The Anne Clifford Project

The Lady Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery (1590-1676) is one of the most important women of the 17^th century. She spent her childhood close to the court of Elizabeth I, at times sleeping in a chamber nearby the Queen, of whom Anne Clifford said she was “well beloved”. Her relationship with James I was not so cordial, though she danced in the masques of his Queen, Anne of Denmark. Her friendships were wide and varied, from the poets Samuel Daniel and Ben Jonson, to divines including John Donne and George Herbert. She was an antiquarian and spent much of her life collecting documents related to her family’s history—working with men like Roger Dodsworth, William Dugdale, and John Selden. Most spectacularly, she was a builder, rebuilding and extending her five castles of Skipton, Brougham, Brough, Appleby and Pendragon. She was also a renowned philanthropist, her charitable work known throughout the country. Her most important historical work was her Great Books of Record. She is most famous for her autobiographies in which her personal joys, struggles, and day to day experiences are set within the grand political and social narratives of the times. She outlived three monarchs, and Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, and came to be known by many as the Queen of the North, so absolute was her influence in the ancient county of Westmorland, and north-western Yorkshire.

Professor Jessica L. Malay began the Anne Clifford project in 2010 with the intention of producing the first edition of Anne Clifford’s Great Books of Record (published in 2015 by Manchester University Press) and the first complete edition of Anne Clifford’s Autobiographies (published in 2018) by Manchester University Press. Professor Malay continues to publish articles and essays related to Anne Clifford. Future plans include a biography of Anne Clifford that places her firmly within the socio/political structures and events of the seventeenth century.

Recent Events:

Prof Jessica Malay on Lady Anne Clifford, Huddersfield Literature Festival, 8 March 2018, https://www.huddlitfest.org.uk/event/prof-jessica-malay-on-lady-anne-clifford/

Publications:

Recently Released: Anne Clifford’s Autobiographical Writing (Manchester University Press, 2018) http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526117885/

Anne Clifford is best known for her autobiographical writing, and is one of the most quoted individuals in the seventeenth century. References to her autobiographical writing along with quotations began appearing in print, with the earliest of these appearing in Thomas Pennant’s A Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides, 1772 (1776). This was followed closely by William Seward’s Anecdotes of Some Distinguished Person (1795) which includes a long extract from Anne Clifford’s memoir of 1603. Anne Clifford autobiographical work comes in many forms: memoir, diaries, and diurnal account of days. The first modern edition of any of Anne Clifford’s autobiographies was published by Vita Sackville-West in 1623. This was an edition of the 1603 memoirs, and the 1616,1617 and 1619 diaries. In 1990 D.J.H. Clifford published these, and also a large portion of the yearly memoirs from 1650-1676, and most of the Daybook of 1676.

In 2015 the Anne Clifford Project undertook the task of producing the first complete edition of Anne Clifford’s autobiographies. This edition supports all known autobiographical texts by Anne Clifford with detailed annotations, and brings to the public for the first time the complete autobiographical work of this important 17^th century figure. This edition was supported in part by an MHRA Research Associateship which was held by Dr Mary Chadwick.

The Great Books of Record (Manchester University Press, 2015)

The Great Books of Record are difficult to place in any particular genre. They include the genealogical record of the Cliffords from the 12^th century into the 18^th. They feature biographical sketches, and longer biographies. They contain a rich variety of documentary evidence of the social, economic and political life of a number of individuals stretching over 600 years. Perhaps the Great Books are best characterized as early modern historiography with its rich mixture of narratives of lives embedded within the evidences through which those lives are evidenced and placed within broader social structures.

The Great Books Project, funded by a Leverhulme Project Grant produced the first print edition of Anne Clifford’s most important textual achievement, published by Manchester University Press in 2015. http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719091872/

Publications Related to this book:

Malay, J. L. “Lady Anne Clifford’s Great Books of Record: Remembrances of a Dynasty.” A History of Early Modern Women's Writing. Ed. Patricia Phillippy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017

Malay, J. L. “Constructing Narrative of Time and Place: Anne Clifford’s Great Books of Record.” Review of English Studies 66.277 (2015), 859-875.

Reviews of this book:

Burton, J. “Anne Clifford’s Great Books of Record, a review.” Life Writing 15.1 (2018).

Salzman, P. “Anne Clifford’s Great Books of Record, a review.” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 11.2 (2017).

Additional Publications on Anne Clifford and her social circle:

Malay, J. L. “The Cleopatra Portrait: Literary and Visual Intersections in Female Devisership.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 17.3 (2018).

Malay, J. L. “Crossing Generations: Female Alliances and the Exercise of Dynastic Power in Anne Clifford’s Great Books of Record.” The Politics of Female Alliance in Early Modern England. Eds. Christina Luckyj and Niamh J. O'Leary Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2017.

