CLIFFORD, Henry (1592-1643)

The last of the male line of an ancient baronial family first summoned to Parliament in 1299, Clifford was described by his cousin, Lady Anne Clifford, with whom he was in conflict for all his adult life, as ‘a tall and proper man, a good courtier, a brave horseman, and an excellent huntsman’; she also noted that he was ‘endowed with good natural wit’ and had ‘good skill in architecture and mathematics, being much favoured both by King James and King Charles’. However, according to Lady Anne, by 1617 the 25 year-old Clifford controlled the family estates, even though his father, Francis Clifford^*, 4th earl of Cumberland, whom he supposedly dominated, did not die until 1641.37 Anne Clifford’s Great Bks. of Rec. 715-16. The reality of the relationship between Clifford and his father may have been more complicated; by 1616 the 4th earl was reluctant to travel far and, consequently, much of the business of managing the estate and fulfilling the family’s role in local administration necessarily fell to Clifford himself.38 Whitaker, 369. This explains why, in 1618, he was appointed lord lieutenant of Cumberland, Northumberland and Westmorland jointly with his father and Theophilus Howard^*, Lord Howard of Walden (subsequently 2nd earl of Suffolk). It also helps to explain why much of the burden of the office fell on Clifford, whose industry in local administration was commended by the king in 1623.39 CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 38. However, letters of advice from his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Wentworth^* (subsequently 1st earl of Strafford) indicate a powerful strain of filial piety in Clifford, which made him reluctant to oppose his father when he disagreed with him.40 Wentworth Pprs. 139-40.

Clifford was invariably called Lord Clifford by his contemporaries, but it is questionable whether he was really entitled to use that title before he was summoned to the upper House in 1628. The Clifford barony was a barony by writ, which meant it could be inherited by women, and, after the death of Clifford’s uncle, George Clifford^*, 3rd earl of Cumberland, in 1605, it was claimed by the 3rd earl’s widow on behalf of her daughter, Lady Anne Clifford.41 Anne Clifford’s Great Bks. of Rec. 701-4. Of course, it could be argued that Clifford was entitled to call himself Lord Clifford even if the barony rightly belonged to his cousin, Lady Anne. According to modern usage, when an earl has no secondary peerage his heir is styled ‘Lord’, and uses his family surname. It seems to have been accepted by contemporaries that the eldest son of an earl, like any son of a duke or marquess, was by courtesy called ‘Lord’, although this perhaps suggests that Clifford should have been known as Lord Henry Clifford, rather than Lord Clifford.42 CP, iv. 580; T. Smith, De Republica Anglorum (1583), 20; J. Cowell, The Interpreter (1607), unpag. (‘Lord’).

In the 1620s Clifford took on the task of lobbying at court on behalf of his father, principally concerning the renewal of Cumberland’s valuable licence for exporting undressed cloth, which was due to expire in 1626. In the summer of 1621, while serving as one of the knights of the shire for Westmorland, Clifford submitted a petition to the king arguing that the licence should be continued in order to recompense his father and him for their losses arising from declining cloth exports and to reward Clifford for his services in governing the north. Writing to the favourite, George Villiers^*, marquess (later 1st duke) of Buckingham, Clifford claimed that the petition had ‘your noble recommendations’ and he requested, if not an extension, then ‘some valuable reparation’ as a mark of the king’s favour. In accordance with the Cliffords’ request, this petition was referred to Henry Montagu^*, Viscount Mandeville (subsequently 1st earl of Manchester) and Lionel Cranfield^*, Lord Cranfield (subsequently 1st earl of Middlesex). However, in May 1622, Clifford learned that Ludovic Stuart^*, 2nd duke of Lennox [S] (earl and subsequently duke of Richmond in the English peerage) had been promised the licence after Cumberland’s term expired. Instead, Cranfield, now lord treasurer, pledged his support if Clifford ‘could find any suit, where his Majesty’s profits and yours might go hand in hand’.43 Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent. U269/1/OE851; Bodl. MS Add D111, ff. 123-4; Wentworth Pprs. 168-9.

