Thomas Clifford

“ Thomas Lord Clifford died on 4th of October, 1392, leaving his son and heir John (seventh Lord Clifford) an infant of about three years old. This lord married the Lady Elizabeth de Percy circa 1413, and his eldest son was born on 20th of August, 1414: he died on 13th March, 1422.
The wife of Sir Philip Wentworth, were she a daughter of Roger, fifth Lord Clifford, must have been born between 1363 and 1389; if a daughter of John, seventh Lord Clifford, she must have been born between 1414 and 1422. ”

“ Clifford was an ardent Roman Catholic, a supporter of the royal prerogative and of the French alliance. He regarded with favour the plan of seeking French assistance in order to force Romanism and absolute government upon the country, and his complete failure to understand the real political position and the interests of the nation is reflected in the advice he was said to have given to Charles, to accept the pension from Louis, and “be the slave of one man rather than of 500.” ”

“ Now you do NOT "suffer fools gladly" on the contrary, you "gladly make fools suffer." I do not say you are wrong—No tu quoque [Cf. above. But for due cause he could suffer them "with a difference"; of a certain caller he writes: "What an effusive bore he is! But I believe he was very kind to poor Clifford, and restrained my unregenerate impatience of that kind of creature."] —but that is where the danger of the explosion lies—not in regard to the larger business of the Association. ”

“ On the 22nd of April he was raised to the peerage as Baron Clifford of Chudleigh, and on the 28th of November, by the duke of York’s interest, he was made lord treasurer; his conduct to Arlington, whose claims to the office he had pretended to press, was, according to Evelyn, the only act of “real ingratitude” in his career. Arlington, however, quickly discovered a means of securing Clifford’s fall. The latter was strongly in favour of Charles’s policy of indulgence, and supported the declaration of this year, urging the king to overcome the resistance of parliament by a dissolution. ”

“ His father having been attainted and his estates forfeited when Henry de Clifford was seven years old, he was, according to Dugdale, brought up as a shepherd at his mother's estate of Londesborough in Yorkshire, whence by the help of Sir Lancelot Threlkeld he was conveyed to a Cumberland farm on the Scottish borders, while his hereditary manors were enjoyed by the partisans of Edward IV— Skipton going to Sir William Stanley, and the barony of Westmoreland to Richard, duke of Gloucester (Dugdale. i. 343; Whitaker, History of Craven, 320-7 ) . ”

“ The plague spot began to be visible and palpable in the days of the Cabal. Clifford, the boldest and fiercest of the wicked Five, had the merit of discovering that a noisy patriot, whom it was no longer possible to send to prison, might be turned into a courtier by a goldsmith's note. Clifford's example was followed by his successors. It soon became a proverb that a Parliament resembled a pump. ”

“ Clifford married his kinswoman, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas, lord Ross of Hamlake. She is said to have survived till March 1424 (Walsingham, Hist. Anglic, ii. 214; Whitaker, 316) . By her Clifford had two children : (1) John, his son and heir (d. 13 March 1422) , 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 [q. v.] ; and (2) daughter Maud (d. 16 Oct. 1436) , who married (a) Richard Plantagenet,. ”

“ CLIFFORD, ROGER de, ninth Lord Clifford, fifth Baron of Westmoreland (1333–1389) , was born 10 July 1333 (Scr. and Gros. Roll, text, i. 197) . His father (d. 20 May 1344) was Robert de Clifford, second son of Robert de Clifford (1273–1314) [q. v.] , the founder of the northern branch of this family; his mother (d. 25 July 1362) was Isabella, daughter of Maurice, lord Berkeley. He succeeded his elder brother, Robert, probably in or before 1352, and certainly before 10 Aug. ”

“ Thomas is stated to be a native of Colchester, for many years in Africa, and is described as astrongly built man of about forty, wearing a dark beard and moustache, and with a scar over the right brow caused by a dynamite explosion which blinded the eye.
Here was matter for reflection with a vengeance. As Pringle refilled his lamp and kindled the charred wick, his one thought was the possible identity of the cyclist with the man Thomas. The description as given in the Chronicle was inconclusive, but the cyclist had a very effective mask of dust and mud. ”