Malay, J. L. “Beyond the Palace: The Transmission of Political Power in the Clifford Circle.” Family Politics in Early Modern Literature. Eds. Hannah Crawforth and Sarah Lewis. London: Palgrave, 2017.

Malay, J. L. “Constructing Narrative of Time and Place: Anne Clifford’s Great Books of Record.” Review of English Studies 66.277 (2015).

Malay, J. L. “Positioning Patronage: Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judæorum and the Countess of Cumberland in Time and Place.” The Seventeenth Century 28.3 (2013).

Malay, J. L. “The Marrying of Anne Clifford: Marriage Strategy in the Clifford Inheritance Dispute.” Northern History 159.2 (2012).

Key Stage 2 Activity pack

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Useful Links

The Anne Clifford Great Books Project has no formal connection with, or influence over the content of, any other websites, but information about the world of the Anne Clifford, and links to other sites of interest, may be found on the following websites:

www.abbothall.org.uk
Abbot Hall Art Gallery is the home of Anne Clifford’s Great Picture. They also exhibit other portraits of Anne Clifford and her contemporaries.

www.cumbria.gov.uk

A large collection of Anne Clifford related material is held by the Cumbria Archives Service, including the three sets of Anne Clifford’s Great Books of Record.

www.skiptoncastle.co.uk

Anne Clifford’s letters, at present unpublished and spread across the UK in a number of archives, provide insight into the network of relationships in which this powerful woman was embedded. They provide a first hand view into the events that shaped her life. Here we learn of the strategies that she and her mother considered as they engaged in the battle for the Clifford inheritance, and later the political machinations of Anne Clifford and her daughter as they sought to place Anne Clifford’s grandson in parliament against strong institutional opposition. During the fraught years at the end of the 1650s we follow her attempts to protect her rights against both governmental and local opposition. We can trace Anne Clifford’s affectionate relationship with her many grandchildren and experience the many joys and the great grief that were part of these important relationships. We learn of Anne Clifford’s business acumen and the way in which she enforced her nearly autonomous political control in Westmorland. We get a sense in these letters of her wide ranging relationships with leading families as well as more humble individuals. Her relationship with leading scholars of the day are also revealed. The letters fill the gaps found in Anne Clifford’s autobiographical writing and will provide scholars with not only a wealth of information on this important northern woman, but also early modern culture more widely. The Anne Clifford Project will produce an edited collection of these letters which will appear in 2019.

Anne Clifford is a central figure in studies of early modern women’s writing as well as a much beloved historical person. In what she always termed, “the lands of my inheritance” the vast area of Westmorland, and Craven in Yorkshire, she continues to be revered in folk memory. Her presence is still inscribed on the landscape through the many castles she restored, the churches she rebuilt, the almshouses she financed and the memorials she raised. Anne Clifford’s initials and inscriptions are still present in many of these places, a testimony to her continued presence in the area.

In her lifetime, her influence was felt both nationally through a network of relationships with leading figures of the period and regionally through her administration of large parts of the Northeast. Historians and literary scholars have become interested in her life and work over the past two decades because she is increasingly seen as a crucial figure; her “writings” in all their different forms contributing to the larger emerging picture of the period. This project aims to create links with debates about the rediscovery of the past in the early modern period. Her Great Books of Record also engage in current scholarship on early modern gift-giving, the relationship between pre and post reformation charity, great house culture, marriage, genealogy and family origins.

Anne Clifford’s Autobiographies

In 2015 Prof Malay was awarded an MHRA Research Associateship and welcomes Dr Mary Chadwick to the Anne Clifford project. Dr Chadwick will assist in the production of the first complete edition of Anne Clifford’s autobiographical work.

The Anne Clifford Letters

This project to produce an edition on Anne Clifford’s correspondence will begin in October 2016.

Anne Clifford’s Great Books of Record:

The aim of this project was to:

The objective of this project is to publish an edition of Anne Clifford’s Great Books of Records which will include the following elements:

Complete text of the Great Books that collates notes and supplementary or unique text found in each of the three sets.
Annotation that identifies the status of the transcribed documents within the text, and relevant historical/cultural information.
An introductory essay that considers the historiographical, codicological, as well as the biographical, techniques Clifford employs in the construction of this dynastic narrative.
A complete index
Appendices of genealogical tables, chronologies, and maps.
Illustrations from the manuscripts including genealogical imagery, sketches of selected seals, and portraits of key figures featured in the manuscript.

