special mission to receive the ratification of tie treaty, and, though perhaps not officially, to be present at the marriage of the king's sister Marguerite with the king of Navarre, which was celebrated on 8-18 Aug., only six days before St. Bartholomew; and yet, as he took his departure, he carried away the expression of the king's hope 'that his sister's would not be the only marriage on which those who wished well to Europe would have to congratulate themselves.' This appears to have been Clinton's last public service, though he continued at court and on the queen's council till his death on 16 Jan. 1584-5. He was buried in St. George's Chapel at Windsor, where his grave is marked by a highly ornate monument in alabaster and porphyry, erected to his memory by his widow, Elizabeth, daughter of the Earl of Kildare, and widow of Sir Anthony Browne, who has been identified with the lady celebrated by the Earl of Surrey as the fair Geraldine [see Fitzgerald, Elisabeth].
By his first wife Clinton had three daughters. About 1541 he contracted a second marriage with Ursula, daughter of William, lord Stourton, who died in 1551, leaving a family of two daughters and three sons, the eldest of whom, Henry, was made a knight of the Bath at the coronation of Queen Mary. About 1553 he married Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, by whom he had no children. In after years there seems to have been a bitter quarrel between her and the children by the second marriage. Clinton's will, dated 11 July 1584, contains some curious clauses intended to guard her from any attempt on the part of his son Henry to dispute the will, or to molest her in the possession of her estates, and on 18 Jan., only three days before the earl's death, Henry wrote to Lord Burghley soliciting bis favourable influence; his father, he said, was in the extremity of sickness, and his mother-in-law was scheming to deprive him of his inheritance, and had already, by her evil speeches at court, incensed the queen against him. On 16 Jan. he wrote again, announcing the death of his father, and complaining bitterly of the hard dealing of his mother-in-law, who, when he called to see bis dying father, refused him admittance.
Of Clinton's ability as a councillor we have no direct evidence, beyond the fact that be continued to the last the trusted friend of Burghley. In his military capacity he did well whatever he had to do, though it was but little, and though any share he may have had in the organisation of the young navy was probably vicariously performed, he must still have exercised some degree of supervision. That he must have been a man of remarkable tact is abundantly proved by his having maintained himself in a foremost position in the state under the very different circumstances of the four reigns of Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth, and by has having been the confidential friend of such very different men as Somerset, Northumberland, and Burghley. His portrait as a young man, by Holbein, in the royal collection, was engraved by Bartolossi for 'Imitations of Original Drawings by Holbein,' published by John Chamberlaine in 1793.
[Collins's Peerage of England (ed. 1768), iii. 59-80; Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. i. 497-500 ; Cal. State Papers (Dom.), 1547-85 ; Froude'a Hist. of England, passim.]
CLINTON, GEOFFREY de (fl. 1130), chamberlain and treasurer to Henry I, appears to have been the founder of the great Clinton family, and was probably the creator of his own fortunes, though attempts have been made to show that he was descended from William de Tankerville, chamberlain of Normandy (Duedale, Baronage, i. 528). His name seems to occur for the first time in a charter of Henry I to Westminster Abbey—a document that cannot, from the names of the co-signatories, be dated later than 1123 {Monast. Anglic. i. 308). Foss assigns it to 1121 or 1122. Probably before 1136 Clinton founded the Benedictine priory of Kenilworth; his second charter to this establishment is witnessed by Simon, bishop of Worcester, who was consecrated in 1125 (Stubbs, Reg. Sacr.) In the charter to Kenilworth, Clinton styles himself respectively as chamberlain and treasurer to Henry I. In the 'Pipe Roll' of 30-I Henry I is is found holding pleas in no less than eighteen counties, and appears to have still retained the treasurership (Pipe Roll, 30-1 Henry I; Foss). About the same time (Easter 1130) we read that he was unjustly accused of treason, and was brought to trial at Woodstock. On this occasion David I, king of Scotland, sat in judgment as an English peer (Ord. Vit. viii. c. 22). There does not seem to be any satisfactory evidence as to the date of Clinton's death. According to Madox, a Geoffrey de Clinton was a baron of the exchequer in Stephen's reign ; but there is nothing to show whether this was our Geoffrey or his son. The direct descendants of Clinton (in the male line) seem to have become extinct in the reign of Henry III (Dugdale); but from his nephew Osbert were descended the Earls of Lincoln in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Earl Clinton of the eighteenth, and the Duke of Newcastle in the nineteenth (Nicolas). Clinton himself is included by Orderic
