DÉSORMAIS.

A STORY OF SKIPTON CASTLE.

ONE of the most celebrated and remarkable women of any period was Anne Clifford, daughter of George Earl of Cumberland, and Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery. Her paternal name is surrounded by many poetical and romantic associations, for the Cliffords were one of the great historic families not only of Yorkshire but of England, and a Clifford is the hero of many a deed of chivalry and knightly adventure. Religious, magnificent, and literary, the extraordinary character of the Lady Anne has added its own celebrity to the illustrious name she inherited, and has surrounded with most interesting memories that famous old Castle of Skipton which was long the chief stronghold of her

race.

She had certainly some very remarkable persons among her progenitors, and she inherited some of their qualities. From the days of the Plantagenets down to the wars of York and Lancaster, her knightly ancestors were warriors; but "the good Clifford" who fought at Flodden Field was almost an old man before he wore his armour, and had led the life of a shepherd until his thirty-second year. The career of his son, before the latter was advanced to the earldom of Cumberland, seems to have been as violent and lawless as that of any of Falstaff's allies; and his successor fought against the Armada, and was all his life a restless sailor. Such of the Cliffords of the Tudor days as had any tranquil hours to give to the literature of the age seem to have dabbled in alchemy, astrology, and magic.

It is interesting to glance at the characteristics or the fate for which the Cliffords of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were chiefly remarkable. In the Lancastrian cause the family was destined to do and suffer much. Thomas, eighth Lord Clifford, fell at St. Alban's in 1454, in what Shakspeare calls

The silver livery of advised age,

leaving a son, John-known as "the Black-faced Clifford"-who succeeded him, but who had short enjoyment of his patrimony and honours, for he was slain on the eve of the battle of Towton Moor. On his death the Cliffords were driven from their possessions by the victorious House of York. It was one of the children of this unfortunate nobleman who became known as "the good Clifford-the Shepherd Lord." In his childhood he was placed by his noble mother for safety, first at Londesborough, and then amongst the simple dalesmen of Cumberland, and much of his boyhood is said to have been passed at the little mountain village of Threlkeld, near Keswick, whilst the crown usurped his lands and castles:

Meantime, far off, 'midst Cumbrian hills,

The Clifford lives unknown,

On strangers' bounty he depends,

And may not claim his own.

Like the Chaldæan shepherds, he seems to have early made acquaintance

with the stars; and he was fond of all such knowledge and legendary lore as might be acquired among the wildest scenes of nature. As Wordsworth sings of him:

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;

His daily teachers had been woods and rills-
The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

Thus peacefully he passed his life until, on the accession of Henry VII., he was restored to his honours and estates, and with the rest to his ancient tower of Skipton, "too long to vacancy and silence left":

Glad were the vales and every cottage hearth;

The Shepherd Lord was honoured more and more.

He indulged in after-life the taste he had acquired for studious pursuits. When he resided on his Yorkshire estates his favourite retreat was Barden Tower-a small stronghold of the Cliffords situated in the deep solitude of ancient woods in Wharfedale; his chosen companions were his neighbours the canons of Bolton Priory, and though he could only write his name, his favourite pursuit was astronomy, to which he seems to have added judicial astrology ad libitum, But in 1513 the invasion of the Scots roused him to maintain the martial reputation of his raceArmour rusting in his halls

On the blood of Clifford calls,

and in his sixtieth year he fought in the battle of Flodden Field. In 1523 his course was run, and he was succeeded by Henry his son, who was within two years afterwards advanced to the dignity of Earl of Cumberland. In his youth he had been prodigal, raised money by anticipation, assembled a band of dissolute followers, and turned outlaw. But he was not doomed to remain always a stranger to "all that life has soft and dear," for he had the good fortune to marry the lady Margaret Percyan event by which the whole of the vast lordships and manors constituting "the Percy fee" in Yorkshire became vested in the Cliffords. From thenceforth all the country from Skipton in Craven, to Brougham in Westmoreland, a distance of seventy miles, belonged to them, with the exception of a district about ten miles in length; and for their chase or hunting-ground, they had around their old demesne of Skipton the vast deer-forest which then overspread the rocky, central part of Craven, extending from the Wharfe to the river Aire.

