View source for Abraham Clifford ca.1628-1675

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===[[name::Abraham]] [[name::CLIFFORD]] ca.[[date of birth::1628]]-[[date of death::1675]]===

====Biographical Note====

Son of [[family::Joseph Clifford]] of [[location:: Warwickshire]]. Attended [[education::Pembroke Hall, Cambridge]]: BA 1650; MA 1653; BD 1660 [[occupation::College Fellow|Fellow]] 1650 (re-admitted 1660). [[occupation::clergyman|Rector]] of [[location::Quendon, Essex]], but ejected in  1662. He studied medicine at [[education::Leiden University, Netherlands|Leiden]] and was created an MD at Oxford in 1670, and [[occupation::physician| practised]] in [[location::London]].  [[occupation::‘Secundus a secretis’]] to the [[associates::Prince of Orange]]. He was the author of ''Methodus Evangelica'' (1676), apparently never intended for print.

====Books====

Clifford’s will suggests the importance of books in his life, with them being mentioned at the start, before bequests of property and money.  ‘In Thankfull Remembrance of my Pious Education’ he left his old college a six volume set of the works of Pierre Gassendi, along with items from his library  specified in a separate ‘note or Catalogue’.  These came to be  listed in the college’s  benefactor’s register (fols 163r-164r): 10 folio, 17 quarto and 27 octavo titles, the majority of them seventeenth-century works on [[subject::medicine]].  (These are distinct from his gift of six books to Pembroke in 1662.) The rest of his library, whose content and extent have not been established, was bequeathed to his cousin [[family::Samuel Clifford]], with the added instruction that in the event of his death it was to pass instead to his brother [[family::Isaac Clifford|Isaac]] (both of whom were nonconformist ministers).  A ‘guilded Bible of Bentleys Print’ (one of an edition of Bibles printed by William Bentley in the 1640s) was bequeathed to [[beneficiary::Jane Gibbs]] of Stoke-by-Nayland. 
====Sources====
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*[https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D748957 Will of Abraham Clifford], The National Archives, PROB 11/349/34.
*[https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-LC-II-00077/1 Matthew Wren’s benefactors’ book (Pembroke College MS LC.II.77)], Cambridge Digital Library.
*[https://www.british-history.ac.uk/alumni-oxon/1500-1714/pp274-303 Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714].
*[https://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search-2018.pl?sur=Clifford&suro=w&fir=Abraham&firo=c&cit=&cito=c&c=all&z=all&tex=&sye=&eye=&col=all&maxcount=50Venn ACAD A Cambridge Alumni Database.] 

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