Colleges: Clifton

COLLEGES

18. THE COLLEGE OF CLIFTON

Sir Gervase Clifton in 1349 obtained licence to give eleven messuages and certain lands in Clifton and Stanton on the Wold, with the advowson of the latter, to three chaplains celebrating divine service in the church of Clifton by Nottingham, for the good estate of Sir Gervase and of Isabel his wife. (fn. 1)

His great-great-grandson, Sir Robert Clifton, began in 1476 to change this three-fold chantry into a small collegiate establishment, increasing the endowments and causing it to be dedicated to the Holy Trinity. The three priests had a mansion in common, and the senior was termed the warden. Sir Robert died in 1478, and the founding of the college was concluded by his son Sir Gervase, an esquire of the body to Edward IV and a knight of the Bath at the coronation of Richard III. (fn. 2)

Sir Gervase assigned certain lands to Lenton Priory on condition that they paid £10 a year to the warden of Clifton College to celebrate for his soul and for the soul of William Booth, late Archbishop of York. Sir Robert had married Alice sister to the archbishop. This £10 is entered among the annual outgoings of the priory at the time of the Valor of 1534. (fn. 3) The clear annual value of the college was at this time entered as £20 2s. 6d.; of which sum the warden, John Fynnes, had £6 13s. 4d., and the two fellows or chantry priests (John Hemsell and Thomas Rusby) £6 each. (fn. 4)

The suppression commissioners of 1547-8 returned the annual value as £21 5s. 10d. The same warden and priests were resident. (fn. 5)