Part 12
The Honour of Clitheroe, the name of which is also written Clyderhow and Cletherwoode, was first held by Roger de Poictou, who was almost certainly the builder of the castle, which was dismantled in 1649. He granted it to Robert de Lacy, in whose family it remained with two short intervals until it passed by marriage to Thomas, earl of Lancaster, in 1310. It formed part of the duchy of Lancaster till Charles II. at the Restoration bestowed it on General Monk, from whose family it descended through the house of Montague to that of Buccleuch. The Clitheroe Estate Company are the present lords of the Honour. The first charter was granted about 1283 to the burgesses by Henry de Lacy, second earl of Lincoln, confirming the liberties granted by the first Henry de Lacy, who is therefore sometimes said, although probably erroneously, to have granted a charter about 1147. The 1283 charter was confirmed by Edward III. in 1346, Henry V. in 1413-1414, Henry VIII. in 1542, and James I. in 1604. Of the fairs, those on December 7th to 9th and March 24th to 26th are held under a charter of Henry IV. in 1409. A weekly market has been held on Saturday since the Conqueror's days. In 1558 the borough was granted two members of parliament, and continued to return them till 1832, when the number was reduced to one. Under the Redistribution Act of 1885 the borough was disfranchised. The municipal government was formerly vested in an in-bailiff and an out-bailiff elected annually from the in and out burgesses. A court-leet and court-baron used to be held half-yearly, but both are now obsolete. The present corporation governs under the Municipal Corporation Act (1837). There was a church or chapel here in early times, and a chaplain is mentioned in Henry II.'s reign.
CLITOMACHUS, Greek philosopher, was a Carthaginian originally named Hasdrubal, who came to Athens about the middle of the 2nd century B.C. at the age of twenty-four. He made himself well acquainted with Stoic and Peripatetic philosophy; but he studied principally under Carneades, whose views he adopted, and whom he succeeded as chief of the New Academy in 129 B.C. He made it his business to spread the knowledge of the doctrines of Carneades, who left nothing in writing himself. Clitomachus' works were some four hundred in number; but we possess scarcely anything but a few titles, among which are _De sustinendis assensionibus_ ([Greek: Peri epochês], "on suspension of judgment") and [Greek: Peri aireseôn] (an account of various philosophical sects). In 146 he wrote a treatise to console his countrymen after the ruin of their city, in which he insisted that a wise man ought not to feel grieved at the destruction of his country. Cicero highly commends his works and admits his own debt in the _Academics_ to the treatise [Greek: Peri epochês]. Parts of Cicero's _De Natura_ and _De Divinatione_, and the treatise _De Fato_ are also in the main based upon Clitomachus.
See E. Wellmann in Ersch and Gruber's _Allgemeine Encyclopädie_; R. Hirzel, _Untersuchungen zu Ciceros philosophischen Schriften_, i. (1877); Diog. Laërt. iv. 67-92; Cicero, _Acad. Pr._ ii. 31, 32, and _Tusc._. iii. 22; and article ACADEMY, GREEK.
CLITUMNUS, a river in Umbria, Italy, which rises from a very abundant spring by the road between the ancient Spoletium and Trebia, 8 m. from the former, 4 m. from the latter, and after a short course through the territory of the latter town joins the Tinia, a tributary of the Tiber. The spring is well described by Pliny (_Epist._ viii. 8): it was visited by Caligula and by Honorius, and is still picturesque--a clear pool surrounded by poplars and weeping willows. The stream was personified as a god, whose ancient temple lay near the spring, and close by other smaller shrines; the place, therefore, occurs under the name _Sacraria_ (the shrines) as a Roman post station. The building generally known as the Tempio di Clitunno, close to the spring, is, however, an ancient tomb, converted into a Christian church in the early middle ages, the decorative sculptures, which are obviously contemporary with those of S. Salvatore at Spoleto, belonging to the 4th or 6th century according to some authorities, to the 12th according to others.
See H. Grisar, _Nuovo bullettino di archeologia cristiana_ (Rome, 1895) i. 127; A. Venturi, _Storia dell' arte italiana_ (Milan, 1904), iii. 903.
CLIVE, CAROLINE (1801-1873), English authoress, was born in London on the 24th of June 1801, the daughter of Mr Meysey-Wigley, M.P. for Worcester. She married, in 1840, the Rev. Archer Clive. She published, over the signature "V.," eight volumes of poetry, but is best known as the author of _Paul Ferroll_ (1855), a sensational novel, and _Why Paul Ferroll killed his Wife_ (1860). She died on the 13th of July 1873, at Whitfield, Herefordshire.
CLIVE, CATHERINE [KITTY] (1711-1785), British actress, was born, probably in London, in 1711. Her father, William Raftor, an Irishman of good family but small means, had held a captain's commission in the French army under Louis XIV. From her earliest years she showed a talent for the stage, and about 1728 became a member of the company at Drury Lane, of which Colley Cibber was then manager. Her first part was that of the page Ismenes ("with a song") in the tragedy _Mithridates_. Shortly afterwards she married George Clive, a barrister and a relative of the 1st Lord Clive, but husband and wife soon separated by mutual consent. In 1731 she definitely established her reputation as a comic actress and singer in Charles Coffey's farce-opera adaptation, _The Devil to Pay_, and from this time she was always a popular favourite. She acted little outside Drury Lane, where in 1747 she became one of the original members of Garrick's company. She took part, however, in some of the oratorios of Handel, whose friend she was. In 1769, having been a member of Garrick's company for twenty-two years, she quitted the stage, and lived for sixteen years in retirement at a villa at Twickenham, which had been given her some time previously by her friend Horace Walpole. Mrs Clive had small claim to good looks, but as an actress of broad comedy she was unreservedly praised by Goldsmith, Johnson and Garrick. She had a quick temper, which on various occasions involved her in quarrels, and at times sorely tried the patience of Garrick, but her private life remained above suspicion, and she regularly supported her father and his family. She died at Twickenham on the 6th of December 1785. Horace Walpole placed in his garden an urn to her memory, bearing an inscription, of which the last two lines run:
"The comic muse with her retired And shed a tear when she expired."
See Percy Fitzgerald, _Life of Mrs Catherine Clive_ (1888); W. R. Chetwood, _General History of the Stage_ (1749); Thomas Davies, _Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick_ (1784).
CLIVE, ROBERT CLIVE, BARON (1725-1774), the statesman and general who founded the empire of British India, was born on the 29th of September 1725 at Styche, the family estate, in the parish of Moreton Say, Market Drayton, Shropshire. We learn from himself, in his second speech in the House of Commons in 1773, that as the estate yielded only £500 a year, his father followed the profession of the law also. The Clives, or Clyves, were one of the oldest families in the county of Shropshire, having held the manor of that name in the reign of Henry II. One Clive was Irish chancellor of the exchequer under Henry VIII.; another was a member of the Long Parliament; Robert's father for many years represented Montgomeryshire in parliament. His mother, to whom he was tenderly attached, and who had a powerful influence on his career, was a daughter, and with her sister Lady Sempill co-heir, of Nathaniel Gaskell of Manchester. Robert was their eldest son. With his five sisters, all of whom were married in due time, he ever maintained the most affectionate relations. His only brother survived to 1825.
Young Clive was the despair of his teachers. Sent from school to school, and for only a short time at the Merchant Taylors' school, which then as now had a high reputation, he neglected his books for perilous adventures. But he was not so ignorant as his biographers represent. He could read Horace in after life; and he must have laid in his youth the foundation of that clear and vigorous English style which marked all his despatches, and made Lord Chatham declare of one of his speeches in the House of Commons that it was the most eloquent he had ever heard. From his earliest years, however, his ambition was to lead his fellows; but he never sacrificed honour, as the word was then understood, even to the fear of death. At eighteen he was sent out to Madras as a "factor" or "writer" in the civil service of the East India Company. The detention of the ship in Brazil for nine months enabled him to acquire the Portuguese language, which, at a time when few or none of the Company's servants learned the vernaculars of India, he often found of use. For the first two years of his residence he was miserable. He felt keenly the separation from home; he was always breaking through the restraints imposed on young "writers"; and he was rarely out of trouble with his fellows, with one of whom he fought a duel. Thus early, too, the effect of the climate on his health began to show itself in those fits of depression during one of which he afterwards prematurely ended his life. The story is told of him by his companions, though he himself never spoke of it, that he twice snapped a pistol at his head in vain. His one solace was found in the governor's library, where he sought to make up for past carelessness by a systematic course of study. He was just of age, when in 1746 Madras was forced to capitulate to Labourdonnais during the War of the Austrian Succession. The breach of that capitulation by Dupleix, then at the head of the French settlements in India, led Clive, with others, to escape from the town to the subordinate Fort St David, some 20 m. to the south. There, disgusted with the state of affairs and the purely commercial duties of an East Indian civilian, as they then were, Clive obtained an ensign's commission.
