Project Profile of the Month: Edward Clere
Edward Clere came from a well-off Norfolk family. He had a fairly standard preparation for life for someone of the gentry, entering Cambridge University in 1553, and then being admitted to Inner Temple, one of the Inns of Court, in 1555. Soon after that, he was elected for Parliament for the first of three times. He was clearly not an eloquent orator. A contemporary diarist referred to "a staggering [stumbling] speech: his conclusion I did not conceive" and on another occasion remarked that "such was my ill hap I could not understand what reason he made".
Edward must have been recognised by Elizabeth I's government for other abilities. He was appointed Sheriff of Norfolk in 1567 and 1580. In 1578 he entertained Elizabeth I at his Norfolk residences, and this led to him being knighted. In the 1580s he was involved in detaining Roman Catholics in Norfolk. He helped to organise the defences of Norfolk around the time of the Spanish Armada. Over his life he acquired sufficient lands to be regarded by William Cecil, Elizabeth I's chief minister, as wealthy enough to support a peerage, though he was never ennobled.
But not everything went smoothly. He married a daughter of a servant of the Catholic Duke of Norfolk, and as a result was investigated following the Duke's arrest in 1569.
Locally in Norfolk he was not universally popular. After he was appointed in 1570 to collect a forced loan to the government, there were accusations of extortion and fraud. In 1577, one Roger Wyndham lodged a formal complaint to the royal Council about the handling of goods from a wrecked Scottish ship, requesting independent adjudication as "Sir Edw. Clere was partial and unjust, and his mortal enemy".
He also had difficulties with his son Edward, who was of Catholic sympathies and who was imprisoned for years in the reign of James I for sheltering a Catholic priest.
In this period the ownership of swans was valuable, and cygnets were a luxury food item. Among the positions held by Edward Clere was that of the King's Chief Swanner in Norfolk and Suffolk (the title does not seem to have changed to ”Queen's" during Elizabeth I's reign), and he arranged the "upping" of swans and cygnets (rounding up those not marked as belonging to others besides the monarch), and the marking of those which belonged to the Crown. Swan-upping is a tradition that persists - on a more limited scale - to this day. There is an annual upping on the Thames, complete with official Swan Uppers whose garments have royal insignia, and the office of royal Swan Marker still exists. You can read more in a booklet viewable online here.
Team News
The trail development team badged the following trails in September 2022:
