second, who had recommended a candidate for one of her boroughs. The Countess replied, "I have been bullied by an usurper, I have been neglected by a court, but I will not be dictated to by a subject; your man shan't stand. Anne, Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery." This letter excited great admiration.
The Countess of Pembroke was considered one of the most eminent women of her time for intellectual accomplishments, spirit, magnificence, and benevolence. She died in her castle at Brougham, March 23rd., 1675, at the age of eighty-six. She was buried at Appleby, in Westmoreland, under the monument she had erected. Her funeral sermon was preached by the Bishop of Carlisle, from a verse in the proverbs of Solomon—"Every wise woman buildeth her house." In her ended the Clifford family.
Although the Countess expended more than forty thousand pounds in building, and was truly royal in her acts of generosity and benevolence, yet she was prudent, economical, and exact to the last degree in her accounts. Bishop Rainbow calls her "a perfect mistress of forecast and aftercast." Her information was so extensive, that it was said of her "that she knew how to converse on ail subjects, from predestination to slea-silk." Her manner of living was simple, abstemious, and even parsimonious; and she was accustomed to boast that she had hardly ever tasted wine or physic.