Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/97

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Clinton
91
Clinton

Lawrence, with heads after the models of E. H. Baily and S. Joseph, the sculptors; a medal of Cardinal Wiseman, dated 1836, with reverse, sacred emblems (a specimen, presented by Clint, is in the British Museum); and one of the prize medals for Winchester College, obverse, head of William IV; reverse, tomb of William of Wykeham. His medals are signed Clint or S. Clint.

[Hawkins's Medallic Illustr. of Brit. Hist. ed. Franks and Grueber, i. 11, No. 5, ii. 723; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists of Eng. School; Brit. Mus. Medal Collection.]

W. W.


CLINTON, CHARLES (1690–1773), colonel, American colonist, was born in co. Longford, Ireland, in 1690, his grandfather, on officer of Charles I's army, having settled in Ireland. In May 1729, Charles Clinton, who was an elder and influential member of a presbyterian congregation, chartered a ship to convey a party of relatives and friends to Philadelphia, but, according to American biographers, the captain, either with a view of acquiring their belongings or to deter further emigration, conceived a plan of starving his passengers to death, and only landed them at Cape Cod after accepting a heavy ransom. Clinton's journal, as printed in 'Magazine of American History,' i. (ii.) 620-2, makes no mention of this, but shows that although the ship sailed in May, the American continent was not sighted until 9 Oct. 1729, and that a terrible mortality occurred on board, the deaths including a son and daughter of Clinton. In the spring of 1731 Clinton removed to Ulster county, New York, where he purchased a tract of land about eight miles from the Hudson, amidst the rich pasture lands of what is now Orange County, N.Y. There he followed the occupation of a farmer and land-surveyor, and became a justice of the peace, county judge, and colonel of militia. On 24 March 1758 he was appointed lieutenant-colonel of De Lancy's Provincials and served in the expedition to Fort Frontenac under Bradstreet. He died in 1773, on the eve of the rupture with the mother-country, charging his sons with his latest breath 'to stand by the liberties of their country' (Bancroft, iv. 272). Of his four surviving sons, Alexander was a physician; Charles, a surgeon of the provincial troops which took part in the conquest of the Havannah in 1762; James, afterwards a major-general in the United States army, was father of De Witt Clinton, the originator of the Erie Canal; and the youngest, George, born in 1739, became a well-known soldier and statesman, and was vice-president of the United States from 1804 to his death in 1813.

[Drake's American Biography; Enc. Americana, 11; American Mag. of History, i. (ii.) 620-2; Bancroft's Hist. of America, vol. iv. Details of Fort Frontenac, on Lake Ontario, and of its capture by Bradstreet, will be found in F. Parkman's Wolfe and Montcalm (London, 1884).]

H. M. C.


CLINTON, CHARLES JOHN FYNES (1799–1872), classical scholar, born 16 April 1799, was the third son of the Rev. Charles Fynes Clinton, LL.D., prebendary of Westminster, being thus a brother of Henry Fynes Clinton, the chronologist [q. v.] He was educated at Westminster, and at Oriel College, Oxford, graduating B.A. in 1821. Having held some parochial charges, he was appointed in 1828 to the rectory of Cromwell, Nottinghamshire. He was also vicar of Orston in the same county. In 1842 he published 'Twenty-one plain Doctrinal and Practical Sermons,' London, 1842, 12mo; and in 1853 edited and completed for publication 'An Epitome of the Civil and Literary Chronology of Rome and Constantinople,' which had been left unfinished by his brother, the chronologist. In 1864 he edited and published the 'Literary Remains' (London, 1864, 12mo) of his brother. He died in 1872.

[Men of the Time, 1866, p. 183.]

W. W.


CLINTON, EDWARD FIENNES de, ninth Lord Clinton and Saye, Earl of Lincoln (1512–1585), lord high admiral, son of Thomas, eighth lord Clinton, who died of the sweating sickness in 1517, was born in 1512, and, being left a royal ward, married, in or about 1530, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Blount, and widow of Gilbert, lord Talboys, but better known in history as the mistress of Henry VIII and the mother of his illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy, duke of Richmond. Mr. Froude calls her 'an accomplished and most interesting person' (Hist. of England, cabinet ed. i. 389 n), but old enough to be her boy-husband's mother. It is fair to presume that this marriage confirmed young Clinton in the king's favour, and we find him in 1532 in attendance on the king at Boulogne and Calais; in 1536 he was summoned by writ to parliament; in 1539 he was one of the deputation to receive Anne of Cleves, and in May 1540 was one of the challengers in the grand tournament held at Westminster. He was shortly afterwards invited by Lord Little, then lord high admiral (and afterwards Duke of Northumberland), to take service afloat, and served under his immediate command in the expedition to Scotland in 1644, and in the storming of Edinburgh (Froude, iv. 35), on which occasion he was knighted by the Earl of Hertford (afterwards