No doubt thanks to his border background, Clifford seems to have been particularly hostile to the Scots. In the 1630s, on hearing that a reversion to his family’s grant of Carlisle Castle was sought by John Murray^‡, earl of Annandale [S], Clifford expressed the hope that the king ‘will not suffer me to be preyed upon by Scottishmen only, in all the reversions we hold from the crown’, as he was ‘sure we have served as faithfully as those that have gotten them from us or labour yet to do the like’. He was therefore especially aggrieved that his father’s cloth export licence had been granted to Lennox, and told Cranfield in July 1622 that he could not believe ‘any person of honour would go about an action so dishonourable’ as to take away the licence from his family. He feared that he had been ‘misreported’ and ‘traduced’ at court. In reality, the pacification of the borders since the union meant that his services were no longer sufficiently important to warrant such a lucrative grant. Clifford subsequently presented Cranfield with an alternative project, the details of which are unknown, but this came to nothing.44 Sheffield Archives, WWM/StrP16/173; Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent. U269/1/OE166, Clifford to Middlesex, 10 July [1622], 7 Feb. 1624,

A letter to Buckingham, written in June or July 1626 and advocating ways of raising money without reference to Parliament, has been attributed to Clifford, but the signature is not his and, consequently, was almost certainly written by a namesake.45 SP16/44/3; R. Cust, Forced Loan, 29; HP Commons, 1604-29, iii. 545. Nevertheless, in 1627 Clifford not only helped to collect the Forced Loan in Yorkshire (though not in the border counties), but also did his best to persuade Wentworth, now his former brother-in-law, to pay up, suggesting that he ‘slip the money into some commissioner’s hand’. He also warned him that the king’s ‘heart is so inflamed in this business as he vows a perpetual remembrance, as well as present punishment’ against refusers.46 Strafforde Letters, i. 36-8; R. Cust, Forced Loan, 248. It may have been because Clifford proved so cooperative that, in July 1627, the king authorized payment to the Cliffords of £6,203 in compensation for the low receipts in the last years they held the licence to export undressed cloth. However, of this sum £2,447 was retained by the crown for arrears of rent and taxes, while the remainder was not paid until the late 1630s.47 E403/2590, pp. 320-3; R.T. Spence, ‘Cliffords, Earls of Cumberland, 1579-1646, a Study of their Fortunes based on their Household and Estate Accts.’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1959), 273-4.

Writ of acceleration, 1628-9

Clifford had been returned to the Commons for Westmorland, where his father was hereditary sheriff, in 1614 and 1621, but refused to stand again in 1624.48 Strafforde Letters, i. 19. He may have been offered a writ in acceleration, for in January of that year, while in Yorkshire trying to raise extra revenue from the Clifford estates, he wrote to Buckingham that he ‘must join with my father in his humble suit to be dispensed from Parliament by your grace’s mediation to his Majesty’. However, it seems more likely that he was simply seconding his father’s request.49 Bodl., Add. D111, f. 261. In early December 1627, Clifford informed Wentworth that he had been ‘much moved to have gone up instantly’ to court to kiss Buckingham’s hands, suggesting that he stood in high favour with the duke, possibly thanks to his exertions in collecting the Forced Loan. Clifford, then in Yorkshire, was disinclined to go because he had recently lost his sister (the wife of Sir Gervase Clifton^‡) and the bad weather. Nevertheless, a writ summoning Clifford to the upper House was issued on 17 Feb. 1628.50 Sheffield Archives, WWM/StrP22/27.

Three days before the writ was issued Clifford, then still at Londesborough (his father’s house in the East Riding), wrote to the antiquarian Sir Robert Cotton^‡. In anticipation of his summons, Clifford wanted Cotton’s assistance in establishing the date of the creation of the Clifford barony, probably in the hope of claiming the rank of the most senior baron. Clifford also consulted the heralds on this point, but thought their information would be merely ‘conjectural’, whereas Cotton, who had already assured him of success, could provide ‘grounded judgement and knowledge’.51 Cott. Julius CIII, f. 95r-v.

