In the times following the sudden dying, aged 49, of Robert Clive – ‘Clive of India’ – on 22 November 1774, rumours as to the way it had occurred unfold quick. Regardless of having beforehand obtained data on the contrary, the author Horace Walpole reported to the diplomat Sir Horace Mann that the main principle was that Clive had lower his personal throat. Woman Mary Coke recorded in her journal that Clive had ‘killed himself’. Such tales weren’t unusual in instances of high-profile society deaths and shortly references to Clive having died on this method started to floor in in style literature. In 1777 a scurrilous biography by Charles Carraccioli said dramatically that Clive ‘was discovered weltering in his blood’ with a razor close by. In Could 1778 City and Nation Journal imagined a dialog within the afterlife between Clive and Charles Yorke. Yorke was lord chancellor when he died out of the blue in 1770 and his dying was additionally described as a suicide by Walpole. Lengthy considered such, it’s now doubted.
It appears possible that the deaths of each males prompted the unfold of hearsay and gossip which used suicide, then socially unacceptable, as a solution to malign them.
Clive’s public profile – underpinned by the victory at Plassey in 1757, which established the East India Firm’s management of Bengal, and by his rich life-style and political affect – meant that he inevitably attracted hypothesis designed to discredit and scandalise him. In Could 1773 parliamentary enquiries into his conduct in India and his acquisition of an infinite fortune had culminated in a Home of Commons debate and, although he had emerged from it together with his wealth intact, the general public mistrust of returned ‘East Indians’ – or nabobs – like Clive, was widespread. In Clive’s case, suicide supplied a possibility to counsel guilt: that he had not escaped the enquiries unscathed and had certainly paid a value for the results of actions he may now not bear to reside with.
The thought of suicide grew to become engrained in subsequent biographies of Clive, starting with the work began, however not completed, by Sir John Malcolm and revealed in 1836, which urged {that a} mixture of ache and the impact of drugs ‘led to the melancholy occasion which ensued’. This continued with the lives revealed by G.R. Gleig (1848), who wrote ‘The world is aware of that he dedicated suicide’, G.B. Malleson (1882), Sir George Forrest (1918), A.M. Davies (1939) and Mark Bence-Jones (1974). The quick biography by George Dunbar in 1936 is an exception. Percival Spear, writing in History Today in 1954, concluded that Clive ‘died by his personal hand’. Different current works proceed to perpetuate this perception. In addition to supporting an inaccurate, and certainly dramatic, image of the final part of Clive’s life these narratives have been fuelled by doubtful Nineteenth-century accounts and likely influenced by a narrative, recounted in Malcolm’s biography, that Clive had tried suicide as a younger man by putting a pistol to his head and pulling the set off twice.
That Clive’s life was dogged by unwell well being is well-known. Situations of despair, nervous dysfunction and bodily ache have been evident in 1750 throughout his time in Madras and in 1766 throughout his second governorship of Bengal. He used opium for reduction. His later life in England noticed recurrences of an belly criticism and nervous exhaustion which required journeys to Tub and Europe. In late 1773 he left for Italy and upon his return in Could 1774 he seems to have been each mentally and bodily effectively; he spent the summer season and autumn in Shropshire, entertaining home friends. In October he was re-elected as an MP for Shrewsbury. In early November, nonetheless, he caught a foul chilly which necessitated a go to to Tub. There was no enchancment and on the twentieth he was again at dwelling in London at his Berkeley Sq. townhouse. What adopted throughout the subsequent two days is described in a letter written by Maria Ducarel, a household pal, to Philip Francis, a member of the Supreme Council in Bengal, a couple of month later. In keeping with Ducarel, Clive was very unwell and his abdomen precipitated him a lot discomfort. In opposition to the recommendation of John Fothergill, a widely known doctor, Clive took doses of opium and different medicines:
In brief, he had all of the restlessness of a dying man, and grew worse and worse until the following day at midday, when he was taken with an epileptic match … and expired instantly.
Newspaper studies assist Ducarel’s account that Clive suffered a sudden deadly medical emergency, in all probability triggered by extreme use of drugs. Additional proof of that is present in a letter from Robert Pardoe, an lawyer at Lincoln’s Inn, to a pal in Clive’s dwelling county of Shropshire. Fearful that false rumours would unfold, Pardoe was adamant that Clive had died throughout a seizure and that he had skilled related situations earlier than.
Had Clive died by suicide an inquest would have been required: there’s nonetheless no hint of any such prevalence among the many archives of the Westminster coroner. As an alternative there’s each indication that occasions following Clive’s dying adopted regular observe. The executors met the following day to learn the need and agree funeral preparations. The physique was faraway from Berkeley Sq. on 24 November and brought to Shropshire. The plans supplied for a hearse and coaches to proceed from Clive’s ancestral dwelling, Styche Corridor, to the church at Moreton Say, with tenants in attendance, for the burial there at 12 midday on 30 November 1774. Armorial shields, drapes and streamers have been positioned in native church buildings. This proof contradicts claims in biographies, designed to assist the suicide principle, that Clive’s funeral was a rushed, secretive affair.
What appears clear is {that a} fantasy of suicide grew up so strongly round Clive that it led, in impact, to a conspiracy principle based mostly round the concept that an act of felo de se had been lined up. It has grow to be one in every of many defining parts in how Clive continues to be remembered; authors as current as Maya Jasanoff (2005) and William Dalrymple (2019) have repeated it.
David Prior accomplished a College of Wales M.Phil. dissertation on Robert Clive and presently works on the Parliamentary Archives.
