CLEMENT, Gregory (1594-1660), of St George’s Botolph Lane, London.

Gregory Clement was the heir of John Clement, a merchant and burgess of Plymouth. He probably followed his father’s trade from an early age, as there is no evidence that he was educated beyond a fairly basic level, and this may explain his poor spelling in later correspondence and also Edmund Ludlowe II’s* comment that ‘he had no good elocution’.21Cornw. RO, RS/1/906-7; Ludlow, Voyce, 245. Clement made good this educational deficiency through a mixture of boundless energy and low cunning. In his early twenties he had left Plymouth to become involved in the East India trade, as servant to one Mr Hewkely; in November 1623 he petitioned the Company, asking to be employed as a factor in his own right, and was taken on for seven years on 10 December of the same year.22Foster, English Factories in India, 1624-9, p. xxiii; CSP Col. E.I. 1622-4, pp. 190, 224. In February 1624 he took ship for India in the Star, taking up his post first at Surat and then, from June 1627 until his recall in the spring of 1630, at Agra.23CSP Col. E.I. 1622-4, p. 242; Foster, English Factories, 1624-9, pp. xxiii, 24. Clement’s salary was modest – 100 marks annually for the first three years of his contract, and £100 for the remaining four – and he joined the numerous other factors who were tempted to twist the rules, and even violate the Company’s privileges, by engaging in private ventures of their own.24Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 135, 169. He was accused of malpractice in ‘private trade’ as early as October 1626; he was briefly imprisoned by the king of Agra in March 1628 for contravening an agreement over saltpetre; and his return to England in 1630 was amid further accusations of abusing his position, leading to a fine of 10,000 mahmudis [silver coins] ‘for his sundry misdemeanours’ in Amadavad and Agra, imposed by the Company.25Foster, English Factories, 1624-9, pp. xxiii, xxx, 145, 270; Foster, English Factories in India, 1630-3 (Oxford, 1910), 10, 12, 33.

Although Clement had been summarily dismissed by the East India Company, he did not give up the eastern trade, and during the 1630s he continued to operate as a private adventurer, and was a sponsor of the notorious plundering raid of the Samaritan in the later 1630s.26Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 173. This naturally caused great anger in the Company, which was determined to teach the interloper a lesson. To take but two examples, in September 1635 Clement asked to receive 4,000 rials (a middle eastern currency) owed to him at Surat, only to be subjected to an official investigation into his activities before the matter would be settled, and in June 1640 his request to be exempted from duty for imported cloth was met by an abrupt refusal, ‘considering the inconvenience of private trade’.27Cal. Ct. Mins. E. India Co. 1635-9, p. 85; 1640-3. p. 47. The Company’s attitude softened somewhat as the 1640s continued, and Clement acquired the £1,000 adventure of Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke (in 1643), the £800 stake of Nathaniel Wylde (1644), a £2,000 share of the 1646 general voyage (which he sold on to William Methwold), and in 1648 his ship, the Endymion, was engaged in the trade to Bantam.28Cal. Ct. Mins. E. India Co. 1640-3, p. 322; 1644-9, pp. 9, 175, 260.

The East India trade was only one of Clement’s commercial interests, however, as by 1634 he had joined with Maurice Thomson, Robert South and other London merchants in trading in tobacco with Virginia and the West Indies.29Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 134-5, 173, 183n, 186. In 1639 he owned a collier trading in the Baltic, by 1643 he was trading in the Mediterranean with the Levant Company, and in 1647 he backed a colonial venture in the Bahamas, becoming one of the ‘proprietors’ of the islands by 1650.30CSP Dom. 1639, p. 215; Cal. Ct. Mins. E. India Co. 1640-3, p. 302; SP105/159, f. 97; Oxford DNB; Hassam, ‘Bahama Islands’, 5. Another lucrative sideline was privateering. In January 1637 Clement and his partners petitioned for relief from the admiralty after the seizure by Dunkirk pirates of their ship, the Robert Bonaventure, with £15,500 worth of tobacco on board; and soon afterwards they were granted letters of marque to set forth the 300-ton ship, Discovery, and an attendant pinnace, to capture Spanish ships and cargo to the same value.31CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 350, 554. The unscrupulous approach of Clement and his partners led to a torrent of complaints in later months. In November the owners of a French ship, captured by the Dunkirkers and subsequently taken by the Discovery, complained that their cargo should not be sold off in England; by January 1638 the Discovery had taken four ships but her crew was unpaid and had not received the promised share of the prize money; in September Clement and his partners were summoned before the privy council.32CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 510, 550; 1637-8, p. 150; 1638-9, pp. 3, 16.

