suc. bro. 24 Nov. 1679 as 4th earl of THANET de jure 16th Bar. Clifford (by decision of 12 Dec. 1691)
Never sat.
b. 7 Aug. 1638, 2nd s. of John Tufton, 2nd earl of Thanet and Margaret, da. and coh. of Richard Sackville†, 3rd earl of Dorset; bro. of Nicholas Tufton, 3rd earl of Thanet, Richard Tufton, 5th earl of Thanet, Thomas Tufton, 6th earl of Thanet and Sackville Tufton‡. educ. Eton 1653-4;1 Queen’s, Oxf. 1654-6 (without matric.);2 travelled abroad (Low Countries: tutor, George Sedgewick) 1656-7, (France) 1660-3.3 unm. d. 27 Apr. 1680; will 22 Oct. 1679, admon. 17 June 1680.4
Dep. sheriff, Westmld. 1676-9; sheriff (hered.) Westmld. 1679-d.5
Associated with: Hothfield House, Kent; Thanet House, Aldersgate St., London; Appleby, Brough; Brougham Castles, Westmld. and Skipton Castle, Yorks.
It is clear from the diary of his maternal grandmother, Lady Anne Clifford, dowager countess of Pembroke and Montgomery, that John Tufton, second son of John Tufton, 2nd earl of Thanet, was her favourite grandson. She meticulously recorded the frequent and long visits he made to her northern residences in Westmorland and Yorkshire and provided him with generous benefactions in her will. He was almost more of a Clifford than a Tufton, and while his elder brother Nicholas, 3rd earl of Thanet, was based in the family’s ancestral properties in Kent and Sussex, John Tufton appears to have increasingly identified with the northern properties of his grandmother and spent a growing amount of time there.6 Lady Anne, whose interest in Appleby was described as ‘absolute’, pressed Tufton to be her nominee at the by-election in early 1668 for the borough seat, in the face of stiff opposition from the under-secretary of state Joseph Williamson‡. He refused on the grounds that he was ‘in favour of a country life’, and she then turned to his younger brothers in turn until Thomas Tufton, later 6th earl of Thanet, accepted and was duly selected.7 She was most generous to John in her will in which she bequeathed to him the reversion to the Clifford lands in both Westmorland and the Craven region of Yorkshire, pointedly bypassing her eldest grandson Nicholas stating that he already had sufficient estates in the south.
John Tufton’s doting grandmother died in March 1676, upon which her daughter, Tufton’s mother Margaret, dowager countess of Thanet, inherited the Westmorland property and with it the hereditary shrievalty of the county. She appointed Tufton her deputy sheriff, and he inherited the Westmorland estates upon his mother’s death shortly thereafter in August 1676. He continued to be deputy sheriff under his brother, the 3rd earl of Thanet, the new sheriff by inheritance.8 In 1678 his cousin Alathea Compton, last surviving child of James Compton, 3rd earl of Northampton, and Lady Anne Clifford’s younger daughter, Isabella, died childless and underage. She had been in line to inherit the Craven properties, but at her death they too reverted to Tufton.
Tufton and his brother Nicholas were at odds in 1678-9 over this Yorkshire inheritance, and over Tufton’s treatment of Thanet’s tenants in the north, a dispute which came before the House briefly in May 1679.9 Tufton finally acquired the unquestioned possession of all the Clifford properties in the north when he succeeded to the earldom upon his brother’s death in November 1679, but he died unexpectedly after barely five months in possession of the title, a period during which the second Exclusion Parliament was prorogued. He never had an opportunity to sit in the House, and as he died unmarried and childless, it was his next brother, Richard Tufton, who sat in the Exclusion Parliament as earl of Thanet.
C.G.D.L.- 1 Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford ed. D.J.H. Clifford, 114, 116; Eton Coll. Reg., 338.
- 2 Lady Clifford Diary, 114,116, 122, 126.
- 3 Lady Clifford Diary, 126, 133-4, 137, 139, 149; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 582; 1658-9, p. 578.
- 4 TNA, PROB 11/363; PROB 11/364.
- 5 TNA, C181/7, pp. 354, 490, 539, 605.
- 6 Lady Clifford Diary, 114-16, 122, 125-6, 133-4, 137, 139, 140-1, 149, 162, 164, passim.
- 7 CSP Dom. 1667-8, pp. 172, 174, 190, 191, 195, 209, 212, 213, 217, 219, 228.
- 8 Add. 29555, ff. 362, 364, 366, 374, 376, passim.
- 9 R.T. Spence, Lady Anne Clifford: Countess of Pembroke, Dorset and Montgomery, 245; LJ xiii. 552, 577; HMC Lords, i. 141.