At the beginning of the fifteenth century the estate passed to the Clifton family who owned Hodsock for fourteen generations, until 1765. Hodsock was never the Clifton family's main home so they probably never spent more than was necessary on the house and estate. Even so, Hodsock was sufficiently grand to entertain Henry VIII who visited in 1541. Many of the family tombs and monuments can be seen at Clifton church near Nottingham. The family fought on the Royalist side in the Civil War in the 1640s and was heavily fined. This may be the reason why the house declined to the status of a farmhouse.
