The Many Afterlives of Jeronimy Clifford (1737–1780)

This chapter explores the many afterlives of Jeronimy Clifford's case in the years between his death and the dawn of the revolutionary era. Shortly after he died in 1737, at least two parties revived his claim. One person, who may have been in debtors' prison with Clifford, purported to possess his will and attempted to extort the Society of Suriname. Another group sought to settle Clifford's claim against the society, seeking justice (and profit) on his behalf. The latter party printed a number of pro-Clifford texts, which prompted the issue of other books and pamphlets about the case. The claim's advocates moved the English Crown to again intercede with the Dutch, but without achieving satisfaction. These reverberations of the Clifford case show the uses to which seventeenth-century colonial English subjecthood was being put by the second half of the eighteenth century.