The piratical adventures of Clement and his friends continued for much of the 1640s, aided by a renewal of his letters of reprisal in October 1641 which allowed him and his partners to set out a new ship, confusingly also named the Discovery, as the lease on its predecessor had expired.33HMC 4th Rep. 102; PA, Main Pprs, 23 Oct. 1641. In March 1646 there were complaints from Hamburg merchants that one of their ships, carrying Spanish goods, had been seized by the new Discovery, and this was challenged on the grounds that the king had annulled all letters of marque in October 1644.34LJ viii. 198b. It has been calculated that the Discovery took 27 prizes in the year from May 1645 to June 1646, and it must be suspected that Clement and his partners had long before recouped their initial losses, and were now operating at a substantial profit.35Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 501.

Perhaps Clement’s most lucrative venture was the one that drew him into the parliamentarian camp in the spring of 1642: the Irish adventure. In March of that year Clement invested a modest £200 in the initial scheme, which promised a share in the confiscated land once the Irish rebellion had been suppressed; but in June he was one of the London merchants who backed the Irish ‘sea adventure’, to the tune of £1,300. His stake increased in later years, as he invested a further £600 in the ‘doubling ordinance’ of 1646, designed to encourage further funds for the Irish war.36Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 71, 156, 179; A. and O. i. 9-10. By this time, Clement had joined other merchants in agreeing to send supplies and money to the beleaguered Protestant forces in Munster, and he had provided over £2,000 of his own money to that end.37CJ vi. 596b-7a; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 382. It is not known how far Clement matched his Irish investments with similar schemes in England during the first civil war, although he was certainly involved in finance at this time, lending £40 to Parliament through the Levant Company in 1643 and joining Captain Peter Whitty in donating £640 to the Plymouth garrison in March 1644.38SP105/159, f. 97; Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/168. He was also quick to take advantage of the sale of lands during the later 1640s, securing the lordship of Great Potterne in Wiltshire, formerly belonging to Salisbury diocese, in July 1648, for the substantial figure of £8,226.39Bodl. Rawl. B.239, p. 14; LPL, MS 951, no. 11, f. 48.

It is more difficult to gauge the extent of Clement’s involvement in the private money markets, which may have been extensive. One debt in particular – that of £800 to the Cornish royalist, Jonathan Rashleigh* – was probably one of two major factors which influenced Clement’s election as MP for Fowey in the spring of 1648: the other was the match-making of his cousin, Jonathan Sparke, who was Rashleigh’s brother-in-law.40Coate, Cornw. 245-6. When first ‘acquainted’ of the possibility by Sparke in April, Clement had apparently thought his election, and that of his merchant friend, Nicholas Gould*, to the two vacant seats would be a forgone conclusion, and he was dismayed when only Gould was returned. In a letter to Rashleigh of 30 May, Clement voiced his disappointment that ‘if it had not been for John Langdon I had been certainly chosen’, as Langdon, Rashleigh’s servant, had told his master that Clement ‘was glad I had it not, and that I never desired it’. Whether this mistake reflected Rashleigh’s own reluctance to give way to Clement is uncertain but plausible, not least because Rashleigh had suggested that he seek another Cornish seat. Clement remained adamant that Fowey was his first choice, however, as ‘I have no acquaintance with the sheriff, wherefore I must rely on you and such friends as you can procure to draw the sheriff to do me this favour’. He would then use his influence at Westminster, and ‘shall get my friends to move the House for issuing forth a writ to then sheriff for returning the other burgess for Fowey’ – a result that, he assured Rashleigh, would ‘infinitely oblige’ him.41Cornw. RO, RS/1/906; RS/1/65. A week later, on 6 June, Clement again wrote to Rashleigh

I am of opinion it lies very much if not altogether in you to bring in the other burgess for Fowey. Be pleased to have a further conference with the sheriff, and labour by your self and friends for his assurance that I may be returned, for I resolve to get my friends to move the House for issuing forth the writ and so soon as I have it I will send it [to] my Cousin Sparke to attend you and the sheriff.

