scribed to the charter of incorporation in 1765. He exhibited with that society in 1762, 1764, 1765, 1767, the works contributed being portraits, including one of himself. In 1777 he painted and presented to the Merchant Taylors' Company, of which he was a member of the court of assistants, a large picture, representing Henry VII granting the charter to the master, Richard Smith, and wardens of the company in 1503. For this pretentious and ill-executed picture, which still hangs in the court room of the company, Clarkson was voted the thanks of the company, and presented with a piece of plate. In 1788 he was one of the committee appointed to select a painter for the portrait of George Bristow, clerk to the company, Opie being chosen in preference to Sir Joshua Reynolds. The house in which Clarkson lived in Islington stood until October 1886; it contained some figures painted in chiaroscuro, representing ‘Design, Sculpture, and Architecture.’ He died 26 Sept. 1795, and was buried 2 Dec. at St. Mary's, Islington.
[Redgrave's Dict. of English Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1768–1880; Nelson's Hist. of St. Mary, Islington; Lewis's Hist. of Islington; Pye's Patronage of British Art; Faithfull's Account of the Paintings belonging to the Merchant Taylors' Company; Catalogues of the Incorporated Society of Artists; information from the churchwardens of St. Mary, Islington.]
CLARKSON, THOMAS (1760–1846), anti-slavery agitator, was the son of the Rev. John Clarkson, head-master from 1749 to 1766 of the free grammar school at Wisbeach, where he was born on 28 March 1760. At the age of fifteen he was admitted to St. Paul's School on 4 Oct. 1775, where he obtained one of the Pauline exhibitions in 1780, and, having gained the Gower exhibition in a previous year, went up to St. John's College, Cambridge, as a sizar. In 1783 he graduated B.A., having obtained the first place among the junior optimes in the mathematical tripos of that year. In 1784 and 1785 he won the members' prizes for Latin essays open to middle and senior bachelors respectively. The subject for the essay of 1785 was the question ‘anne liceat invitos in servitutem dare?’ and the contest for this prize determined the whole course of Clarkson's life. The study of the subject absorbed him day and night. The essay was read in the senate house in June 1785, and obtained much applause. The subject still continuing to engross his thoughts, he determined to translate his essay, and thus draw the attention of influential people to the horrors of the slave trade. Cadell the publisher, to whom he first offered the manuscript, did not give him much encouragement. On leaving the shop he met Joseph Hancock of Wisbeach, a quaker, and an old family friend, who thereupon introduced him to James Phillips, a bookseller in George Yard, Lombard Street, by whom the essay was published in June 1786. Through this introduction to Phillips, Clarkson came to know William Dillwyn, James Ramsay, Joseph Woods, Granville Sharp, and others who had already been labouring in the same cause. Soon after this he made the acquaintance of William Wilberforce, to whose advocacy in parliament its final success was greatly due. On 22 May 1787 a committee was formed for the suppression of the slave trade, consisting of Granville Sharp, William Dillwyn, Samuel Hoare, George Harrison, John Lloyd, Joseph Woods, Thomas Clarkson, Richard Phillips, John Barton, Joseph Hooper, James Phillips, and Philip Sansom, all of whom, it should be noticed, were quakers, with the exception of Sharp, Sansom, and Clarkson.
Shortly afterwards Clarkson went to Bristol, Liverpool, and other places for the double purpose of collecting further information with regard to the slave trade and of holding meetings in favour of its suppression. At Manchester he delivered one of the few sermons he ever preached; for though he had been ordained a deacon, he had abandoned all idea of exercising his profession. Through the personal exertions of Clarkson and his fellow-workers, and by the distribution of a number of anti-slavery tracts, the diabolical nature of the trade became generally known throughout the country. On 11 Feb. 1788 a committee of the privy council was ordered to inquire into ‘the present state of the African trade.’ On 9 May the abolition of the slave trade was first practically discussed in parliament. The subject was introduced by Pitt, in the absence of Wilberforce through illness. As a step towards curbing the cruelties of the trade, Sir William Dolben introduced a bill providing that the number of slaves brought in the ships should be in proportion to their tonnage. The mortality of the negroes during the voyage averaged, under the most favourable circumstances, 45 per cent., and in many cases over 80 per cent. After the parties interested in the traffic had been heard by counsel at the bar of both houses, the bill, in spite of violent opposition, passed into law.
The privy council report having been presented, Wilberforce brought the question before the House of Commons on 12 May 1789. Meanwhile Clarkson's labours had never slackened, and in August of this year
