Sir Joseph Williamson, Secretary of State to Charles II., having presumed
to recommend a candidate for her borough of Appleby, she wrote him the
following spirited and well-known reply:
"I have been bullied by an usurper: I have been neglected by a court:
but I will not be dictated to by a subject. Your man sha'n't stand.
"ANNE DORSET, PEMBROKE, AND MONTGOMERY."
This statement is taken from _A Sermon preached at the Funeral of Anne,
Countess of Pembroke, &c._, by Bishop Rainbow; with _Biographical Memoirs_
(1839), page of the _Memoir_ xiii. In a note, it is observed that--
"Mr. Lodge questions the genuineness of this letter, which appears to
have been first published in _The World_ in 1753."
I concur with Mr. Lodge. The style of the letter is quite modern: the verb
"bully" seems also quite a modern coinage and the signature varies from the
usual setting forth and sequence of titles contained in the inscriptions
which the Countess placed over the gateways of her castles, as she repaired
them, and which ran thus, the peerages being placed in the order of their
creation, viz.: "Countess Dowager of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery." In
support of the genuineness of the letter, it may be urged that Sir Joseph
Williamson, from an early period after the Restoration until 1674, when he
became Secretary of State, held various offices about the Court that might
have thus brought him into collision with the Countess; that he was not a
very scrupulous man; that he was the "son of a clergyman somewhere in
_Cumberland_;" and that his highest promotion took place before the death
of the Countess in 1675. (For some account of him, see Evelyn's _Memoirs_,
Index.) To this it may be added, that the letter accords with her
courageous spirit. Can no earlier authority be given for it than that of
_The World_ in 1753?