ABSTRACT
On the nth of December 1643, an unexpected event altered the course of Lady Anne Clifford’s life. Her first cousin, Henry Clifford, 5th Earl of Cumberland, died suddenly at York, leaving a wife and daughter to mourn him but no son to inherit either his title or his lands. Lady Anne’s own concise description of this process of differentiation pulls together a number of themes which are fundamental to the identity she forged. It is characteristic of Anne’s increasing absorption in texts that the passage contains an echo of some lines in Sidney’s Arcadia, in which Dorus sings the verses, ‘Come from marble bowers, many times the gay harbour of anguish.’ The layering of meanings through juxtaposed texts, through allusions to literature and to the Bible, is a frequent device in the diary and memoirs; and, as overlapping images, heraldic devices, and inscriptions on paintings, buildings, and memorials would become one of Anne’s chief vehicles for self-representation.