Clifford held the proxies of both his father and of his friend (and husband of his cousin) Edward Wotton^*, 1st Lord Wotton, until the latter’s death on 4 May. He is recorded as having attended the opening of the session on 19 Mar., but this is probably a clerical error, for when the House was called on the 22nd he was recorded as ‘coming up’. He had certainly reached the capital by the 24th, when he delivered to the clerk his proxies, and was formally introduced to the House on the 26th. In all, he attended 63 of the 94 sittings, 67 per cent of the total.52 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 26-7, 87; HMC 3rd Rep. 38. On 8 Apr. Lord Wotton’s brother, Sir Henry Wotton^‡, invited Clifford, Wentworth and Sir Gervase Clifton, whom he termed ‘the medley triplicity’, to visit Eton, where Wotton was provost. This may explain why Clifford was excused by the House two days later, although he returned for the next sitting on the morning of 12 April.53 Strafforde Letters, i. 45; Lords Procs. 1628, p. 192.

When Sir William Segar, Garter king-at-arms, prepared the official list of peers for the 1628 Parliament he ranked Clifford as senior baron, possibly thanks to Cotton’s researches.54 Lords Procs. 1628, p. 16. However, when the House was called on 22 Mar., Francis Russell^*, 4th earl of Bedford, moved that Clifford’s ranking ‘in the place pretended to be due to the ancient barony of Clifford’ should not prejudice the claim of Lady Anne Clifford (Bedford’s cousin) to the Clifford barony or the claim of Henry Neville^*, 9th or 2nd Lord Abergavenny, and other contenders for the rank of senior baron. Bedford’s motion was accordingly referred to the committee for privileges. Nevertheless, when Clifford was introduced on 26 Mar., he was ‘placed as ancientest baron’.55 Ibid. 86-7.

Clifford was appointed to only seven of the session’s 52 committees. These included a private measure concerning William Cavendish^*, 2nd earl of Devonshire, in which Clifford’s friend William Cavendish^*, earl of Newcastle, had an interest. They also included two bills regarding hospitals.56 Ibid. 104, 120, 151, 390; Fairfax Corresp. ed. G.W. Johnson, i. 242-3. Clifford made no recorded speeches. During the session, Lady Anne Clifford petitioned the king, claiming she had inherited the Clifford barony from her father. She therefore sought both official acknowledgment of her right to the title and an order forbidding Clifford from using it. Quite how she thought Clifford’s writ of acceleration could be reversed is unclear. Charles referred the petition to the Lords, where it was read on 16 May. Ten days later, further consideration of the dispute was referred to the next session, as was the question of which barony had seniority, a prize now claimed by Algernon Percy^*, Lord Percy, (subsequently 4th earl of Northumberland).57 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 446, 531.

Clifford spent Christmas 1628 at Londesborough and evidently intended to travel back to London with Wentworth, who had by now also been raised to the peerage, in time to attend the start of the 1629 session on 20 January. However, on 10 Jan. Clifford wrote to inform Wentworth that he had ‘so much to do this next week’ that he was obliged to delay his journey until the week after. He hoped, if necessary, that Wentworth would inform the upper House that ‘I intend to be trotting the same week the Parliament begins’. Clifford also wanted Wentworth to secure the support of the latter’s father-in-law, John Holles^*, 1st earl of Clare, for the coming session, as Clare was ‘one of my cables I anchor to’. This presumably was in anticipation of renewed controversies over the Clifford barony.58 Sheffield Archives, WWM/StrP16/182.

Clifford is not recorded as having attended the upper House until 29 Jan., but thereafter he seems to have been absent for only two sittings. In total, he may have attended 15 of the session’s 23 sittings, 65 per cent of the total. However, he was named to just two of the 19 committees appointed that session, one for naturalizing the wife of his first cousin once removed, James Stanley^*, Lord Strange (subsequently 7th earl of Derby) and another to consider the proposal for an academy to educate the sons of noblemen.59 LJ, iv. 15b, 39b.