At this time India was ready to become the prize of the first conqueror who to the dash of the soldier added the skill of the administrator. For the forty years since the death of the emperor Aurangzeb, the power of the Great Mogul had gradually fallen into the hands of his provincial viceroys or _subadhars_. The three greatest of these were the nawab of the Deccan, or south and central India, who ruled from Hyderabad, the nawab of Bengal, whose capital was Murshidabad, and the nawab or wazir of Oudh. The prize lay between Dupleix, who had the genius of an administrator, or rather intriguer, but was no soldier, and Clive, the first of a century's brilliant succession of those "soldier-politicals," as they are called in the East, to whom Great Britain owes the conquest and consolidation of its greatest dependency. Clive successively established British ascendancy against French influence in the three great provinces under these nawabs. But his merit lies especially in the ability and foresight with which he secured for his country, and for the good of the natives, the richest of the three, Bengal. First, as to Madras and the Deccan, Clive had hardly been able to commend himself to Major Stringer Lawrence, the commander of the British troops, by his courage and skill in several small engagements, when the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) forced him to return to his civil duties for a short time. An attack of the malady which so severely affected his spirits led him to visit Bengal, where he was soon to distinguish himself. On his return he found a contest going on between two sets of rival claimants for the position of viceroy of the Deccan, and for that of nawab of the Carnatic, the greatest of the subordinate states under the Deccan. Dupleix, who took the part of the pretenders to power in both places, was carrying all before him. The British had been weakened by the withdrawal of a large force under Admiral Boscawen, and by the return home, on leave, of Major Lawrence. But that officer had appointed Clive commissary for the supply of the troops with provisions, with the rank of captain. More than one disaster had taken place on a small scale, when Clive drew up a plan for dividing the enemy's forces, and offered to carry it out himself. The pretender, Chanda Sahib, had been made nawab of the Carnatic with Dupleix's assistance, while the British had taken up the cause of the more legitimate successor, Mahommed Ali. Chanda Sahib had left Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic, to reduce Trichinopoly, then held by a weak English battalion. Clive offered to attack Arcot in order to force Chanda Sahib to raise the siege of Trichinopoly. But Madras and Fort St David could supply him with only 200 Europeans and 300 sepoys. Of the eight officers who led them, four were civilians like Clive himself, and six had never been in action. His force had but three field-pieces. The circumstances that Clive, at the head of this handful, had been seen marching during a storm of thunder and lightning, frightened the enemy into evacuating the fort, which the British at once began to strengthen against a siege. Clive treated the great population of the city with so much consideration that they helped him, not only to fortify his position, but to make successful sallies against the enemy. As the days passed on, Chanda Sahib sent a large army under his son and his French supporters, who entered Arcot and closely besieged Clive in the citadel.
Macaulay gives the following brilliant account of the siege:--
"Raja Sahib proceeded to invest the fort, which seemed quite incapable of sustaining a siege. The walls were ruinous, the ditches dry, the ramparts too narrow to admit the guns, and the battlements too low to protect the soldiers. The little garrison had been greatly reduced by casualties. It now consisted of 120 Europeans and 200 sepoys. Only four officers were left, the stock of provisions was scanty, and the commander who had to conduct the defence under circumstances so discouraging was a young man of five and twenty, who had been bred as a book-keeper. During fifty days the siege went on, and the young captain maintained the defence with a firmness, vigilance and ability which would have done honour to the oldest marshal in Europe. The breach, however, increased day by day. Under such circumstances, any troops so scantily provided with officers might have been expected to show signs of insubordination; and the danger was peculiarly' great in a force composed of men differing widely from each other in extraction, colour, language, manners and religion. But the devotion of the little band to its chief surpassed anything that is related of the Tenth Legion of Caesar, or the Old Guard of Napoleon. The sepoys came to Clive, not to complain of their scanty fare, but to propose that all the grain should be given to the Europeans, who required more nourishment than the natives of Asia. The thin gruel, they said, which was strained away from the rice would suffice for themselves. History contains no more touching instance of military fidelity, or of the influence of a commanding mind. An attempt made by the governor of Madras to relieve the place had failed; but there was hope from another quarter. A body of 3000 Mahrattas, half soldiers, half robbers, under the command of a chief named Murari Rao had been hired to assist Mahommed Ali; but thinking the French power irresistible, and