Chapter 10

(W. K. S.)

1The following account of the Irish clan-system differs in some respects from that in the article onBrehon Laws(q.v.); but it is retained here in view of the authority of the writer and the admitted obscurity of the whole subject.(ED.E. B.)2The explanation here given ofgeilfineis different from that given in the introduction to the third volume of theAncient Laws of Ireland, which was followed by Sir H.S. Maine in his account of it in hisEarly History of Institutions, and which the present writer believes to be erroneous.3It should also be mentioned that illegitimacy was not a bar. The issue of “handfast” marriages in Scotland were eligible to be chiefs, and even sometimes claimed under feudal law.4This office is of considerable importance in connexion with early Scottish history. In the Irish annals theríg, or chief of a great tribe (mor tuath), such as of Ross, Moray, Marr, Buchan, &c., is called amor maer, or greatmaer. Sometimes the same person is called king also in these annals. ThusFindlaec, or Finlay, son ofRuadhri, the father of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is called king of Moray in theAnnals of Ulster, andmor maerin theAnnals of Tighernach. The term is never found in Scottish charters, but it occurs in the Book of the Abbey of Deir in Buchan, now in the library of the university of Cambridge. The Scotic kings and their successors obviously regarded the chiefs of the great tribes in question merely as theirmaers, while their tribesmen only knew them as kings. From these “mor-maerships,” which corresponded with the ancientmor tuatha, came most, if not all, the ancient Scottish earldoms.

(ED.E. B.)

2The explanation here given ofgeilfineis different from that given in the introduction to the third volume of theAncient Laws of Ireland, which was followed by Sir H.S. Maine in his account of it in hisEarly History of Institutions, and which the present writer believes to be erroneous.

3It should also be mentioned that illegitimacy was not a bar. The issue of “handfast” marriages in Scotland were eligible to be chiefs, and even sometimes claimed under feudal law.

4This office is of considerable importance in connexion with early Scottish history. In the Irish annals theríg, or chief of a great tribe (mor tuath), such as of Ross, Moray, Marr, Buchan, &c., is called amor maer, or greatmaer. Sometimes the same person is called king also in these annals. ThusFindlaec, or Finlay, son ofRuadhri, the father of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is called king of Moray in theAnnals of Ulster, andmor maerin theAnnals of Tighernach. The term is never found in Scottish charters, but it occurs in the Book of the Abbey of Deir in Buchan, now in the library of the university of Cambridge. The Scotic kings and their successors obviously regarded the chiefs of the great tribes in question merely as theirmaers, while their tribesmen only knew them as kings. From these “mor-maerships,” which corresponded with the ancientmor tuatha, came most, if not all, the ancient Scottish earldoms.

CLANRICARDE, ULICK DE BURGH(BourkeorBurke), 1stEarl of(d. 1544), styled MacWilliam, and Ne-gan or Na-gCeann (i.e.“of the Heads,” “having made a mount of the heads of men slain in battle which he covered up with earth”), was the son of Richard or Rickard de Burgh, lord of Clanricarde, by a daughter of Madden of Portumna, and grandson of Ulick de Burgh, lord of Clanricarde (1467-1487), the collateral heir male of the earls of Ulster. On the death of the last earl in 1333, his only child Elizabeth had married Lionel, duke of Clarence, and the earldom became merged in the crown, in consequence of which the de Burghs abjured English laws and sovereignty, and chose for their chiefs the sons of Sir William, the “Red” earl of Ulster’s brother, the elder William taking the title of MacWilliam Eighter (Uachtar,i.e.Upper), and becoming the ancestor of the earls of Clanricarde, and his brother Sir Edmond that of MacWilliam Oughter (Ochtar,i.e.Lower), and founding the family of the earls of Mayo. In 1361 the duke of Clarence was sent over as lord-lieutenant to Ireland to enforce his claims as husband of the heir general, but failed, and the chiefs of the de Burghs maintained their independence of English sovereignty for several generations. Ulick de Burgh succeeded to the headship of his clan, exercised a quasi-royal authority and held vast estates in county Galway, in Connaught, including Loughry, Dunkellin, Kiltartan (Hilltaraght) and Athenry, as well as Clare and Leitrim. In March 1541, however, he wrote to Henry VIII., lamenting the degeneracy of his family, “which have been brought to Irish and disobedient rule by reason of marriage and nurseing with those Irish, sometime rebels, near adjoining to me,” and placing himself and his estates in the king’s hands. The same year he was present at Dublin, when the act was passed making Henry VIII. king of Ireland. In 1543, in company with other Irish chiefs, he visited the king at Greenwich, made full submission, undertook to introduce English manners and abandon Irish names, received a regrant of the greater part of his estates with the addition of other lands, was confirmed in the captainship and rule of Clanricarde, and was created on the 1st of July 1543 earl of Clanricarde and baron of Dunkellin in the peerage of Ireland, with unusual ceremony. “The making of McWilliam earl of Clanricarde made all the country during his time quiet and obedient,” states Lord Chancellor Cusake in his review of the state of Ireland in 1553.1He did not live long, however, to enjoy his new English dignities, but died shortly after returning to Ireland about March 1544. He is called by the annalist of Loch Cé “a haughty and proud lord,” who reduced many under his yoke, and by the Four Masters “the most illustrious of the English in Connaught.”

