The plunderer’s legacy: How Robert Clive’s loot from Bengal funded England’s elite

The man who looted Bengal and turned himself into an 18th-century billionaire scattered his wealth across family, friends and England’s great institutions. Robert Clive’s will, signed in April 1774 and preserved in the UK’s National Archives (reference PROB 11/1003/165), shows in meticulous detail how Bengal’s treasure was converted into English dowries, estates, libraries and parish endowments.

The 16-page document, obtained exclusively for The Tribune, has never previously been reported in such depth. Its line-by-line bequests reveal a fortune that by today’s simple inflation measure amounted to GBP 30 million, but by the more realistic test of wealth share equates to between GBP (£) 7 and 9 billion (Rs 70,000–90,000 crore). That scale places Clive in the ranks of a modern multi-billionaire.

The exclusive findings cast fresh light on Clive’s legacy, already back in the news after The Tribune’s earlier report on the debate over his London statue. Where that controversy asked how he should be remembered, his will shows exactly where Bengal’s wealth went.

Clive’s meteoric rise took less than two decades. In 1757, he secured victory at the Battle of Plassey, overthrowing Bengal’s Nawab and installing the East India Company’s chosen puppet, Mir Jafar. From that moment, Bengal’s treasury was effectively at his disposal. By the time he drew up his will in 1774, just 17 years later, plunder had been transformed into dynastic power.

Clive knew that loot alone could not secure his family’s place among England’s ruling class. His will therefore scattered large sums across Britain’s elite institutions.

The most telling was his gift to Christ Church, Oxford — the university’s oldest and richest college, where he had once briefly matriculated but never taken a degree. By leaving the equivalent of GBP 1 million (Rs 100 crore) for its library, Clive bought symbolic legitimacy. Though his fortune came from Bengal, the endowment ensured his name lived on not in Calcutta but in the intellectual sanctum of England’s elite. It was a classic act of cultural laundering: loot turned into books and prestige.

He paired this with GBP 1 million (Rs 100 crore) for St Margaret’s, Westminster — the parish church of Parliament — to be spent on ornaments and books, and a further GBP 4 million (Rs 400 crore) endowment for Westminster’s poor children. His native Shropshire was not forgotten either: Moreton Say and Market Drayton parishes received endowments worth at least GBP 12 million (Rs 1,200 crore) in modern wealth-share terms, to support widows, church repairs and the poor in perpetuity. Executors were also empowered to spend another GBP 2 million (Rs 200 crore) on general charities.

What Bengal’s treasury financed in the 1760s had, by 1774, become the financial bedrock of England’s universities, churches and parish life.

The way the money moved reveals the scale of the fortune. His widow Lady Margaret was bequeathed income worth GBP 5-10 million a year (Rs 500-1,000 crore) from annuities and half the rents of all estates.

Their daughters’ portions were worth GBP 20-35 million each (Rs 2,000-3,500 crore) for dowries, secured as in noble families. Land for elder daughters was valued at GBP 40 million (Rs 4,000 crore) in perpetuity.

Younger sons Robert and Richard were left GBP 10-15 million each (Rs 1,000-1,500 crore) plus lifelong annuities.

Cousins and in-laws were given gifts totalling GBP 15 million (Rs 1,500 crore), spread widely across the family network.

Executors’ trusts had GBP 10-15 million (Rs 1,000–1,500 crore) to buy new land and GBP 4 million (Rs 400 crore) for church livings. Public piety for Christ Church Oxford, Westminster churches and Shropshire parishes was valued at over GBP 20 million (Rs 2,000 crore) combined.

The landed estates formed the power base. Claremont in Surrey was worth GBP 100 million (Rs 10,000 crore), while Shropshire, Middlesex and Irish lands equalled GBP 250-300 million (Rs 25,000-30,000 crore). Together they were worth GBP 400-500 million (Rs 40,000-50,000 crore).

The grand total comes to about GBP 7-9 billion (Rs 70,000-90,000 crore) in wealth-share terms, plus more than GBP 20 million (Rs 2,000 crore) annually in rents and annuities.

Despite all the plunder, Clive was not the absolute richest man of his time in Britain. Dukes like Northumberland or plutocrats like Sir Lawrence Dundas controlled even greater hereditary estates. But as a self-made fortune, Clive’s pile was almost unmatched.

Where others inherited wealth across centuries, Clive conjured his in a single decade of conquest, transforming Bengal’s treasury into a dynasty rooted in Surrey mansions, Shropshire parishes and Oxford libraries.

The inflation lens reduces Clive’s wealth to a mere GBP 30 million, a sum that sounds impressive but in modern Britain would place him below today’s football club owners or hedge-fund managers. The wealth-share measure shows what really mattered: Clive controlled a slice of the economy itself. That power translated into marriages, estates, libraries and churches that endure today.

Later that same year, in November 1774, Clive died suddenly at his London home aged just 49. The verdict of the coroner’s jury was suicide — he reportedly cut his own throat with a penknife after years of ill-health, depression and addiction to a mix of opium, morphine, codeine and other narcotics. Cheap to buy but dangerously addictive, it was prescribed across Georgian England for everything from headaches to stomach cramps, leaving many dependents.

So ended the life of the man who drained Bengal to found a dynasty.

Clive’s will did not simply close a life. It opened an empire’s money trail. Bengal’s revenues were translated into English land, English dowries, English libraries, English parishes. The wealth did not evaporate with Clive’s death; it was invested, compounded and endowed.

Statues of this balding, pot-bellied mercenary — his head disguised beneath a wig — are still on display outside the Foreign Office in London and in the market square of Shrewsbury, his birthplace, where they were raised in the 19th and early 20th centuries to celebrate the “conqueror of India”.

Statues may still divide opinion, but the harder truth lies in the numbers. Honesty about the profits of empire, suggests the number to remember is not GBP 30 million. It is GBP 7-9 billion (Rs 70,000-90,000 crore).