(1715 - 93), dau. of Cts. of Newburgh and Thomas Clifford; m. 1 1739 James Joseph Mahony, comte Mahony, 2 1773 Don Carlo Severino.
1740 - 93 Florence (Jun. 1740), Naples (1740 - ), Ischia, Rome
In December 1739 Lady Anne Clifford married in Paris Count James Joseph Mahony who the following year entered the Neapolitan service. They arrived in Florence from Avignon in June,1 and the Countess was in Albano later that month on her way to join her husband.2 Mahony cut a fine military figure in Naples, attaining the rank of Lieutenant General and being made governor of the fort of St Elmo.3 Their daughter Cecilia was painted as a child by Batoni (untraced).4 When her husband died in 1757 their daughter was about to marry Prince Benedetto Giustiniani. After the marriage the Countess received a pension of three hundred pounds a year from the King of Naples, 'besides about a hundred and fifty more, which she is entitled to as a General's widow'.5
The Countess continued to live in Naples and Sir William Farington saw her at one of Mrs Catherine Hamilton's conversazioni on 30 April 1765.6 In 1773 she married again, a circumstance described by James Byres in March the following year: 'she married some time ago Don Carlo Severino, the younger brother of a noble family in Apulia. This she did against the advice of all her friends, except her confessor, for Don Carlo is at least some twenty years younger than she is, and was reckon'd a little flighty, and is this summer gone quite mad. The physicians give little hope for his recovery. Lady Ann will not suffer him to be put up in a madhouse, but keeps him at home, treats him with great care and tenderness which is really dangerous considering his situation'.7 On 19 February 1774, two weeks before Byres wrote this letter, 'Monsr e Madama Mohone' had passed through Capua with a Captain Anstruther.8 It appears that the couple stayed together some time. In 1785 Lord Pembroke cryptically observed that 'Poor Made. Mahony, I apprehend, has lost her nose, & keeps her Cancer, & mad husband',9 but Byres was then saying that they were separated, the Countess having resolved 'to retire for some time to the Island of Ischia', partly, he believed, 'on account of her health and partly for oeconomy, for her connexion with Don Carlo had greatly deranged her affairs'.(10) In 1785 her youthful portrait by Subleyras (Caen) was copied by the ageing Batoni, who also painted her daughter and son-in-law, Prince Benedetto Giustiniani,11 all for William Constable, her first cousin at Burton Constable in Yorkshire (see Constable).
In her last years she continued her sociable existence at Naples and Ischia. Henry Quin remarked that she was 'One of the old Trouts' at a reception in Rome given by Cardinal de Bernis in January 1786,12 and in August 1787 she received Emma and Sir William Hamilton at Ischia for ten days.(13) T.C. Porter called on Countess Mahony 'who lived at Ischia' in Naples on 22 December 1788,14 and Father Thorpe mentioned her there in 1791.15
1. SP 98/43, f.50 (Walton, 11 Jun. 1740). 2. Wal.Corr., 17:28. 3. Sterne Letters, 274 - 5n10. 4. Clark/Bowron, p.364. 5. Lyte letters mss (18 Apr. 1757). 6. Farington jnl.mss. 7. Byres letters mss c (5 Apr. 1774). 8. ASN cra 1259. 9. Pembroke Papers, 2:288. 10. Byres letters mss c (28 Oct. 1785). 11. For whom, see A. Busiri-Vici, L'Urbe, 5[1969]. 12. Quin jnl.mss (27 Jan. 1786). 13. Morrison, 1:131 (no.168). 14. Porter mss. 15. Thorpe letters mss (13 Apr., 8 Jun. 1791).