Gervase Clifton, 1st Baron Clifton

Who was Gervase Clifton, 1st Baron Clifton?

Gervase Clifton, 1st Baron Clifton was an English nobleman.

Clifton was a son of Sir John Clifton of Barrington Court, Somerset and was educated at St Alban Hall, Oxford. In 1591, he became a Knight of the Shire of Huntingdonshire, settled in Leighton Bromswold and married Katherine, a daughter of Sir Henry Darcy that year and was knighted by 1597. From 1597-98 and also in 1601, Clifton was MP for Huntingdonshire and was raised to the Peerage by writ of summons in 1608 as Baron Clifton, of Leighton Bromswold, County Huntingdon.

On 30 December 1617, Lord Clifton was imprisoned in the Tower of London for threatening Sir Francis Bacon when the latter ordered a survey of Clifton's land. He was then prosecuted by the Star Chamber on 17 March 1618 and moved to Fleet Prison, where he stabbed himself to death in the following October. His only son had died in 1602 after the result of wounds received from a bear, which had broken free during a bear-baiting show at Nottingham and so Clifton's title passed to his daughter, Katherine.