The date of birth of this MP, an illegitimate son of the wealthy Nottinghamshire knight Sir Gervase Clifton, is difficult to establish, but he was certainly older than his father’s legitimate son and heir, Robert. Indeed, if, as seems likely, he is to be identified with the individual of this name who was serving in Normandy in the 1420s he was born well before his father’s marriage. Having mustered in the retinue of Sir Ralph Butler, captain of Arques, in 1422, a Gervase Clifton served as lieutenant there for at least eight years. Our MP’s subsequent military reputation is most likely to be explained by this early service in the Norman garrisons.
Yet Clifton’s good fortunes initially rested on his association with John Kemp, archbishop of York (1425-52), and subsequently cardinal (from 1439) and archbishop of Canterbury (1452-4). Kemp had served as chancellor of Normandy in the final years of Henry V’s reign, and Clifton may have first come to his notice while in France, rather than through mutual links among the leading families of the east Midlands.
Clifton does not appear to have established his position in Kentish society immediately after his marriage, for three years elapsed before he was first appointed to the county bench. Yet after that appointment his rise proved rapid, so that in November 1439 he was not only pricked as sheriff but within a matter of days elected as knight of the shire for the Parliament called to assemble at Westminster on 12 Nov. Although no election indenture survives for this Parliament, Clifton’s fellow Member for Kent is known to have been James Fiennes, one of just four esquires for the King’s body. This has prompted the suggestion that he himself had joined the household circle that was to dominate Kentish politics in the 1440s. Yet his election may have had more to do with the continued influence of his patron, Cardinal Kemp. Certainly, it was because of Canterbury’s ‘reverence’ to the cardinal that Clifton was admitted to the freedom of the city, in November 1440, without paying the usual entry fine.
It was probably Clifton’s military credentials that led to his appointment as deputy to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, the warden of the Cinque Ports and constable of Dover castle, at some point after Michaelmas 1444. He replaced Sir Reynold Cobham of Sterborough, Gloucester’s father-in-law, and his appointment and movement into Gloucester’s service can most likely be explained by his connexions with Cobham’s family. Earlier, Sir Reynold had included him among the feoffees of certain manors in Kent, and in 1448 Clifton was to act alongside Cobham’s widow in donating land in Surrey to St. Peter’s College, Lingfield.
Like other members of Gloucester’s affinity in Kent, Clifton made an accommodation with James Fiennes, now created Lord Saye and Sele, who succeeded the duke as warden of the Cinque Ports. His transition to Fiennes’ service as lieutenant of Dover castle may have been made easier by the fact that Fiennes was a kinsman of his wife. In 1448 Clifton was among those, alongside Fiennes, to whom Sir William Septvance’s widow surrendered her dower lands, and shortly before Fiennes died he made Clifton one of his own feoffees.
The importance of any bond established between Fiennes and Clifton in the 1440s should not be exaggerated. Throughout that decade and beyond our MP’s strongest attachment remained to Cardinal Kemp. He was among Kemp’s servants associated with him in a grant by Thomas Seyton* of the manor of Grove, Buckinghamshire, in 1445, and the following year he witnessed a quitclaim on the cardinal’s behalf.
Clifton’s growing reputation was made more apparent in June 1451 by his appointment as treasurer of the town and marches of Calais. This came at a crucial time, both militarily and politically, for the beleaguered English outpost. Humphrey, duke of Buckingham, had resigned his post as captain of the town around March the previous year, after serving for an eight-year period marked by mutiny in the garrisons and the steady accumulation of arrears in the soldiers’ pay. The French, after their victory in Normandy, now threatened to invade the pale of Calais, and to augment its defences a substantial force was assembled under the leadership of John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton (appointed lieutenant of Calais and captain of Rysbank tower), and Sir Ralph Butler, now Lord Sudeley (given the command at Calais castle).
The new year bought fresh military responsibility for our MP. In February 1452 he was among those named to a commission of array in Kent, an action aimed against the intentions of Richard, duke of York, who was gathering an army in the west to march on London. Clifton and his fellow commissioners’ prompt actions allowed the King’s forces to move quickly to counter York’s own attempts to raise the county with his ally Sir Edward Brooke*, Lord Cobham. It seems likely that our MP was in the royal camp at Dartford.
Clifton’s military undertakings between 1449 and 1452 had proved expensive for him. In 1449 he and Iden had been allowed to borrow money to finance their naval expedition with payment promised from the forthcoming parliamentary subsidy, and in March 1450 Clifton had been assigned 400 marks for his ‘great costs and expenses’ in keeping the seas.
By the end of 1453 the financial burdens upon Clifton as a consequence of his office at Calais were proving intolerable. That year Parliament had passed an act requiring the treasurer and victualler of Calais to render account every two years, under pain of a fine of £500, and in 1455 the Exchequer began process against him to recover a fine for his failure to do so.
