Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Clive, Edward (1704-1771)
CLIVE, Sir EDWARD (1704–1771), judge, eldest son of Edward Clive of Wormbridge, Herefordshire, by his wife Sarah, daughter of Mr. Key, a Bristol merchant, was born in 1704, and after being admitted a member of Lincoln's Inn on 27 March 1719 was called to the bar in 1725. In 1741 he was returned to parliament as one of the members for the borough of St. Michael's, Cornwall. There is no record of any speech of his while in the house. In Easter term 1745 he was made a serjeant-at-law and appointed a baron of the exchequer in the room of Sir Laurence Carter. On the death of Sir Thomas Burnet in January 1753 Clive was transferred to the common pleas, and on 9 Feb. received the honour of knighthood. After sitting in this court for seventeen years he retired from the bench in February 1770 with a pension of 1,200l. a year, and was succeeded by Sir William Blackstone. Clive is chiefly remarkable for having concurred with Mr. Justice Bathurst in the case of Buxton v. Mingay, where these two judges determined, in spite of the opinion of Lord-chief-justice Willes to the contrary, that a surgeon was 'an inferior tradesman,' within the meaning of 4 & 5 W. & M. c. 23, s. 10 (Wilson, ii. 70). He married, first, Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Symons of Mynde Park, Herefordshire; and secondly, Judith, the youngest daughter of his cousin, the Rev. Benjamin Clive, who survived him many years, and died at Wormbridge on 20 Aug. 1796. Clive died at Bath on 16 April 1771. As he had no children by either marriage, he left the Wormbridge estate to the great-grandson of his eldest uncle, Robert Clive. The present owner of Wormbridge is Percy Bolton Clive, the grandson of Mrs. Caroline Clive [q. v.], the authoress of 'Paul Ferroll.' Clive was the nephew of George Clive, the cursitor baron of the exchequer. His portrait was introduced by Hogarth in his engraving of 'The Bench' (1758 and 1764).
[Foss's Judges of England (1864), viii. 261-2; Gent. Mag. xv. 221, xxiii. 53, 100, xli. 239, lxvi. pt. ii. 709; Collins's Peerage (1812), v. 545; the table prefixed to vol. i. of George Wilson's Reports (1799); Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices (1849), ii. 276 n.; Blackstone's Reports (1781), ii. 681; Parliamentary Papers (1878), vol. lxii. pt. ii.]