CLIVE, EDWARD, Earl of Powis (1754–1839), governor of Madras, was the eldest son of the first Lord Clive, governor of Bengal [q. v.] Succeeding to the Irish barony of Clive on his father's death in 1774, he was returned to parliament, although still under age, as member for Ludlow, and sat for that borough in the House of Commons until his elevation to a British peerage as Baron Clive of Walcot in 1794. In 1798 he was appointed governor of Madras, which office he held until 1803. During the first year of his government the south of India was the scene of the important military operations which, resulting in the capture of Seringapatam and the death of Tippoo Sultan, were followed by General Wellesley's campaign against the freebooter, Dhundaji Wah, and three years later by the second Mahratta war and the campaign in the Deccan, of which the most memorable incident was the battle of Assaye. In all these operations Clive rendered active co-operation by placing the resources of the Madras presidency at the disposal of the generals commanding, and in the year following his retirement from office he received the thanks of both houses of parliament for his services. In the same year, 1804, he was raised to an earldom, with the title of Earl of Powis. It devolved upon Olive, when governor of Madras, to carry into effect, under the orders of Lord Wellesley, the measures by which the nawab of the Carnatic was deprived of sovereign power and his territories became a British province. In 1805 Clive was nominated lord-lieutenant of Ireland, but owing to Mr. Pitt's death the appointment did not take effect. He does not appear to have subsequently filled any prominent official position. He was remarkable for his physical vigour, which he retained to an advanced age, digging in his garden in his shirt-sleeves at six o'clock in the morning when in his eightieth year. He married in 1784 Lady Henrietta Antonia Herbert, daughter of Henry Arthur, earl of Powis (the last earl of the Herbert family), with whose death that earldom lapsed until it was revived in the person of Clive. He left two sons and two daughters, and died on 16 May 1839, having been apparently well the day before his death.
[Ann. Reg. 1839; Collins's Peerage of Scotland, vol. v.; Mill's History of British India, vol. vi.; Marshman's History of India, vol. ii.]
CLIVE, ROBERT, Lord Clive (1725–1774), governor of Bengal, was the eldest son of Richard Clive of Styche, a small estate near Market Drayton in Shropshire, in which county the Clive family had been established ever since the reign of Henry II. He was born 29 Sept. 1725 (Robinson, Merchant Taylors' School, ii. 90). His mother was a daughter of Mr. Nathaniel Gaskell of Manchester, one of her sisters being the wife of Mr. Daniel Bayley of Hope Hall, Manchester, in whose house Clive spent several years of his childhood. At a very early age he appears to have given evidence of that energy of disposition, combined with a certain amount of combatieness, which distinguished him in after life. Mr. Bayley, writing about him to his father in June 1732, when he had not completed his seventh year, described him as 'out of measure addicted to fighting.' When still very young he was sent to a school at Lostock, Cheshire, kept by a Dr. Eaton, who predicted that 'if his scholar lived to be a man, and if opportunity enabled him to exert his talents, few names would be greater than his.' At the age of eleven he was removed to a school at Market Drayton, thence in 1737 to Merchant Taylors' School, and finally to a private school at Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, where he remained until he was appointed in 1743, at the age of eighteen, a writer in the service of the East India Company at Madras. His school life does not appear to have been particularly studious. Notwithstanding Dr. Eaton's opinion of his talents, which seems in some measure to have been shared by his father, the greater part of such book learning as Clive possessed would appear to have been acquired some few years later, after his arrival in India, when he obtained access to the library of the governor of Madras, and is said to have spent a good deal of his time in studying its contents. As a schoolboy Olive's chief characteristics were undaunted courage and energy in out-of-door pursuits, which latter sometimes took a mischievous turn, and possibly accounted for his frequent changes of school. It is related of him that on one occasion he climbed the lofty steeple of the church at Market Drayton, and seated himself on a stone spout in the form of a dragon's head which projected from it near the top. There is also a tradition that he levied from the shopkeepers at Market Drayton contributions in pence and in trifling articles as compensation to himself and a band of his schoolfellows for abstaining from breaking windows.
Leaving England in 1743, Clive did not reach Madras until late in 1744, after an unusually long voyage, in the course of which he was delayed for nine months in Brazil. His detention in Brazil led to his acquiring some slight knowledge of the Portuguese language, which was of use to him in after