The Great Books are formed from a variety of texts and textual genre including documentary texts, historical narrative, autobiography, and literary description structured in a particular way. The material in these books was initially collected in order to form a narrative that powerfully insisted upon Anne Clifford’s rights to her northern lands, drawing upon a variety of documents relating to the acquisition, management, and activities connected to these lands, and other properties owned by her progenitors the Viponts and Cliffords, stretching back into the twelfth century. These documents are arranged in such a way as to strongly assert the role of women in the accumulation and development of both the land and honour of the Clifford family. Anne Clifford arranged the material and added further historical summaries and commentary upon her acquisition of the Clifford lands in order to witness and celebrate her decades long struggle to see her rights of inheritance finally acknowledged. The Great Books are a prodigious witness to the rights she claimed.

The books are divided into three volumes. The arrangement of the three extant sets is the same. Book one begins with Robert 1st Lord Vipont.(d. 1226) first hereditary sheriff and baron of Westmorland and his wife Idonea de Builli (d. 1235). It continues through the succeeding Vipont Lords through the last Vipont heirs, the co-heirs Isabella de Vipont (who marries Roger Clifford) and Idonea de Vipont. The book then turns to the Clifford Marcher lords from (Walter d. 1187) to Roger Clifford, the Elder (d. 1283). Throughout this book, as well as the other two books, the contributions of female heirs in managing and augmenting the Clifford holdings are continually referred to.

Like book two and most of book three, this book is organized in a consistent manner. Each section pertains to the person (male or female) who holds lordship over the estates and begins with a brief introduction. A genealogical tree also generally accompanies each section. Especially interesting are the trees of matrilineal descent which accompany all sections devoted to women. From this follows transcriptions of documents connected to the person, especially - though not exclusively - documents concerning the acquisition and management of property holdings. Within these documents is material relating to religious foundations, civic bodies, and a wide variety of individuals across the social spectrum. After each transcription, which in the early documents is often in Anglo-French or Latin, is an English translation. In the margins the location of the original document is often noted. At times the person responsible for providing or finding the document is also noted. In several places there are sketches of the seals attached to particular documents; obviously the sketch was intended to validate the authenticity of a document. Following the documents Anne Clifford wrote a biographical summary for each individual, and finally at the end of the documents in each section is a list in order of presentation of all the documents contained in the section. Book two contains records from Roger de Clifford the younger (d. 1282) to Henry, 10th Lord Clifford (d. 1523).

Book three begins with Henry Clifford, 1st Earl of Cumberland. The material for the first two earls is organized in the same fashion as all preceding sections. However, material relating to George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, and Anne Clifford’s father, is much more eclectic including material related to George Clifford’s relationship with Queen Elizabeth, information on his sea voyages, items concerning his marriage to Margaret Clifford including material related to their marital difficulties, and other material that had a direct bearing on the legalities of Anne Clifford’s claim as sole heir general. As part of this material there are two “digressions” on her uncle, Francis Clifford 4th Earl of Cumberland, who was named by George Clifford as his heir, and on Francis Clifford’s son, Henry Clifford 5th Earl of Cumberland, both of whom Anne Clifford believed illegally held what she generally termed, “the lands of mine inheritance.” In addition this book contains documents and a biographical “memorial” of Margaret Clifford. Book three also contains Clifford’s autobiographical summaries of her own life from her birth to her death. In two of the sets material was added by Anne Clifford’s Thanet descendents (her first daughter Margaret married John Tufton, 2nd Earl of Thanet) up to 1734. Each of the three sets of the Great Books also contain unique material - especially to be found in marginal notes added to the books in various hands, including Anne Clifford’s.

As can be seen by this brief survey, these books provide unique access to cultural documents covering over 500 years. They provide crucial insight into Anne Clifford’s sense of self through her construction of a shared, and often female, dynastic identity. The Great Books return often to female heirs like Idonea Builli, Isabella Vipont, and Alice de Lacy, Countess of Lincoln and their contributions, through the lands they brought with their marriages, to the Clifford estates. Anne Clifford deftly arranges the material to highlight not only inheritance of land, but inheritance of honour brought to the Cliffords through the female line foregrounding the virtue and intelligence of women like Margaret, daughter of Prince Llewellyn of Wales, Maud Beauchamp, daughter of the third Earl of Warwick, Eleanor Brandon, niece of Henry VIII, and finally her own mother Margaret Russell.

Methodology:

The interdisciplinary project team of Dr Jessica Malay and Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh will bring together skills from history and literary studies including an ability to engage closely and critically with the textual detail, an understanding of the importance of the contextual framework, and a knowledge of the relevant genre.

An initial transcription will be made.
Information from all three sets of Great Books, with unique material clearly identified and the source recorded in the notes.
Useful explanatory notes, material from related manuscript sources, illustrations and appendices will be incorporated into the text.

Our aim is to produce an accurate text which contains and clearly identifies all material from all three set of Great Books. Clarity is extremely important, and the format envisaged will provide scholars with a useful and comprehensive text that also authentically represents the variety of material in the books and the relationship between this material and the original manuscripts.

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