440
niSTOIlY OF INDIA.
[Book HI.
A.D. 1749.
Clive's ap- pointment as a writer.
Styclie, situated in the parish of Moreton-Say, near Market-Drayton, in Shrop- shire, His father, Richard Olive, possessed the above estate, and a/lded to the rather scanty income which he derived from it by practising as a lawyer; his mother was Rebecca, daughter of Nathaniel Gaskill, of Manchester. In tljis city he spent his childhood in the family of Mr. Bayley, who had married his
mother's sister. According to this gentleman he was in his seventh year of a fierce and imperious temper, and "out of measure addicted" to fighting. From Manches- ter he was sent while yet very young to a school at Lostocke, in Cheshire, taught by Dr. Eaton, who is said to have predicted, that if 'he lived to be a man, and op- portunity enabled him to exert his talents, few names would be greater than his." From Lostocke he removed, at the age of eleven, to a school at Market -Dra}' ton, where he took a lead among his schoolfellows for mischief and daring, and was one morning seen seated on a stone spout near the top of its lofty steeple. A few years later he attended the Merchant Tailors' School in London. His last school was at Hemel-Hempstead, in Hertfordshire, where he was in 1743, when he was appointed a writer in the service of the East India Company.
His destination was Madras, which he reached late in 1744. The voyage was tedious, but he appears to have turned his time to good account, for dm-ing a nine months' detention of the ship at Brazil he made himself familiar with the Portuguese language. His letters, written to his friends at home shortly after he had entered on the duties of his office, display a kindly, thoughtful, manly spirit, and are so well expressed as to justify a doubt of the accuracy of the statement which has been made, that he idled awav his time at school, and was in consequence very imperfectly educated. To one he says, " I must confess, at intervals, when I think of my dear native England, it affects me in a ver}' par- ticular manner; however, knowing it to be for my own welfare, I rest content
Robert, Lord Olive. — From the picture by Dance, engraved in
Malcolm's Life of Clive.
