Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cleeve, Bourchier

by Francis Watt

CLEEVE, BOURCHIER (d. 1760), writer on finance, a prosperous pewterer in. London, was probably the son of Alexander Cleeve, pewterer in Cornhill, who died on 11 April 1738 (Gent. Mag. April 1738, p. 221). Cleeve's name is mentioned in 1755 as paying a fine to be excused serving the office of sheriff. About this date he acquired an estate in Foots Cray, Kent, once the property of Sir Francis Walsingham. Here 'he pulled down the old seat, and erected, at some distance northward from it, an elegant mansion of freestone, after a design of Palladio, and enclosed a park round it, which he embellished with plantations of trees, an artificial canal, &c.' This house was called Foots Cray Place. Cleeve also acquired a good deal of other land in Kent before his death, which took place on 1 March 1760. Cleeve was survived by his wife and daughter, both named Elizabeth. The latter inherited the estates, which in 1765 came into the possession of Sir George Yonge, bart., by his marriage with her. Cleeve wrote 'A Scheme for preventing a further Increase of the National Debt, and for reducing the same,' inscribed to the Earl of Chesterfield (1756). The scheme was simply to impose a considerable tax on houses, and to repeal 'an equivalent amount of taxes on commodities.' A part of this tract was taken up with estimates of the amount subtracted in taxes from incomes of various magnitude. Cleeve's estimates were much exaggerated, as was conclusively shown in 'J. Massie's Letter to Bourchier Cleeve, Esq., concerning his Calculations of Taxes' (1757).

[Gent. Mag. July 1755, p. 330, March 1760, p. 154, January 1761, p. 44; London Magazine, March 1760, p. 163; Hasted's Hist. of Kent, vol. i.; Ireland's Hist. of Kent, vol. iv. (with picture of house, p. 524); M'Culloch's Literature of Political Economy. There is no copy of Cleeve's pamphlet in the British Museum, but there are four of Massie's reply to it. An answer to this, and apparently the third edition of the pamphlet, is in the Edinburgh Advocates' Library.]

F. W-t.

Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.69–70
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line

Page	Col.	Line
		16	Cleeve, Bourchier: for probably the son read the tenth son
		18	after p, 221) insert by his second wife, Anne daughter of John Bourchier
23	ii	23-34	Cleeve, Bourchier: for Cleeve was survived . . . Elizabeth, read, He married, about 1740, Mary Haydon, who died 28 Dec. 1760, leaving a daughter, Ann.
		9 f.e.	before Hasted's insert P.C.C. 94 Linch;