Now that Parliament had reconvened, the committee for privileges was instructed to meet and consider which baron had seniority and whether Lady Anne Clifford was entitled to the Clifford barony. When the committee met on 9 Feb., Percy produced evidence tracing his own barony back to the reign of William the Conqueror; Clifford was then given a week to respond, and to answer Lady Anne’s claim. On the 13th, Edward Herbert^‡ and Peter Ball^‡, two barristers of the lower House, were given leave by the Commons to plead Clifford’s case in the Lords. However, when the privileges committee met again on the 16th, they were distracted by a question, raised by Abergavenny’s counsel, whether lords summoned by writs of acceleration should be accorded the precedence of their father’s baronies; no decision as to which barony was the oldest seems to have been made. Clifford and his father did not submit their answer to Lady Anne’s petition until 23 Feb., when they argued that the Clifford barony pre-dated the 1299 writ summoning the 1st Lord Clifford to Parliament and had descended in the male line ‘all the time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary’. However, they provided no evidence to substantiate their extremely tenuous assertions. Rather more persuasively, Clifford pointed out that, whatever the situation had been before 1628, he was now fully entitled to call himself Lord Clifford by virtue of his summons to Parliament. Anne evidently conceded the point, by referring to Clifford by his title in her response instead of calling him ‘Henry Clifford’, as she had in her original petition. Nevertheless, she continued to argue that he should not be considered as holding the ancient Clifford barony. There were no further recorded proceedings before the Parliament was dissolved the following month.60 Ibid. 22a; HMC Buccleuch, iii. 336, 339; CJ, i. 929b; PA, HL/PO/JO/10/4/2, answer of Francis earl of Cumberland and Henry Lord Clifford, replication of Anne Countess of Dorset. Clifford continued to be ranked as the senior baron at the trial of Mervyn Tuchet^*, 2nd earl of Castlehaven [I] (12th Lord Audley in the English peerage) in 1631.

The Personal Rule and Civil War, 1630-43

In the early 1630s Clifford took full control of his family’s estates, which were subsequently administered under the supervision of his secretary, Robert Robotham. Nevertheless, he struggled to keep his expenditure under control. Initially he raised extra money by making long leases on parts of the family estates in Yorkshire, but this was only a short term expedient and one which diminished future rents. After 1633 his debts rose steeply. By 1637, £6,600 was owed to London creditors, although this sum was subsequently reduced, thanks to the belated payment by the crown of the compensation which had been awarded to the Cliffords in 1627. In addition, large sums were due to the family’s senior servants for payments made out of their own pockets; one was found to be owed more than £1,000 when he died in 1639. By then Robotham was seriously alarmed by the state of the finances, but such considerations were soon overshadowed by the mounting political crisis of the First Bishops’ War.61 Sheffield Archives, WWM/StrP16/189; Spence, ‘Cliffords, Earls of Cumberland’, 318-26.

Despite his financial problems, Clifford continued to make frequent journeys to London to attend court. In about 1630 he lamented that others failed to do so, as attendance at court was ‘very slender (especially of the nobility)’, with the result that the glory of the court was ‘daily fading’. In July 1634 Clifford married his eldest daughter to Richard Boyle^†, Viscount Dungarvan [I] (subsequently 1st earl of Burlington), the eldest son of the vastly wealthy Richard Boyle, 1st earl of Cork [I]. Cork was apparently willing to accept the match without a portion because, Clifford’s sons having died young, the bride had a good prospect of eventually becoming Clifford’s co-heir. Although it was true that the original estates of the 1st Lord Clifford, in Westmorland and around Skipton Castle in the West Riding, would descend to Lady Anne Clifford in the event Clifford died without male heirs, Clifford’s daughters stood to inherit the substantial additions later generations had made to the lands, principally in the East Riding. Probably more importantly than this, however, was the fact that the Clifford marriage provided Cork with useful connections at court, in the form of Clifford’s brothers-in-law, William Cecil^*, 2nd earl of Salisbury, and Thomas Wentworth, now Viscount Wentworth and lord deputy of Ireland and the man responsible for proposing the match.62 HP Commons, 1640-60, draft biography, SIR RICHARD BOYLE; Spence, ‘Cliffords, Earls of Cumberland’, 329; Strafforde Letters, i. 113; H.F. Kearney, Strafford in Ire. (1989), 35; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 277; HMC Var. vii. 430. Clifford himself went to Ireland in 1635, where he tried to mediate between Cork and Wentworth, after the latter prosecuted the former for illegally appropriating the property of college of Youghal, but without success.63 Strafforde Letters, i. 417; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 316; CSP Dom. 1635, p. 385; Kearney, 127.

