ELEGY ON TOM CLIFFORD, SON OF THE HIGH TREASURER
OF ENGLAND (IN PART UNPUBLISHED)
TOGETHER WITH OTHER RELATED MANUSCRIPT PAPERS

CLIFFORD, Thomas. Three manuscripts relating to the death of Thomas Clifford the younger, son of Thomas Clifford, Lord High Treasurer of England (1630-1673).

(a) Manuscript poem signed "W.R." entitled "To the happy Memory of that Incomparable Person Mr. Clifford who died at Florence" beginning "If with just griefe, and a Concerne but due", 3 sheets folio, 60 lines.

(b) Autograph letter signed by Sir Bernard Gascoyne (1614-87), military adventurer and writer, to the boy's father, Lord Clifford, discussing the embarkation of the body of his son to England with a detailed account of the funeral expenses to date, 4pp. folio, Florence, 2 June 1671.

(c) Letter in English subscribed "your assured friend and servant, the Great Duke of Tuscany" (Cosmo III) sent by means of Sir Bernard Gascoyne returning to England, to Lord Clifford, expressing sympathy and friendship. I p. 4to. Florence 11 July 1671.

Together with an envelope with red wax stamps addressed "A Son excellence Mylord Clifford. London."

The story of Tom Clifford is told in a chapter devoted to it in C. H. Hartmann's *Clifford of the Cabal*. 1937. Tom Clifford (1652-1671), the eldest surviving child of Thomas Lord Clifford, travelled to Florence to complete his education after three years at Queen's College, Oxford where he had been a good pupil and been described by one of the fellows as "a civil, hopeful youth..." His father put him under the care of Sir Bernard Gascoyne, an Italian adventurer who had fought for Charles I. The party arrived in Florence in March 1671, where the young man was kindly received by Cosmo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and made much of by the Florentine nobility. After a few days Tom Clifford fell ill with a fever after drinking three or four glasses of wine and beer in ice at a dinner. He died on March 29. Sir Bernard Gascoyne remained with him to the end and closed his eyes. The old man was distraught with grief. He had grown to love Tom Clifford as if he were his own son, and the boy seems to have returned his affection. He wrote of his distress to Arlington in his quaint ill-spelt English (See Hartmann). To Sir Thomas Clifford he could not as yet bring himself to write.

By the beginning of May arrangements had been made by the Duke of York for the embarkation of Clifford's body on a man-of-war for return to England. The embarkation was an occasion of considerable gloomy pageantry. The funeral procession was to enter Leghorn as late as it was possible to do in a garrison town where gates had to be shut at night, so that the English could accompany it with torches

to the house where it was to be deposited until it was put aboard. In
the event the body was borne through the streets of the town
straight to the waterside. Eight English trumpeters walked on foot
half a mile before the hearse. Then amid the thunder of some three
hundred cannon from the English ships in the harbour the corpse
was embarked on a boat draped with black and covered with family
escutcheons. "And all things else carried on with that splendour
and decencie" wrote Sir Thomas Clutterbuck, "that I believe nothing
of this nature hath bin formerly seene here..."

It was not until 2 June, when he had returned to Florence, that Sir Bernard succeeded in writing his letter of condolence to Lord Clifford. This letter (item b above) fills two folio pages and is accompanied by an account of funeral expenses which occupy a further two pages. The text of this letter is printed in full by Hartmann. The two pages of accounts are not. The letter begins:

"Right Honourable,

According to your Orders was Pouer Mester Clifford bract to
Leghorne as honorably as our country could afford and received
thether by the Nation like your Sonne, and all the Scips in the Rade
Englice did Paye ther respects to him with ther Gunns; the Fleet
Prensently after did depart, and I hope by this tyme are in Great Part
of ther way. I tanke God for all things good and bad, bott I assure
this hasse bin a vere hard measure for you and vere schiorp for me,
bott ist nott remedye...."

The letter from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, (item c above), 1 side
quarto, is a friendly letter of condolence sent several months after
Tom Clifford's death. It was written to be taken to Lord Clifford by
Sir Bernard when he returned to England.

Something more than his father's importance is needed to account
for the wave of shock and sympathy caused by Tom Clifford's
death. His character was such that Evelyn wrote to Williamson, April
24, 1671 "I do assure you Mr. Treasurer's is an unspeakable loss; I
have often said it. I do not know that ever I beheld so much
sweetness and manliness mingled together as in that fine youth, and
by what I could conjecture, from the little inspection I had, he must
have been a brave man..." Hartmann believed that Dryden too was
moved. He suggests very strongly that Dryden's elegy *On the Death
of a Very Young Gentleman* was composed on the death of Tom
Clifford: "At any rate, it fits all the circumstances to perfection."

The present poem, signed "W. R." (item a above), of 60 lines, fills
the recto of three folio sheets. A third of it only is printed by
Hartmann. Whoever the author, the extravagance of its grief and
personal tone could only be justified in someone who knew Tom
Clifford well. In the third verse the author speaks of him or herself as
having parted in tears from Tom Clifford at his father's door when
the boy left on his ill-fated foreign trip. It begins:

"If with just grief, and a Concerne but due
For such a losse, I should thy fate pursue
I must not mourne but dy; since gone with thee
Are all those hopes that Made Life dear to Me:

and continues at some length mingling sentiments of sorrow and
regret with comment on the custom of travelling abroad and the
attendant dangers. Florence, who has proved herself, like a
Courtesan, Fayre only in appearance "whilst such Infection lodgeth
in the Ayre", should be visited henceforth by none but goths,
merchants and traitors fled from home.

*Provenance.* These papers were discovered among the Clifford
Papers at Ugbrooke, Devon (where Tom Clifford lies in the family
vault) and were dispersed by auction in 1987. They were obviously
available to Hartmann when he wrote the chapter discussed above
but were published by him only in part.