“ Without justice, temperance, and definite industry, the most brilliant attributes of mind may be impotent for good, and without the habit of social subordination and the bond of social sympathy the most brilliant society would be but a rope of diamonds. ”

“ A luckless youth is forced to heat the yet empty chambers of his brain, and to forge false thunder therein at an age when he needs rather to sit at the feet of wisdom. Space forbids me to give instances from my books, but the facts are open to others as to myself. ”

“ He was still living in 1187, and according to Eyton died in 1190. His children were Walter (d. 1220?) , Richard, and William, and three daughters, Lucia, married to Hugo de Say, Amicia, married to Osbern FitzHugh, and Rosamond [q. v.] The main part of the Clifford estates passed to Matilda, a great-granddaughter, wife of William Longespée, earl of Salisbury, whose daughter, Margery Longespée, brought them to her husband, Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln (d. 1311) . Walter de Clifford's grandson Roger (d. 1231) was father of Roger (d. 1285?) ”

“ Some may aver, and not without seeming of truth, that trial is to genius as the furnace to noble metal. But, surely, this world will always offer to its children a front stern enough for their chastisement, and a law hard enough for their contrition—there needs not the imposition of fetters of ours, nor the devices of our caprice or austerity. ”

“ It would seem to be the aim of good education to insist upon a mastery of one or more subjects, that the grown man should be able to fight with the foremost, to concentrate his powers, and to realize what knowledge is, but that at the same time he should gain some not inadequate notion of the whole field of the battle of life. ”

“ But that which they who govern education can do is, to give to genius and to character a free way for expansion and action. We cannot make such a man as Edwards the naturalist of Banff, and the more sad is it that such men when born to us are too often maimed or driven by circumstance, and their gifts despoiled. ”

“ Such young men are now sent into the world in numbers, with minds orderly, trim, and garnished, but without élan, and without initiative—admirable clerks and formalists—but as men of action spoiled forever. ”

“ By the fire of his spirit there was roused so great an energy on the part of thousands of men as has hardly been known in these times; and he so put his people in heart, that not only the depression created by defeat, but the sense of being abandoned and left for sacrifice by the evading army, was succeeded by a quick growth of warlike pride, by a wholesome ardor for the fight, by an orderly, joyous activity. ”

“ Schubert died at the age of thirty-one, Mendelssohn at the age of thirty-six, Mozart at the age of thirty-six—these, like many other masters prodigiously, even wastefully, productive in the days of their spring, were worn out when their transcendent genius should have borne its harvest. Even in music we find the most lustrous and immortal works were the works not of youth, nor of early manhood, but of riper years; of masters who were endowed with inexhaustible well-springs of force in body and brain, or who had husbanded their stores in earlier days. ”

“ Brain-forcing is terribly mischievous. It urges genius into precocious fruitage, it drains the springs of nervous force, it excites high tension without giving volume to fortify it, it stints the variety of mental expansion, and by enforcing control it breaks the spirit. The true purpose of education is, first of all, to teach discipline—the discipline of the body, and the higher discipline of the mind and heart; to encourage the budding faculties to break freely in natural variety ”

“ The spontaneous and equable play of all sides of life favors growth and tone; but to enter the colt for the race, to bloom and seed the young plant, or to put the young male to the stud, is to stint their growth and to exhaust their vigor. Precocity is gained at the cost of feeble maturity and early decay. And yet, can the young brain grow, cell add itself to cell, and fibre knit itself to fibre, without work and play? ”

“ Men whose steps are faltering upon the very threshold of the ministry come to me lamenting that the hope and the fervor, the peace and the joy of their initiation have fled, and in their place are listlessness, weariness, confusion of mind—nay, even satiety and disgust. ”