the triumph of Chanda Sahib certain, they had hitherto remained inactive on the frontiers of the Carnatic. The fame of the defence of Arcot roused them from their torpor; Murari Rao declared that he had never before believed that Englishmen could fight, but that he would willingly help them since he saw that they had spirit to help themselves. Raja Sahib learned that the Mahrattas were in motion, and it was necessary for him to be expeditious. He first tried negotiations--he offered large bribes to Clive, which were rejected with scorn; he vowed that if his proposals were not accepted, he would instantly storm the fort, and put every man in it to the sword. Clive told him, in reply, with characteristic haughtiness, that his father was a usurper, that his army was a rabble, and that he would do well to think twice before he sent such poltroons into a breach defended by English soldiers. Raja Sahib determined to storm the fort. The day was well suited to a bold military enterprise. It was the great Mahommedan festival, the Muharram, which is sacred to the memory of Husain, the son of Ali. Clive had received secret intelligence of the design, had made his arrangements, and, exhausted by fatigue, had thrown himself on his bed. He was awakened by the alarm, and was instantly at his post. The enemy advanced, driving before them elephants whose foreheads were armed with iron plates. It was expected that the gates would yield to the shock of these living battering-rams. But the huge beasts no sooner felt the English musket balls than they turned round and rushed furiously away, trampling on the multitude which had urged them forward. A raft was launched on the water which filled one part of the ditch. Clive perceiving that his gunners at that post did not understand their business, took the management of a piece of artillery himself, and cleared the raft in a few minutes. Where the moat was dry, the assailants mounted with great boldness; but they were received with a fire so heavy and so well directed, that it soon quelled the courage even of fanaticism and of intoxication. The rear ranks of the English kept the front ranks supplied with a constant succession of loaded muskets, and every shot told on the living mass below. The struggle lasted about an hour; 400 of the assailants fell; the garrison lost only five or six men. The besieged passed an anxious night, looking for a renewal of the attack. But when day broke, the enemy were no more to be seen. They had retired, leaving to the English several guns and a large quantity of ammunition."
In India, we might say in all history, there is no parallel to this exploit of 1751 till we come to the siege of Lucknow in 1857. Clive, now reinforced, followed up his advantage, and Major Lawrence returned in time to carry the war to a successful issue. In 1754 the first of the Carnatic treaties was made provisionally, between T. Saunders, the Company's resident at Madras, and M. Godeheu, the French commander, in which the English protégé, Mahommed Ali, was virtually recognized as nawab, and both nations agreed to equalize their possessions. When war again broke out in 1756, and the French, during Clive's absence in Bengal, obtained successes in the northern districts, his efforts helped to drive them from their settlements. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 formally confirmed Mahommed Ali in the position which Clive had won for him. Two years after, the Madras work of Clive was completed by a firman from the emperor of Delhi, recognizing the British possessions in southern India.
The siege of Arcot at once gave Clive a European reputation. Pitt pronounced the youth of twenty-seven who had done such deeds a "heaven-born general," thus endorsing the generous appreciation of his early commander, Major Lawrence. When the court of directors voted him a sword worth £700, he refused to receive it unless Lawrence was similarly honoured. He left Madras for home, after ten years' absence, early in 1753, but not before marrying Miss Margaret Maskelyne, the sister of a friend, and of one who was afterwards well known as astronomer royal. All his correspondence proves him to have been a good husband and father, at a time when society was far from pure, and scandal made havoc of the highest reputations. In after days, when Clive's uprightness and stern reform of the Company's civil and military services made him many enemies, a biography of him appeared under the assumed name of _Charles Carracioli, Gent._ All the evidence is against the probability of its scandalous stories being true. Clive as a young man occasionally indulged in loose or free talk among intimate friends, but beyond this nothing has been proved to his detriment. After he had been two years at home the state of affairs in India made the directors anxious for his return. He was sent out, in 1756, as governor of Fort St David, with the reversion of the government of Madras, and he received the commission of lieutenant-colonel in the king's army. He took Bombay on his way, and there commanded the land force which captured Gheria, the stronghold of the Mahratta pirate, Angria. In the distribution of prize money which followed this expedition he showed no little self-denial. He took his seat as governor of Fort St David on the day on which the nawab of Bengal captured Calcutta, and thither the Madras government at once sent him, with admiral Watson. He entered on the second period of his career.