Clement was leaving nothing to chance this time. He said he had made enquiries, had ascertained that Fowey really was under Rashleigh’s control, and by sending Sparke with the writ, would ensure there were no mishaps. At the end of the letter he reinforced his point with a thinly veiled reference to the money that he was owed, telling Rashleigh that ‘if you did give me a thousand pounds it would not be so acceptable as to procure unto me this my request’.42Cornw. RO, RS/1/907. Rashleigh had little choice but to bow to pressure, and on 5 July Clement was at last returned as MP for Fowey.43Cornw. RO, R/5497/2.

Despite his eagerness to be elected, there is no evidence that Clement attended the House of Commons during the late summer and autumn of 1648. Having survived Pride’s Purge, he subscribed the dissent against negotiating with the king on 20 December, and the next day he was named to his first committee, to view the treasuries and report back to Parliament, alongside another merchant-MP with west country connections, Thomas Boone.44PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, pp. 473-4; [W. Prynne], A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 21 (E.1013.22); C. Walker, Anarchia Anglicana (1649), 49 (E.570.4); CJ vi. 102a. In the early days of January 1649, as if suddenly noticed by the radicals for the first time, Clement was named to a torrent of important committees. On 1-3 January he was nominated to the Army Committee and the Committee for Compounding (alongside his allies Boone and Gould) and to the Committee for Advance of Money – and these appointments were confirmed on 6 January, when he was also added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers. Having been named on 3 January to a committee for establishing a high court of justice to try the king, he was named on 6 January to the trial commission.45CJ vi. 107b, 110a-b, 112b, 113b; A. and O. Within a week, Clement had joined most of the important executive committees and had been given a key role in the fate of the monarch. Other appointments followed in mid-January, as he was named to the committee on the sale of dean and chapter lands and a committee to receive a petition from London, and on 17 January he was made militia commissioner for the City of London.46CJ vi. 116a, 118a; A. and O. During January he attended all four sessions of the high court of justice for the king’s trial, although he was less frequent in his attendance of the meetings of the commissioners, and on 29th he signed the death warrant that brought the king to the scaffold the next day.47Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 728n, 742; Oxford DNB.

After the regicide, Clement became a prominent member of the commonwealth administration. His first recorded attendance at the Committee for Compounding was on 22 February 1649, and he attended regularly until April, reappearing in the committee books from February 1650.48SP23/5, ff. 69, 78v, 80, 84v, 86; SP23/6, f. 2; SP23/7, ff. 29, 70, 101. By November 1649 Clement had been appointed to the committee for regulating the excise, and his attendance record on this body was impressive. In the next thirty months he was recorded in the minute books as having attended 72 times, and in some months of intense activity (especially in the winter and spring of 1650-1) he was present at six or seven meetings every month.49Bodl. Rawl. 386, unfol. It is more difficult to gauge how assiduously Clement attended other executive committees, but there are signs that he took his administrative work seriously. For example, there are no surviving records from the committee for the sale of forfeited estates, to which Clement was appointed on 16 July 1651, but this was an area of especial interest to him, and which he pursued in Parliament, so it would be surprising if he neglected its deliberations.50A. and O.

Clement’s administrative role and his private interests were the main influences on his activity as an MP from the spring of 1649. He was clearly regarded as something of a financial expert. On 8 May 1649 he was named to the committee to amend the bill for receiving accounts, and on 23 November of the same year he was named to the committee on the payment of charges laid on the excise revenue.51CJ vi. 204b, 325a. On 9 March 1650 Clement was added to the Committee of Navy and Customs on an ad hoc basis (although he had been a member of this committee since at least mid-January 1649), and a week later he was named to the committee on the bill for regulating trade.52CJ vi. 379b, 383b; Add. 22546, f. 35. These appointments were no doubt linked to Clement’s position on executive committees, as well as his private involvement in seaborne trade, and this blending of public and private can also be seen in other appointments. On 1 February 1649 he was named to the committee for regulating the navy and customs officials, on 25 July he was appointed to the committee to encourage the plantation of the Elutherian Islands in the Bahamas, and on 3 August he was named to the committee on the bill for taking the accounts of the customs, prize goods and navy.53CJ vi. 127b, 270a, 274a. On 7 August he was included in the committee on the transport of pepper, spices and drugs from Britain, and ten days later he and his old commercial partner Maurice Thomson were ordered to take care of a petition from the masters of ships.54CJ vi. 275a, 281a. Later appointments follow a similar pattern. For example, on 25 April 1650 Clement was appointed to consider a bill prohibiting the transport of bullion abroad, and on 11 February 1651 he was named to the committee to consider supplies to the navy and army.55CJ vi. 403b, 533b. Closely connected with financial and commercial policy was the need to maintain good relations with the inhabitants of London and Westminster, and as a prominent merchant, Clement was the natural choice for a variety of committees, such as those to consider the complaints of the people of Westminster (26 Feb. 1649), to raise money for the Irish war (9 Apr. and 4 July 1649), to relieve the London poor (22 Aug. 1649), to receive a petition from the City (13 Apr. 1650) and to repair the roads around Tower Hill (23 Oct. 1650).56CJ vi. 151a, 183a, 250a, 284a, 398a, 486b.