Clanricarde married (1) Grany or Grace, daughter of Mulrone O’Carroll, “prince of Ely,” by whom he had Richard or Rickard “the Saxon,” who succeeded him as 2nd earl of Clanricarde (grandfather of the 4th earl, whose son became marquess of Clanricarde), this alliance being the only one declared valid. After parting with his first wife he married (2) Honora, sister of Ulick de Burgh, from whom he also parted. He married (3) Mary Lynch, by whom he had John, who claimed the earldom in 1568. Other sons, according to Burke’sPeerage, were Thomas “the Athlete,” shot in 1545, Redmond “of the Broom” (d. 1595), and Edmund (d. 1597).

See alsoAnnals of Ireland by the Four Masters(ed. by O. Connellan, 1846), p. 132 note, and reign of Henry VIII.;Annals of Loch Cé (Rerum Brit. Medii Aevi Scriptores) (54) (1871);Hist. Mem. of the O’Briens, by J.O. Donoghue (i860), pp 159, 519;Ireland under the Tudors, by R. Bagwell, vol. i.;State Papers, Ireland, Carew MSS.and Gairdner’sLetters and Papers of Henry VIII.; Cotton MSS.Brit. Mus., Titus B xi. f. 388.

(P. C. Y.)

1Cal. of State Pap., Carew MSS.1515-1574, p. 246.

CLANRICARDE, ULICK DE BURGH(BourkeorBurke),Marquess of(1604-1657 or 1658), son of Richard, 4th earl of Clanricarde, created in 1628 earl of St Albans, and of Frances, daughter and heir of Sir Francis Walsingham, and widow of Sir Philip Sidney and of Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, was born in 1604. He was summoned to the House of Lords as Lord Burgh in 1628, and succeeded his father as 5th earl in 1635. He sat in the Short Parliament of 1640 and attended Charles I. in the Scottish expedition. On the outbreak of the Irish rebellion Clanricarde had powerful inducements for joining the Irish—the ancient greatness and independence of his family, his devotion to the Roman Catholic Church, and strongest of all, the ungrateful treatment meted out by Charles I. and Wentworth to his father, one of Elizabeth’s most stanch adherents in Ireland, whose lands were appropriated by the crown and whose death, it was popularlyasserted, was hastened by the harshness of the lord-lieutenant. Nevertheless at the crisis his loyalty never wavered. Alone of the Irish Roman Catholic nobility to declare for the king, he returned to Ireland, took up his residence at Portumna, kept Galway, of which he was governor, neutral, and took measures for the defence of the county and for the relief of the Protestants, making “his house and towns a refuge, nay, even a hospital for the distressed English.”1In 1643 he was one of the commissioners appointed by the king to confer with the Irish confederates, and urged the wisdom of a cessation of hostilities in a document which he publicly distributed. He was appointed commander of the English forces in Connaught in 1644, and in 1646 was created a marquess and a privy councillor. He supported the same year the treaty between Charles I. and the confederates, and endeavoured after its failure to persuade Preston, the general of the Irish, to agree to a peace; but the latter, being advised by Rinuccini, the papal nuncio, refused in December. Together with Ormonde, Clanricarde opposed the nuncio’s policy; and the royalist inhabitants of Galway having through the latter’s influence rejected the cessation of hostilities, arranged with Lord Inchiquin in 1648, he besieged the town and compelled its acquiescence. In 1649 he reduced Sligo. On Ormonde’s departure in December 1650 Clanricarde was appointed deputy lord-lieutenant, but he was not trusted by the Roman Catholics, and was unable to stem the tide of the parliamentary successes. In 1651 he opposed the offer of Charles, duke of Lorraine, to supply money and aid on condition of being acknowledged “Protector” of the kingdom. In May 1652 Galway surrendered to the parliament, and in June Clanricarde signed articles with the parliamentary commissioners which allowed his departure from Ireland. In August he was excepted from pardon for life and estate, but by permits, renewed from time to time by the council, he was enabled to remain in England for the rest of his life, and in 1653 £500 a year was settled upon him by the council of state in consideration of the protection which he had given to the Protestants in Ireland at the time of the rebellion. He died at Somerhill in Kent in 1657 or 1658 and was buried at Tunbridge.

The “great earl,” as he was called, supported Ormonde in his desire to unite the English royalists with the more moderate Roman Catholics on the basis of religious toleration under the authority of the sovereign, against the papal scheme advocated by Rinuccini, and in opposition to the parliamentary and Puritan policy. By the author of theAphorismical Discovery, who represents the opinion of the native Irish, he is denounced as the “masterpiece of the treasonable faction,” “a foe to his king, nation and religion,” and by the duke of Lorraine as “a traitor and a base fellow”; but there is no reason to doubt Clarendon’s opinion of him as “a person of unquestionable fidelity. . . and of the most eminent constancy to the Roman Catholic religion of any man in the three kingdoms,” or the verdict of Hallam, who describes him “as perhaps the most unsullied character in the annals of Ireland.”

He married Lady Anne Compton, daughter of William Compton, 1st earl of Northampton, but had issue only one daughter. On his death, accordingly, the marquessate and the English peerages became extinct, the Irish titles reverting to his cousin Richard, 6th earl, grandson of the 3rd earl of Clanricarde. Henry, the 12th earl (1742-1797), was again created a marquess in 1789, but the marquessate expired at his death without issue, the earldom going to his brother. In 1825 the 14th earl (1802-1874) was created a marquess; he was ambassador at St Petersburg, and later postmaster-general and lord privy seal, and married George Canning’s daughter. His son (b. 1832), who achieved notoriety in the Irish land agitation, succeeded him as 2nd marquess.

