Ann Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery, was another insatiate builder, and a woman of very great independence of character; not a vindictive fiend, like old Bess of Hardwicke, but, all the same, a woman who would have her way. She married the Earl of Dorset, as weak and vicious a man as she was a strong and virtuous woman, with whom she lived most unhappily. When he fortunately died, she declared that she would not wed a man who was either a curser, a courtier, or a swearer, or who had children; and it so happened that in marrying Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, she allied herself to a widower with a family, who was both a courtier and a proficient in vile language and fancy swearing. He, however, soon joined the majority, and his widow took no more chances in the lottery of marriage. She busied herself in rebuilding her castles, which had been destroyed during the Civil War, six of them throughout Cumberland and Westmoreland; and spent the remainder of her long life in journeying from one to another, carrying with her the huge volumes in which she had collected the records of the Clifford family and the memoirs of her own life. Hers was the borough of Appleby, for which Sir John Williamson, Secretary of State, proposed a candidate. But the Countess, who had despised Cromwell and loathed the viciousness of Charles the Second’s _entourage_, replied, in a characteristic note, ‘I have been bullied by an usurper; I have been neglected by a Court; but I won’t be dictated to by a subject. Your man shan’t stand.--ANN DORSET, PEMBROKE, AND MONTGOMERY.’ She was a wonderful woman. She spoke five languages fluently, and was accomplished in many ways, and, according to Bishop Rainbow, of Carlisle, who preached her funeral sermon, ‘she had a clear soul shining through a vivid body: her body was durable and healthful,’ he continues; ‘her soul sprightful and of great understanding and judgment faithful memory, and ready wit.’ She was ‘a perfect mistress of forecast and aftercast,’ and, according to Doctor Donne, ‘knew well how to converse of all things, from predestination to slea-silk.’ She was no less great as a builder than Nimrod was mighty as a hunter, and Bess of Hardwicke was scarce her equal in the piling up of bricks and mortar. [Illustration: ANN CLIFFORD, COUNTESS OF DORSET, PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY, AGED 18. ]