See the _Life of John Clare_, by Frederick Martin (1865); and _Life and Remains of John Clare_, by J.L. Cherry (1873), which, though not so complete, contains some of the poet's asylum verses and prose fragments.
CLARE, JOHN FITZGIBBON, 1ST EARL OF (1749-1802), lord chancellor of Ireland, was the second son of John Fitzgibbon, who had abandoned the Roman Catholic faith in order to pursue a legal career. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was highly distinguished as a classical scholar, and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated in 1770. In 1772 he was called to the Irish bar, and quickly acquired a very lucrative practice; he also inherited his father's large fortune on the death of his elder brother. In 1778 he entered the Irish House of Commons as member for Dublin University, and at first gave a general support to the popular party led by Henry Grattan (q.v.). He was, however, from the first hostile to that part of Grattan's policy which aimed at removing the disabilities of the Roman Catholics; he endeavoured to impede the Relief Bill of 1778 by raising difficulties about its effect on the Act of Settlement. He especially distrusted the priests, and many years later explained that his life-long resistance to all concession to the Catholics was based on his "unalterable opinion" that "a conscientious Popish ecclesiastic never will become a well-attached subject to a Protestant state, and that the Popish clergy must always have a commanding influence on every member of that communion." As early as 1780 Fitzgibbon began to separate himself from the popular or national party, by opposing Grattan's declaration of the Irish parliament's right to independence. There is no reason to suppose that in this change of view he was influenced by corrupt or personal motives. His cast of mind naturally inclined to authority rather than to democratic liberty; his hostility to the Catholic claims, and his distrust of parliamentary reform as likely to endanger the connexion of Ireland with Great Britain, made him a sincere opponent of the aims which Grattan had in view. In reply, however, to a remonstrance from his constituents Fitzgibbon promised to support Grattan's policy in the future, and described the claim of Great Britain to make laws for Ireland as "a daring usurpation of the rights of a free people."