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racter and conduct of Robert, first lord of Skipton; for whilst he preserved the favour of Henry the Sixth, he so managed as not to forfeit the respect and esteem of the nobility. Indeed the times were such as to call for the utmost wariness and circumspection, for the pretensions of the house of York were beginning to appear, and discontent and disaffection were spreading rapidly throughout the kingdom.

It was impossible, however, to avoid taking a decided part when the claims of the rival houses were put to the arbitration of the sword; and, although by the marriage of his aunt Maud de Clifford, daughter of Thomas, sixth lord of Skipton, with Richard Plantagenet, earl of Cambridge, this eighth lord was allied to the house of York, and, in fact, resided with his family the greater part of the year at Conisburgh castle, which the countess of Cambridge, then a widow, possessed in right of her dower; yet, from some disagreement, probably originating, on the part of the Plantagenets, from the magnitude and long tenure of this very dower by the relict of the earl, it is certain that a dislike amounting to the bitterest enmity was engendered between the two families, and induced

lord Clifford and his son not only to support with zeal the house of Lancaster, but to become the most implacable foes of the Yorkists.

It was the fate of the father, however, to perish early in this disastrous contest; for in the first battle fought between the contending parties at St. Albans, on May 22, 1455, in which Henry the Sixth was defeated and taken prisoner, this nobleman, together with other chieftains of his faction, was slain in attempting to turn the fortune of the day. To this event Shakspeare alludes in the opening of his Third Part of King Henry the Sixth, where, speaking of the king as having secretly withdrawn from the field, he adds—

Whereat the great lord of Northumberland,
Whose warlike ears could never brook retreat,
Cheer'd up the drooping army; and himself,
Lord Clifford, and lord Stafford, all a-breast,
Charged our main battle's front, and, breaking in,
Were by the swords of common soldiers slain.

The representation of the poet is here founded on fact, for such, according to the statement of the chroniclers, were the circumstances which preceded the death of lord Clifford; but, in admitting these lines, the bard had forgotten that, at the close of the preceding play, he had given Clifford his death

wound from the hand of the duke of York, evidently with the design of accounting for the savage ferocity with which John, the son of this Clifford, avenged himself on every individual of the race of Plantagenet who was unfortunate enough to fall within his power. The passions, however, which this unnatural war set afloat, and which, in numerous instances, alike bade defiance to every tie of humanity and consanguinity, wanted not the aid of fiction to account for the miseries which they inflicted; for by man, habituated to deeds of violence, freed from the restraints of law, and uninfluenced by morals or religion, what enormity has not been committed?

Thomas lord Clifford was interred with his uncle, Henry Percy earl of Northumberland, and Humphrey earl of Stafford, in the lady chapel of the monastery of St. Albans, having entered the fortyfirst year of his age, and leaving one son, the abovementioned John, by Joan, daughter of Thomas lord Dacre, of Gillesland.

JOHN LORD CLIFFORD, NINTH LORD OF THE HONOUR OF SKIPTON, and surnamed, probably from the unrelenting sternness of his features, blackfaced Clifford, was born on the 8th of April, 1430,

at Conisburgh castle in Yorkshire, under the same roof which had witnessed the birth of the

very duke of York whom he is represented to have killed, and who was the son of Richard earl of Cambridge, by his first wife, Anne Mortimer, his second lady, who survived him, being, as I have stated before, Maud Clifford; thus forming an alliance which, instead of cementing the two families in the bond of peace, seems to have produced nothing but alienation and hostility.

Lord John appears to have been early initiated into all the horrors of civil discord, for at the death of his father, in 1455, he had been three years engaged in the struggle between the houses of York and Lancaster; a school in which, according to every account, he had imbibed a more than common portion of the rancour and cruelty so prevalent in those days of bloodshed and confusion.

It was at the battle of Wakefield, which took place on December 30th, 1460, between Richard duke of York, and queen Margaret, in which the former was totally defeated, that the vindictive ferocity of Clifford became such as to leave an eternal blot upon his character. his character. Leland says, "that for slaughter of men at Wakefield, he was called the

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butcher;" but the action which on that day has more peculiarly stained his memory was the slaughter of the young earl of Rutland, second son of the duke of York, who is represented by Hall and Holinshed as not being more than twelve years of age, though the countess of Dorset and Pembroke, in her Summary of the Lives of her Ancestors, contends, with the view of, in some measure, mitigating the horror of the deed, that he was seventeen. As the chroniclers, however, describe him as being attended by his tutor, and paint him with the manners and apprehensions of a child, it is scarcely probable that he could be so old. "Whilst this battle was in fighting," says Hall," a priest called sir Robert Aspall, chaplain and schoolmaster to the young earl of Rutland, second son to the above-named duke of York, scarce of the age of xij years*, a fair gentleman, and a maiden-like person, perceiving that flight was more safe-guard than tarrying, both for him and his master, secretly conveyed the earl

* Peacham, in his " Complete Gentleman," in general an acurate writer, repeats this assertion. "Edmund Plantagenet, son and heir of Richard duke of York, earl of Rutland (who, being a child scarce twelve years of age, was stricken to the heart with a dagger by the lord Clifford, at the battle of Wakefield), had, &c."-Edition of 1634, p. 169.

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