ve enabled the Proprietors to carry their point. The
corrupt clique utilized this victory by proposing and carrying a
resolution that the prosecutions instituted against them should be
dismissed. This was accordingly done.

{196}Two months later, July 14, Clive landed in England. He was well
received. The King and Queen admitted him to private audiences. The
Court of Directors received him in full conclave, immediately after
his reception by their Majesties, thanked him for his splendid
achievements, and immediately convened a general Court to confirm the
proposal that the jagir, granted him by Mir Jafar, should be
confirmed to him for an additional ten years. This resolution was
unanimously passed.

So far there was no sign of the coming storm. Not a sound of the
distant hurricane had been wafted to the ears of Clive. He had
returned as ambitious as he ever had been, resolved to devote to the
service of his country the energies he had displayed in the East.
Already he had made arrangements to secure seats for himself and for
six of his relatives, when, to rest before the elections should take
place, he started for Paris (January, 1768) with Lady Clive and a
small party. He was very confident in the future. He had received
personally the King's commands to lay before his Majesty his ideas of
the Company's affairs both at home and abroad, with a promise of his
Majesty's countenance and protection in anything he might attempt for
the good of the nation and the Company. He had seen so much of what
he called 'the ignorance and obstinacy' of the Court of Directors,
who, he stated in a letter to his successor, Mr. Verelst, 'are
universally despised and hated,' that he felt sure his would be the
hand, in the coming meeting of the Court {197}of Proprietors, to stay
their fall or to renew their vitality. In a word, his confidence was
never greater, never did he feel more assured regarding the future.

Yet, during this confidence of the soul, this longing for political
warfare, his nearest friends could easily detect that he had not
sufficiently recovered from the strain of his last three years in
India. His body did not respond to the call of the ever active brain.
His friends and his physicians urged him then to take a complete rest
and holiday of fourteen to fifteen months in France. With difficulty
they induced him to stay eight months. Then he returned to find that
he and his six relatives had, in his absence, been electe