CLIVE, Edward Bolton (1765-1845), of Whitfield, Herefordshire

A veteran Reformer who possessed a ‘plain, straightforward manner’, Clive lent silent support to the Whig leadership after 1832.1Hereford Times, 19 June 1841. He hailed from a junior branch of the Clives of Powis Castle, but ‘differ[ed] in politics’ from his high Tory kinsmen, as a parliamentary guide noted.2The assembled Commons (1837), 44. He inherited estates in Herefordshire, Louth and Tipperary from his father, a banker and MP, in 1779 and acquired property around Birmingham and in Mayo through his marriage in 1790, following which he retired from the army.3HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 675. Sympathetic to the French Revolution and of ‘ultra-liberal principles’, he joined Earl Grey’s Society of the Friends of the People 1793.4Ibid. His Francophilia was such that he moved to Paris in 1802, and was ‘among the few gentlemen who returned to England with an undiminished bias in favour of the democratical party’.5Gent. Mag. (1845), ii. 313-14. From 1815 he became a prominent leader of Whiggery in Herefordshire, and was elected as a Foxite for Hereford city in 1826.6HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 675-7. Clive topped the poll at every election after 1832.

At the 1832 general election, Clive emphasised his support for the abolition of slavery and the Grey ministry’s reduction of taxes by £2.8 million. He hailed the Reform Act as a vindication of his long-held views, noting that he was among the signatories of Grey’s 1792 petition for reform.7Hereford Times, 15 Dec. 1832. He later attributed the nation’s ills to the ‘long and iniquitious reign of George III’ when the government was dominated by borough-mongers.8Hereford Times, 22 Dec. 1832. Styled a Reformer, Clive was a reliable supporter of Grey’s ministry, voting against Hume’s resolutions for economy, the Attwood brothers’ motions on currency reform and Ingilby’s proposal to reduce malt duty in the 1833 session. He also toed the government line in supporting Stanley’s amendment to strike out the appropriation clause of the Irish church temporalities bill, 21 June 1833.

With parliamentary reform passed, Clive had little time for further, more radical reforms such as the ballot. Despite the popularity of that measure among his local supporters, Clive preferred to draw attention to his long record of support for parliamentary reform at the 1835 general election.9Hereford Journal, 7 Jan. 1835. The opposition of the Tory corporation and cathedral did, however, reinforce his commitment to municipal and church reform in the coming session.10Hereford Times, 10 Jan. 1835. Clive unsurprisingly sided with the Whig leadership in the key party divisions on the speakership, the address and Russell’s Irish church motion, 19, 26 Feb., 2 Apr. 1835. He made a rare spoken intervention on 10 February 1837, deputising for his absent Conservative kinsman Viscount Clive, on the matter of a petition from the latter’s constituency of Ludlow.

At the 1837 general election Clive conceded that he would vote for the ballot if a majority of his constituents wished it.11Hereford Times, 22 July 1837. The defeat of his Reform colleague also made him more favourable to the ballot.12Hereford Times, 5 Aug. 1837. In response to criticism that the government had not done enough to relieve agriculture, Clive highlighted the commutation of tithes and the 1834 revision of the poor law, which he had strongly supported, as examples of measures that had reduced the burden on farmers.13Hereford Journal, 26 July 1837.

Clive honoured his hustings speech by dividing in favour of the ballot, 15 Feb. 1838. He continued to support Melbourne’s ministry in all key party votes, including Irish church reform, and the government’s education scheme, 24 June 1839. He opposed the motions of no confidence in the government, 31 Jan. 1840, 4 June 1841. Having cast votes in favour of Villiers’s 1839 and 1840 motions for a committee of the whole House on the corn laws, Clive was open to the alteration of protective duties. At the 1841 general election, he recommended the fixed duty proposed by the government, saying that it would ‘improve trade and give a steady and remunerating price to the agriculturist’.14Hereford Times, 29 May 1841.

Clive opposed Peel’s revised sliding scale on corn and reintroduction of income tax in 1842. His endorsement of the abolition of church rates, 16 June 1842, was a rare example of him voting in advance of the Whig leadership. His support for the new poor law and the poor law commission remained undeviating. Along with most of the Liberal parliamentary party he backed William Miles’s amendment to lower the duty on colonial sugar, 14, 17 June 1844, in opposition to Peel. His division in favour of Russell’s motion to equalise foreign and colonial sugar duties, 26 Feb. 1845, was his last major vote, as age and increasing ill health meant he was absent from the divisions on the Maynooth college bill introduced later in the session.

On his death in April 1845, the Conservative Hereford Journal, which had often been a critic of Clive’s political opinions, observed that ‘his decisions were inflexibly impartial and upright’. The Liberal Hereford Times declared that he ‘was no ordinary man. He possessed a manly and vigorous intellect, and was distinguished for his stern and inflexible integrity’.15Hereford Times, 2 Aug. 1845. Clive was replaced as MP for Hereford by his old friend the former Herefordshire MP Sir Robert Price, who in turn gave way to Clive’s third son George Clive, Liberal MP for Hereford, 1857-69, 1874-80. Clive’s Herefordshire seat Whitfield, and the bulk of his Warwickshire and Irish estates passed to his eldest surviving son Rev. Archer Clive (1801-73).16HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 678. George received Perrystone, Herefordshire, and £20,000.17Ibid.; PROB 11/2022/628.