101. yearly, and was himself retained by the Earl of March, for service in Ireland, for which he was bound to provide five knights bachelors, thirty-four squires, and forty mounted archers, properly equipped for one year, for which the said Roger was to receive wages at the rate of ten marks a man, passage outward and homeward to be provided by the said Earl of March, who was to share in the prisoners and other prizes of war, according to the customary proportion, &c. Such at least appears to be the signification of an ancient indenture, in obsolete French, dated London, the 25th Sep., in the third year of Richard II. It is not without interest, as throwing light upon the interdependencies of military service in those days; but Dr. Whitaker should not have concluded that all his readers would understand half-anglicised French of the 14th century, but should have explained the document in plain terms. seas. His Thomas, the sixth Lord, lived not much more than two years after his father's death. He died beyond His daughter, Maud, was second wife to that Richard, Earl of Cambridge, who suffered the penalties of treason, in the reign of Henry V. son John ". was a soldier, and he lived under a martial prince, who by indenture, dated Feb. 8, 4th Henry V., retained him in his service for the war in France for one year the contract was to this effect, that this Lord, with fifty men at arms, well accoutred, whereof three to be knights, the rest esquires, and one hundred and fifty archers, whereof two parts to serve on horseback, the third on foot, should serve the king from the day he should be ready to set sail for France, taking for himself four shillings for every knight; for every esquire, one shilling; for every archer, sixpence per diem." According to the general computation of the value of money in those days, this rate of payment seems enormously high.* Sir Matthew continues, "This was the usual means whereby Kings in those times furnished their armies with men of value; and it was counted no dishonourable thing for persons of honour upon this kind of traffic to make themselves an advantage; indeed it was in those martial times the trade of the nobility and great men." This trade indicated a gradual decay of the genuine feudal system, and prepared the way for standing armies. This John Clifford fell at the siege of Meause, in the last year of Henry V. and was buried in Bolton Abbey. The next Lord Clifford was slain at St. Albans, May 22, 1455, fighting for his sovereign, in whose service the family was destined to perform and to suffer much. He is first of the line whose name is familiarised to the general reader, being the subject of some powerful lines in the second part of " King Henry the Sixth." "Wast thou ordained, dear father, And in thy reverence and thy chair days thus * I am strongly inclined to suspect something false, and deceptive in the received comparative values of many nominal payments, in different ages. In the times of the Plantagenets money was so little in actual use, and the necessaries of life so variable in point of scarcity or abundance from the rude state of agriculture, and the unsettled state of the times, that the very grounds of a ratio were wanting. When I read that Sir Walter Ralegh's court-dress was worth 80,000l., and then find that 80,000l. in Elizabeth's time was equal to almost half a million, I feel sceptical.-S. T. C. It shall be stony. York not our old men spares, The "younger Clifford," by whom this dreadful resolution is supposed to have been made, has been recorded as the most merciless in a merciless time. But such is the appetite of man for horrors, that the facts even of civil war are not bad enough to satisfy it without aggravation. The Clifford who fell at St. Alban's was not a very old man, being only in his forty-first year, nor was Rutland, whom the son of that Clifford is said to have butchered with his own hand, after the battle of Wakefield, a child, but a youth of nineteen, who had probably killed his man before he was killed himself. Yet John, the ninth Lord Clifford, must have been a wholesale homicide, to be distinguished as he was, since Leland says, "that for slaughter of men at Wakefield he was called the Boucher." Shakspeare, or whoever was the author of King Henry VI., has palliated his thirst of blood by ascribing it to filial vengeance; but if the father fell only by the chance of war, the son could not be entitled, even by martial morality, to pursue his revenge beyond the measures of war. It was to his tent that King Henry, when taken captive by the party which used his name, was brought to meet his victorious Queen, and there he knighted his young Edward, then a boy of eight years. Seldom has a prince so meek been entertained by a subject so ferocious. Clifford was slain the day before the battle of Towton, after the rencontre at Ferrybridge. Having put off his gorget, he was struck in the throat with a headless arrow, and so was sent to his own place, wherever that might be. This happened in the small valley of Dittingdale, or Deidingdale, between Towton and Scarthingwell. The place of his interment is uncertain, but he was not gathered in the tomb of his forefathers. The common report was that he was flung into a pit with the crowd of carcases, and none thought fit to seek for his bones. So detestable is cruelty, even to a cruel generation, that nobody esteemed black-faced Clifford too good to rot among his fellow cut-throats of the "swinish multitude." John, Lord Clifford, though dead, was attainted, and his estates, castles, &c., forfeited in the 1st of Edward IV. The castle, manor, and Lordship of Skipton, were granted to Sir James Stanley, and afterwards, in the 10th year of King Edward IV., to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, according to the terms of the grant "for the encouragement of piety and virtue in the said Duke,” who retained it till his death. Thus was the house of Clifford driven from its possessions, and deprived of its rank. The children of the ruthless warrior sought and found a refuge among the simple dalesmen of Cumberland. Who has not heard of the good Lord Clifford, the Shepherd Lord? He that in his childhood was placed among lowly men for safety, found more in obscurity than he sought,-love, humble wisdom, and a docile heart. How his time past during his early years, it is pleasanter to imagine, than safe to conjecture; but we doubt not, happily; and since he proved equal to his highest elevation, his nurture must needs have been good. His mother, Margaret, with whom came in the barony of Vescy, was married to Sir Lancelot Threlkeld, who extended his protection over the offspring of her former husband. Much of Henry Clifford's boyhood is said to have been passed in the village named after his kind step-father, which lies under Blencathra,* on the road between Keswick and Penrith. The only extant document relating to the Cliffords during the domination of the House of York, is a deed of arbitration between Lancelot Threlkeld, knight, and Lady Margaret, his wife, the Lady Clifford, late the wife of John Lord Clifford, on the one part, and William Bilston, one of the executors of the will of Henry de Bromflete, Lord Vescy, deceased, in which the said Lancelot and Margaret promise "to be good master and lady to the said William, and to move the children of the said John, late Lord Clifford, to be loving and tender to the said William." It would seem by this, that the attainder did not deprive the Cliffords of their interests in the barony of Vescy. The " Shepherd Lord" was restored to all his estates and titles in the first year of Henry VII. He was a lover of study and retirement, who had lived too long at liberty, and according to reason, to assimilate readily with the court of the crafty Henry. By the Lady Anne, he is described "as a plain man, who lived for the most part a country life, and came seldom either to court or to London, excepting when called to Parliament, on which occasion he behaved himself like a wise and good English nobleman.” His usual retreat, when in Yorkshire, was Barden Tower; his chosen companions the Canons of Bolton. His favourite pursuit was astronomy. He had been accustomed to watch the motions of the heavenly bodies from the hill-tops, when he kept sheep; for in those days, when clocks and almanacs were few, VOL. II. Vulgarly called Saddleback. C |