Retain your loyalty, preserve your rights.
Such was the motto of Lady Anne Clifford, the woman who defied King James I and risked everything by opposing her family, friends, and the law in a battle to reclaim her inheritance.
Anne's father, the Earl of Cumberland, died in 1605 and bequeathed his great northern estates not to his sole surviving child but to his brother, believing that a prophecy by his great-grandfather would eventually come true and return the estates to Anne.
Only fifteen years old at the time, she and her mother vowed to contest the will, and Anne spent the next three decades battling for what she believed was rightfully hers.
Lady Anne Clifford steadfastly (and treasonably) refused to accept the king's decision, whatever the consequences, but was defeated and left with the prophecy as her only hope.
Widowed at the age of thirty-four, she survived an anxious period alone with her two young daughters before surprising everyone with an ill-judged second marriage that gave her access to the highest in the land.
But the Civil War destroyed that power and confined the fifty-two-year-old Anne to a grand palace in London for six years.
Would she ever attain ye landes of mine inheritance? The Will to Succeed, the first novel to tell the story of Lady Anne Clifford, chronicles her brave attempt to take back what she was owed and gives readers a glimpse into some of the issues that women faced in the seventeenth century.
About the Author Christine Raafat is a writer living in Cumbria, England.
Unicorn Publishing Group The will to succeed: lady anne clifford's battle for her rights, paperback/christine raafat
