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Law, Land, Identity: The Case Of Lady Anne Clifford, Carla Spivack

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This article presents the case history of Lady Anne Clifford, a seventeenth century Englishwoman who spent most of her adult life fighting to regain her ancestral estates, which she felt her father had unjustly left to her uncle instead of to her. Although, as the article explains, she had the better of the legal argument, that was no match for the combined forces of her two husbands and of King James I, who sought to deprive her of her land. Finally, however, because Clifford outlived her uncle's son, the last male heir, she did inherit the estates.

The article examines …