The Clifford family was a family of bankers, merchants, and regents of English descent who were active in Amsterdam during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. The family originated in northern England, although the surname originated in the village of Clifford, Herefordshire.[1] Northern England was the home of the noble Clifford family, since Roger Clifford was born in Cumberland and died at Brough Castle in Westmorland. There is no evidence that the Clifford banking family is descended from a nobleman named Clifford who fought for William I of England.[2]
The oldest known ancestor is John Clifford, who was a tenant in Aylsham. His son, Richard Clifford, was born in Aylsham. He studied at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and in 1569 became rector of Landbeach, a village just north of Cambridge,[3] though he was also canon of Stow. His wife was Alice; her maiden name is unknown.
Henry Clifford (1576-1628) was born in Landbeach to Richard and Alice Clifford. He also studied at Corpus Christi.
George Clifford I
Henry's son, George Clifford, relocated to Amsterdam between 1634 and 1640. This George, or Joris (1623-1680) married Abigail Bouwens in 1648 and spent the rest of his life on the Zeedijk. From 1654 on, he had an account with the Amsterdamsche Wisselbank. Six of his children were baptised in Amsterdam's Presbyterian Church and two in the Oude Kerk. In 1664, he traded on Maryland and Barbados. (By 1660, Barbados had generated more trade than all the other English colonies combined.) According to the inventory after his death, he traded in tea, tobacco, sugar, cotton, spices, herbs, and dyes like indigo and dragon's blood.
George Clifford II
George Clifford II (1657-1727, son of George I) began his career on the Leliegracht. He represented the Bank of England.[4] From 1696 to 1700, he was director of the Sociëteit van Suriname. In 1707, Clifford & Co. had the largest balance at the Bank of Amsterdam. In 1709, George bought the estate Hartekamp in Heemstede for 22,000 guilders from Johan Hinlopen.
From 1701 on, George and his brother Isaäc (1665-1729) ran their father's business under the name 'George en Isaäc Clifford & Co.'. The brothers split in 1713, before or after the bank arranged a loan to Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, and to Augustus III of Poland.
George Clifford II's only son was George Clifford (1685-1760), who is best known as the patron of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, whom he employed as 'hortulanus' to catalog the family's unique collection of plants, herbarium, and library.[5] The result was Linnaeus' book Hortus Cliffortianus, whose publication costs were paid by George Clifford III. A large part of his botanical collection, the Clifford Herbarium, is in the Natural History Museum in London.[6]
Later history
Herengracht 480 on the right, owned by Pieter Clifford (1712-1788)
In the mid-18th century, members of the family began to enter the city-government of Amsterdam. The Cliffords regularly lent money to banks in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, the English and Danish governments, and owned plantations in Suriname.
In May 1772, with £15,000, the Cliffords and Muilman representing Van Seppenwolde organised an exchange circuit in the hope of making a profit on rising EIC shares. (Clifford acted in breach of the stock exchange contract).[7] The advantage would lie in the commission they charged between themselves. Jan Clifford had apparently given too much credit on less solid bills of exchange. Both Clifford's sons tried to plug the gap after their father's death by privately undertaking bold speculation in the EIC and the Bank of England. However, the continued decline of these funds caused the speculation to fail. In December the company went bankrupt during the Crisis of 1772 after price overshooting on the Amsterdam and London stock market, bringing down a number of other bankers and their firms.[8]
In the mid-19th century, the Clifford family moved to The Hague. The family archive was lost in an incendiary raid on Dalfsen during World War II.[9]
Carl Linnaeus, also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin; his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus and, after his 1761 ennoblement, as Carolus a Linné.
Bennebroek is a village and former municipality in the northwest Netherlands, now part of Bloemendaal, North Holland. Before its merger, it was the smallest municipality in the Netherlands, covering an area of only 1.75 km².
Heemstede is a town and a municipality in the Western Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. In 2021, it had a population of 27,545. Located just south of the city of Haarlem on the border with South Holland, it is one of the richest municipalities of the Netherlands.
Georg Dionysius Ehret was a German botanist and entomologist known for his botanical illustrations.
Hope & Co. was a Dutch bank that existed for two and a half centuries. The bank was located in Amsterdam until 1795; originally it concentrated on Great Britain. From 1750 it played a major part in the finances of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) through Thomas Hope and his brother Adrian. During the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) the Hope brothers profited from the Netherlands' neutral position and became very wealthy. The Hopes became heavily involved in the Dutch Caribbean, and Danish West Indies. They specialised in plantation loans, in which the entire produce of the plantation was remitted to the lender, who would supervise its sale in order to secure repayment. In this way, the Hopes helped the plantation economy to become integrated into a global network of financiers and consumers. The Hope family were among the richest in Europe at the time. The family business focused on financing commercial transactions and especially on issuing money loans to monarchs and governments in Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Russia, Portugal, Spain, France and America. The bank was famous for having Catherine the Great as their client and Adrian supplied her several times with diamonds.
