TO-DAY IN HISTORY

Southland Times, Issue 20666, 23 April 1929, Page 6

TO-DAY IN HISTORY

APRIL 23. Born: King Louis IX., of France, 1215; Julius Caesar Scaliger, eminent scholar, 1484. George, Lord Anson, navigator, Shuckborough, 1697; Sir Gilbert Elliot, first Earl of Minto, statesman, 1751.

Died: Pierre Danes, French scholar, 1577; William Shakespeare, Stratford-on-Avon, 1616; Maurice de Nasau, Prince of Orange, 1625; Jean Barbayrac, jurist, 1744; Andrew Baxter, philosopher, 1750; Joseph Nollekins, sculptor, London, 1823; Aaron Arrowsmith, geographer, London, 1823; William Wordsworth, poet, 1850; Count de Volney, French philosopher, 1820.

HENRY CLIFFORD “THE SHEPHERD LORD.”

The life of Henry Clifford, commonly called the Shepherd Lord, is a striking illustration of the casualties which attended the long .and disastrous contest between the Houses of York and Lancaster. The De Cliffords were zealous and powerful adherents of the Lancastrian interest. In this cause Henry’s grandfather had fallen in the battle of St. Albans; and his father at the Battle of Towton, that bloody engagement at which nearly 40,000 Englishmen perished at the hands of their fellow countrymen. But scarcely had the Yorkists gained this victory, which placed their leader on the throne as Edward the Fourth, than search was made for the sons of the fallen Lord Clifford. There were two boys, of whom Henry, the eldest, was only seven years old. But the very name of Clifford was so hated and dreaded by the Yorkists, that Edward, although acknowledged king, could be satisfied with nothing less than the lives of these two boys. The young Cliffords were immediately searched for, but their mother’s anxiety had been too prompt even for the eagerness of revenge; they were not to be found. Their mother was closely and peremptorily examined about them. She said, “She had given directions to convey them beyond sea, to be bred up there; and that being thither sent, she was ignorant whether they were living or not.” This was all that could be elicited from their cautious mother. Certain it is that Richard her younger son was taken to the Netherlands, where he shortly afterwards died. But Henry the elder and heir to his father’s titles and estates, was either never out of England, or if lie were, he speedily returned, and was placed by his mother in Lonsborow in Yorksjflre, with a trustworthy shepherd, the husband of a young woman who had been under nurse to the boy whom she had now to adopt as her foster son. Here in the hut of this shepherd, was the young heir of the lordly Cliffords, to be clothed, fed and employed as the shepherd’s own son. In this condition he lived year after year in such perfect disguise that it was not till he had attained his fifteenth year, that a rumour reached the court of his being alive and in England. Happily the Lady Clifford had a friend at court who forwarned her that the king had received an intimation of her son’s place of concealment. With the assistance of her then husband, Sir Lancelot Threikeld, Lady Clifford instantly removed “the honest shepherd and his wife and family into Cumberland” where he took a farm near the Scottish Borders. Here, though his mother occasionally held private communications with him, the young Lord Clifford passed fifteen years more, disguised and occupied as a common shepherd, and had the mortification of seeing his Castle and Barony of Shipton in the hands of his adversary Sir William Stanley; and his Barony of Westmoreland possessed by the Duke of Gloucester, the king’s brother.

On the restoration of the Lancastrian line by the succession of Henry VII., Henry Clifford now thirty-one years old, was summond to the House of Lords, and restored to his father’s titles and estates. But such had been his humble training that he could neither write nor read. The only book open to him during his shepherd's life was the book of nature and this he had studied with diligence. He had gained a practical knowledge of the heavenly bodies and a deep-rooted love for Nature’s grand and beautiful scenery.

Having regained his property and position he immediately began to repair his castles and improve his education. He quickly learned to write his own name; and to facilitate his studies built Barden Tower, near Bolton Priory, that he might place himself under the tuition of some learned monks there, and apply himself to astronomy and other favourite sciences of the

period. Thus this strong minded man, who up to the age of thirty, had received no education, became by his own determination far more learned than the noblemen of his day usually were, anti appears to have left behind him scientific works of his own composition.

His training as a warrior had been equally defective. Instead of being practised from boyhood in the use of arms and the feats of chivalry, as was common with the youth of his own station, he had been trained to handle the shepherd’s crook. Yet scarcely had he emerged from obscurity and his quiet pastoral life, when we find him become a brave and skilful soldier—an able and victorious commander. At the battle of Flodden he was one of the principal leaders and brought to the field a numerous retinue. He died on April 23, 1523, in his seventieth year.