Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/14

 chaplain of Preston gaol, and Henrietta Fielding, his wife. He was educated at the Preston grammar school, but also received instruction from his father, who added to his other merits that of being an accomplished artist. Clay was intended for the legal profession, and was articled to a solicitor at Preston, but having great love of art decided on quitting his profession and becoming a painter. A portrait of his mother removing the doubts of his parents as to the advisability of this step, he went to Liverpool to study in 1852, and later in the same year became a student of the Royal Academy in London. In 1854 he exhibited for the first time, sending to the British Institution 'Finishing Bleak House,' and to the Royal Academy 'Nora Creina' and 'Margaret Ramsay;' in 1855 he sent to the Royal Academy a portrait of his father, and continued to contribute to the same exhibition regularly up to the time of his death. The chief pictures painted by him were 'The Imprisonment of Mary Queen of Scots at Lochleven Castle,' exhibited in 1861; 'Charles IX and the French Court at the Massacre of St. Bartholomew,' exhibited in 1865; and 'The Return to Whitehall, 29 May 1660,' exhibited in 1807, and now in the Walker Gallery at Liverpool. This was his last work of importance, as his health failed about this time, and he died at Rainhill, near Liverpool, on 1 Oct. 1868, aged 37, just at the commencement of a very promising career. On 9 April 1856 he married Elizabeth Jane Fayrer, who survived him, and by whom he left a family.

[Redgrave's Dict, of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760-1880; Memoir of the Rev. John Clay; Catalogues of the Royal Academy, &c.; private information.]  CLAY, JAMES (1805–1873), writer on whist, was born in London in 1805. His father, a merchant in the city of London, was brother of Sir William Clay, M.P. for the Tower Hamlets [q. v.] Clay was educated at Winchester. In 1830, in company with Benjamin Disraeli, who maintained to the end a close friendship with him, he travelled in the East. In 1837 he contested Beverley, and in 1841 Hull, unsuccessfully. In 1847 he was elected as a liberal for Hull, for which borough he sat until his death, which took place in 1873 at Regency Square, Brighton. He married the daughter of General Woolrych, one of Wellington's generals, and had a family, the best known of whom are Ernest Clay (who had a distinguished diplomatic career, and on his marriage with the daughter of Mr. Ker Seymer, formerly member for Worcestershire, took after his own name that of Ker Seymer), Frederick Clay, the musician, and Cecil Clay, well known in literary and artistic circles. Clay was chiefly eminent as a whist-player. 'A Treatise on the Game of Whist, by J. C.,' affixed to J. L. Baldwin's 'Laws of Short Whist' (London, 1804), has gone through many editions, and retains its authority in this country and in America. Some refinements which have come in, such as the lead from the penultimate and the discard from a strong suit when the adversaries show strength in trumps, secured his adhesion, and have been added to later editions by the author's sons. In the 'Correspondence of Lord Beaconsfield' are many friendly references to Clay. In a letter from Malta, dated 27 Sept. 1830 (Home Letters, pp. 58-9), Disraeli speaks of Clay's life of 'splendid adventure,' and, afer chronicling his various triumphs, appends the characteristic reflection: 'To govern men you must either excel them in their accomplishments or despise them. Clay does one, I do the other, and we are both equally popular.'

[Information privately supplied.]  CLAY, JOHN (1796–1858), prison chaplain, was the fifth son of Thomas Clay of Liverpool, ship and anchor smith, who died in 1821, by Mary, daughter of Ralph Lowe of Williamson Square, Liverpool, tanner. He was born in Liverpool on 10 May 1796, and after receiving a commercial education entered a merchant's office, but the failure of his master left him at the age of twenty-one without employment. He had, however, mechanical genius, and invented a chair for persons suffering with spinal complaints, and an improved bow and arrow which long bore his name. After spending a considerable time in self-education he was ordained as a literate by the Bishop of Chester on 11 Aug. 1821, and obtained a title for orders by acting as assistant-chaplain at Preston house of correction. On 22 Sept. 1822 he was ordained a priest, and soon after entered as a ten-years man at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but did not keep the three terms required until 1834-5, when he took his degree as bachelor of divinity. He became chaplain of the gaol in 1823, and held the post for thirty-six years. His one ambition in life was the reformation and reclamation of prisoners, and to this end he incessantly laboured. His experience soon taught him that the indiscriminate mixture of prisoners was the great hindrance to any improvement in their moral condition, and his chief efforts were made in the direction of the silent and separate confinement of criminals. He befriended all who deserved