Bibliography.—See the article “Burgh, Ulick de,” in theDict. of Nat. Biography, and authorities there given;Hist. of the Irish Confederation, by R. Bellings, ed. by J.T. Gilbert (1882);Aphorismical Discovery(Irish Archaeological Society, 1879);Memoirs of the Marquis of Clanricarde(1722, repr. 1744);Memoirs of Ulick,Marquis of Clanricarde, by John, 11th earl (1757);Life of Ormonde, by T. Carte (1851); S.R. Gardiner’sHist. of the Civil Warand of theCommonwealth; Thomason Tracts(Brit. Mus.) E 371 (11), 456 (10);Cal. of State Papers, Irish, esp.Introd.1633-1647 andDomestic; Hist. MSS. Comm., MSS. of Marq. of OrmondeandEarl of Egmont.

(P. C. Y.)

1Hist. MSS. Comm.: MSS of Earl of Egmont, i. 223.

CLANVOWE, SIR THOMAS, the name of an English poet first mentioned in the history of English literature by F.S. Ellis in 1896, when, in editing the text ofThe Book of Cupid, God of Love, or The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, for the Kelmscott Press, he stated that Professor Skeat had discovered that at the end of the best of the MSS. the author was called Clanvowe. In 1897 this information was confirmed and expanded by Professor Skeat in the supplementary volume of his Clarendon PressChaucer(1894-1897). The beautiful romance ofThe Cuckoo and the Nightingalewas published by Thynne in 1532, and was attributed by him, and by successive editors down to the days of Henry Bradshaw, to Chaucer. It was due to this error that for three centuries Chaucer was supposed to be identified with the manor of Woodstock, and even painted, in fanciful pictures, as lying

“Under a maple that is fair and green,Before the chamber-window of the QueenAt Wodëstock, upon the greenë lea.”

“Under a maple that is fair and green,

Before the chamber-window of the Queen

At Wodëstock, upon the greenë lea.”

But this queen could only be Joan of Navarre, who arrived in 1403, three years after Chaucer’s death, and it is to the spring of that year that Professor Skeat attributes the composition of the poem. Sir Thomas Clanvowe was of a Herefordshire family, settled near Wigmore. He was a prominent figure in the courts of Richard II. and Henry IV., and is said to have been a friend of Prince Hal. He was one of those who “had begun to mell of Lollardy, and drink the gall of heresy.” He was one of the twenty-five knights who accompanied John Beaufort (son of John of Gaunt) to Barbary in 1390.

The date of his birth is unknown, and his name is last mentioned in 1404. The historic and literary importance ofThe Cuckoo and the Nightingaleis great. It is the work of a poet who had studied the prosody of Chaucer with more intelligent care than either Occleve or Lydgate, and who therefore forms an important link between the 14th and 15th centuries in English poetry. Clanvowe writes with a surprising delicacy and sweetness, in a five-line measure almost peculiar to himself. Professor Skeat points out a unique characteristic of Clanvowe’s versification, namely, the unprecedented freedom with which he employs the suffix of the final-e, and rather avoids than seeks elision.The Cuckoo and the Nightingalewas imitated by Milton in his sonnet to the Nightingale, and was rewritten in modern English by Wordsworth. It is a poem of so much individual beauty, that we must regret the apparent loss of everything else written by a poet of such unusual talent.

See also a critical edition of theBoke of Cupideby Dr Erich Vollmer (Berlin, 1898).

(E. G.)

CLAPARÈDE, JEAN LOUIS RENÉ ANTOINE ÉDOUARD(1832-1870), Swiss naturalist, was born at Geneva on the 24th of April 1832. He belonged to a French family, some members of which had taken refuge in that city after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In 1852 he began to study medicine and natural science at Berlin, where he was greatly influenced by J. Müller and C.G. Ehrenberg, the former being at that period engaged in his important researches on the Echinoderms. In 1855 he accompanied Müller to Norway, and there spent two months on a desolate reef that he might obtain satisfactory observations. The latter part of his stay at Berlin he devoted, along with J. Lachmann, to the study of the Infusoria and Rhizopods. In 1857 he obtained the degree of doctor, and in 1862 he was chosen professor of comparative anatomy at Geneva. In 1859 he visited England, and in company with W.B. Carpenter made a voyage to the Hebrides; and in 1863 he spent some months in the Bay of Biscay. On the appearance of Darwin’s work on theOrigin of Species, he adopted his theories and published a valuable series of articles on the subject in theRevue Germanique(1861). During 1865 and 1866 ill-health rendered him incapable of work, and he determined to pass the winter of 1866-1867 inNaples. The change of climate produced some amelioration, and his energy was attested by two elaborate volumes on the Annelidae of the gulf. He again visited Naples with advantage in 1868; but in 1870, instead of recovering as before, he grew worse, and on the 31st of May he died at Siena on his way home. HisRecherches sur la structure des annélides sédentaireswere published posthumously in 1873.

CLAPPERTON, HUGH(1788-1827), Scottish traveller in West-Central Africa, was born in 1788 at Annan, Dumfriesshire, where his father was a surgeon. He gained some knowledge of practical mathematics and navigation, and at thirteen was apprenticed on board a vessel which traded between Liverpool and North America. After having made several voyages across the Atlantic he was impressed for the navy, in which he soon rose to the rank of midshipman. During the Napoleonic wars he saw a good deal of active service, and at the storming of Port Louis, Mauritius, in November 1810, he was first in the breach and hauled down the French flag. In 1814 he went to Canada, was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, and to the command of a schooner on the Canadian lakes. In 1817, when the flotilla on the lakes was dismantled, he returned home on half-pay.

