Clifford

(Martin), English Rationalist. Was Master of the Charter house, 1671, and published anonymously a treatise of Human Reason , London, ’74, which was reprinted in the following year with the author’s name. A short while after its publication Laney, Bishop of Ely, was dining in Charter house and remarked, not knowing the author, “’twas no matter if all the copies were burnt and the author with them, because it made every man’s private fancy judge of religion.” Clifford died 10 Dec. 1677. In the Nouvelle Biographie Générale Clifford is amusingly described as an “English theologian of the order des Chartreux,” who, it is added, was “prior of his order.”