It has been conjectured that this adventurous young nobleman was the hero of the ballad of "The Nut-brown Mayde"-that touching though antiquated celebration of woman's love and constancy. The ballad, however, has been regarded by some critics as older than the youthful days of Henry VIII., and the hero discovers himself as "an erlys son," which Henry Clifford certainly was not. Be this as it may, the earl had been in youth the comrade of Henry VIII., and, unlike most other

*When this young nobleman went to London upon his creation as Earl of Cumberland, he had a retinue of thirty-four horsemen, but the cost of each man and horse was only tenpence a day in the money of those times. He was lodged at Derby House, where now the Heralds' College stands. He does not seem to have purchased and brought with him from London to the north any articles of luxury and amusement, except a hound and a falcon, a bugle horn and a sheaf

friends of that inconstant and blood-stained tyrant, retained the king's favour so long as to receive, in 1542, a grant of the Priory of Bolton, with all the lands and manors of that famous house. But as if the gift by the royal plunderer of the Church had been fatal to the grantee, and the abbey lands had "wrought his swift decay," he lived only nineteen days after he became possessor of these rich spoils, and died at the age of forty-nine. Of his successor, Henry Clifford, little is to be said, except that he became allied with royalty by his marriage with the Lady Eleanor Brandon, and that he was not only a studious man in a generally unlettered age, but was much given to alchemy. Having had a narrow escape of being buried alive during an illness, he lived to marry, for his second wife, Anne, daughter of Lord Dacre, and to enjoy his honours without suffering disturbance, though without acquiring renown. George Clifford, his son, was the father of Lady Anne, and succeeded, as third Earl of Cumberland, in 1569. He was a man of noble mind, great natural gifts, and adventurous disposition. He early showed his predilection for "a life on the ocean wave," and even when at Cambridge did not care for any other learning than what might aid To steer the bold barque o'er the new-found main To the new land of glory, blood, and gain.

*

In his nineteenth year he married the Lady Margaret Russell, daughter of Francis, second Earl of Bedford, to whom he had been betrothed in infancy, but he did not love her, and often deserted his home to engage in naval expeditions. The sea, which (as Hartley Coleridge says) he wooed for his bride, was to him a cruel mistress, and his naval trophies were bought at the expense of his fortune. He made nine voyages, chiefly to the West Indies, and on the memorable advance of the Spanish Armada, distinguished himself in the action off Calais. This high-born wanderer of the sea is portrayed by the pen of his dutiful daughter and the pencil of an unknown limner, as a model of masculine comeliness, with an expressive as well as handsome countenance, set off by costly attire. He was possessed of great bodily strength and agility, and was skilled in knightly accomplishments. His valour and love of daring were quite romantic, and he could charm the female ear by eloquent discourse

Of all the wonders of the mighty deep-
Of perils manifold and strange.

James I. had been only two years upon the English throne when the earl's adventurous career closed, at the age of forty-seven, and on this event the right to his lands, baronies, and honours (save the earldom, which went to his only brother, Sir Francis Clifford) descended to the Lady Anne, his only daughter and heir, then in her sixteenth year, she having been born on the 30th of January, 1590.

Our noble heroine shall now introduce herself. Writing in the sixtyof arrows. He was very economical in the presents he brought to his wife, for they appear to have been confined to "a white embroidered frontlet" which cost fifty shillings, and some velvet.

*The inventory of his apparel (printed in Whitaker's "History of Craven”) affords an example of the showy and costly character of a nobleman's wardrobe at that time, and quite a picture of the interior of a great baronial castle in the middle of the sixteenth century.

third year of her age, when Time had long robbed her of her charms and thinned her flowing hair, she says:

"I was very happy in my first constitution, both in mind and body, both for internal and external endowments; for never was there a child more resembling both father and mother than myself. The colour of mine eyes was black like my father's, and the form and aspect of them was quick and lively like my mother's. The hair of my head was brown and very thick, and so long that it reached to the calf of my legs when I stood upright, with a peak of hair upon my forehead, and a dimple on my chin, and an exquisite shape of body like my father. * ** And though I say it, the perfections of my mind were much above those of my body: I had a strong and copious memory, a sound judgment, a discerning spirit, and a strong imagination, insomuch that at many times even my dreams and apprehensions proved to be true."

