Lady Anne Clifford - Patron of The Arts

Patron of The Arts

She was an important patron of authors and literature; her letters, and the diary she kept from 1603 through 1616, have made her a secondary literary figure in her own right.John Donne is reported to have said that she could 'discourse of all things from Predestination to Slea-silk '. She bore five children by her first husband— although none of their three sons survived to adulthood. Her two surviving daughters both married and had issue. A central conflict with her second husband lay in a choice of husband for her younger daughter, Lady Margaret Sackville (2 July 1614- 14 August 1676). Lady Margaret married in 1629, John Tufton, 2nd Earl of Thanet, by whom she had 11 children.

The artist Jan van Belcamp painted a triptych portrait of Anne Clifford to her own design and specifications. Titled "The Great Picture," it portrays Lady Anne at three points in her life—at age 56, at age 15, and before birth in her mother's womb. In connection with the painting, Anne Clifford dated her own conception to 1 May 1589—certainly an unusual act of precision.

In 1656, she erected the Countess Pillar in memory of her late mother. She restored churches at Appleby-in-Westmorland, Ninekirks, Brougham and Mallerstang. She was also responsible for the improvement and expansion of many of the Clifford family's castles across Northern England, including those at Pendragon (Mallerstang), Brough, Skipton and Appleby, the last being her home.

She served as High Sheriff of Westmorland from 1653 to 1676. At her death, aged 86, she was the Dowager Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery. Her tomb is in St Lawrence's Church, Appleby-in-Westmorland.