Intelligence was brought, the Court being set,
That a Play Tripartite was very near made;
Where malicious Matt Clifford and spiritual Spratt
Were join'd with their Duke, a Peer of the Trade.
(Dryden, Miscellany Poems, 5th edit. pt. ii. p. 89.)
Clifford attacked Dryden in a series of letters, written at different periods and probably circulated by transcripts, for the only known edition was issued long after the author's death with the title ‘Notes upon Mr. Dryden's Poems in Four Letters, by M. Clifford, late master of the Charterhouse, London; to which are annexed some Reflections upon the Hind and Panther, by another hand’ (Thomas Brown), 4to, London, 1687. The style of these paltry effusions makes it difficult to believe that the writer had been a distinguished university man; the criticism is chiefly verbal. Dryden made no reply, much to Clifford's chagrin, for in the last letter dated from the Charterhouse, 1 July 1672, and signed with his name, he writes: ‘Since I cannot draw you to make a reply to me, assure your self that after this letter you shall hear no further from me.’
In 1671 Clifford was elected master of the Charterhouse, a post which he doubtless owed to the friendship of Buckingham. He died on 10 Dec. 1677, and was buried on the 13th in the chancel of St. Margaret's, Westminster, not, as Wood asserts, in the chapel of the Charterhouse. Buckingham intended to have erected a memorial to him, as he had already done to Cowley, their common friend, ‘but dying, it was turned upon the carver's hands.’ During the time of his mastership Clifford published anonymously ‘A Treatise of Humane Reason,’ 12mo, London, 1674, which was reprinted the following year, and again in 1691 with the author's name on the title-page. ‘One or two months after its publication the Bishop of Ely (Laney) was dining in Charterhouse with many “persons of quality,” and the conversation during dinner turned on that book. The bishop, no doubt unaware that he was in the presence of the writer of it, remarked that “'twas no matter if all the copies were burnt and the author with them,” “because it made every man's private fancy judge of religion.”’ The treatise was answered the year following its issue by ‘Observations upon a Treatise,’ attributed to the Rev. Edward Stephens, and by ‘Plain-Dealing. … By A. M., a Countrey Gentleman.’ The last-named tract was in turn dealt with by Albertus Warren, who, at the end of his ‘Apology,’ 1680, has left a curious description of Clifford's person and habits. To Clifford, Sprat addressed his ‘Life of Cowley.’ His portrait, engraved by Vandergucht, faces the ‘Life’ in the octavo editions of the poet's complete works.
In the ‘Nouvelle Biographie Générale’ (x. 862), Clifford is amusingly described as ‘théologien anglais, de l'ordre des Chartreux,’ who, it is added, ‘fut prieur de son ordre.’
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 999–1000, iv. 209, 728; Welch's Alumni Westmon. (1852), pp. 111, 115, 116, 532; Dryden's Works, ed. Scott, 2nd edit., i. 136, 154–5; W. Haig Brown's Charterhouse, Past and Present, pp. 121–2; Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, 2nd edit., iv. 96–7; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
CLIFFORD, RICHARD (d. 1421), bishop of Worcester and London, is said to have been grandson of Thomas de Clifford, younger son of Robert de Clifford II (d. 1344), third baron of Westmoreland (Whitaker; Dugdale, i. 340). It is, however, possible that he was the son of Sir Lewis Clifford (1336?-1404), as Godwin asserts on manuscript authority (p. 187, cf. Scrope and Grosvenor Roll, i. 197, ii. 427, 429, &c.) He makes his first appearance on 1 March 1385 as canon of St. Stephen's Chapel Royal in Westminster. When the appellant lords impeached Sir Simon Burley [q. v.], Clifford found himself involved in the same charges, and was imprisoned in Rochester Castle 4 Jan. 1388. Five months later (3 June) the commons made a special petition that his name, with that of Henry Bowet [q. v.] and a few others, should be excluded from the list of pardons. From this it would appear that he was one of the favourites of Richard II, an opinion which is strengthened by the fact that he is first clerical executor of this king's will, dated 16 April 1398 or 1399 (Parl. Rolls, ii. 248-9; Walsingham, Ypod. Neustriæ, p.355; Rymer, vii. 567, viii. 77). He must, however, have been released very soon, as on 4 June 1388 he appears as guardian of the privy seal, an office which he seems to have held till the end of the reign (Rymer, viii. 77; Privy Council Proceedings, i. 80-1), and even during the first year and a half of Henry IV (ib. p. 129). He was a great pluralist, and was apparently canon and prebendary of Salisbury (Blebury) till his elevation to a bishopric (22 Sept. 1401); prebendary of Fenton, in the diocese of York (17 Oct. 1386; reappointed 31 Dec. 1395); prebendary of Leighton Buzzard (9 Aug. 1392), and of Cadington Major in the diocese of London (10 Dec. 1397); archdeacon of Canterbury (March 1397); dean of York (26 March 1398); prebendary of Riccall (York, 24 April 1398), and of Norwell Palishall (Southwell, from 25 Sept, 1415);
