bishop Peckham denounced as simoniacal. Giffard had already been involved, like the other suffragans to Canterbury, in the struggle against Peckham's excessive claims of metropolitical jurisdiction. He afterwards, however, became friendly with him, and sent the archbishop many costly presents (Reg. Peckham, No. dli.). Giffard's many favours to the Franciscans, whose general in 1277, and again in 1282, admitted him as a brother of the order, must have procured him the friendship of the Franciscan primate. His remissness in allowing the monks of the cathedral to steal the body of one Henry Poche from the Franciscans and bury it in their churchyard was in 1290 a new source of difference.
In 1300 Giffard had become sick and infirm. He was in March visited by Archbishop Winchelsey at Wyke. Next year William of Gloucester produced thirty-six articles against him before the archbishop, when visiting the diocese. They were mostly small, technical and legal, and included, besides the old complaints of the chapter, a charge of manumitting serfs without its consent, and unduly favouring his nephews. They were, however, elaborately investigated, and the bishop's answers, which seem fairly satisfactory, are recorded with the charges in his register. Giffard died on Friday, 26 Jan. 1302, and was buried on 4 Feb. by John, bishop of Llandaff, in Worcester Cathedral, on the south side of the altar of the lady chapel, where his tomb is still to be seen. (There is an engraving of it in Thomas's ‘Survey of Worcester Cathedral,’ p. 44.)
Giffard's will, dated 13 Sept. 1300, left a large number of legacies to kinsfolk, including his sister Mabel, abbess of Shaftesbury, and to various churches. His heir was John, son of his younger brother, William Giffard (Calendarium Genealogicum, p. 625) who, fighting on the baronial side at Boroughbridge, was hanged at Gloucester, and forfeited his estates to the crown. They were soon, however, restored, and in later times the Giffords of Weston-sub-Edge assumed the arms of the see of Worcester in memory of an ancestor who had done so much for the family (Hoare, Wiltshire, i. 204).
Despite his quarrels with the chapter, Giffard was a benefactor of his cathedral, and beautified the pillars of the choir and lady chapel by interlacing them with little pillars. In 1280 he laid the first stone of the pavement of the cathedral (Ann. Wigorn. p. 479). One of his first acts was to obtain leave to fortify and finish Hartlebury Castle which Bishop Cantelupe [q. v.] had begun. He extorted from Bishop Cantelupe's executors a legacy left to the see, for supplying a stock of cattle on the lands of the bishopric. He obtained a grant of fairs to Stratford-on-Avon and Blockley. He also secured permission to fortify his palace at Worcester and Wydindon like that at Hartlebury.
[The fullest account of Giffard is in Thomas's Survey of Worcester Cathedral, pp. 135–54, largely derived from his still surviving Register, large extracts of which, including his will and the ‘Articuli contra Godfridum episcopum Wygornensem et responsiones ejusdem,’ are printed in the ‘Appendix chartarum originalium.’ His relations with Malvern Priory are fully told in Thomas's Antiquitates prioratus majoris Melverniæ, which prints from the Register all his acts relating to that convent; Martin's Registrum Epistolarum Johannis Peckham (Rolls Ser.) gives several of his letters and a large number of Peckham's to him, and in the introduction to vol. ii. Mr. Martin summarises the Malvern question; Raine's Fasti Eboracenses, in the notice of Walter Giffard, gives what is known of his early history; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 424, or, still better, Hoare's Wiltshire, i. 196–204, for an account of his family; Annals of Winchester, Wykes, and more particularly the Annals of Worcester in Annales Monastici, vols. ii. and iv.; Foss's Judges of England, iii. 93–4; Roberts's Calendarium Genealogicum.]
GIFFARD, HENRY WELLS (1810–1854), captain in the navy, son of Admiral John Giffard (d. 1851), entered the navy in 1824; was a midshipman of the Asia at the battle of Navarino, 20 Oct. 1827; was promoted to the rank of lieutenant on 4 March 1831; and after serving in the Mediterranean and on the East Indian station was made commander on 22 Feb. 1838. In 1839 he commissioned the Cruiser of 16 guns, in which he went out to China and took part in the capture of Chusan and Canton. He was advanced to post-rank on 8 June 1841; but continuing in command of the Cruiser, was present at the reduction of Amoy and Chinghae. He returned to England in 1842, and in 1846–7 was captain of the Penelope, bearing the broad pennant of Sir Charles Hotham, on the coast of Africa. In June 1852 he was appointed to the Tiger, paddle-wheel frigate, for service in the Mediterranean, and in 1854 attached to the fleet in the Black Sea. On 11 May the Tiger, in company with two other steamers, was detached from the fleet off Sebastopol, and early on the following morning in a dense fog took the ground close under a cliff a little to the south of Odessa. As soon as she was discovered from the shore, the Russians brought up a battery of field-pieces, and from the edge of the cliff opened a plunging fire of shot, shell, and carcasses, to which