In 1820 Clapperton removed to Edinburgh, where he made the acquaintance of Walter Oudney, M.D., who aroused in him an interest in African travel. Lieut. G.F. Lyon, R.N., having returned from an unsuccessful attempt to reach Bornu from Tripoli, the British government determined on a second expedition to that country. Dr Oudney was appointed by Lord Bathurst, then colonial secretary, to proceed to Bornu as consul with the object of promoting trade, and Clapperton and Major Dixon Denham (q.v.) were added to the party. From Tripoli, early in 1822, they set out southward to Murzuk, and from this point Clapperton and Oudney visited the Ghat oasis. Kuka, the capital of Bornu, was reached in February 1823, and Lake Chad seen for the first time by Europeans. At Bornu the travellers were well received by the sultan; and after remaining in the country till the 14th of December they again set out for the purpose of exploring the course of the Niger. At Murmur, on the road to Kano, Oudney died (January 1824). Clapperton continued his journey alone through Kano to Sokoto, the capital of the Fula empire, where by order of Sultan Bello he was obliged to stop, though the Niger was only five days’ journey to the west. Worn out with his travel he returned by way of Zaria and Katsena to Kuka, where he again met Denham. The two travellers then set out for Tripoli, reached on the 26th of January 1825. An account of the travels was published in 1826 under the title ofNarrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa in the years 1822-1824.

Immediately after his return Clapperton was raised to the rank of commander, and sent out with another expedition to Africa, the sultan Bello of Sokoto having professed his eagerness to open up trade with the west coast. Clapperton landed at Badagry in the Bight of Benin, and started overland for the Niger on the 7th of December 1825, having with him his servant Richard Lander (q.v.), Captain Pearce, R.N., and Dr Morrison, navy surgeon and naturalist. Before the month was out Pearce and Morrison were dead of fever. Clapperton continued his journey, and, passing through the Yoruba country, in January 1826 he crossed the Niger at Bussa, the spot where Mungo Park had died twenty years before. In July he arrived at Kano. Thence he went to Sokoto, intending afterwards to go to Bornu. The sultan, however, detained him, and being seized with dysentery he died near Sokoto on the 13th of April 1827.

Clapperton was the first European to make known from personal observation the semi-civilized Hausa countries, which he visited soon after the establishment of the Sokoto empire by the Fula. In 1829 appeared theJournal of a Second Expedition into the Interior of Africa, &c, by the late Commander Clapperton, to which was prefaced a biographical sketch of the explorer by his uncle, Lieut.-colonel S. Clapperton. Lander, who had brought back the journal of his master, also publishedRecords of Captain Clapperton’s Last Expedition to Africa . . . with the subsequent Adventures of the Author(2 vols., London, 1830).

CLAQUE(Fr.claquer, to clap the hands), an organized body of professional applauders in the French theatres. The hiring of persons to applaud dramatic performances was common in classical times, and the emperor Nero, when he acted, had his performance greeted by an encomium chanted by five thousand of his soldiers, who were called Angustals. The recollection of this gave the 16th-century French poet, Jean Daurat, an idea which has developed into the modern claque. Buying up a number of tickets for a performance of one of his plays, he distributed them gratuitously to those who promised publicly to express their approbation. It was not, however, till 1820 that a M. Sauton seriously undertook the systematization of the claque, and opened an office in Paris for the supply ofclaqueurs. By 1830 the claque had become a regular institution. The manager of a theatre sends an order for any number ofclaqueurs. These people are usually under achef de claque, whose duty it is to judge where their efforts are needed and to start the demonstration of approval. This takes several forms. Thus there arecommissaires, those who learn the piece by heart, and call the attention of their neighbours to its good points between the acts. Therieursare those who laugh loudly at the jokes. Thepleureurs, generally women, feign tears, by holding their handkerchiefs to their eyes. Thechatouilleurskeep the audience in a good humour, while thebisseurssimply clap their hands and crybis! bis!to secure encores.

CLARA, SAINT(1194-1253), foundress of the Franciscan nuns, was born of a knightly family in Assisi in 1194. At eighteen she was so impressed by a sermon of St Francis that she was filled with the desire to devote herself to the kind of life he was leading. She obtained an interview with him, and to test her resolution he told her to dress in penitential sackcloth and beg alms for the poor in the streets of Assisi. Clara readily did this, and Francis, satisfied as to her vocation, told her to come to the Portiuncula arrayed as a bride. The friars met her with lighted candles, and at the foot of the altar Francis shore off her hair, received her vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and invested her with the Franciscan habit, 1212. He placed her for a couple of years in a Benedictine convent in Assisi, until the convent at St Damian’s, close to the town, was ready. Her two younger sisters, and, after her father’s death, her mother and many others joined her, and the Franciscan nuns spread widely and rapidly (seeClares, Poor). The relations of friendship and sympathy between St Clara and St Francis were very close, and there can be no doubt that she was one of the truest heirs of Francis’s inmost spirit. After his death Clara threw herself wholly on the side of those who opposed mitigations in the rule and manner of life, and she was one of the chief upholders of St Francis’s primitive idea of poverty (seeFranciscans). She was the close friend of Brother Leo and the other “Companions of St Francis,” and they assisted at her death. For forty years she was abbess at St Damian’s, and the great endeavour of her life was that the rule of the nuns should be purged of the foreign elements that had been introduced, and should become wholly conformable to St Francis’s spirit. She lived just long enough to witness the fulfilment of her great wish, a rule such as she desired being approved by the pope two days before her death on the 11th of August 1253.