“ Although Todleben seemed to be one to whom the very labors of fighting and of exterminating the weaker breeds of men must be an easy and delightful exertion of natural strength, he had joyous, kind-looking eyes, almost ready to melt with good-humor, and a bearing and speech so frank and genial, strangers were instantly inclined to like, and very soon after to trust in him. ”

“ Pupil-teachers, again, present a curious subject for observation, and a sad one. Called upon as children to teach children, their brains turn backward, or stop at the stage they have attained, and the living stream of thought is congealed into a dead dogmatism. Their minds, no longer open to the dew of knowledge from above, are bent to the work of churning vapid juices for yet callower nurslings. ”

“ With the courtesy and serenity of his carriage he combined a passionate humanity, so often characteristic of those who come of the Society of Friends, and a simple love of truth which showed itself in his generous encouragement of younger workers. ”

“ This invaluable attribute is happily much under the influence of education. Compare, for instance, the slow wit of the rustic with the mental alertness of the "joly prentis of Chepe." Education can not only instruct the mind, but can make it apprehensive, nimble, and even fiery. "It is of no use to know a thing," we often say to our bedside students, "unless you can deliver yourself of your knowledge." ”

“ That many mute, inglorious Miltons are buried in our churchyards, I venture to doubt; the fire of a Burns is not easily hidden under a bushel, but some smaller lights may thus be quenched, and the best of such men, like Burns himself, may be thwarted or broken in heart. ”

“ These words seem almost too simple—these truths too obvious for repetition; yet for lack of that which lies in them our modern schemes of education are day after day ruining the young by overstimulation and unhealthy competition. Happily, the public is awaking to its error, and is beginning to regret the days when its young dunces grew into its old heroes. What we did blindly in the past by trusting to the hidden wealth of Nature, we may now do face to face by the revelation of her secrets. ”

“ Of all gifts, then, to be cherished and nurtured, perhaps we should place first control, as by it effort is husbanded; perhaps of equal or scarcely of the second place comes tension; quality of brain cannot be had for the asking, and lack of quantity in individuals may be compensated by numbers. Variety, however charming, however grateful, is the least precious of these conditions of brain, and is the last which calls for nurture. ”

“ Often, too, these diseases rose to the height of epidemic pestilences, so that patients, however extreme their need, dreaded the very name of hospital, and the most skilful surgeons distrusted their own craft. New hospitals or new wards were built, yet after a very short time the new became as pestiferous as the old; and even scrupulous care in ventilation and housemaids’ cleanliness failed to prevent the devastation. Surgery had enlarged its freedom, but only to find the weight of its new responsibilities more than it could bear. ”

“ To meet this demand, colleges of all kinds and degrees spring up—middle class seminaries, theological colleges, colleges of science, university boards—even the old universities themselves are stirring from their scholarly ease, are sending out missionaries in partibus, and are cramming the youth of twenty counties in the art of making most show with least learning. ”

“ Of all endowments control is the most precious, and its nurture our most bounden duty. For a happy and useful life, perhaps control is more needful than quality, volume, variety or even tension of brain. But, were not men born to us whose high qualities of brain enable them to see more deeply into the secrets of Nature, our progress would cease; did quantity of brain-force cease from a people, that people would lack endurance ”

“ Like Brougham and Cavour, men of great power of continuous work have usually been large as well as sound eaters. A "hardheaded" man is also a hard-bodied man, and the national history of Europe is a long display of the successive triumphs of the men of colder over the men of warmer regions; of the hardy, lusty, and hungry races over the softer, more indolent, and more abstemious. ”

“ How great quality and quantity of brain may fall short of achievement, for lack of high tension rather than of control, must be sought in the story of "Hamlet" and like inventions; for, although the unhappy General Trochu is not yet quite forgotten, none such leave an enduring name. How many of us know that quiet friend unnoted of the many, unfelt by the world; whose powers of assimilating knowledge are great, whose intellect is capacious, and whose accomplishments are manifold, but whose nerve-currents are of low or inconstant tension! ”