Self-interest undoubtedly motivated much of Clement’s involvement in trade and shipping matters, and the same was true when it came to schemes to raise money from the sale of confiscated lands. On 9 March 1649 he was named to the committee for the sale of fee farm rents originally belonging to the crown, on 14 March he was given ‘especial care’ of this committee, along with Augustine Garland, and in early April Clement was appointed to the committee which considered the resultant bill.57CJ vi. 160b, 163b, 178b. On 6 April 1650 Clement was named to the committee on the bill for the sale of delinquents’ estates, and similar appointments followed: on 3 July 1650 he was appointed to the committee on legislation to extend the powers of the Committees of Compounding and Advance of Money over the ‘discovery’ of concealed estates; on 24 January 1651 he was named to the committee on a further bill for the sale of delinquents’ estates, and on 4 March he was added to the committee on the act of pardon and oblivion, to consider concealment and undervaluing.58CJ vi. 393b, 436b, 528a, 544b. Clement went on to benefit personally from such schemes, and on 4 July 1651 he was confirmed in possession of confiscated estates in Kent, where he had already become a notable figure in the local community.59CJ vi. 597b; A. and O. Ireland was another area where Clement’s public duties and private concerns came together, and he was involved in raising loans and contributions for the new expedition in the spring and summer of 1649, and in the following November he was named to the committee on the bill to promote learning and godliness in the island.60CJ vi. 183a, 249b, 250a, 327b. In July 1651 Clement used his position as MP to try to secure repayment of large sums that he and his consortium had provided for Munster in the 1640s. The committee for Irish affairs reported that Clement and his friends should receive the town of New Ross in full repayment, and Clement, ‘who is now present’, told the House of their commitment to Ireland and the insistence of their creditors.61CJ vi. 596b-7a. Despite encouraging noises, the matter does not seem to have been pursued by Parliament.

Clement’s busyness in the Commons came to an abrupt end in January 1652, when he was allowed leave to go into the country. This may have been in the knowledge that certain ‘informations’ about his private life had been revealed. On 19 February these allegations were referred to a committee, and the Cornish MP, Robert Bennett* was given care of the investigation.62CJ vii. 71b, 93a. A delay ensued, but on 11 May Bennett reported back to the House that Clement had been found guilty of ‘offensive and scandalous’ behaviour – committing adultery with his maidservant – and he was disabled from sitting as an MP.63CJ vii. 108b, 130a, 131a; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 222. There can be little doubt that Clement’s downfall was politically motivated, masterminded by the radical group in the Commons led by Thomas Harrison I and Oliver Cromwell, increasingly hostile to the lack of commitment of the more worldly Members of the Rump.64Worden, Rump Parl. 270, 284. Clement was an obvious target, as he was an important part of a loose coalition of merchants and moderates, with Nicholas Gould and Thomas Boone acting as his close allies at Westminster as well as Whitehall. All three served on key executive committees, such as that for regulating the excise; they probably collaborated in the Commons as well, as in the three years between February 1649 and February 1652 Clement was named to five committees with Gould and ten with Boone; and after Clement was thrown out of the Commons, both of his friends refused to play any substantial part in parliamentary affairs.65CJ vi. 134a-598b; Worden, Rump Parl. 31, 284.