The sources for her life are to be found in the BollandistActa Sanctorumon the 11th of August, and sketches in suchLives of the Saintsas Alban Butler’s. See also Wetzer und Welte,Kirchen-lexicon(2nd ed.), art. “Clara.”

(E. C. B.)

CLARE, the name of a famous English family. The ancestor of this historic house, “which played,” in Freeman’s words, “so great a part alike in England, Wales and Ireland,” was Count Godfrey, eldest of the illegitimate sons of Richard the Fearless, duke of Normandy. His son, Count Gilbert of Brionne, had two sons, Richard, lord of Bienfaite and Orbec, and Baldwin, lord of Le Sap and Meulles, both of whom accompanied the Conqueror to England. Baldwin, known as “De Meulles” or “of Exeter,” received the hereditary shrievalty of Devon with great estates in the West Country, and left three sons, William, Robert and Richard, of whom the first and last were in turnsheriffs of Devon. Richard, known as “de Bienfaite,” or “of Tunbridge,” or “of Clare,” was the founder of the house of Clare.

Richard derived his English appellation from his strongholds at Tunbridge and at Clare, at both of which his castle-mounds still remain. The latter, on the borders of Essex and Suffolk, was the head of his great “honour” which lay chiefly in the eastern counties. Appointed joint justiciar in the king’s absence abroad, he took a leading part in suppressing the revolt of 1075. By his wife, Rohese, daughter of Walter Giffard, through whom great Giffard estates afterwards came to his house, he left five sons and two daughters. Roger was his heir in Normandy, Walter founded Tintern Abbey, Richard was a monk, and Robert, receiving the forfeited fief of the Baynards in the eastern counties, founded, through his son Walter, the house of FitzWalter (extinct 1432), of whom the most famous was Robert FitzWalter, the leader of the barons against King John. Of this house, spoken of by Jordan Fantosme as “Clarreaus,” the Daventrys of Daventry (extinct 1380) and Fawsleys of Fawsley (extinct 1392) were cadets. One of Richard’s two daughters married the famous Walter Tirel.

Gilbert, Richard’s heir in England, held his castle of Tunbridge against William Rufus, but was wounded and captured. Under Henry I., who favoured the Clares, he obtained a grant of Cardigan, and carried his arms into Wales. Dying about 1115, he left four sons, of whom Gilbert, the second, inherited Chepstow, with Nether-Gwent, from his uncle, Walter, the founder of Tintern, and was created earl of Pembroke by Stephen about 1138; he was father of Richard Strongbow, earl of Pembroke (q.v.). The youngest son Baldwin fought for Stephen at the battle of Lincoln (1141) and founded the priories of Bourne and Deeping on lands acquired with his wife. The eldest son Richard, who was slain by the Welsh on his way to Cardigan in 1135 or 1136, left two sons Gilbert and Roger, of whom Gilbert was created earl of Hertfordshire by Stephen.

It was probably because he and the Clares had no interests in Hertfordshire that they were loosely and usually styled the earls of (de) Clare. Dying in 1152, Gilbert was succeeded by his brother Roger, of whom Fitz-Stephen observes that “nearly all the nobles of England were related to the earl of Clare, whose sister, the most beautiful woman in England, had long been desired by the king” (Henry II.). He was constantly fighting the Welsh for his family possessions in Wales and quarrelled with Becket over Tunbridge Castle. In 1173 or 1174 he was succeeded by his son Richard as third earl, whose marriage with Amicia, daughter and co-heir of William, earl of Gloucester, was destined to raise the fortunes of his house to their highest point. He and his son Gilbert were among the “barons of the Charter,” Gilbert, who became fourth earl in 1217, obtained also, early in 1218, the earldom of Gloucester, with its great territorial “Honour,” and the lordship of Glamorgan, in right of his mother; “from this time the house of Clare became the acknowledged head of the baronage.” Gilbert had also inherited through his father his grandmother’s “Honour of St Hilary” and a moiety of the Giffard fief; but the vast possessions of his house were still further swollen by his marriage with a daughter of William (Marshal), earl of Pembroke, through whom his son Richard succeeded in 1245 to a fifth of the Marshall lands including the Kilkenny estates in Ireland. Richard’s successor, Gilbert, the “Red” earl, died in 1295, the most powerful subject in the kingdom.

On his death his earldoms seem to have been somewhat mysteriously deemed to have passed to his widow Joan, daughter of Edward I.; for her second husband, Ralph de Monthermer, was summoned to parliament in right of them from 1299 to 1306. After her death, however, in 1307, Earl Gilbert’s son and namesake was summoned in 1308 as earl of Gloucester and Hertford, though only sixteen. A nephew of Edward II. and brother-in-law of Gaveston, he played a somewhat wavering part in the struggle between the king and the barons. Guardian of the realm in 1311 and regent in 1313, he fell gloriously at Bannockburn (June 24th, 1314), when only twenty-three, rushing on the enemy “like a wild boar, making his sword drunk with their blood.”

