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 296 CLIFFORD her cousin Henry Clifford had been sum. to the House of Lords as Lord Clifford) she claimed the Barony of Clifford, and her petition was referred to the House of Lords. (") The vast family estates, however, and the hereditary Shrievalty of Westmorland, were, from 1605, held by her uncle, Francis, 4th Earl of Cumberland (the h. male of the family), and did not come into her possession till the death, s.p.m.s., on 1 1 Dec. 1 643, of his only s. and h., Henry, the 5th and last Earl, who in 1628 had been sum. v.p. as Lord Clifford, as above-mentioned. She d. at Brougham Castle, Westmorland, 22 Mar., and was bur. 14 Apr. 1675/6, in the church of St. Lawrence, Appleby, in her 87th year.C') M.I. On her death, s.p.m.s.y the right to the Barony fell into abeyance between her ist da. Margaret, Countess of Thanet, and her granddaughter. Lady Alethea Compton,('^) only surv. child of her 2nd and yst. da., Isabella, Countess of Northampton, deceased.('') (^) On 3 Nov. 1606, her mother, Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, claimed the Barony of Clifford on her daughter's behalf, her petition being referred by the King to the Earl Marshal's Commissioners. The claim was renewed in 1628, when it was referred to the Lords. It is interesting to note, as J. H. Round remarks (Peerage and Pedigree, vol. i, p. 94), that " between these two dates the system of dealing with such claims had changed." The same writer points out that the pro- ceedings "afford perhaps the earliest instance of the doctrine of 'attraction ' in peerage law," being 10 years earlier than the Ros case (1616), which has hitherto been supposed to be the first in which this question arose. With regard to this doctrine of "attraction" and some account of peerage titles assumed by peers, see vol. v. Appendix F. V.G. C") From 1605 to 1643 she (or her mother, the Dowager Countess, on her behalf) was engaged in constant law suits with the heir male. She resided at fixed times at each of her six castles, Skipton, Appleby, Brougham, Brough, Pendragon, and Bardon tower, all of which (besides several churches connected with her estates) she repaired. "With a Shandean exactness," says Hartley Coleridge in his Biographia Borealis, "she begins her memoirs of herself nine months before her nativity for the sake of quoting the 139th Psalm." In the "True Memorial!" she states that "The colour of her eyes was black like her father's, with a peak of hair on her forehead, and a dimple in her chin, like her father — full cheeks and round-fac'd like her mother, and an excellent shape of body resembling her father. . . The hair of her head was brown and very thick, and so long that it reached to the calf of her leggs when she stood upright. And when she caused these memorials of herself to be written she had passed the year 63 of her age; she said the perfections of her mind were much above those of her body; she had a strong and copious memory, a sound judgment, and a discerning spirit, and so much of a strong imagination in her as that at many times even her dreams and apprehensions beforehand prov'd true." Dr. Donne said of her that "she knew well how to discourse of all things from predestination to slea-silk." Her tutor was the poet Samuel Daniel. ('^) Alethea, da. of James (Compton), 3rd Earl of Northampton, and the only child that survived infancy of his ist wife, Isabella abovenamed, was b. 14. Mar. 166 1 (exactly 7 months before her mother's death); she m. Edward Hungerford, of Farleigh, Somerset (s. and h. ap. of Sir Edward Hungerford, K.B.), and d. s.p., 14 Oct. 1678. Admon. 22 Apr. and 19 Dec. 1681. {^) The Shrievalty of Westmorland, however, passed to her ist da., the said Countess of Thanet, for whom her 2nd s., John, appears in the official lists as deputy.