To insist in the financial affairs of Clare may seem blatant, or
otiose: actually, the treatment which he underwent was a leading
influence in his career. He was grateful enough to Radstock for
raising a subscription fund; he may have been grateful to Taylor
and Hessey for subscribing L100 of his own money; but what hurt and
embittered him was to see this sum and the others invested for him
under trustees. Indeed, what man would not, if possessed of any
independence of mind, strongly oppose such namby-pamby methods? It is
possible to take a more sinister view of Taylor and Hessey and their
reluctance ever to provide Clare with a statement of account; but in
the matter of Clare's funded property folly alone need be considered.

In October 1821, notably, Clare saw an excellent opportunity for the
future of his family. A small freehold of six or seven acres with a
pleasant cottage named Bachelor's Hall, where Clare had spent many an
evening in comfort and even in revelry, was mortgaged to a Jew for
two hundred pounds; the tenants offered Clare the whole property on
condition that he paid off the mortgage. Small holdings were rare in
that district of great landowners, and this to Clare was the chance
of a lifetime. He applied therefore to Lord Radstock for two hundred
pounds from his funded property; Radstock replied that "the funded
property was vested in trustees who were restricted to paying the
interest to him." It would have been, thought Clare, no difficult
matter for Radstock to have advanced me that small amount; and he
rightly concluded that his own strength of character and common sense
were distrusted by his patrons. Not overwhelmed by this, he now
applied to his publisher Taylor, offering to sell his whole literary
output for five years at the price of two hundred pounds. Taylor was
not enthusiastic. These writings, he urged, might be worth more, or