Her rights were her rights, and she had always had a great idea of them. One recognizes the spirit that told the King she “_would never be parted from Westmoreland_,” in the old litigant that went unhesitatingly and repeatedly to law over niceties connected with small portions of her estates, content to spend large sums of money in lawyers’ fees if only she could succeed—as she invariably did—in proving her point. There is one story which illustrates both her tenacity and her humour—the story of a certain tenant whose rent included a hen due yearly to the lady of the manor. This tribute he neglected to hand over. Lady Anne instantly had the law on him, spent £400 in enforcing her claim, won her case, received the hen, invited her defeated opponent to dinner with her, and caused the bird to be cooked for them both as the staple dish of the meal.
So the tranquil and crowded years spun themselves out for her, and she grew to be an old woman and a contented one, for she had attained at last the existence and occupations best suited to her. Her life was full: the things which filled it were small things, perhaps, but if they satisfied her who should cavil? Her journeyings alone occupied much of her time: those extraordinary progresses from castle to castle, she herself travelling in her horse-litter, her ladies in the coach-and-six, her menservants on horseback, her women in other coaches, and a rabble of small fry following, so that the miniature army which accompanied her amounted sometimes to as many as three hundred. Often this retinue would include members of her family, or some of her neighbours; they travelled over the moors of the North, by rough roads, “uncouth and untrodden, those mountainous and almost impassable ways,” stopping on the way in those highland villages which had not yet been honoured by a visit from the great old lady or received her bounty, and, coming at the end of the journey to Brougham, to Brough, to Barden, to Skipton, to Pendragon, or to Appleby, Lady Anne would receive her dependants one by one in her own chamber, give her hand to the men, kiss the women, and dismiss them again to their own homes. Her health was no longer very good, but that was never allowed to deter her from her plans: her courage and vigour triumphed always over the treacherous flesh, greatly to the concern of those about her. On one occasion, travelling from Appleby to Brougham, she was delayed at the start by a “swounding fit,” when she had to be carried to a bed and laid there near a “great fire”; much persuasion was used that she “would not travel on so sharp and cold a day, but she, having before fixed on that day, and so much company being come purposely to wait on her, she would go.” As she reached her litter, however, she fainted again, “Yet as soon as that fit was over she went.” Arrived at Brougham she fainted for the third time, but on being upbraided by her friends and servants for her stubbornness in making the journey, she replied that she knew she must die, and it was the same thing to her to die on the way as in her house, in her litter or in her bed, and furthermore would not acknowledge any necessity why she should live, but saw every necessity for keeping to her resolution. “If she will, she will, you may depend on’t,” they said of her, “if she won’t, she won’t, and there’s an end on’t.”