SOURCE: Holmes, Martin. “The Old Waste Places.” In Proud Northern Lady: Lady Anne Clifford, 1590-1676, pp. 159-68. London: Phillimore, 1975.

In the following excerpt from his full-length study of Clifford, Holmes discusses some of the details from Clifford's later years as noted in her unfinished autobiography, a work that, unlike her diary, is not a spontaneous expression of feeling but a selection of facts recorded long after the events had taken place.

The castle's gently render'd 

Macbeth, V, vii

In 1652 Lady Anne started an autobiography based on her memories, diaries and other documents. For many years she had been compiling a genealogical history of the Vipont and Clifford families, based on her mother's researches and embodying transcripts of official records and other documentary evidence, taken originally in the course of her campaign to establish her daughter's rights. Now it was fair-copied in triplicate in three sets of three great...