Charles Clay

Sir Charles Travis Clay (30 July 1885 – 31 January 1978) was an English librarian and antiquarian who was the librarian of the House of Lords Library from 1922 to 1956.

Early life and education

Clay was born at Rastrick House in Rastrick, near Halifax, Yorkshire, the younger son of historian and genealogist John William Clay and his wife, Alice Caroline Pilleau. His mother was the daughter of Colonel Henry Pilleau and descended from Pezé Pilleau, the notable Huguenot silversmith.

Clay was educated at Harrow School, earning a scholarship for mathematics at Balliol College, Oxford in 1904. After gaining only second-class honours in mathematical moderations, he was able to keep his scholarship but read history. Under the tutelage of Henry William Carless Davis and Arthur Lionel Smith, he took first-class honours in modern history in 1908.

Clay was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA) for 65 years and vice-president of the society from 1934 to 1938. He also served as honorary vice-president of the Royal Historical Society. He was a member of the Huguenot Society and the Harleian Society as well as the Roxburgh Club for bibliophiles. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy elected in 1950. He edited multiple volumes of Early Yorkshire Charters during his career.

Following his retirement, Clay was knighted in the 1957 Birthday Honours.

Personal life In 1913, Clay married Alice Violet Robson (1892–1972), daughter of Liberal MP and Attorney General William Robson, Baron Robson. She was a lifelong Liberal. They had three daughters: Rachel Maxwell-Hyslop (1914–2011), a prominent archaeologist; Dr Diana Franklin Laurenson (1920–1977), who defended her doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics in 1960 and taught at the London Polytechnic; and Rosemary Travis Howarth (1924–2009) who studied and subsequently worked at the Courtauld Institute of Art. All three daughters married and there were eight grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

Clay died in Little Tew, Oxfordshire, in 1978.