PORTRAIT OF MARGARET MASKELYNE, LADY CLIVE, by Nathanial Dance (POW/P/5), post-conservation at Powis Castle. T.POW.P.5
About
The East India Company at Home, 1757-1857 was a 3-year Leverhulme Trust-funded research project based in the Department of History at the University of Warwick (2011-2012) and University College London (2012-2014). The project was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and ended in August 2014. Over three years the core project team and over 300 project associates worked together to examine the British country house in an imperial and global context.
Professor Finn will continue to blog (and tweet) about developments connected with the project and themes related to colonial material cultures. Have questions? Contact:
m.finn@ucl.ac.uk
Just researching Lord Robert Clive of India and Indian Mutiny of 1857, Plassey etc. Have travelled to Cawnpore and Lucknow twice in 2 years and know a reasonable amount now about the situations as they each developed between late May 1857 and liberation of the Residency late Nov 1857. Cawnpore is more to do with my direct family history, including Bibighar location and the infamous well, Sati Chaura massacre ghart, Wheelers Entrenchment etc. Plus the burial well just beyond the Entrenchment which is off limits to visitors / ie Military compound. Fascinating place to visit.
Wish you all the best with your project
Kind regards – Mark Probett (New Zealand)
Dear Mark,
Many thanks for your comment. Great to hear about your interests in the subject!
All best,
Kate
Today happens to be the wedding anniversary of Sir Robert Clive and Margaret Maskelyne, celebrated at the historic church St Mary’s within the walls of Fort St George at the then Madras, S. India. Three decades ago, my husband and I on a photo-journalistic venture visited the place, and though the pews were empty, we heard the strains of Handel’s Largo resonate. While reading the inscriptions of the various eminent personalities on their statues within the church, relating to the East India Company period, the organist approached us and explained that it was February 18, a date to remember in the Clive context!
Not Anonymous, but Kalyani Davidar from Chennai, S.India
Does anyone know when Margaret Maskelyne first visited India before she got married in 1753?
The details of Robert Clive’s death are sketchy but there is a theory that Margaret may have killed her husband as an act of self-defence. This theory relies on the belief that Robert Clive’s illness was a type of porphyria, which produced fits of mental incapacity and physical violence and severe abdominal pain. Is there any evidence to support that theory?