Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/136

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built in the Dutch style and probably by Dutch workmen. After a few days' visit to Gresham in London, Clough returned with his bride to Antwerp in May to find the city at the height of a religious crisis. It is probable that he soon quitted Antwerp to travel for nearly three months in Spain. He returned, however, to Flanders, where he continued to reside throughout 1567 and 1568, making occasional visits to Wales. In January 1569 he reported the arrest of the English merchants at Antwerp. He himself managed to effect his escape, only to be arrested a few weeks later at Dieppe with letters for the English government in his possession. The intervention of Cecil soon procured his release, and he was allowed to return home unmolested. Arrived in London he found the fleet of the merchant-adventurers on the eve of its departure for Hamburg, it having been at last resolved to transfer the seat of commerce from Antwerp to that city. There is little doubt that Clough on this occasion went over to Hamburg in the honourable capacity of deputy of the Fellowship of the Merchant-Adventurers (April 1569). His connection with Gresham was now severed, their correspondence had ceased, and the remaining glimpses of Clough are few and of little interest. He died of a lingering illness at Hamburg when in the prime of life, some time between 11 March and 19 July 1570. He could have scarcely passed his fortieth year at the time of his death, which was mourned by all Welsh bards of note, among others by John Tudor, Simwnt Fychan, and William Cynwal. He was buried at Hamburg, but, in compliance with his request, his heart, and some add his right hand, were brought to England in a silver urn and deposited in the church of Whitchurch, the parish church of Denbigh. Clough began to write his will with ' his own hand ' at Antwerp on 20 Sept. 1568, when, as he says, he was ' in ryghte good healthe and mery.' But on 26 Feb. 1569-70 he drew up a document, which he made his wife and two intimate friends sign, bequeathing all his movable goods to Gresham, a fact which adds weight to Fuller's assertion 'that it was agreed betwixt him [Clough] and Sir Thomas Gresham that the survivor should be chief heir to both.' Gresham, however, renounced the document just cited when the earlier will was proved, on 9 Nov. 1570 (Reg. in P. C. C. 23 and 37, Lyon). By Katharine of Berain, Clough had two daughters, Anne, born in 1568, and Mary, born in 1569. Bachegraig was inherited by his eldest daughter, who married Roger Salusbury, younger son of Sir John Salusbury, knt., of Lleweni, and it continued in this family until it ended in an heiress, Mrs. Thrale, afterwards Piozzi, herself a Salusbury. A curious house in Denbigh, also built by Clough, together with Maenan Abbey in Carnarvonshire, came by marriage to the husband of his younger daughter, William Wynn of Melai, Denbighshire, and is now possessed by their descendant, Lord Newborough. Plas Clough fell to a natural and ' forraine borne ' son, Richard, and has continued up to the present day in the possession of his descendants. He married Mary, daughter of John Drihurst of Denbigh. Clough meditated many plans for the benefit of his native land; among others he intended to make the Clwyd navigable as far as Ruddlan, introduce commerce into the heart of the country, and convert the sides of the court of his house, Bachegraig, into magazines for dispensing his imports. To Denbigh, his birthplace, he left the one hundred pounds which he had lent in his lifetime to the town towards the founding of a free school, but no result came of this bequest. His fortune was in fact so large that 'Eve a aeth yn Glough' (he is become a Clough) passed into a proverb on the attainment of wealth by any person. During his long residence at Antwerp he formed an acquaintance with Ortelius, and ultimately became the medium of communication between the latter and his fellow-townsman Humphrey Llwyd, the celebrated Welsh historian and antiquary (see letter from Llwyd, dated 5 April 1568, at the end of Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, where he mentions Clough with affection, and styles him 'vir integerrimus'). A portrait of its founder still hangs at Plâs Clough, apparently the work of some Flemish artist, of which a poor engraving is given at page 446 of the third edition of Pennant's ' Account of London.'

Mrs. Clough, when her husband's death had left her for a second time a widow, became the wife of Morris Wynn of Gwydyr, Carnarvonshire, after whose decease she took for a fourth and last husband Edward Thelwall of Plâs y Ward, Denbighshire. The rapidity with which this lady supplied the place of her husbands as she lost them forms the subject of an amusing anecdote in Pennant's 'Tour in Wales,' ed. 1784, ii. 29-30. She died on 27 Aug. 1591, and was buried on 1 Sept. at Llanyfydd, Denbighshire.

[Burgon's Life and Times of Sir T. Gresham; Harl. MS. 1971, f. 95; Burke's Landed Gentry, 6th ed. i. 328; Fuller's Worthies, Flintshire (ed. 1662), pp. 39-40; Williams's Biog. Dict. of Eminent Welshmen, pp. 76-8; Lipscomb's Buckinghamshire, iii. 273; Johnson's Diary of a Journey into North Wales (1816), p. 51; Pennant's Tour