In July 1638 Thomas Howard^*, 21st (or 14th) earl of Arundel, by now one of the joint lord lieutenants of the border counties, forwarded to Clifford the king’s command to put the northern counties on a military footing following the Prayer Book rebellion in Scotland. Clifford assured Charles of his loyalty, and stated that he would ‘lay aside all thoughts of my poor estate and fortune, wholly bending them to those ends your Majesty shall please to direct them’. Although he lamented, in a letter to Wentworth, that he was ‘destitute of arms, men and money’, he believed that the coming war could be turned to his advantage, as it made the counties where he was lord lieutenant strategically important, giving him the opportunity to show his usefulness to the crown.64 Strafforde Letters, ii. 186, 208, 211-12, 214-15.

Shortage of money delayed military campaigning until the following year. On 26 Jan. 1639, Clifford was ordered to attend the general gathering of the nobility at York, but shortly thereafter he was instructed to return to his border estates in order to defend them. In February, he was dispatched to take charge of Newcastle, and in March he was sent to establish a garrison at Carlisle. However, in July, following the Pacification of Berwick, Arundel, now general of the army in the north, had his son, Sir William Howard^† (subsequently Viscount Stafford), appointed as Clifford’s replacement at Carlisle. An aggrieved Clifford informed Charles that although Sir William could take charge of the city he could not assume control of the castle, as the crown had leased Carlisle Castle to his father and himself in 1611 for a period of 60 years. The king, apparently unaware of this inconvenient fact, and anxious to re-establish royal control over the strategically important fortress, responded by instructing the attorney general, Sir John Bankes^‡, to find a way to rescind the Clifford lease. The following month, he also removed Clifford from the lieutenancy of Cumberland and Northumberland. In the event, Clifford kept control of Carlisle Castle, but the incident led to a cooling of relations between Clifford and Arundel, and possibly also dampened Clifford’s ardour for royal service.65 Spence, ‘Henry, Lord Clifford and the First Bishops’ War’, 141-56; idem, ‘Backward North Modernized?’, NH, xx. 70; CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 367, 372, 430; 1639, p. 409; Whitaker, 374-5; Strafforde Letters, ii. 364.

Clifford succeeded his father as earl of Cumberland in January 1641. He supported the king in the Civil War, reportedly after some hesitation, and was appointed commander of the royalist forces in Yorkshire in 1642. However, he was a reluctant warrior and, in early December, relinquished that position to Newcastle. He died in December 1643 of a fever in the house he had rented in the Minister Yard in York. At the end of the month, in accordance with his wishes, he was buried with his ancestors, at a cost of more than £480, at Skipton. In his will, dated 29 Oct. 1642, he gave ‘most humble and hearty thanks for my education in the true Protestant religion, which I have constantly practised, abhorring all my life long all manner of popery and schistmatical opinions which now threaten the ruin of this Church and State’. He appointed as his executors his wife (who outlived him by less than two months) and his eldest daughter, Lady Dungarvan, who, with her husband, inherited those parts of his estate not settled on Lady Anne Clifford. In 1691 the House of Lords finally resolved the dispute over the Clifford barony in favour of Lady Anne, although by then she had long since died. It ruled that her grandson Thomas Tufton^†, 6th earl of Thanet, was the rightful holder of the 1299 Clifford barony, which meant that the summons issued to Clifford in 1628 had created a new barony by writ. This barony descended to Lady Dungarvan, whose husband, by now 2nd earl of Cork, was made Lord Clifford in his own right by patent in November 1644.66 HMC Cowper, ii. 316; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 344; P. Warwick, Mems. Reign Chas. I, 257; R.T. Spence, Skipton Castle in the Great Civil War, 10, 53-4; idem, ‘Noble Fun. in the Great Civil War’, Yorks. Arch. Jnl. lxv. 115, 120; Par. Reg. of Skipton-in-Craven, 168; Clay, 398-400; CP, iii. 299, 302.