Lewis Clifford KG (abt. 1330 - 1404)

Born about 1330 in Devon, England

Husband of Eleanor (Mowbray) Clifford — married before 13 Oct 1372 in England [uncertain]

Descendants

Died 1404 at about age 74 in England

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Biography

Sir Lewis (spelled in various ways such as Lowys, Loys etc.) was a Knight of the Garter (KG) who fought as a knight under both Edward the Black Prince, and his brother John of Gaunt, in France, Brittany and Spain.^[1] He worked in various other trusted roles for them and also for Edward's widow Joan of Kent, and his son King Richard II.^[2] He was a close friend of the famous author Geoffrey Chaucer and Kittredge described him as "one of the best known of English gentlemen, under the degree of a lord, in the last quarter of the fourteenth century".^[3]

He was one of the deponents who attested at the well-known Grosvenor versus Scrope heraldic inquest. Harris Nicholas (p.428) notes that in his deposition Sir Lewis said "he was more than fifty years old in 1386" implying birth before 1336.^[4] However, as has been pointed out by modern historians, the chronicle writer Froissart admired Sir Lewis and believed he first saw action in the French campaign of 1342.^[5] If we can trust Froissart, which is not certain, Sir Lewis must have been born well before 1330.^[6] The Oxford National Biography for Sir Lewis suggests he was born in the early 1330s.^[2]

According to Fleming's ODNB article, between 1370 and 1372 Sir Lewis "married Eleanor, daughter of John (II) Mowbray, Lord Mowbray of Axholme, and Joan of Lancaster, and widow of Roger, Lord de la Warr (1326–1370)".^[2] Sir Lewis had two known children.

• Elizabeth, a daughter, who died on March 5, 1414. Kittredge notes that she was "aged seventeen and upwards in June, 1379" and "therefore cannot have been the offspring of Dame Eleanor". She married twice but had no descendants.^[7]

• (1) Sir John Leuveysy, died October 26, 1379 without issue.
• (2) Sir Philip la Vache, married by February 9, 1380

• Lewis, a son who died young in 1391, before Sir Lewis. Kittredge proposed that he is the son of Lady Eleanor, and he is the child Lewis who his friend Geoffrey Chaucer dedicated a famous poem to.^[7]

Despite his famous admirers and network he died in some shame because like some other knights in his time, he came to be associated with the Lollard movement, which was seen as heretical.

He wrote a repentant testament, which was nevertheless written mainly in English and reflected the style of wills by these early non-conformists. His actual opinions about Lollardy are uncertain.^[8]

This testament mentions one daughter and no sons. It was made 17 September 1404, and according to Fleming, the "fact that probate of his will was granted on 12 December 1404 indicates that he had died soon after making it".^[2] However, his will is generally reported to have been given probate on 5 December.^[9]

Lewis's exact ancestry is uncertain, but he was brother to Hugh de Clifford. William Clifford, ancestor of the Cliffords of Chudleigh, and often called Sir Lewis Clifford's son, was actually his nephew. More precisely he was the son of Lewis's brother Hugh, as laid out in a legal case involving later generations.^[10]

It is also known that Sir Lewis had an aunt (taunte, possibly Elizabeth Prideaux) who was living in Columbjohn in Devon in 1373, apparently as an elderly widow. G.L. Kittredge noted this more than 100 years ago in 1917.^[7] The Duke issued instructions to protect her rights. This indicates that Sir Lewis was a descendant (probably a great grandson) of Giles de Clifford, who was a younger son of a Clifford baron from Herefordshire. He and his son Reginald had held Columbjohn. The manor was given in marriage about a generation later, when Sir John de Clifford gave it in marriage to the Prideaux family in 1332. The exact family tree of the Devon Cliffords is difficult or impossible to reconstruct, but Lewis would only be a distant cousin to the Lords Clifford.

Research Notes

Old proposals about his father. Modern historians since Kittredge say that no one actually knows whose son Lewis was, although there is a good lead to Devon. Older works made various attempts to connect him to one the Lords Clifford of his time, who were based in the north of England. These continue to influence genealogists. For example, the following are all wrong. BEWARE:

• Vivian's Devon visitation makes Sir Lewis a son of his contemporary Thomas Clifford, who died 1391.^[11]
• In the 17th century Dugdale said that Sir Lewis was the brother of his contemporary Thomas and son of Roger (d. 1389).^[12] This follows what Froissart understood in his chronicle.^[13]
• Because Sir Lewis is about the same age as Sir Roger, Nicholas Harris Nicholas, in 1832, and later the second Complete Peerage, suggested that Sir Lewis might be a brother of Roger, and a son of Roger's father Robert de Clifford (d.1345).^[14][4]

The Devon Cliffords had recently held lordship over Columbjohn, Combe-in-Teignhead and Godford in 1373, and were clearly already established in Devonshire in the 13th century, going back to Giles Clifford, and his son Reginald.^[15] The new owners the Prideaux family, acquired Comlumbjohn by the marriage of Roger Prideaux with Elizabeth Clifford in about 1332.

