July 7. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



Countess's Memoirs or Diaries," Mr. Craik says, " are not 

 to be found in this transcript. Fisher is, moreover, a very 

 ignorant and incompetent hand, and appears to have 

 been frequently unable to read what he undertook to 

 copy. Mr. Baynes's transcript," of which I shall presently 

 speak, "may, however, have been made from his." * 



Extracts have been given by Seward from 

 what he terms " Memoirs of the early part of the 

 Countess's Life, printed for the first time,"f but 

 he gives no authority in confirmation of their 

 authenticity, and they appear perfectly distinct 

 from Mr. Hailstone's " Memoriall." 



Extracts, purporting to be taken from the 

 Countess's Diary, have also been given by Pennant, 

 Whitaker, and Hartley Coleridge. The last able 

 writer says that he is mainly indebted to Dr. 

 Whitaker for his facts. He also refers to " Sir 

 Matthew Hale's MSS." (portions, doubtless, of 

 the three folios), and gives us quotations in the 

 Countess's own language. These we also find 

 given by Baynes, but they are not in Whitaker's 

 or Seward's Works ; nor in Mr. Hailstone's tran- 

 script. When alluding to these MSS. we may 

 refer to Roger North, who accompanied his rela- 

 tive the Chief Justice (afterwards Lord Keeper) 

 on the Circuit, and visited Appleby Castle soon 

 after the Countess's death. He speaks of her as 

 " a magnificent and learned lady." " It was said," 

 he adds, " that Hales (sic), afterwards Chief 

 Justice, assisted her in the perusal and methodizing 

 of her evidences and muniments, and made her 

 fair extracts of them." 



We cannot but mark the ungracious terms in 

 which Hale's labours are alluded to both by 

 Whitaker and Coleridge. The former, who has 

 largely availed himself of them, coolly observes 

 that - - 



" Ingenuous curiosity, and perhaps too the necessary in- 

 vestigation of her claims to the baronies of the family, led 

 the Countess to compile their history ; an industrious and 

 diffuse, not always an accurate work, in which more 

 perhaps might have been expected from the assistance of 

 Sir Matthew Hale, who, though a languid writer, was a 

 man of great acuteness and comprehension." — History of 

 Craven, p. 313. 



In terms not more complimentary Coleridge 



says : 



" Lady Anne herself made a digest of the family re- 

 cords, with the assistance of Sir Matthew Hale. We re- 

 gret to say that, from the specimen we have seen, the 

 learned judge seems to have contrived to shed a sombre, 

 judicial dulness over the composition. He was much 

 more interested about the tenures, leases, and other legal 

 antiquities, than about the wild adventures, loves, and 

 wars of the ancient house." — Biographia Borealis, p. 243. 



Did these writers expect that, whilst engaged in 

 such a laborious and unimaginative occupation as 

 a digest of grants and charters, " thoughts that 



* Romance of the Peerage, vol. iv. p. 141. 

 t Anecdotes of some distinguished Persons, vol. iv, 

 p. 302. ^ 



No. 297.] 



breathe and words that burn " should have burst 

 from the excellent judge ? 



Gilpin mentions that he has " derived the most 

 material part of his History of the Countess from 

 a MS. life of Mr. Sedgwick, her secretary, written 

 by himself. In this work Mr. Sedgwick occasion- 

 ally inserts a few circumstances relating to his 

 lady. It is a pity he had not given her the better 

 share. His MS. is still extant in Appleby Castle," 

 The three folios Gilpin did not see, but, when 

 speaking of the Countess's own "Journal," he 

 adds, " What an interesting collection of valuable 

 anecdotes might be furnished from the incidents 

 of such a life ! " The original diary, he had been 

 informed, "the late Earl of Thanet destroyed, as it 

 contained va&ny severe remarks on several cha- 

 racters of those times which the earl supposed 

 might give offence to their families." * This re- 

 port might possibly have been circulated in order 

 to prevent the MS. from being examined. Whit- 

 aker tells us that amidst the evidences of Skipton 

 are several memoranda of large parcels of papers 

 sent away by order of Thomas, Earl of Thanet.- 

 (P, 316. note.) 



The friend, to whom I have already referred, 

 states, that he saw the folio volumes as late as the 

 year 1843; and also that " loose in one volume 

 was a birthday letter from the Countess to her 

 father when aged eight or nine, much like a 

 modern valentine." In addition to the larger 

 Diaries, Whitaker mentions " an original book 

 of accounts, filled with memoranda relative to 

 Lady Anne's education, from 1600 to 1602," 

 from which he has given extracts. Was this com- 

 pletely distinct from the other documents ? 



Pennant, who has devoted some pages to Skipton 

 Castle, and to the Cliffords, mentions the Countess 

 Margaret's letters as extant in manuscript, and also 

 her diary, and that of her daughter ; " the former 

 mentions," he says, " several minutiw that I omit, 

 being only proofs of her great attention to ac- 

 curacy,"! i*- is pretty clear that this last ob- 

 servation applies to the Lady Anne J, not to her 

 mother. 



The following letter in my possession, addressed 

 to Rltson, is in manuscript, but though not pub- 

 lished in his correspondence (1833), it may have 

 appeared elsewhere in print. The writer, John 

 Baynes, Esq., of Embsay, near Bolton Abbey (to 

 whom reference has already been made), was a 

 Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Having 

 gained the highest honours in the university, and 



* Observations on the ^fountains and Lakes of Cumher~ 

 land and fFestmoreland, vol. ii. pp. 161. 164. 



t Tour in Scotland, vol. ii. p. 358. 



j " With a Shandean exactness, very unusual amongf 

 female autobiographers in these days, Lady Anne begins 

 her memoirs of herself nine months before her nativity, 

 for the sake of introducing a beautiful quotation from 

 Psalm cxxxix. 12 — 16." ' — Biographia Borealis, p. 269. 