The earl was the last of his mighty line, and his vast possessions in England (in over twenty counties), Wales and Ireland fell to his three sisters, of whom Elizabeth, the youngest, wife of John de Burgh, obtained the “Honour of Clare” and transmitted it to her son William de Burgh, 3rd earl of Ulster, whose daughter brought it to Lionel, son of King Edward III., who was thereupon created duke of Clarence, a title associated ever since with the royal house. The “Honour of Clare,” vested in the crown, still preserves a separate existence, with a court and steward of its own.

Clare College, Cambridge, derived its name from the above Elizabeth, “Lady of Clare,” who founded it as Clare Hall in 1347.

Clare County in Ireland derives its name from the family, though whether from Richard Strongbow, or from Thomas de Clare, a younger son, who had a grant of Thomond in 1276, has been deemed doubtful.

Clarenceux King of Arms, an officer of the Heralds’ College, derives his style, through Clarence, from Clare.

See J.H. Round’sGeoffrey de Mandeville, Feudal England, Commune of London, andPeerage Studies; also his “Family of Clare” inArch. Journ.lvi., and “Origin of Armorial Bearings” in Ib. li.; Parkinson’s “Clarence, the origin and bearers of the title,” inThe Antiquary, v.; Clark’s “Lords of Glamorgan” inArch. Journ.xxxv.; Planche’s “Earls of Gloucester” inJourn. Arch. Assoc.xxvi.; Dugdale’sBaronage, vol. i., andMonasticon Anglicanum; G.E. C[okayne]’sComplete Peerage.

(J. H. R.)

CLARE, JOHN(1793-1864), English poet, commonly known as “the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet,” the son of a farm labourer, was born at Helpstone near Peterborough, on the 13th of July 1793. At the age of seven he was taken from school to tend sheep and geese; four years later he began to work on a farm, attending in the winter evenings a school where he is said to have learnt some algebra. He then became a pot-boy in a public-house and fell in love with Mary Joyce, but her father, a prosperous farmer, forbade her to meet him. Subsequently he was gardener at Burghley Park. He enlisted in the militia, tried camp life with gipsies, and worked as a lime burner in 1817, but in the following year he was obliged to accept parish relief. Clare had bought a copy of Thomson’sSeasonsout of his scanty earnings and had begun to write poems. In 1819 a bookseller at Stamford, named Drury, lighted on one of Clare’s poems,The Setting Sun, written on a scrap of paper enclosing a note to his predecessor in the business. He befriended the author and introduced his poems to the notice of John Taylor, of the publishing firm of Taylor & Hussey, who issued thePoems Descriptive of Rural Life and Sceneryin 1820. This book was highly praised, and in the next year hisVillage Minstrel and other Poemswere published. He was greatly patronized; fame, in the shape of curious visitors, broke the tenor of his life, and the convivial habits that he had formed were indulged more freely. He had married in 1820, and an annuity of 15 guineas from Lord Exeter, in whose service he had been, was supplemented by subscription, and he became possessed of £45 annually, a sum far beyond what he had ever earned, but new wants made his income insufficient, and in 1823 he was nearly penniless. TheShepherd’s Calendar(1827) met with little success, which was not increased by his hawking it himself. As he worked again on the fields his health temporarily improved; but he soon became seriously ill. Lord Fitzwilliam presented him with a new cottage and a piece of ground, but Clare could not settle in his new home. Gradually his mind gave way. His last and best work, theRural Muse(1835), was noticed by “Christopher North” alone. He had for some time shown symptoms of insanity; and in July 1837 he was removed to a private asylum, and afterwards to the Northampton general lunatic asylum, where he died on the 20th of May 1864. Clare’s descriptions of rural scenes show a keen and loving appreciation of nature, and his love-songs and ballads charm by their genuine feeling; but his vogue was no doubt largely due to the interest aroused by his humble position in life.

See theLife of John Clare, by Frederick Martin (1865); andLife and Remains of John Clare, by J.L. Cherry (1873), which, though not so complete, contains some of the poet’s asylum verses and prose fragments.

CLARE, JOHN FITZGIBBON,1st Earl of(1749-1802), lord chancellor of Ireland, was the second son of John Fitzgibbon, who had abandoned the Roman Catholic faith in order to pursue a legal career. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was highly distinguished as a classical scholar, and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated in 1770. In 1772 he was called to the Irish bar, and quickly acquired a very lucrative practice; he also inherited his father’s large fortune on the death of his elder brother. In 1778 he entered the Irish House of Commons as member for Dublin University, and at first gave a general support to the popular party led by Henry Grattan (q.v.). He was, however, from the first hostile to that part of Grattan’s policy which aimed at removing the disabilities of the Roman Catholics; he endeavoured to impede the Relief Bill of 1778 by raising difficulties about its effect on the Act of Settlement. He especially distrusted the priests, and many years later explained that his life-long resistance to all concession to the Catholics was based on his “unalterable opinion” that “a conscientious Popish ecclesiastic never will become a well-attached subject to a Protestant state, and that the Popish clergy must always have a commanding influence on every member of that communion.” As early as 1780 Fitzgibbon began to separate himself from the popular or national party, by opposing Grattan’s declaration of the Irish parliament’s right to independence. There is no reason to suppose that in this change of view he was influenced by corrupt or personal motives. His cast of mind naturally inclined to authority rather than to democratic liberty; his hostility to the Catholic claims, and his distrust of parliamentary reform as likely to endanger the connexion of Ireland with Great Britain, made him a sincere opponent of the aims which Grattan had in view. In reply, however, to a remonstrance from his constituents Fitzgibbon promised to support Grattan’s policy in the future, and described the claim of Great Britain to make laws for Ireland as “a daring usurpation of the rights of a free people.”

