Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/425

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Clarke
417
Clarke

through the number of the prisoners and the crowd present at Captain Clark’s trial for killing Captain Innes in a duel, at the celebrated ‘black sessions’ at the Old Bailey [see under Abney, Sir Thomas]. Clarke was buried at Godmanchester. He married, first, Anne, daughter of Dr. Thomas Greene, bishop of Ely, by whom he had a son Thomas, general and lieutenant-governor of Quebec in 1792; and secondly, Jane, daughter of Major Mullins of Winchester, by whom he had four sons [see Clarke, Sir Alured] and two daughters. His second wife survived him.

[Foss's Lives of the Judges; Gent. Mag. xx. 233, 236, and lxii. 1221; London Mag. May 1750.]

J. A. H.


CLARKE, CHARLES (d. 1767), antiquary, describes himself in his literary advertisements as ‘late of Baliol College, Oxford,’ but his name does not appear in the college admission book, nor is there evidence of his having been matriculated. His attainments as an antiquary were slender indeed, to judge from the one extant specimen entitled ‘Some conjectures relative to a very ancient piece of money lately found at Eltham in Kent endeavouring to restore it to the place it merits in the Cimeliarch of English coins, and to prove it a coin of Rich the First King of England of that name. To which are added some remarks on a dissertation [by Dr. John Kennedy] . . . on Oriuna, the supposed wife of Carausius, and on the Roman coins therein mentioned,’ 4to, London, 1751. A reply to the first part was published the following year by the Rev. George North F.S.A. who in his ‘Remarks on “Some Conjectures,’ ” made short work of Clarke’s idle imaginings. The piece, he conclusively showed, was an ordinary token of the kind known among numismatists as ‘Penyard pence.’ Clarke, greatly angered, sought to take revenge in an attempted refutation of North’s ‘Epistolary Dissertation on some supposed Golden coins,’ which he repeatedly advertised but had the good sense not to publish. It is rather surprising to find that he was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries on 13 Feb. 1752. On the second leaf of his unlucky ‘Conjectures’ he had announced the speedy publication of what was to have been his chief performance, entitled ‘The Hebrew Samaritan, Greek, and Roman Medalist.’ The work never appeared, possibly from the fact that the author had become convinced of the danger of trifling with numismatics. He died at Glemsford, Suffolk, in April 1767, and was buried there on the 20th of the same month (Glemsford Burial Register,). In Nichols’s ‘Literary Anecdotes’ (v. 448) Clarke is described as ‘Rev.;’ the error probably arose from a misprint. in the list of the Society of Antiquaries for 1753.

[Manuscript note in a copy of Clarke's Conjectures in the British Museum; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. v. 447–54, 701, 702, ix. 615; Monthly Review, vi. 69; Smith's Bibl. Cantiana, p. 194.]

G. G.


CLARKE, CHARLES (d. 1840), antiquary, was appointed a clerk in the ordnance office at Chatham in 1783. Seven years later he was transferred to Gravesend, and in 1800 to Guernsey, where he remained until his retirement from the service in 1807 (Royal Kalendar). He died on 30 May 1840 in his eightieth year, and was buried in Old St. Pancras churchyard, London (inscription in Cansick's Epitaphs of St. Pancras, i. 128). Clarke was devoted to archæology, a branch of antiquities which he was well qualified to illustrate both by his pencil and pen. His youthful essays in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ under the signatures of ‘Indagator’ and ‘Indagator Roffensis,’ obtained for him the friendship and the correspondence of the Rev. Samuel Denne, the Kentish antiquary (Nichols, Illustr. of Lit. vi. 610–57). In 1790 Denne communicated to the Society of Antiquaries, as an appendix to his own paper on ‘Stone Seats in the Chancels of Churches,’ some observations by Clarke on the same subject (Archæologia, x. 316–21). Three years afterwards Clarke returned the compliment by addressing to Denne his ‘Observations on Episcopal Chairs and Stone Seats; as also on Piscinas and other appendages to Altars still remaining in Chancels; with a Description of Chalk Church, in the Diocese of Rochester,’ which paper, with four plates from drawings by the author, was printed in ‘Archæologia,’ xi. 317–74. Clarke was elected F.S.A. on 7 April 1796. Other papers from his pen appeared in Britton's ‘Architectural Antiquities’ (vols. i. and iv.). He also revised and prefaced a work left by his near relative, William Oram, entitled ‘Precepts and Observations on the Art of Colouring in Landscape Painting,’ 4to, London, 1810. His other works are: 1. ‘Observations on the intended Tunnel beneath the river Thames, shewing the many defects in the present state of that projection,’ 4to, Gravesend, 1799. The project was that of Ralph Dodd, a well-known engineer, for a subway from Gravesend to Tilbury. Clarke had previously written on the subject in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ vol. lxviii. pt. ii. pp. 565–7. 2. ‘Some Account of the Rise and Progress of Early English Architecture, with descriptional Remarks on the Churches of the Metropolis,’