James Stanier Clarke
English cleric and naval author (1766-1834)
James Stanier Clarke (1766 – 4 October 1834) was an English cleric, naval author and man of letters. In 1799, he became the librarian to the Prince of Wales.
Early life
The eldest son of Edward Clarke and Anne Grenfield, and brother of Edward Daniel Clarke, he was born on 17 December 1766 at Mahon, Minorca where his father was at the time chaplain to the governor. He was educated at Uckfield School and then at Tonbridge School under Vicesimus Knox. Matriculating at St John's College, Cambridge in 1784, he did not complete a first degree.
Having taken holy orders, Clarke was in 1790 appointed to the rectory of Preston, Sussex. About the beginning of 1791 he was living in Sussex with his mother, taking in the refugee Anthony Charles Cazenove for half a year. In 1792 he was living at Eartham with William Hayley; Thomas Alphonso Hayley made a bust of him.
Courtier
Clarke in February 1795 entered the Royal Navy as a chaplain; and served, 1796–99, on board HMS Impetueux in the Channel fleet, under the command of captain John Willett Payne, by whom he was introduced to George, Prince of Wales. It was the end of his service afloat, after George appointed him his domestic chaplain and librarian.
“James Stanier Clarke” enters the record as english cleric and naval author (1766-1834). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what James, Stanier and Clarke can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3161420. VIAF identifies the subject as 42180553. The Library of Congress control number is no91008683. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1766, 1834, 1799 and 1784.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Stanier Clarke” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.