Northern ladies: a celebration of Lady Anne Clifford 350 years after her death – and her contemporaries

2026 is the 350th anniversary of the death of Lady Anne Clifford, the last of the Cliffords to bear that name. Her struggle to retain her inheritance has attracted admiration over the generations: for some she is a formidable Northern Lady, for others a feminist icon.

The Record Series of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society is also publishing in the autumn a collection of previously unedited letters by Lady Anne, to Lady Anne and about Lady Anne edited by Professor Jessica Malay. The volume also contains the memoir of Lady Anne’s secretary, George Sedgewick (1618-85), published in full for the first time.

We are therefore holding what will be a dual celebration with a conference in Skipton Town Hall on Saturday 31 October. We have a stellar cast of speakers, all expert in their fields. We shall launch Professor Malay’s edition of Lady Anne’s letters and have two lectures on the life of Lady Anne herself, shedding new light on aspects of her life and revealing new thinking about her. Then we shall hear lectures on two of her contemporaries – her cousin once removed, Elizabeth Boyle, Countess of Cork, who inherited the parts of the Clifford estates which eluded Lady Anne, and a distant relative, Alice Thornton. And we end with an account of another formidable Lady but of an older generation, Bess of Hardwick, the Countess of Shrewsbury, of whom Lady Anne was almost certainly aware through her friendship with Bess’s granddaughters.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the conference.