CLIVE, Robert, Lord, son of Richard Clive, Esq. of Styche, near Drayton in Salop, was born in 1725. Towards the close of the war in 1741, he was sent as a writer, in the East India service to Madras; but being fonder of the camp than of the counting-house, he soon availed himself of an opportunity to exchange his pen for a pair of colours. He first distinguished himself at the siege of Pondicherry in 1748; at the taking of Devi Cotta in Tanjore, he acted under Major Laurence, who wrote of his military talents in. the highest terms; he commanded a small party at the taking of Arcot, and afterwards defended that place against the French; and he performed many other exploits, which, considering the remoteness of the scene of action, it would require a long detail to render sufficiently intelligible. He was, however, looked upon and acknowledged as the man who first stimulated his countrymen to spirited action, and raised their reputation in the East; so that when he returned to England in 1753, he was presented by the court of directors with a rich sword set with diamonds, as an acknowledgment of past, and an incitement to future services. Captain Clive returned to India in 1755, as governor of Fort St David, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the king’s service. As commander of the Company’s troops, he, in conjunction with Admiral Watson, reduced Angria the pirate, and became master of Geria, his capital, with all his accumulated treasure. On the loss of Calcutta, and the well-known barbarity of Surajah Dowlah, they sailed to Bengal, where they took Fort William, in January 1757; and Colonel Clive having defeated the soubah’s army soon afterwards, this circumstance accelerated the conclusion of a peace. Surajah Dowlah’s perfidy, however, ere long produced fresh hostilities, which ended in his ruin; for he was totally defeated by Colonel Clive at the famous battle of Plassy. The next day the conqueror entered Muxadabad in triumph, and placed Jaffier Ally Cawn, one>ρf the principal generals, on the throne: the deposed soubah was soon afterwards taken, and privately put to death by Jaffier’s son. Admiral Watson died at Calcutta, but Colonel Clive commanded in Bengal the two succeeding years. He was honoured by the Mogul with the dignity of an omrah of the empire, and rewarded by the new soubah with a grant of lands, or jaghire, producing L.27,000 a year. In 1760 he returned to England, where he received the unanimous thanks of the Company, was elected member of parliament for Shrewsbury, and raised to an Irish peerage by the style and title of Lord Clive, Baron of Plassy. In 1764, fresh disturbances having taken place in Bengal, Lord Clive was esteemed the only man qualified to settle them, and accordingly was again appointed to that presidency, after receiving the order of the Bath, and with the rank of major-general. Lord Clive, when he arrived in India, exceeded the most sanguine expectations which had been formed, by restoring tranquillity to the province without striking a blow; and he impressed the minds of the natives with the highest ideas of the British power. He returned home in 1767; and in 1772, when a parliamentary inquiry into the conduct of the East India Company was agitated, and formidable charges were pointed against him, he entered into an able justification of himself in a masterly speech, which he delivered in the House of Commons. He died suddenly towards the close of the year 1774.