For some time longer there was no actual breach between him and Grattan. Grattan supported the appointment of Fitzgibbon as attorney-general in 1783, and in 1785 the latter highly eulogized Grattan’s character and services to the country in a speech in which he condemned Flood’s volunteer movement. He also opposed Flood’s Reform Bill of 1784; and from this time forward he was in fact the leading spirit in the Irish government, and the stiffest opponent of all concession to popular demands. In 1784 the permanent committee of revolutionary reformers in Dublin, of whom Napper Tandy was the most conspicuous, invited the sheriffs of counties to call meetings for the election of delegates to attend a convention for the discussion of reform; and when the sheriff of the county of Dublin summoned a meeting for this purpose Fitzgibbon procured his imprisonment for contempt of court, and justified this procedure in parliament, though Lord Erskine declared it grossly illegal. In the course of the debates on Pitt’s commercial propositions in 1785, which Fitzgibbon supported in masterly speeches, he referred to Curran in terms which led to a duel between the two lawyers, when Fitzgibbon was accused of a deliberation in aiming at his opponent that was contrary to etiquette. His antagonism to Curran was life-long and bitter, and after he became chancellor his hostility to the famous advocate was said to have driven the latter out of practice. In January 1787 Fitzgibbon introduced a stringent bill for repressing the Whiteboy outrages. It was supported by Grattan, who, however, procured the omission of a clause enacting that any Roman Catholic chapel near which an illegal oath had been tendered should be immediately demolished. His influence with the majority in the Irish parliament defeated Pitt’s proposed reform of the tithe system in Ireland, Fitzgibbon refusing even to grant a committee to investigate the subject. On the regency question in 1789 Fitzgibbon, in opposition to Grattan, supported the doctrine of Pitt in a series of powerful speeches which proved him a great constitutional lawyer; he intimated that the choice for Ireland might in certain eventualities rest between complete separation from England and legislative union; and, while he exclaimed as to the latter alternative, “God forbid that I should ever see that day!” he admitted that separation would be the worse evil of the two.

In the same year Lord Lifford resigned the chancellorship, and Fitzgibbon was appointed in his place, being raised to the peerage as Baron Fitzgibbon. His removal to the House of Lords greatly increased his power. In the Commons, though he had exercised great influence as attorney-general, his position had been secondary; in the House of Lords and in the privy council he was little less than despotic. “He was,” says Lecky, “by far the ablest Irishman who had adopted without restriction the doctrine that the Irish legislature must be maintained in a condition of permanent and unvarying subjection to the English executive.” But the English ministry were now embarking on a policy of conciliation in Ireland. The Catholic Relief Bill of 1793 was forced on the Irish executive by the cabinet in London, but it passed rapidly and easily through the Irish parliament. Lord Fitzgibbon, while accepting the bill as inevitable under the circumstances that had arisen, made a most violent though exceedingly able speech against the principle of concession, which did much to destroy the conciliatory effect of the measure; and as a consequence of this act he began persistently to urge the necessity for a legislative union. From this date until the union was carried, the career of Fitzgibbon is practically the history of Ireland. True to his inveterate hostility to the popular claims, he was opposed to the appointment of Lord Fitzwilliam (q.v.) as viceroy in 1795, and was probably the chief influence in procuring his recall; and it was Fitzgibbon who first put it into the head of George III. that the king would violate his coronation oath if he consented to the admission of Catholics to parliament. When Lord Camden, Fitzwilliam’s successor in the viceroyalty, arrived in Dublin on the 31st of March 1795, Fitzgibbon’s carriage was violently assaulted by the mob, and he himself was wounded; and in the riots that ensued his house was also attacked. But as if to impress upon the Catholics the hopelessness of their case, the government who had made Fitzgibbon a viscount immediately after his attack on the Catholics in 1793 now bestowed on him a further mark of honour. In June 1795 he was created earl of Clare. On the eve of the rebellion he warned the government that while emancipation and reform might be the objects aimed at by the better classes, the mass of the disaffected had in view “the separation of the country from her connexion with Great Britain, and a fraternal alliance with the French Republic.” Clare advocated stringent measures to prevent an outbreak; but he was neither cruel nor immoderate, and was inclined to mercy in dealing with individuals. He attempted to save Lord Edward Fitzgerald (q.v.) from his fate by giving a friendly warning to his friends, and promising to facilitate his escape from the country; and Lord Edward’s aunt, Lady Louisa Conolly, who was conducted to his death-bed in prison by the chancellor in person, declared that “nothing could exceed Lord Clare’s kindness.” His moderation and humanity after the rebellion was extolled by Cornwallis. He threw his great influence on the side of clemency, and it was through his intervention that Oliver Bond, when sentenced to death, was reprieved; and that an arrangement was made by which Arthur O’Connor, Thomas Emmet and other state prisoners were allowed to leave the country.

