In 1523 Henry Clifford, the 10Th Baron Died Aged 69. His Had Not Been an Easy Life, His

Craven POG

In 1523 Henry Clifford, the 10th baron died aged 69. His had not been an easy life, his father John was killed in 1461, on the day before the battle of Towton, and was subsequently attainted, his family's lands were granted to the Nevilles and Stanleys. It is not clear how Henry lived afterwards, aged just seven he was undoubtedly cared for by his motherMargaret who died in 1493 and, as she was an heiress to estates in Londesborough, the pair were probably comfortably maintained by relatives. He was certainly educated and literate. When Henry Clifford was twelve Henry Hartlington of Craven bequeathed him a sword and a silver bowl[1] and in 1472 (when he was eighteen) Edward IV granted him a formal pardon. It was the success of the Lancastrian cause that restored Henry’s personal fortunes. He was thirty-one when the first of the Tudors, Henry VII, ascended the throne and by November he had reversed his father's attainder and restored the Clifford lands and title.

In 1486 he married Anne St John (daughter of the king's mother's half-brother) by whom he had two sons and four daughters. Three years after Anne’s death in 1508 Clifford married Florence Pudsey widow of Sir Thomas Talbot by whom he had one daughter. Neither marriage was particularly happy, at one stage Florence sued for restitution of conjugal rights. His pre and extra-marital affairs also produced children, his first illegitimate son was born prior to his first marriage and at least two or three more children were sired subsequently.

He worked hard to re-build the estates. There were extensive works at SkiptonCastle and BardenTower in Craven and he enclosed lands, on one occasion provoking a law suit. He was considered an abrasive neighbour and landlord and was insensitive to the King’s wish to maintain order in the north. However, by 1496 a year's revenue from the lordship of Skipton amounted to little less than £300, and at his death his total annual income (from all his lands in Yorkshire and Westmoreland) was assessed at £1332 2s. 4d., placing him in the top third of the English nobility for wealth.

The picture is one of a man whose formative years had been fatherless and who lacked the ability to commit to a relationship. His world perhaps was one where he was reliant on the good will of others. He would certainly be aware of his ancestors’ power and wealth and resentful towards those who had been on the winning side in the Wars of the Roses, and who now occupied his family’s lands. When a throw of the political dice reversed his fortunes, he would not have been pleased or surprised, merely glad that what was his had been restored and keen to make up for lost years.

Henry was a gentleman, he had an extensive library which included volumes on law and medicine, and aside from his interest in property restoration he developed a taste for astronomy and alchemy. It is said that his happiest hours were spent alone at Barden amidst the splendid countryside there. Aware that, during his youth, he had lacked the wherewithal to live as a baron’s son should, he was keen to ensure that his own son and heir would.

The baron’s heir was another Henry born around 1492 or 1493. This Henry was brought up at court with the future King Henry VIII. According to his great-granddaughter, Anne Cliffordhe was ‘bred up for the first part, in his childhood and youth, with the said king [Henry VIII] … Which engrafted such a love in the said Prince towards him that it continued even to the very end’[2] Henry VIII made Clifford KB at his coronation on 23 June 1509.

He married Margaret Talbot in around 1513 or 1514 the daughter of George, fourth earl of Shrewsbury, she died in 1516. He then appears to have begun behaving irrationally. Relations between Henry and his father had been sour since his father’s remarriage[3] and , at about this time, his father wrote to a privy councillor:

“I’m sure you will remember when we met before that I told you about the ungodly and bad (“ungoodly”) disposition of my son Henry Clifford. He not only disobeys and despites my commands but threatens my servants, saying that if anything happened to me he would destroy them all, which is believable because he struck with his own hand my poor servant Henry Popeley who is in peril of death, prostrate and likely to die. Also he has spoiled my houses and stolen some of my valuable goods, purely out of malice and to maintain his inordinate pride and riot[4]. He made this clear when he left the court and returned to this country with both himself and his horse dressed in a cloth of gold and goldsmith’s work more like a duke than the poor baron’s son he is. And, as I told you before, he spends his days plotting how he might destroy me, his poor father, by shameful and dangerous slanders and in other ways troubling me and playing mind games intended to shorten my life. Never the less, I have by the King’s command and your wishes given him £40 and also my blessing upon his good and lawful demeanour.

“I have also urged him and pray that he should leave the dangerous and evil counsel of those evilly disposed persons (which include young gentlemen as well as others) who have previously given him evil counsel and which counsels he follows daily. As I told both you and the King, if his shameful dispositions are not looked upon and something promised by his highness to bring him to dread (as the beginning of all wisdom is to dread God and his prince), he should be utterly undone for ever, bodily as well as spiritually (“ghostly”). Other people recognise that his evil dispositions have increased and he has become emboldened by the support of great lords. He has said he will cast down one of my servants even if he is close to me and in my presence and in this country. He is encouraging “debate” between gentlemen and harassing a number of religious houses in order to take their tithes from them, shamefully beating their tenants and servants in such a manner that whole towns are having to guard their churches night and day and dare not go to their own houses but seek sanctuary in those churches.”[5]

Clifford’s loyalty to his friend the king is unquestionable, it is therefore difficult to imagine what the beliefs were that threatened both his life and mental well being. It is also difficult to identify the “great lords” who supported and emboldened him.

What is clear, though, is that he cared little for those beneath him, was violent, arrogant and cavalier towards the church. As late as 1537, twenty years on, the Duke of Norfolk, in a private letter to Cromwell, wrote that if Clifford was to remain as warden of the West Marches “he must be brought to change his conditions and not be so greedy to get money of his tenants”.[6]

In 1517 Clifford was imprisoned for a time in the Fleet prison for unknown offences.

She died only a year or two after the marriage and there were no children. Clifford married for a second time about 1516. His wife was Margaret (c.1492–1540), first daughter of Henry Percy, fifth earl of Northumberland, and his wife, Catherine.

They had two sons, Henry Clifford, second earl of Cumberland (1517-1570), and Sir Ingram Clifford (1518?–1578/9), and four daughters. He succeeded his father on 20 April 1523, when he was said to have been about thirty, and was created earl of Cumberland on 18 June 1525 as part of a reorganization of the government of the north.

When Cumberland had livery of his lands on 18 July 1523, they had a gross annual rental of £1332. He had already acquired the manor of Carleton in Craven in 1514 but made no further acquisitions until he secured the Craven manors of Marton Priory by purchase from Charles Brandon, first duke of Suffolk, in 1541.

Cumberland needs to be defended against the assertions that he was raising the cornage rents of his tenants in Westmorland and that he was rapacious in his treatment of tenants in Craven. He was, however, a notable encloser.

Some of his Craven enclosures were destroyed in riots in May 1535, and his new fences in the Eden valley were thrown down in the unsettled conditions of the winter of 1536.

[1]Henry Summerson, ‘Clifford, Henry, tenth Baron Clifford (1454-1523)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004

[2]A. G. Dickens, ed., “Clifford letters of the sixteenth century”, Surtees Society, vol. 172 (1962)

[3]A.G. Dickens, ed., “Clifford letters” page 135, citing Anne Clifford’s account: Harleian MS 6177

[4] The word “riot” here means (as the rest of the sentence makes clear) his ostentatious dress

[5]The letter is printed in T. D. Whitaker “The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven”, 3rd edn, 1878, p327. The version given here is a modernised interpretation of the letter printed by Whitaker.

[6]LP Henry VIII, 12/1, no. 919