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ANNE CLIFFORD, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE. 

 By GEO. WATSON. 



(Read at Penrith. )* 



Prominent amongst the relics of the past, on the south bank of 

 the Eamont, stands the hoary pile of Brougham Castle, so 

 picturesque an object in the magnificent landscape, viewed from 

 the Beacon side. For hundreds of years it was one of the seats of 

 the Cliffords, the last of whom was the Lady Anne Clifford, whose 

 life and illustrious lineage I have asked you to consider for an 

 hour this evening. 



Those who heard my paper last year on " Cicely Neville, and 

 the Feudal Lords of Penrith," may perhaps remember our notice 

 of the deadly feud between the second family of Ralph Neville, 

 Earl of Westmorland, and the Cliffords. We saw that after Ralph 

 Neville's youngest daughter. Cicely, the Rose of Raby, was married 

 to Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, the claimant to the throne, 

 her branch of the Neville family became leading champions of her 

 husbands cause in the terrible Wars of the Roses, in which they 

 came into frequent deadly conflict with the Cliffords, who fought 

 on the opposing Lancastrian side. We saw that so bitter and 

 sanguinary was the strife, that ere the Duchess Cicely died in 

 religious seclusion in her castle, not only the House of Lancaster, 

 for which the Cliffords bled, but her own House of York, had not 

 a male left (except an imbecile youth, a prisoner in the Tower of 

 London, shortly to be executed on Tower Hill) ; the only female 



(* Inserted by the Penrith Society, by virtue of Rule 8.) 



