[Illustration] An illustrious Norman family, traced to the Conquest,
of which the extinct Earls of Cumberland were the chiefs, first
connected with Devonshire by the marriage of Thomas, fourth grandson
of Sir Louis Clifford, who died in 1404, with a daughter of John
Thorpe of King's Teignton.
Ugbrooke came from an heiress of Courtenay, in the reign of
Elizabeth. The peerage was conferred by Charles II. on the Lord
Treasurer Clifford, one of the celebrated CABAL.
Sir Thomas Clifford-Constable, Baronet (1815), represents a younger
branch of this family, descended from Thomas, fourth son of the
fourth Lord Clifford.
See "Cliffordiana," by the Rev. G. Oliver, Exeter, 8vo., and
"Collectanea Cliffordiana," Paris, 1817, 8vo.; Erdeswick's
Staffordshire, edit. 1844, 73; and for the Earls of Cumberland, and
their ancestors the Lords Clifford, see Whitaker's admirable account
in his "Craven," ed. 1812, 240, &c., see also Queen's Coll. Ox. MS.
cv. for "Evidences of the Cliffords;" Brydges's Collins, vii. 117,
and Lysons, xci.; and for the early history of this family, Eyton's
Antiquities of Shropshire, vol. v. p. 146.
ARMS.--_Checky or and azure, a fess gules_. Borne by Roger de
Clifford in the reign of Henry III., and by Walter de Clifford at
the same period, instead of _a fess, a bend gules_. Sir Robert
de Clifford, in the reigns of Edward II. and III. bore the present
coat. Sir Lewis de Clifford, in the time of Richard II. differenced
his coat by a _border gules_. (Rolls.) See also the Roll of
Carlaverock, p. 195.
Present Representative, Hugh Charles Clifford, 8th Baron Clifford of
Chudleigh.