After his disgrace, Clement again concentrated his activities on his commercial and business interests, and in November 1654 purchased property in Kent confiscated from the London alderman, Sir James Bunce.66CCC 2141. Although he had not been appointed to local commissions after the end of 1652, and had been removed as a justice of the peace for the county in December of that year, Clement remained intent on building up his Kentish connections, and later in the decade he married the daughter of a prominent landowner in the county, Sir John Sedley.67A. and O.; C231/6, p. 248; LMA, St Peter, Paul’s Wharf par. regs.; CTB i. 217. When the Irish adventure lands were finally allocated in 1653-4, Clement had amassed £5,050 in credit against the scheme, which translated into 8,332 Irish acres in King’s County and a further £50 in properties in the city of Waterford.68Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 156, 179, 201. This made Clement a major Irish landowner, and he even received the personal endorsement of the lord protector, who in April 1654 wrote to the Irish commissioners to recommend his agent, Francis Blomer, who was to have ‘all lawful favour and countenance’ in taking possession of his lands, as it had promised to plant 100 English families there.69Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 250; Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 417. There is no evidence that Clement’s much vaunted plantation took place, but he remained interested in expanding his Irish interests, not least because he still hoped to be awarded concealed lands in Leinster in full payment of his Munster dues. In May 1658 this was still outstanding, despite an order of the court of claims passed nearly five years before.70CSP Ire. p. 666.

In the tense weeks before the return of Charles II, Clement was among those regicides who sought to ‘withdraw themselves’, and he was hiding in ‘a mean house in Purple Lane near Gray’s Inn’ when he was discovered, thanks to his insistence on his accustomed luxuries – ‘better provisions being observed to be carried in there than was usual’. Even then, Clement nearly evaded capture, for the militia commissioners were unable (or unwilling) to identify him, and it was only as he left them that ‘a blind man who was crowded into the room, having some knowledge of Mr Clement, and guessing by his voice (which was somewhat remarkable) that it was he, desired he might be called in and asked whether his name were not Mr Gregory Clement’.71Ludlow, Voyce, 154. On his arrest, Clement was committed to the custody of Harbert Morley* on 19 May, and his capture was duly reported to the Commons by a gleeful Arthur Annesley* on 26th.72CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 575; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 272n. When he came before the judge on 10 October, Clement at first pleaded not guilty, but he later changed his plea, ‘yielding so far to the importunity of his relations’, who hoped that it was ‘the only way to save his life or his estate (which was very considerable)’. There was little doubt that the court would demand execution, however, and as the day approached Clement was said to have ‘expressed his trouble (to some friends in the prison)’ that he had been persuaded to admit his guilt. Of all the regicides, Clement was the most taciturn, being ‘very silent’ while in prison and on the scaffold, where he ‘spoke little’.73State Trials, v. 1004, 1283, Ludlow, Voyce, 223-4; T. Harrison, The Speeches and Prayers of Major General Harrison… (1660), 73 (E.1053.1). He was hanged, drawn and quartered, his head was set on London Bridge, and his quarters displayed on the gates of the City of London.74W. Winstanley, The Loyall Martyrology (1665), 130.

Despite his priapic reputation, it is doubtful that Clement had any children. Nothing is known of his first wife, Christian Barter, and his second, Frances Sedley, claimed that she had married ‘rashly’ and had been ‘deserted’ by Clement before the Restoration.75CTB i. 217. The claim that Major William Clement of the London militia was his son seems doubtful, as are reports that another son fled to America.76M. Noble, Lives of the English Regicides (1798), i. 45. In any case, his lands were confiscated at his death, and were duly parcelled out by the Stuart government. Sir James Bunce recovered his lands in Kent, and Mary Musgrave, the heiress of Sir Andrew Coggan, was regranted the Greenwich estate, while Great Potterne was soon returned to the bishop of Salisbury.77CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 316, 337-8, 608; LJ xi. 103b; CTB i. 87, 96. Other English lands were granted to courtiers, and the lands in Ireland went to Sir Robert Preston.78CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 608; 1661-2, pp. 152, 155; Ire. under the Commonwealth ii. 417n. Clement was one of the more paradoxical of Rump MPs, and later commentators have tended to veer between two extremes, rather than attempt to reconcile the his contradictions and inconsistencies. Thus Clement’s character was celebrated by Ludlowe, who was perhaps justified in stating that as an MP, he ‘did there discharge the trust reposed in him with much sincerity, closing always with that party who were most hearty to the interest of the commonwealth’.79Ludlow, Voyce, 245. On the other hand, there may be some truth in what the royalist, William Winstanley, wrote in 1665.

Gregory Clement, a lustful goat, who being a moneyed merchant purchased himself a place in Parliament, that he might the more freely, and with the greater authority, exercise his notorious debaucheries, which were so vulgarly known that his fellow villains could not but upon pretence of honesty discard him their company. He contributed largely to the destruction of his sovereign; for he who fears not to commit adultery will not stick out to do murder.80Winstanley, The Loyall Martyrology, 129-30.