Bourchier Cleeve

Bourchier Cleeve (died 1760) was an English pewterer and writer of pamphlets.

Life

A prosperous pewterer in London, he was probably the son of Alexander Cleeve, pewterer in Cornhill, who died on 11 April 1738. Cleeve in 1755 as paid a fine to be excused serving the office of sheriff of London.[1]

Foots Cray Place, 1760 engraving by William Woollett

Around that date Cleeve acquired an estate in Foots Cray, Kent, once the property of Sir Francis Walsingham. He pulled down the old house, and erected, at some distance north of it, a Palladian mansion of freestone. He enclosed a park round it, with plantations of trees, and an artificial canal. This house was known as Foots Cray Place.[1] It has been attributed to the architect Isaac Ware, on the basis of a 19th-century listing; Howard Colvin regards the attribution as "acceptable" on style ground, but there is no direct evidence. The house was damaged by fire in 1949, and demolished.[2]

Cleeve also acquired much other land in Kent before his death, which took place on 1 March 1760.[1]

Works

Cleeve wrote A Scheme for preventing a further Increase of the National Debt, and for reducing the same (1756), inscribed to the Earl of Chesterfield (1756). The scheme was to impose a high tax on houses, and to repeal an equivalent amount of taxes on "commodities". Part of this tract was taken up with estimates of the amount subtracted in taxes from incomes. Cleeve's estimates were exaggerated, as was shown by Joseph Massie's Letter to Bourchier Cleeve, Esq., concerning his Calculations of Taxes (1757).[1] He wrote another pamphlet, on the staffing of the navy.[3]

Family

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, 5th Baronet, by his marriage with her.[1]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5  Watt, Francis (1887). "Cleeve, Bourchier". In Stephen, Leslie. Dictionary of National Biography. 11. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  2. ↑ Howard Colvin (1978). A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840. John Murray. pp. 866–7. ISBN 0 7195 3328 7.
  3. ↑ Brian Hanley (1 January 2001). Samuel Johnson as Book Reviewer: A Duty to Examine the Labors of the Learned. University of Delaware Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-0-87413-736-1.
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1887). "Cleeve, Bourchier". Dictionary of National Biography. 11. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 

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