It was against this background of financial difficulty and lawsuits, that Sir Gervase was elected to his second Parliament as a knight of the shire for Kent. His election proved controversial. On 5 July 1455 the King’s council wrote to Clifton’s friend, Sir John Cheyne II*, the sheriff of Kent, warning him that ‘we be enfourmed there is besy labour made in sondry wises by certaine persones for þe chesyng of the said knightes’, and that the peaceful proceeding of the election was threatened. Cheyne was ordered to observe the statutes concerning parliamentary election and report any malefactors to the council.
Nevertheless, this pardon does not seem to have eased the pressure on him. Despite the arrangements made in 1455, the finances of Calais continued to be in desperate straits throughout the second half of the decade. When Clifton presented his account for the year ending 24 June 1457 he was found to be still some £7,650 in arrears, and by the end of Henry VI’s reign the deficit had reached a massive £37,160. Moreover, his duties in Kent, where he was expected to act on numerous commissions and as a j.p., kept him away from Calais for long periods of time. In the accounting year 1456-7, for example, he was only present in the pale for four weeks.
The final months of Sir Gervase’s shrievalty coincided with the outbreak of open hostilities between the crown and the Yorkist lords. On 12 Oct. 1459 the latter fled England in disarray after the desertion at Ludford Bridge of Andrew Trollope’s contingent of soldiers from Calais. It seems unlikely that Clifton himself was present on the field, but his sympathies probably lay with Trollope, in whose ship he had made the passage from Sandwich to Calais on more than one occasion.
On 10 July the earls of Warwick and March defeated the royal army and captured Henry VI at Northampton. Sir Gervase was not present at the battle; rather, a week later he was reported to have joined Lords Clifford and Scales in their defence of the Tower of London. Even so, he successfully escaped the fate of (Sir) Thomas Brown II* (who was tried and executed for his part in directing fire-power on the City), and before too long he rode north to add his weight to the forces raised by Margaret of Anjou in the north of England. It seems certain that he was present on the side of the victorious queen at the battle of Wakefield at the end of the year, and on 4 Mar. 1461 was among those Lancastrians exempted from the new King Edward IV’s pardon.
Clifton’s decision to lend his armed strength to those loyal to Henry VI might seem to have put him beyond reconciliation with the new regime. Yet this was not the case. On 31 July 1461 Edward IV pardoned him of all offences committed before 20 July and on the following 20 Dec. he was also pardoned of all misdemeanours as treasurer of Calais and sheriff of Kent, and their related financial penalties.
Yet Sir Gervase would have found it increasingly difficult to accommodate himself within the pro-Yorkist political society of Kent in the early 1460s. Instead, he relocated his interests to the east and north Midlands, where he had maintained personal links throughout the previous two decades. In July 1451, for example, he and John Scott had received an Exchequer lease of certain manors in south Lincolnshire.
The death in 1457 of Sir Gervase’s wife, Isabel,
Despite and partly because of this apparently advantageous marriage, Clifton was soon again in trouble. First, it is clear that he was still beset with the financial problems that had troubled him in the late 1450s. On 15 Mar. 1463 he entered into a statute staple bond for £200 with the London mercer, Hugh Wyche*, and John Brown and two years later the sheriff of Lincolnshire was ordered to arrest and imprison him for the debt. Then, in October 1465 the sheriff of Kent was also ordered to attach him, this being in respect of a debt contracted seven years earlier. On both occasions the sheriffs returned that Clifton could not be found because he was already in prison. In fact, he had been in prison since at least Trinity term 1463.
Following the accusations of treason and despite his subsequent pardon, Clifton’s situation became increasingly desperate. He was estranged from his wife soon afterwards. Maud claimed that at her marriage she had been possessed of goods worth £1,000 and lands worth 1,000 marks p.a. and that by 1465 all these goods had been lost and her lands reduced in value to 700 marks p.a. through her husband’s negligence. Furthermore, he had refused to allow her any money to live on and she had been reduced to borrowing from her friends. Deprived of her livelihood through the ‘cohercion’ of her husband, she threw herself upon the protection of John Neville, earl of Northumberland.
Despite this olive-branch, Clifton’s Lancastrian allegiances became apparent in October 1470 when Henry VI was re-crowned King after the flight of Edward IV and his closest supporters to the Low Countries. Sir Gervase’s activities during the Readeption are obscure, but it seems unlikely that he sat as a knight of the shire for Kent or anywhere else in the Parliament which assembled at Westminster in November. He was certainly not appointed to either of the two Readeption commissions of the peace issued for the county.
It is of interest to note that Sir Gervase’s remains were removed to the Scott family church at Brabourne and buried next to his first wife, Isabel. The decision to bury him there may have been taken by Sir John Scott, but might equally have resulted from the actions of his son-in-law, John Digges, whose relationship to Clifton was remembered on our MP’s brass. The Clifton arms, impaling Digges’s and quartered with those of Scott and Fynch, also adorned the east window of the church.