THE DISPENSER OF CHARITY. eighteen thousand pounds a year; which he squan- dered in the most magnificent manner. This man-called by Walpole, " a memorable simpleton, inflicted upon Anne Clifford even more misery than her first husband caused. Ignorant, vicious, and illiterate, he tortured her. A fruitful subject of annoyance with him was endeavouring to force her to sacrifice her younger daughter, Lady Isabella, to a marriage with one of his own younger sons ; to which he could never gain the shadow of assent from either mother or daughter. So wretched was she with both her tyrants, that she observes, bitterly : In both their life-times the marble pillars of Knowle, in Kent, and Wilton, in Wiltshire, were to me often but the gay arbours of anguish." To her steady friend, her uncle-the Earl of Bedford, -she was frequently compelled to appeal for interference, and for assistance in many difficulties. On one occasion, in 1638, when re- covering from a dangerous attack of illness, she wrote to him, imploring him to interpose with Lord Pembroke for permission to come up to London, were it but for ten days or a fortnight at most, to attend to her affairs. " For I dare not," she exclaims, " venture on it without his leave, lest he should take that occasion to turn me out of this house, as he did out of Whitehall, and then I shall not know where to put my head" ! The conduct of the Earl of Pembroke became at last so unendurable that she was compelled to 37
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