Her portrait at Knowle Park represents a youthful person of symmetrical form, with features betokening great energy of character,

Less formed to sue than to command,

but adorned with the grace of a high-born woman. Another portrait of her, taken in later life, represents features more expressive of firmness than benignity; but, although she did possess a masculine decision of character, she was undoubtedly a person of beneficent and amiable disposition. She inherited the literary taste of some of her ancestors. Amongst the books introduced beside her in a picture, in which she is represented as a damsel of thirteen, are Eusebius, St. Augustine, Josephus, and the "Arcadia" of Sir Philip Sidney. She must have been a learned little lady indeed, if these were the books she was capable of reading! It is a pleasant relief to find that she nevertheless learned dancing and the use of the cross-bow, and took part in private theatricals.

Our sympathies are particularly engaged by finding that she had an early love for poetry and regard for literary men-a taste for which she was, doubtless, much indebted to her worthy tutor, Samuel Daniel, himself historian and poet. Her noble father, sea-rover as he was, had been a patron of Spenser, and by her was Spenser's monument erected in Westminster Abbey.

The Lady Anne enjoyed the care and affection of her mother until her twenty-sixth year, and owed to her parent the defence of her inheritance and patrimonial rights. She set up a characteristic and enduring monument of her filial love in erecting a pillar upon the spot where she took the last leave of her mother, on the road between Penrith and

* Written, as the reader will remember, in the classic halls of Wilton, in which the Lady Anne passed some period of her life after her marriage to Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery.

† Honourable testimony to the care of this excellent parent in forming the character of the Lady Anne is borne by her poet-tutor in the poem addressed to her, in which he says:

"With so great care doth she that hath brought forth

That comely body, labour to adorn

That better part, the mansion of your mind,

With all the richest furniture of worth,

To make thee highly good as highly born,

And set your virtues equal to your kind."

Appleby, in remembrance of which event she ordained that, at the pillar, there should be a distribution of money to the poor upon the anniversary for ever. The poet Rogers, it will be remembered, has commemorated

The modest stone which pious Pembroke reared;

Which still records beyond the pencil's power

The silent sorrows of a parting hour.

At an early age Anne Clifford was united to Richard Sackville, third Earl of Dorset, who, although in other respects a man of sense, seems to have been a profligate spendthrift, eager to sign away her patrimonial rights for present gain. He died in 1624, leaving only two daughters, for the noble pair had been successively bereaved of their three sons; and it was by the marriage of one of those daughters to John Tufton, Earl of Thanet, that the ancient manor and castle of Skipton has descended on Sir Richard Tufton, the present owner of that historical domain.

At the mature age of forty-one, after six years of widowhood, the countess was again overtaken by matrimony. Her second husband was that memorable simpleton (as Walpole calls him), Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, himself a widower of forty-five, whose qualifications seem to have consisted of hawking and hunting, and whose only recommendations were that he was a favourite courtier and a handsome person, for his character has been justly regarded by posterity as odious and contemptible. Yet his mother was that " Sidney's sister" celebrated as "the subject of all verse," and his brother was Lord Herbert of Cherbury, one of the most distinguished of the worthies and benefactors of Oxford, a scholar, philosopher, and hero.*

In her own account of her wedded life, the lady says of her departed lords:

"It was my misfortune to have crosses and contradictions with them both ... so that in both their lifetimes the marble pillars of Knowle and Wilton were to me oftentimes but the gay arbours of anguish.. I made good books and virtuous thoughts my companions, which can never discern affliction, nor be daunted when it unjustly happens."

But soon the Lady Anne was to merge her conjugal miseries in the troubles of the civil wars. A firm royalist and faithful daughter of the Church of England, this high-spirited lady would probably have performed heroic actions had her strong castles and broad lands been in her own command during the early years of the rebellion. When she came to be actual mistress of what had been legally hers since 1643, her property was in a dilapidated state. Her Westmoreland castles-viz. Appleby, Brougham, Brough (which guarded the pass of Stainmoor), Pendragon (which commanded the pass of Mallerstang), and her Yorkshire strongholds of Barden and Skipton-were in ruins. It might be said of these as of the exiled Percy's in the well-known ballad:

Her towers and castles, once so fair,

Were mouldering in decay;

Proud strangers had usurped her lands

And borne their wealth away.

* Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, died 23rd January, 1650. For some time before, the countess had been obliged to live apart from him. 2 E

VOL. XLVII.