heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

268 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
favourites the Spencers, he and other barons conspired
with Thomas of
Lancaster, in his castle at Pontefract ;
and Sir Wm. de Pakington, an old
chronicler, says that he " toke out his dagger and sayd he would kill him
"with his oune hande in that place, except he would go with them."
But the battle at Boroughbridge was disastrous to their cause the
;
barons were beaten, Lancaster himself and many others were taken
prisoners, and executed at Pontefract. Holinshead says that "Clifford was
"hanged in yron chaines at York." Sir Matthew Hale says "that by
" reason of his great wounds, being held a dying man, he was respited,
"and that he died a natural death, 1327."
Two members of the House of Clifford held office in this Minster
during the fourteenth century. Richard de Clifford son of Thomas de
Clifford, younger brother of Roger fifth Lord Dean of York from 1397 to
1401, and afterwards Bishop of Worcester, Bishop of London, and Cardinal.
He enriched the fess with a mitre stringed argent, and added a border of
the second. John de Clifford, probably his uncle, was treasurer of the
Minster, 1374.
He may have borne the coat with the augmentation
of three
bezants, significant of his office, which appears amongst the coloured
illustrations.
Thomas, the sixth Lord, was the dissolute friend of Richard II.
John, the seventh, a faithful and brave comrade of Henry
V. With
fifty men-at-arms and 150 archers he joined the King in France, and,
made a Knight of the Garter for his services, fell, when only thirty-three
years of age, at the siege of Meaux, 1422.
His son Thomas, eighth Lord, at the outbreak of the War of the
Roses, in 1455, threw in his power and influence with the Lancastrians;
and in the last act of his play of Henry VI., part ii., Shakespeare, or at
any rate the writer of that play, represents him sharply taunting the
Earl of Warwick for his disloyalty to Henry VI., in the King's presence,
and then, shifting the scene to St. Albans, introduces Warwick vehemently
desiring to avenge this insult by single combat
" Clifford of Cumberland ! 'tis Warwick calls,
And (if
thou dost not hide thee from the bear)
Now, when the angry trumpet sounds alarm,
And dead men's cries do fill the empty air,
Clifford, I say, come forth and fight with me !
Proud northern Lord, Clifford of Cumberland,
Warwick is hoarse with calling thee to arms."
Richard Duke of York, however, interferes, and insists on fighting
with Clifford, slays him in the encounter according to Whitaker they
were first cousins and departs. Young Clifford, as he is called (i.e. John,
by his father's death ninth Lord Clifford), comes in, laments his father's
death, and resolves upon a vengeance of ruthless extermination: