Mr. Richard Clive formed high hopes of his son while yet a child. This anticipation of his future greatness, which seems to have been founded more on the boy's display of courage and sagacity, than on his acquirements as a scholar, was confirmed by the opinion of Dr. Eaton, to whose school, at Lostocke, in Cheshire, he was sent when very young; and this respectable man had the foresight to predict, "that if his scholar lived to be a man, and opportunity enabled him to exert his talents, few names would be greater than his." At the age of eleven, Robert Clive went from Lostocke to Market Drayton, where he was placed under the tuition of the Rev. Mr. Burslem. After a few years, he was sent to the public seminary of Merchant Taylors' school in London, whence he went again to a private school, kept by Mr. Sterling, at Hemel Hempstead, in Hertfordshire, with whom he remained till 1743, when he was appointed a writer in the service of the East India Company. The few anecdotes that are preserved of the early life of Clive tend chiefly to show that he was endowed, in a remarkable degree, with that constitutional courage which so essentially promoted his rise in the military profession, and which, it is probable, led him to adopt it. One well-authenticated and extraordinary instance is recorded of his boldness as a boy. The church at Market Drayton, which stands on the side of a hill, has a lofty steeple, near the top of which is a stone spout of the form of a dragon's head. It was with no slight surprise and alarm, his companions, and some of the inhabitants, saw young Clive seated on this spout, and evincing by his manner an indifference, if not insensibility, to the danger of his situation.[19] Several of the oldest inhabitants of Market Drayton not only confirm this fact, but add, on the testimony of their parents, that Clive was wont to levy from some of the shopkeepers contributions in pence and trifling articles, in compensation to himself, and the little band he led, for abstaining from breaking their windows, and other mischievous tricks; and one old man mentioned to a gentleman[20], who resided near Styche, that he had been repeatedly told by a person who witnessed the action, that, when a little dam broke, which the boys had made across the gutter in the street, for the purpose of overflowing a small shop, with the owner of which they had quarrelled, Clive unhesitatingly threw his body into the gutter, and remained there till they had repaired their work of mischief.[21] Such anecdotes are not likely to have been invented, though they would long ago have been forgotten, but for the celebrity of him, of whose daring and decided mind they gave such early proofs.