Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/98

 Duke of Somerset), the commander-in-chief of the army. From Scotland the fleet was sent to Boulogne, then besieged by the king, and there Clinton served on shore till the capture of the town on 14 Sept. In the following year he held a command in the fleet under Lord Lisle, which repelled the threatened invasion of the French under Annebault; and in 1646 was one of the commissioners to settle the terms of peace with France, and signed as a witness on 7 June (, Hagæ 1741, vol. vi. pt. iii. p. 138).

After the accession of Edward VI, Clinton commanded the fleet which co-operated with Somerset in the invasion of Scotland in 1547, and had an important share in the decisive victory at Musselburgh. He was then appointed governor of Boulogne, and held that post till the surrender of the place by treaty in April 1550. His defence during the previous winter, when left almost entirely without support, won him deserved credit; and on his return to England he was appointed, 14 May 1550, lord high admiral, with very full powers and privileges, and received in addition lands and manorial rights to the value, it would appear, of about 500l. per annum. In the following April he was elected a knight of the Garter, and was installed on 30 June. Minor offices in great number were heaped upon him, including that of lord-lieutenant of the county of Lincoln, and, on 1 July 1553, that of governor of the Tower. This would seem to have been with the object of strengthening the cause of Lady Jane Grey, on whom the crown was settled by the will of Edward VI, to which Clinton was a witness. His share in this intrigue may fairly be attributed to his old intimacy with the Duke of Northumberland, for after the duke's death he seems to have had no difficulty in making his peace with Queen Mary, and in the following year took an active part in the suppression of Wyatt's rebellion, which was in the nominal interest of Lady Jane Grey. In October 1554 he was sent, in company with Garter king-at-arms, to invest the Duke of Savoy with the order of the Garter. In 1557 he was associated with the Earl of Pembroke in the command of the English contingent sent to the support of the Spaniards at St. Quentin, and though it did not arrive till after the battle had been won (10 Aug.), some of the glory of that brilliant victory fell on Clinton, in England at least (cf., Hist. of England, cabinet ed. ii. 299). On Mary's accession he had been deprived of his office of lord high admiral, but was again appointed to it on 18 Feb. 1557–8, with a special commission (12 April) as commander-in-chief of the fleet and forces to be employed against France and Scotland. It was a time of great difficulty and danger; Calais had fallen (19 Jan.), and the grief of the people was only equalled by their dread sense of coming evil. Clinton's return to office seems to have put new life into the conduct of affairs. By May he had mustered a force of some two hundred and fifty vessels of all sizes, detached squadrons of which scoured the Channel, while the main fleet, combined with a Flemish squadron, attempted an attack on Brest. Brest they found too strong, but landing near Conquêt, they ravaged the country for several miles, till a party of some five hundred Flemings, straggling too far inland, were cut off and taken prisoners, and eventually the fleet was forced by sickness and the late season to return to Spithead. Nothing at all commensurate with the cost and magnitude of the expedition was achieved, though, as a formidable diversion, and by drawing the French troops away from Flanders, something might have been done on the north. But the English counsels were feeble; Mary was dying, and Philip had no wish to win success for the English without a more distinct idea of what his future relations with them were likely to be. The war thus languished, and an armistice was concluded, which in the following March, four months after Elizabeth's accession, was converted into a treaty of peace, in which the loss of Calais was practically accepted by the English.

The change of queen and religion made no change in Clinton's position. He continued lord high admiral under Elizabeth as under Mary, and directed, though he had no immediate share in, the naval operations in Scotland in 1560, and at Havre in 1562–3. He was in attendance on the queen on her visit to Cambridge in 1564, when the degree of M.A. was conferred on him as well as on some others of the royal train. In 1569 he, together with the Earl of Warwick, commanded the army which quelled the formidable rising of the north, and drove its leaders, the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, over the border into Scotland; and in 1570, when Elizabeth was publicly excommunicated by the pope (15 May), and it seemed not improbable that France, if not Spain, might make some attempt to give effect to the sentence, Clinton in person took command of the fleet, with special orders to guard the North Sea, and 'to sink at once, and without question, any French vessels he might find carrying troops to Scotland.' His services during this critical period were recognised by his being advanced on 4 May 1572 to the dignity of Earl of Lincoln. A few weeks later he was sent to France on a