Heemstede Castle is the site of the old castle of Heemstede. The property is situated at the site of the former castle 'Heerlijkheid Heemstede', or 'Huis te Heemstede', at a strategic position on mouth of the Spaarne river on the Haarlem lake.
Hartekamp, or Hartecamp, is the name of a villa in Heemstede, North Holland, the Netherlands, on the Bennebroek border. It was once the Buitenplaats of George Clifford, who employed Carl Linnaeus in 1737 to write his Hortus Cliffortianus, a detailed description of the gardens of Hartecamp.
The Hortus Cliffortianus is a work of early botanical literature published in 1737.
The Leidsevaart is a canal between the cities of Haarlem and Leiden in the Netherlands. It was dug in 1657, making it one of the oldest canals in the Netherlands. It was the major means of transport between Leiden and Haarlem for almost two centuries until the rail connection was established in the 19th century. The original stops along the railway mirrored the toll bridges of the canal.
George Clifford III was a wealthy Dutch banker and one of the directors of the Dutch East India Company. He is known for his keen interest in plants and gardens.
John Hope, also known as Jan Hope, was a wealthy Dutch banker, participating in Hope & Co., a member of the city council and an art collector. In 1770 he was appointed as manager of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He is also known today for his Groenendaal Park in Heemstede, where he summered on his estate. Shortly before he died he bought the nearby "Bosbeek". This estate became one of the first examples of a large garden in the 'English Style' in the Netherlands, and shaped by his second son Adrian Elias. His oldest son Thomas Hope became a designer of neoclassical interior decoration, and his youngest son Henry Philip Hope a gem collector and jewelry specialist.
Johannes Burman, was a Dutch botanist and physician. Burman specialized in plants from Ceylon, Amboina and Cape Colony. The name Pelargonium was introduced by Johannes Burman.
The Huis te Manpad is an historical villa and former summer home of Jacob van Lennep in Heemstede, the Netherlands; bordered by the Leidsevaart canal, the Manpadslaan, and the Herenweg. It neighbors the estate of Hartekamp, famed for the gardens described by Carl Linnaeus. Both estates still have trees and other flora dating from that period.
Jeronimo, Jeronimy or Hierome Clifford was one of the biggest plantation-owners in Suriname in the late 17th century.
Joan or Johan van Scharphuysen, Scharphuizen or Jan van Scherpenhuizen was a Dutch colonist, a judge in Suriname, a slave-trader, colonial governor from 1689 to 1696 on behalf of the Society of Surinam, and a considerable plantation-owner.
Andries Pels was a wealthy Dutch banker and insurer. He began as someone who had devoted himself to the merchandise trade, along with his brother Guillelmo, but after the latter's death in 1705 he concentrated more and more on the money and exchange business. In 1707, he founded the firm Andries Pels & Sons, the largest merchant bank of the day, that lasted until 1774.
The British credit crisis of 1772–1773, also known as the crisis of 1772, or the panic of 1772, was a peacetime financial crisis which originated in London and then spread to Scotland and the Dutch Republic. It has been described as the first modern banking crisis faced by the Bank of England. New colonies, as Adam Smith observed, had an insatiable demand for capital. Accompanying the more tangible evidence of wealth creation was a rapid expansion of credit and banking, leading to a rash of speculation and dubious financial innovation. In today's language, they bought shares on margin.
Balthasar Denner was a German painter, highly regarded as a portraitist. He painted mostly half-length and head-and-shoulders portraits and a few group portraits of families in interiors. Usually Denner concentrated on the face; clothes and paraphernalia were done by other painters or later his daughter. His chief peculiarity consisted in the fineness of his mechanical finish, which extended to depicting even the almost invisible furze of hair growing on smooth skin. He is particularly noted for his heads of old men and women.
Alexander Fordyce was an eminent Scottish banker, centrally involved in the bank run on Neale, James, Fordyce and Down which led to the credit crisis of 1772. He fled abroad and was declared bankrupt, but in time he used the profits from other investments to cover the losses.
Hendrik Albertus van den Eijnde or van den Eynde was a Dutch sculptor. His work was part of the sculpture event in the art competition at the 1936 Summer Olympics.
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