The Clifford family
Thomas Clifford, sixth Baron Clifford. 1362/3–1391
He was the eldest son of Roger Clifford, fifth Baron Clifford of Westmorland (1333–1389), and his wife, Maud Beauchamp (d. 1403). His father started providing for Thomas's future when he was still an infant, in 1365 granting him the Westmorland manor of King's Meaburn for life. In 1373 arrangements were made for his marriage, to Elizabeth Ros, daughter of Thomas, Lord Ros of Helmsley, which had taken place by 2 November. It was apparently a condition of the match that Roger Clifford should settle lands worth £100 on the couple—he conveyed estates worth 40 marks in 1379, and lands in Brough in 1383.
Children:
- John,(d 13 March 1422), aged two at his father's death, who succeeded to the lordship , a warrior of some repute in Henry V's French wars, who, marrying Elizabeth Percy, Hotspur's daughter, became the father of Thomas, eighth baron Clifford
- Maud (d 16 Oct. 1436)
Maud Clifford, Countess of Cambridge
Maud Clifford of Cambridge, daughter of Thomas Clifford and Elizabeth Ros and was born about 1389 at Brough Castle, Westmoreland and died 26 Aug 1446, and was buried at Roche Abbey, where she was benefactor and founder. Maud married 3 times:
- John Neville of Raby, Lord Latimer, before July 1406 . They divorced
- Richard Plantagenet of Conisburgh
- John Wentworth of North Elmsall, Yorkshire about 1429
Maud lived until about 1436, and remembered her nephew, Thomas Clifford, and great-nephew, John Clifford, in her will.
Thomas Clifford, eighth Baron (1414–1455)
An ally of the Percy family in the Neville-Percy feud, which helped instigate the civil disturbances of the 1450s, Thomas Clifford, eighth Lord Clifford, was slain by the Yorkists at the Battle of St. Albans in 1455. His death turned his son into an implacable foe of the house of York and was the cause of one of several feuds among the English peerage that embittered political relations on the eve of the Wars of the Roses.
The eighth Baron Clifford was born at Skipton Castle on 20 August 1414, the son of John, seventh Baron Clifford (1388/9–1422), and his wife, Elizabeth Percy (d. 1436). Thomas was not quite eight when his father was killed in France, on 13 March 1422, leaving him heir to the baronies of Westmorland, centred upon Appleby, and Skipton in Craven, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In February 1423 his mother and grandmother (Elizabeth Ros, widow of Thomas Clifford, sixth Baron Clifford) paid 800 marks for his marriage and wardship, and on 1 August 1424 entered into an agreement with Thomas, Lord Dacre, whereby Thomas Clifford was to marry Dacre's daughter Joan (b. before 1424, d. before 1455). The match maintained a political alignment originating in John Clifford's minority, linking the Cliffords with the Percys and the offspring of the first marriage of Ralph Neville, first earl of Westmorland (who included Thomas Dacre's wife, Philippa), in opposition to the children of Westmorland's second marriage, headed by Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury.(Nephew of Maud - above)
Thomas Clifford came of age and was first summoned to Parliament as Lord Clifford in 1436. He was one of the lords who accompanied William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, to France in 1444 to escort Margaret of Anjou to England for her marriage to Henry VI. As one of the leading magnates of the north, Clifford, along with the Nevilles and Percies, was excused attendance in Parliament in 1449 to defend the border from possible invasion by the Scots. In 1451, Clifford was part of an embassy to James II of Scotland, and he also served in the 1450s as sheriff of Westmorland.
Clifford accompanied the royal army that confronted Richard Plantagenet, duke of York, at Dartford in 1452, and he supported Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, and his sons in their ongoing quarrel with Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, and his sons in the mid-1450s. When the Nevilles allied themselves with York and took up arms against the king in 1455, Clifford naturally supported Henry VI and led the defense of the barricades against the Yorkist attack at the Battle of St. Albans on 22 May. Like Northumberland and Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, who were also slain in the fighting, Clifford was likely marked as a special enemy and targeted for death by the Yorkist forces. Clifford’s death at the hands of the Yorkists had an important effect on the Wars of the Roses, for it turned his son, John Clifford, ninth Lord Clifford, into a staunch supporter of the house of Lancaster and a bitter personal enemy of York and the Neville family.
John, ninth Baron Clifford (1435–1461),
A soldier and magnate, sometimes known as ‘the Butcher’, he was born at Conisbrough Castle in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 8 April 1435, the eldest son of Thomas Clifford, eighth Baron Clifford (1414–1455), and his wife, Joan Dacre (b. before 1424, d. before 1455).Conisbrough was the dower house of his great-aunt Maud, Countess of Cambridge, who was one of John's godparents, and later left him twelve silver dishes in her will.In August 1453, he was supporting the Percys, allies of the Cliffords since the 1390s, in their confrontation with the Nevilles, equally long-term adversaries in north-west England of the Cliffords, on Heworth Moor near York.
In 1454, he became a father. His wife Margaret (d. 1493), was daughter and heir of Henry Bromflete, Lord Vescy, and their marriage appears to have formed part of Thomas Clifford's programme of expanding his interests in parts of the north, relatively free from Neville domination.
Motivated by the slaying of his father by the Yorkists at the Battle of St. Albans in May 1455, John Clifford, ninth Lord Clifford, committed such violent acts of battlefield vengeance against his opponents that he won the epithets “butcher” and “black-hearted Clifford.” His most notorious deed was the slaying, after the Battle of Wakefield, of seventeen-year-old Edmund Plantagenet, earl of Rutland, second son of Richard Plantagenet, duke of York, as the earl knelt before Clifford imploring mercy.
In February 1458, Clifford, Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, and Henry Percy, third earl of Northumberland, two other noblemen whose fathers had been killed by the Yorkists at the Battle of St. Albans, came to London “with a great power,” clamoring for compensation for the deaths of their fathers. Clifford was described as being so bitter about his father’s fate that “the sight of any of the house of York was as a fury to torment his soul” . Henry VI and the Council temporarily mollified the three men by ordering York and his chief allies at St. Albans, Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, and his son Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, to fund masses for the souls of the slain men and to pay an indemnity to their heirs
In November 1459, Clifford was present at the Lancastrian-controlled Coventry Parliament, where he took an oath of allegiance to Henry VI, who shortly thereafter named him commissary-general of the Scottish marches and conservator of the truce with Scotland. After the Act of Accord of October 1460 disinherited Edward of Lancaster, Prince of Wales, and recognized York as heir to the throne, Clifford was one of the Lancastrian nobles who took the field against the Yorkist regime on the prince’s behalf, and was a leader of the Lancastrian force that defeated and killed York at the Battle of Wakefield in December 1460.
At some point after the battle, Clifford overtook the fleeing Rutland, probably somewhere on or near Wakefield Bridge, and slew the young man while he knelt in supplication and his chaplain begged for his life. The best-known account, that of the Tudor chronicler Edward Hall, has Clifford refuse all entreaties by saying: “By God’s blood, thy father slew mine, and so I will do thee and all thy kin” ). Although the exact location and circumstances of Rutland’s death are uncertain, all accounts agree that Clifford was the earl’s killer. Hall and other sources also charge Clifford with having York’s head struck from his dead body and topped with a derisive paper crown.
In February 1461, Clifford participated in the Lancastrian victory at the Battle of St. Albans. He was slain at the Battle of Ferrybridge on 28 March 1461, one day before the Yorkist victory at the Battle of Towton gave the throne to Edward IV. The first Parliament of the new reign attainted Clifford, and his estates were divided among various Yorkists, including Richard, duke of Gloucester.
©