In 1513, when about sixty years of age, he received a summons to attend the expedition into Scotland, with a contingent of men-at-arms, and held a command at the battle of Flodden, where he displayed the hereditary military skill and valour of the Cliffords.
"From Penigent to Pendle Hill,
From Linton to Long Addingham,
And all that Craven coasts did till,
They with the lusty Clifford came.
All Staincliffe Hundred went with him,
With striplings strong from Wharfedale,
And all that Hauton Hills did climb,
With Longstroth eke and Litton dale,
Whose milk-fed fellows, fleshly bred,
Well brown'd, with sounding bows upbend,
All such as Horton fells had fed,
On Clifford's banners did attend."
—Ballad of Flodden Field.
He survived the battle ten years, died in 1523, at about the seventieth year of his age, and was buried with his ancestors in the church of Bolton.
Margaret, Lady Clifford, married for her second husband, Launcelot Threlkeld, and bore him three daughters. She survived her first husband thirty years, and the restitution seven years, dying in 1491, at Londesborough. She was buried in the church there, near the altar, under a slab, with an inlaid brass plate bearing the following inscription:—"Orate pro anima Margarete, D'ne Clifford et Vescy, olim spouse nobilissimi viri joh'is D'm Clifford et Westmoreland, filie et hereditis Henrici Bromflet, quondam D'ni Vescy, etc. ... Matris Henrici Domini Clifford, Westmoreland et Vescy, quae obiit 15 die mens Aprilis, Anno Domini 1491, cujus corpus sub hoc marmore est humatum."
[The Felons of Ilkley.]
THE town of Ilkley, on the Wharfe, now so well known to tourists for the beauty of its situation and the grandeur of the natural scenery surrounding it, and to invalids for the invigorating and restorative qualities of its waters, is a place of very ancient date. It was built and fortified by the proprætor, Virius Lupus, in the time of the Emperor Severus, the fortress being situated on a precipitous bank of the Wharfe, and a cohort stationed there. Remains of the intrenchments are still to be seen, and altars, sepulchral stones, and other memorials of the Roman Olicaria have frequently been disinterred. Under the Saxons, too, it was a place of some importance, with a church and priest. In the churchyard there are some remarkable relics of this age, consisting of three stone crosses, with curiously convoluted knots and scroll work. Afterwards it sank into a mere village, but with a grammar school, founded in 1601 by the parishioners, and so remained until recent times, when the fame of its salubrious springs went forth over the land and attracted crowds of fashionable invalids and hypochondriacs.