ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how Anne Clifford's single-minded goal - to control and be associated with the properties belonging to the earldom of Cumberland - was successfully carried out due in large measure to her effectiveness as an architectural patron. It also demonstrates that Clifford's writings about her understanding and use of her castles expose her powerful resolve to bind herself and her progeny to the legacy of her distinguished family. For Clifford, her houses retained traces of past events of dynastic importance that could only be accessed by physically using the spaces. Instead of concentrating in her writings on describing tapestries, portraits, or other embellishments through which to assert familial connections or ancestral pride, she seems to have viewed house itself as a vessel of the past that connected her to present and future. It furthermore provided her with constant acknowledgment and affirmation of the success of her forty-year quest to regain possession of them.
