Lord Sidmouth’s under-secretary, the anti-Catholic Henry Clive, was of the Whitfield branch of the family, a barrister by profession and the absentee landlord of a 4,869-acre estate in county Tipperary worth £1,200 a year. In 1820 he secured his second return for Montgomery on the interest of his distant kinsman the 1st earl of Powis, who until 1818 had seated him for Ludlow.
In 1820 Clive assisted in the passage of Powis’s heir Lord Clive’s* estate bill, under which he became a trustee. As hitherto he voted with Powis’s Members against Catholic relief, 28 Feb. 1821, 20 Apr. 1822, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May 1825, and against parliamentary reform, 9 May 1821, 23 Apr. 1826, and abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 23 May 1821. He was given little constituency business, but he presented loyal addresses from Montgomeryshire, Shropshire and elsewhere to the king at his accession and during the furore generated by Queen Caroline’s prosecution, and may have acted for Powis Castle in committees on the 1820 Ludlow, [Welsh] Pool and Oswestry roads bills. As his name was similar to and occasionally confused with that of Powis’s younger son Robert Henry Clive, who had succeeded him as Member for Ludlow, the last is uncertain.
Clive ... showed me with great triumph an extract from the proceedings of the privy council in Elizabeth’s time in which a certain number of foreigners settled at Colchester solicited and obtained permission to settle at Halstead on certain conditions. He was fool enough to think this a good precedent, and Lord Sidmouth may not be aware that it proved too much.
Add. 51653, Mackintosh to Holland, Mon. [July 1820].
When called on to defend government’s handling of the case of Robert Franklin, charged with writing and issuing seditious placards concerning the queen, 17 Oct., he said that Sidmouth had thought it ‘inconsistent with official practice’ to comply with applications for Franklin’s detention, interfere with the police magistrates, or offer rewards for his apprehension. Clive and his wife were at Wynnstay to celebrate the birthday of Powis’s son-in-law, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn*, 26 Oct. 1820, and when they stayed on for the christening of Williams Wynn’s heir, his brother Charles Williams Wynn* commented:
It sounded somewhat odd to me to hear ... that he expects Mr. Under-Secretary Clive this evening; the times being so tranquil, and the home office so devoid of business, that though Lord Sidmouth be obliged to attend the ... Lords all day, yet his subordinate may without public inconvenience be spared for a fortnight.
Coedymaen mss 592.
Following the abandonment of the bill of pains and penalties, Clive brought up copies of collects and prayers from which the queen’s name had been omitted, 26 Jan., divided against the opposition censure motion, 6 Feb., and argued against printing the radical Nottingham petition for the impeachment of ministers, 20 Feb. 1821. Asked that day to explain why a prisoner detained after Peterloo had been refused permission to visit his dying wife, he was unable to do so.
He presented a strong case against charges of home office neglect in the Bowditches’ case, 15 Feb., and refuted allegations that the transportation of offenders bill was a ‘boon sought after the assizes’, 26 Feb. 1821. He announced that inquiry into conditions in New South Wales was already in progress and argued that with 16,000 prison places and approximately 13,000 convictions a year, transportation was essential. He tried, on a point of order, to prevent Thomas Coke I presenting the Norfolk landowners’ petition for relief from distress, 5 Mar., but made little headway without the Speaker’s assistance. He could not say whether the convicted murderer, England, had been pardoned, 9 Apr.
Clive, who remained on good terms with the Williams Wynns, retired from office with Sidmouth when the ministry was reshuffled on the junction with the Grenvillites in January 1822. He was subsequently silent in debate and an increasingly inactive Member. He divided against opposition motions on distress and taxation, 11, 21 Feb., against reducing the salt duties, 28 Feb., and against inquiry into the conduct of the lord advocate towards the Scottish press, 25 June. He had been granted three weeks’ leave on urgent private business, 27 Apr. 1822. He was included on the many select committees that could draw on his home office experience for the remainder of the Parliament. He divided against repeal of the Foreign Enlistment Act, 16 Apr., in the government’s minority against inquiry into the prosecution of the Dublin Orange rioters, 22 Apr., and their majority against inquiry into chancery arrears, 5 June 1823. He voted against condemning the indictment in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith for encouraging slaves to riot, 11 June, and for the Irish insurrection bill, 14 June 1824. He now spent more time at Barkham Place, the Leveson Gowers’ former estate he had purchased in 1816 from Henry Arthur Broughton, and he presented a petition from nearby Oakingham against the county courts bill, 1 Mar. 1825.
Acting with the Powis Castle Clives rather than his brother, he voted against the corn bill, 2 Apr. 1827, for repeal of the Test Acts, 26 Feb. 1828, against Catholic relief, 6 Mar. 1827, 12 May 1828, and, as ministers anticipated, for Catholic emancipation, 6, 30 Mar. 1829. He voted against transferring East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 11 Feb., enfranchising Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., and reducing the grant for South American missions and abolishing the death penalty for forgery, 7 June 1830. He made no reference to his political views in his addresses at the general election that summer, when he was returned unopposed.
It had been known for some time that Powis Castle faced a close and costly struggle in the new Montgomery District constituency, and Clive stood down at the dissolution in December 1832.