CLARKE, SIR EDWARD GEORGE Eng lish lawyer and politician, son of J. G. Clarke, of Moorgate street, London, was born on Feb. 15, 1841. In 1859 he became a writer in the India office, but resigned in the next year, and became a law reporter. He obtained a Tancred law scholarship in 1861, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 5864. He joined the home circuit, became Q.C. 1880, and a bencher of Lincoln's Inn in 1882. He appeared, among other cases, as counsel for Patrick Staunton in the Penge murder case (187 7) for Mrs. Bartlett (1886), for Sir W. Gordon-Cumming in his slander action (in which Edward VII., then Prince of Wales, gave evidence), and for Dr. Jameson in 18g6. He was knighted in 1886. He was returned as Conservative member for Southwark at a by-election early in 188o, but failed to retain his seat at the general election which followed a month or two later; he found a seat at Plymouth, however, which he retained until 1900. He was solicitor-general in the Conservative administration of 1886-92, but declined office under the Unionist government of 1895 when the law officers of the crown were debarred from private practice. The most remark able, perhaps, of his speeches in the House of Commons was his reply to Mr. Gladstone on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill in 1893. In 1899 he resigned his seat on the question of the government's South African policy. At the general election in 1906 he was returned at the head of the poll for the city of Lon don, but he offended a large section of his constituents by a speech against tariff reform in the House of Commons on March 12, and shortly afterwards he resigned his seat on grounds of health. He retired from the bar in 1914 and died in 1931.
He published a Treatise on the Law of Extradition (4th ed. 5903), four volumes of his political and forensic speeches; The New Testament: The Authorized Version Corrected (1913) ; The Book of Psalms: the Prayer Book Version Corrected (1915) ; and his autobiography, The Story of My Life (1918).