Robert Clive (1789–1854)

Clive was born in the parish of St George's, Hanover Square, London, a younger son of Edward Clive, 1st Earl of Powis. His mother was Lady Henrietta, daughter of Henry Herbert, 1st Earl of Powis. Edward Herbert (ne Clive), 2nd Earl of Powis, was his elder brother. His paternal grandfather was Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive ("Clive of India"), the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency who is credited for laying the foundation of the British East India Company rule in Bengal. He was educated at Eton College and was at St John's College, Cambridge from 1807 to 1809, when he graduated M.A. He was awarded an honorary LL.D. in 1835. ==Career==

Clive sat as one of the two Members of Parliament for Ludlow from 1818 to 1832, An agricultural landowner in Shropshire, Worcestershire, and Wales, he was an advocate of the abolition of the Corn Laws during Sir Robert Peel's administration. He was appointed to the commission investigating the Rebecca Riots in south Wales in October 1843. He was Colonel commanding the Worcestershire Yeomanry from 1833 until his death. A keen antiquary, Clive was author of Documents Concerned with the History of Ludlow and the Lords Marchers (1841), and president of the Cambrian Archaeological Association in 1852. Clive was deputy-chairman of two early railway companies in Shropshire, the Shrewsbury and Birmingham and the Shrewsbury and Hereford Railway. At a directors' meeting of the latter, on 30 December 1853, he was taken seriously ill and never recovered, dying a few weeks later. ==Personal life==

Clive married Lady Harriet Windsor, daughter of Other Windsor, 5th Earl of Plymouth, in 1819. They had several children, including: • Robert Windsor-Clive (1824–1859), also an MP for Ludlow and South Shropshire; he married Lady Mary Bridgeman, daughter of George Bridgeman, 2nd Earl of Bradford. After falling ill at a railway company directors' meeting, Clive died in Shrewsbury in January 1854, aged 65, at the nearby home of the Town Clerk. He was buried at Bromfield Parish Church, near his Oakly Park home near Ludlow. ==References==