a fellow of the Royal Society on 22 April in the last-named year. Clench resided in Brownlow Street, Holborn. He was murdered between nine and eleven o'clock on the night of Monday, 4 Jan. 1692. 'This week,' writes Evelyn, 'a most execrable murder was committed on Dr. Clench, father of that extraordinary learned child whom I have before noticed. Under pretence of carrying him in a coach to see a patient, they strangled him in it, and sending away the coachman under some pretence, they left his dead body in the coach, and escaped in the dusk of the evening' (Diary, 1850-2, ii. 317). A swindler named Henry Harrison, to whose mistress Clench had lent money, was convicted of the murder and hanged on 15 April 1692. By his wife Rose, Clench had two sons, Edmund and John. From his will (reg. in P.C.C. 24, Fane), we learn that he died possessed of property in Norfolk, of the manor and advowson of Monk Soham, Suffolk, and the lordship of Blomvile's or Woodcroft Hall in the same parish. Evelyn has left a charming account of Clench's gifted son referred to above, who, when Evelyn saw him, was not twelve years old. It is gratifying to know that no pressure was brought to bear upon him, and that he usually played amongst other boys four or five hours every day, and that he was as earnest at his play as at his study' (Diary, 1850-2, ii. 288-90).
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. (1878), i. 419-21; Luttrell's Relation of State Affairs (1857), ii.; Trials of H. Harrison and J. Cole; Harrison's Last Words of a Dying Penitent; Howe's Mr. Harrison proved the Murtherer; Blomefield's Norfolk (8vo), vii. 221.]
CLENCH, JOHN (d. 1607), judge, son of John Clench of Wetherefield, Essex, by Joan, daughter of John Amias of the same county, and grandson of John Clench of Leeds, Yorkshire, was admitted a student at Lincoln's Inn on 11 Feb. 1556, called to the bar in 1568, appointed recorder of Ipswich in 1573-4--being the first known to have held office--elected reader at his inn in Lent 1574, took the degree of serjeant-at-law in Michaelmas term 1580, was appointed a baron of the exchequer in the following year (27 Nov.), being assigned to the northern circuit, and on 29 May 1584 was transferred to the court of queen's bench. He was one of the judges appointed to hear causes in chancery in the six months which intervened between the death of the lord chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton (20 Nov. 1591), and the appointment of his successor. He remained, however, attached to the northern circuit, apparently until his retirement. In 1596 he took the Lincoln assizes with Chief-justice Anderson, the bulk of the criminal business consisting, as it would seem, of cases of ecclesiastical recusancy. The unknown writer of a letter preserved in the fourth volume of Strype's 'Annals' says : 'The demeanour of him (Anderson, a zealous high churchman) and the other judge, as they sit by turns upon the gaol (with reverence I speak it) in these matters is flat opposite; and they which are maliciously affected, when Mr. Justice Clinch sitteth upon the gaol, do labour to adjourn their complaints (though they be before upon the file) to the next assize; and the gentlemen in the several shires are endangered by this means to be cast into a faction' (Strype, Annals, fol., iv. 265). Clench is said to have been an especial favourite with Elizabeth. Nevertheless he does not appear to have been knighted, or in any way honoured. In 1600, while retaining the emoluments of his office, he was displaced from attendance at court, on account of age and infirmities, and three years later he was pensioned. He died on 19 Aug. 1607, at his seat at Holbrooke, Essex, and was buried in Holbrooke Church, his monument being inscribed as in memory 'colendissimi suique temporis antiquissimi judicis Johannis Clenche.' A half-length portrait of Clench in his robes was long preserved at Harden Hall (the seat in the last century of Lord Alvanley) in Cheshire, but appears to have been among the works of art dispersed in 1815. A portrait of the judge was also in the possession of the town clerk of Ipswich in 1831. Clench married Catherine, daughter of Thomas Almot of Creeting All Saints, Essex, by whom he had issue five sons and eight daughters. His heir, Thomas, who married Margery, daughter of John Barker, merchant, of Ipswich, was sheriff of Suffolk in 1616, and junior M.P. for the same county in 1630, and one John Clench of Creeting was sheriff of Suffolk in 1630. The family appears to be now extinct.
[Add. MS. 19123, fol. 252; Dugdale's Orig. 253; Dugdale's Chron. Ser. 95, 98; Cal. State Papers (Dom. 1581-90), p. 452, (1591-4) pp. 188, 311, (1598-1601) p. 387, (1601-3) p. 284, Addenda (1566-79) p. 527, Addenda (1580-1265) ii. pp. 252-3, 405; Lysons's Magna Britannia, ii. pt. ii. 783; Earwaker's East Cheshire, i. 479; Excursions through Suffolk (1818), i. 150; Suckling's Suffolk, i. xliii, xlviii; Foss's Judges of England.]
CLENNELL, LUKE (1781–1840), artist and wood engraver, was born at Ulgham, near Morpeth, Northumberland, on 8 April 1781. He was the son of a farmer. Placed