In October 1798 Lord Clare, who since 1793 had been convinced of the necessity for a legislative union if the connexion between Great Britain and Ireland was to be maintained, and who was equally determined that the union must be unaccompanied by Catholic emancipation, crossed to England and successfully pressed his views on Pitt. In 1799 he induced the Irish House of Lords to throw out a bill for providing a permanent endowment of Maynooth. On the 10th of February 1800 Clare in the House of Lords moved the resolution approving the union in a long and powerful speech, in which he reviewed the history of Ireland since the Revolution, attributing the evils of recent years to the independent constitution of 1782, and speaking of Grattanin language of deep personal hatred. He was not aware of the assurance which Cornwallis had been authorized to convey to the Catholics that the union was to pave the way for emancipation, and when he heard of it after the passing of the act he bitterly complained that Pitt and Castlereagh had deceived him. After the union Clare became more violent than ever in his opposition to any policy of concession in Ireland. He died on the 28th of January 1802; his funeral in Dublin was the occasion of a riot organized “by a gang of about fourteen persons under orders of a leader.” His wife, in compliance with his death-bed request, destroyed all his papers. His two sons, John (1792-1851) and Richard Hobart (1793-1864), succeeded in turn to the earldom, which became extinct on the death of the latter, whose only son, John Charles Henry, Viscount Fitzgibbon (1829-1854), was killed in the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava.

Lord Clare was in private life an estimable and even an amiable man; many acts of generosity are related of him; the determination of his character swayed other wills to his purpose, and his courage was such as no danger, no obloquy, no public hatred or violence could disturb. Though not a great orator like Flood or Grattan, he was a skilful and ready debater, and he was by far the ablest Irish supporter of the union. He was, however, arrogant, overbearing and intolerant to the last degree. He was the first Irishman since the Revolution to hold the office of lord chancellor of Ireland. “Except where his furious personal antipathies and his ungovernable arrogance were called into action, he appears to have been,” says Lecky, “an able, upright and energetic judge”; but as a politician there can be little question that Lord Clare’s bitter and unceasing resistance to reasonable measures of reform did infinite mischief in the history of Ireland, by inflaming the passions of his countrymen, driving them into rebellion, and perpetuating their political and religious divisions.

See W.E.H. Lecky,History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century(5 vols., London, 1892); J.R. O’Flanagan,The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal in Ireland(2 vols., London, 1870);Cornwallis Correspondence, ed. by C. Ross (3 vols., London, 1859); Charles Phillips,Recollections of Curran and some of his Contemporaries(London, 1822); Henry Grattan,Memoirs of the Life and Times of the Right Honble. Henry Grattan(5 vols., London, 1839-1846); Lord Auckland,Journal and Correspondence(4 vols., London, 1861); Charles Coote,History of the Union of Great Britain and Ireland(London, 1802).

(R. J. M.)

CLARE, a county in the province of Munster, Ireland, bounded N. by Galway Bay and Co. Galway, E. by Lough Derg, the river Shannon, and counties Tipperary and Limerick, S. by the estuary of the Shannon, and W. by the Atlantic Ocean. The area is 852,389 acres, or nearly 1332 sq. m. Although the surface of the county is hilly, and in some parts even mountainous, it nowhere rises to a great elevation. Much of the western baronies of Moyarta and Ibrickan is composed of bog land. Bogs are frequent also in the mountainous districts elsewhere, except in the limestone barony of Burren, the inhabitants of some parts of which supply themselves with turf from the opposite shores of Connemara. Generally speaking, the eastern parts of the county are mountainous, with tracts of rich pasture-land interspersed; the west abounds with bog; and the north is rocky and best adapted for grazing sheep. In the southern part, along the banks of the Fergus and Shannon, are the bands of rich low grounds called corcasses, of various breadth, indenting the land in a great variety of shapes. They are composed of deep rich loam, and are distinguished as the black corcasses, adapted for tillage, and the blue, used more advantageously as meadow land. The coast is in general rocky, and occasionally bold and precipitous in the extreme, as may be observed at the picturesque cliffs of Moher within a few miles of Ennistimon and Lisdoonvarna, which rise perpendicularly at O’Brien’s Tower to an elevation of 580 ft. The coast of Clare is indented with several bays, the chief of which are Ballyvaghan, Liscannor and Malbay; but from Black Head to Loop Head, that is, along the entire western boundary of the county formed by the Atlantic, there is no safe harbour except Liscannor Bay. Malbay takes its name from its dangers to navigators, and the whole coast has been the scene of many fatal disasters. The county possesses only one large river, the Fergus; but nearly 100 m. of its boundary-line are washed by the river Shannon, which enters the Atlantic Ocean between this county and Kerry. The numerous bays and creeks on both sides of this great river render its navigation safe in every wind; but the passage to and from Limerick is often tedious, and the port of Kilrush has from that cause gained in importance. The river Fergus is navigable from the Shannon to the town of Clare, which is the terminating point of its natural navigation, and the port of all the central districts of the county.

There are a great number of lakes and tarns in the county, of which the largest are Loughs Muckanagh, Graney, Atedaun and Dromore; but they are more remarkable for beauty than for size or utility, with the exception of the extensive and navigable Lough Derg, formed by the river Shannon between this county and Tipperary. The salmon fishery of the Shannon, both as a sport and as an industry, is famous; the Fergus also holds salmon, and there is much good trout-fishing in the lakes for which Ennis is a centre, and in the streams of the Atlantic seaboard. Clare is a county which, like all the western counties of Ireland, repays visitors in search of the pleasures of seaside resorts, sport, scenery or antiquarian interest. Yet, again like other western counties, it was long before it was rendered accessible. Communications, however, are now satisfactory.

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