Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/424

 but it appears from the ‘Historical Manuscripts Commission’ (8th Rep. p. 287 et seq.), that a large number of his letters are among the Cornwallis Papers in possession of Lord Braybrooke's family. He was lieutenant-governor of the island of Jamaica from 1782 to 1790, and acted as governor in 1789. Clarke's name appears as lieutenant-colonel of the 7th fusiliers up to 8 July 1791, when he was promoted to the colonelcy of the 1st battalion 60th foot. He had meanwhile been advanced to the rank of major-general, and appointed to the staff at Quebec, where he was stationed from June 1791 to June 1793. In a letter of this period in the ‘Haldimand Papers’ Clarke expresses regret that he had not been able to pass the winter with friends in England, ‘after an absence from home of fifteen years.’ On 5 Aug. 1794 he was transferred to the colonelcy of the 68th foot, then at Gibraltar, and on 25 Oct. following to his old corps, the 5th foot. In the following year he was despatched, in command of reinforcements, to India. By preconcerted arrangement these troops were to co-operate with a naval force under Vice-admiral Elphinstone, afterwards Lord Keith, in an attack on the Dutch settlements at the Cape of Good Hope. Admiral Elphinstone arrived in Simon's Bay in July 1795, and had been engaged in operations against the enemy from that time up to 3 Sept., when the arrival of the reinforcements under Clarke changed the face of affairs. Additional troops were landed, and on 14 Sept. the British force commenced its march to Cape Town, and on the 16th the colony capitulated, whereby the rule of the Dutch East India Company in South Africa was determined, a change which, a Colonial-Dutch writer (Judge Watermeyer) has observed, benefited every man of every hue throughout the colony (, History of the Cape, p. 20). Some weeks were spent with the admiral, concocting measures for the administration of the new colony, a somewhat difficult task (, Life of Keith), and then Clarke took his reinforcements on to Bengal, where he served from that time (from 30 April 1797 as presidency commander-in-chief and senior member of the council) up to 17 May 1798, when he succeeded Sir Robert Abercromby [q. v.] as commander-in-chief in India. He commanded the army which accompanied Sir John Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, to Lucknow, and which deposed the nabob Vizir Ali and placed Saadut Ali on the throne of Oude. Clarke, who had been made K.B., held the post of commander-in-chief under the Marquis Wellesley up to 21 July 1801, when he arrived home, having left Fort William at the end of April. Notices of his services and opinions in India occur incidentally in the letters of Sir John Shore, in the published despatches and correspondence of the Marquis Wellesley, in the ‘Mornington Papers,’ in the ‘British Museum Add. MSS.’—where there is a volume of letters from him to the Marquis Wellesley, with whom the general, a soldier of courtly old-fashioned type, appears to have been on cordial terms—and in Clarke's evidence before the parliamentary inquiry into the conduct of Lord Wellesley in 1806. On 23 Aug. 1801 Clarke was transferred to the colonelcy of the 7th fusiliers. He was afterwards a member of the consolidated board of general officers. On the accession of William IV, Clarke and Sir Samuel Hulse, as the two oldest generals in the army, were made field marshals. Clarke died at Llangollen vicarage, where he was on a visit to his niece, Mrs. Eyton, wife of the incumbent, on 16 Sept. 1832, at the age of eighty-seven.

 CLARKE, CHARLES (d. 1750), judge, was the son of Alured Clarke of Godmanchester in Huntingdonshire, by his second wife Ann, fourth daughter of the Rev. Charles Trimnell, rector of Ripton-Abbotts in Huntingdonshire, and sister to bishop Trimnell of Winchester. He was placed at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1719 under his brother, Dr. [q. v.], then a fellow of that college. Without taking any degree, he entered as a student of Lincoln's Inn in 1717, was called to the bar in 1723, and gained in time a large and very lucrative practice, so that he became able to rebuild the family house at Godmanchester. In 1731 he was appointed recorder of Huntingdon, and represented the county in 1739. In the new parliament of 1741 he was elected for Whitechurch in Hampshire, but in its second session in Hilary term, 1743, was raised to the bench of the exchequer in place of Sir (d. 1750) [q. v.], but was not knighted. At this time he was counsel to the admiralty, and auditor of Greenwich Hospital, in which post he was succeeded by Mr. Heneage Legge. On 17 May 1750 he died of a fever contracted