This edition prints for the first time over 120 letters from, to or about Lady Anne Clifford (1590-1676) together with the full text of the memoir by her secretary George Sedgewick (1618-85).


Lady Anne Clifford (1590-1676) is well known - and often admired - as a formidable aristocratic lady who, by defiance and force of character, managed to recover her ancestral family estates after her father, the third earl of Cumberland, had bequeathed them to his brother and disinherited her. Lady Anne married twice, but in her widowhood she lived at her houses at Skipton and Appleby, never straying south in the last quarter century of her life.

In this edition we print - in most cases for the first time - over 120 letters by Lady Anne, to Lady Anne, or about Lady Anne to offer a fuller picture of her as the manager of her estates and defender of her interests. We add to this the memoir - previously unpublished in full - of her secretary George Sedgewick (1618-85). He offers an eyewitness account of Lady Anne, but his memoir is also the record of a Westmorland boy from a poor background who became the trusted retainer of the earls of Pembroke and then, in her widowhood, of Lady Anne herself.