Upon completion of his education at age eighteen, Robert Edward was commissioned an officer in his cousin Arthur Dillon's Regiment of the Irish Brigade-a unit filled with Roman Catholic exiles serving King Louis XVI of France. It also prevented him from receiving a formal education in his own faith, which is why he-like his two older brothers and his father before him-was sent abroad to Liège, in the Austrian Netherlands, at an early age. Born into a Roman Catholic family in Protestant England during the era of the Catholic Penal Laws meant that Robert Edward was denied the right to hold a position in government or to be commissioned an officer in the military. His ancestral home, Ugbrooke Park, is located in Devon, England. Robert Edward Clifford was the third son of Hugh, the 4th Lord Clifford of Chudleigh.