When the last earl of Cumberland died in 1643 the newer barony of Clifford passed to his daughter Elizabeth, wife of Richard Boyle, 2nd earl of Cork, and from the Boyles it passed to the Cavendishes, falling into abeyance on the death of William Cavendish, 6th duke of Devonshire, in 1858.
The barony of Clifford of Lanesborough was held by the Boyles from 1644 to 1753, and the Devonshire branch of the family still holds the barony of Clifford of Chudleigh, which was created in 1672.
See G. E. C(okayne), Complete Peerage (1887-1898); and T. D. Whitaker, History of Craven (1877).
[1] The original writ of summons (1299) was addressed in Latin, Roberto domino de Clifford, i.e. Robert, lord of Clifford, and subsequently the barons styled themselves indifferently Lords Clifford or de Clifford, until in 1777 the 11th lord definitively adopted the latter form. The “De” henceforth became part of the name, having quite lost its earliest significance, and with unconscious tautology the barony is commonly referred to as that of De Clifford.
CLIFFORD, JOHN (1836- ), British Nonconformist minister and politician, son of a warp-machinist at Sawley, Derbyshire, was born on the 16th of October 1836. As a boy he worked in a lace factory, where he attracted the notice of the leaders of the Baptist community, who sent him to the academy at Leicester and the Baptist college at Nottingham to be educated for the ministry. In 1858 he was called to Praed Street chapel, Paddington (London), and while officiating there he attended University College and pursued his education by working at the British Museum. He matriculated at London University (1859), and took its B.A. degree (1861), B.Sc. (1862), M.A. (1864), and LL.B. (1866), and in 1883 he was given the honorary degree of D.D. by Bates College, U.S.A., being known therefrom as Dr Clifford. This degree, from an American college of minor academic status, afterwards led to sarcastic allusions, but Dr Clifford had not courted it, and his London University achievements were evidence enough of his intellectual equipment. At Praed Street chapel he gradually obtained a large following, and in 1877 Westbourne Park chapel was opened for him. As a preacher, writer, propagandist and ardent Liberal politician, he became a power in the Nonconformist body. He was president of the London Baptist Association in 1879, of the Baptist Union in 1888 and 1899, and of the National Council of Evangelical Churches in 1898. His chief prominence in politics, however, dates from 1903 onwards in consequence of his advocacy of “passive resistance” to the Education Act of 1902. Into this movement he threw himself with militant ardour, his own goods being distrained upon, with those of numerous other Nonconformists, rather than that any contribution should be made by them in taxation for the purpose of an Education Act which in their opinion was calculated to support denominational religious teaching in the schools. The “passive resistance” movement, with Dr Clifford as its chief leader, had a large share in the defeat of the Unionist government in January 1906, and his efforts were then directed to getting a new act passed which should be undenominational in character. The rejection of Mr Birrell’s bill in 1906 by the House of Lords was accordingly accompanied by denunciations of that body from Dr Clifford and his followers; but as year by year went by, up to 1909, with nothing but failure on the part of the Liberal ministry to arrive at any solution of the education problem,—failure due now not to the House of Lords but to the inherent difficulties of the subject (see [Education]),—it became increasingly clear to the public generally that the easy denunciations of the act of 1902, which had played so large a part in the elections of 1906, were not so simple to carry into practice, and that a compromise in which the denominationalists would have their say would have to be the result. Meanwhile “passive resistance” lost its interest, though Dr Clifford and his followers continued to protest against their treatment.
CLIFFORD, WILLIAM KINGDON (1845-1879), English mathematician and philosopher, was born on the 4th of May 1845 at Exeter, where his father was a prominent citizen. He was educated at a private school in his native town, at King’s College, London, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow in 1868, after being second wrangler in 1867 and second Smith’s prizeman. In 1871 he was appointed professor of mathematics at University College, London, and in 1874 became fellow of the Royal Society. In 1875 he married Lucy, daughter of John Lane of Barbados. In 1876 Clifford, a man of high-strung and athletic, but not robust, physique, began to fall into ill-health, and after two voyages to the South, died during the third of pulmonary consumption at Madeira, on the 3rd of March 1879, leaving his widow with two daughters. Mrs W. K. Clifford soon earned for herself a prominent place in English literary life as a novelist, and later as a dramatist. Her best-known story, Mrs Keith’s Crime (1885), was followed by several other volumes, the best of which is Aunt Anne (1893); and the literary talent in the family was inherited by her daughter Ethel (Mrs Fisher Dilke), a writer of some charming verse.
Owing to his early death, Professor Clifford’s abilities and achievements cannot be fairly judged without reference to the opinion formed of him by his contemporaries. He impressed every one as a man of extraordinary acuteness and originality; and these solid gifts were set off to the highest advantage by quickness of thought and speech, a lucid style, wit and poetic fancy, and a social warmth which made him delightful as a friend and companion. His powers as a mathematician were of the highest order. It harmonizes with the concrete visualizing turn of his mind that, to quote Professor Henry Smith, “Clifford was above all and before all a geometer.” In this he was an innovator against the excessively analytic tendency of Cambridge mathematicians. In his theory of graphs, or geometrical representations of algebraic functions, there are valuable suggestions which have been worked out by others. He was much interested, too, in universal algebra, non-Euclidean geometry and elliptic functions, his papers “Preliminary Sketch of Bi-quaternions” (1873) and “On the Canonical Form and Dissection of a Riemann’s Surface” (1877) ranking as classics. Another important paper is his “Classification of Loci” (1878). He also published several papers on algebraic forms and projective geometry.