In 1373, there might have been several widows with a Clifford connection who could have been alive and living in Columbjohn, which was now under Prideaux lordship:

• One is the widow of the last Roger de Prideaux, Johane, who Vivian's pedigree makes out to be a daughter of one Peter Clifford.^[11] Joan appears as a widow in the register of the Black Prince.^[16] However, no record connecting her to Cliffords has been found yet.
• On the other hand another wife in this Prideaux family, Elizabeth Prideaux was certainly a daughter of Sir John de Clyfford, and her marriage had brought Columbjohn to the Prideaux family in 1332 and so it would be a natural place for her to reside as a widow.^[17] However, if we accept that her husband was the same Roger who Joan had married, then she must have already been dead in 1373. A possible way out of that is to accept the proposal of Maclean, which is that Elizabeth and Joan married a father and son with the same name (Roger).^[18]
• Like Elizabeth, based on the 1332 fine, Clarice, Elizabeth's own mother, would have had a claim to be allowed to hold the Clifford lands until she died.

The legal cases in Norfolk which are the reason we know about the connection between Lewis and the descendants of his brother Hugh are the subject of a 1982 thesis at Oxford by Anthony Robert Smith, who had access to documents held in Oxford.^[19] The land involved was the manor of Hickling Netherhall, which Sir Lewis acquired in 1383. As part of a set of deals where he granted parts of this manor to different tenants, Hickling Priory also granted Clifford and his heirs £20 per annum if the rent fell into arrears. Fastolf bought the land 45 years later and claimed that he should also be able to claim the £20. The priory argued, for example in a latter published in the Paston letters, that "ehe condition of the obligation only extended to the heirs of Sir Hugh Clifford, and not to his assigns, and Sir John is only an assign".^[20] Smith mentions (p.199) that in one of the legal arguments the prior "proved that owing to a dispute about Clifford's will Clifford's surviving feoffees, executors and surveyors, including Cheyne (l), decided in 1406 that the rent should descend to William Clifford (Lewis Clifford's nephew) and his heirs". Smith notes the existence of a "note of the October 1406 meeting at which Clifford's will was heard and a decision reached in William Clifford's favour".

Sources

1. ↑ Beltz, George. Memorials of the Order of the Garter (William Pickering, London, 1841) Page 260-4, Page 376
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3} Fleming, P. (2004, September 23). "Clifford, Sir Lewis (c. 1330–1404), soldier and suspected heretic". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 11 Jan. 2024
3. ↑ G. L. Kittredge (Jun., 1903), "Chaucer and Some of His Friends", Modern Philology, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 1-18 https://www.jstor.org/stable/432420
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1} Sir Nicholas Harris Nicholas (1832) De Controversia in Curia Militari Inter Ricardum Le Scrope Et Robertum Grosvenor, vol. 2, p.427-p.433, and in other places.
5. ↑ Jehan Froissart, Jean Alexandre C. Buchon ed., vol. 12, Collection Des Chroniques Nationales Françaises, p.130
6. ↑ Thomas A. Reisner, Mary E. Reisner (1978) "Lewis Clifford and the Kingdom of Navarre", Modern Philology, Vol. 75, No. 4 pp. 385-390 https://www.jstor.org/stable/437484
7. ↑ ^{7.0 7.1 7.2} Kittredge, G. L. “Lewis Chaucer or Lewis Clifford?” Modern Philology, vol. 14, no. 9, 1917, pp. 513–518. https://www.jstor.org/stable/433151 (open access and also on archive.org). The evidence is in John of Gaunt's Register (ed. Armitage-Smith, vol. 1, p.125). March 21, 1373. Entry No. 293 says: "que les villes de Houxham, Colyn Johan et Stokes, sont a une honuree dame q'est taunte a nostre bien ame chivaler monsire Lowys de Clifford".
8. ↑ W. T. Waugh (Oct., 1913) "The Lollard Knights", The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 11, No. 41 pp. 55-92 https://www.jstor.org/stable/25518640
9. ↑ For example, the transcription of his will in Testamenta Vetusta, p.164.
10. ↑ "De Banco. Mich. 25. Hen. 6. m. 557. Summarized in Wrotteseley, Pedigrees from the Plea Rolls, p.390
11. ↑ ^{11.0 11.1} Vivian, John Lambrick. The Visitations of the County of Devon, Comprising the Herald's Visitations of 1531, 1564, & 1620 (Henry S. Eland, Exeter, 1895) p.616.
12. ↑ William Dugdale, The baronage of England, p.341.
13. ↑ Jehan Froissart, Jean Alexandre C. Buchon ed., vol. 9, Collection Des Chroniques Nationales Françaises, p.150
14. ↑ Cockayne et al., Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. 3, p.292, under CLIFFORD.
15. ↑ Richardson, Royal Ancestry, II, 126.
16. ↑ Register of Edward, the Black prince, vol. 2, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.32000000339921&seq=130&q1=prideaux
17. ↑ Scan 1332 fine: http://aalt.law.uh.edu/AALT7/CP25(1)/CP25_1_43_45-53/IMG_0192.htm
18. ↑ Sir John MacLean, The Parochial and Family History of the Deanery of Trigg Minor, in the County of Cornwall, vol. 2 (1876), pp. 199-202, 218-220.
19. ↑ Anthony Robert Smith, 1982, Aspects of the career of Sir John Fastolf (1380-1459) [thesis] https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:82b30e31-1412-495b-bc5d-426dd6aac852
20. ↑ Gairdner (ed.), The Paston letters, 1422-1509 A.D., p.423.

See also:

• Royal Ancestry by Douglas Richardson Vol. III page 461