Looking back on her life in the quiet of her northern home she said, “I must confess, with inexpressible thankfulness that I was born a happy creature in mind, body, and fortune, and that those two Lords of mine to whom I was afterwards by the Divine providence married, were in their several kinds worthy noblemen as any were in this Kingdom. Yet was it my misfortune to have contradictions and crosses with them both, with my first Lord about the desire he had to make me sell my rights in ye lands of mine inheritance for money, which I never did nor never would consent unto, insomuch as this matter was the cause of a long contention betwixt us, as also for his profuseness in consuming his estate.” Her dispute with her second husband arose because she would not compel her daughter by her first husband, against the girl’s desire, to marry his son by his first wife. The consequence of these two disputes, in both of which she was in the right, was that “the marble halls of Knoll and the gilded towers of Wilton, were often to me the Bowers of secret anguish.” She was not what has been called a man’s woman, but she was essentially a woman’s woman. All good women were her friends, her cousin the Countess of Cork, daughter of her usurping uncle; her sister-in-law the Countess of Dorset, wife of her brother-in-law, whom she considered her greatest enemy. Though King James was against her, Queen Anne was her warm friend. She had no children by her second husband; and her two sons by Earl Dorset died young. She had great consolation in the affection first of her mother, then of her two daughters, and also of her grandchildren. It was in connection with one of these that an important incident occurred, necessary to be fully explained here. I have been allowed to utilise some critical points communicated by me to the _Athenæum_, No. 3475, p. 709, June 2, 1894. In an article on “Letter-writing,” published in _The World_, April 5th, 1753, Sir Horace Walpole quotes the famous and often repeated letter by Anne Clifford, Dowager-Countess of Pembroke, to the Secretary of State, who wanted her to nominate his follower for Appleby:— “I have been neglected by a Court, I have been bullied by a usurper, but I will not be dictated to by a subject. Your man sha’n’t stand. “ANNE DORSET, Pembroke and Montgomery.”