Clare Sewell Read
Clare Sewell Read (6 November 1826 – 21 August 1905) was a British agriculturist and Conservative politician.
He was born in 1826 in Ketteringham, Norfolk, and was the eldest son of George Read of Barton Bendish Hall, and his wife Sarah Anne, daughter of Clare Sewell. The family had been farming land in Norfolk for three centuries, and following private education in King's Lynn Read spent five years learning practical agriculture on his father's farm at Plumstead. He subsequently managed large farms in Pembrokeshire and Oxfordshire, before returning to Plumstead in 1854. In 1865 he inherited an 800-acre (3.2 km2) farm at Honingham Thorpe, which he farmed for the next three decades. He was described in 1870 as "a yeoman and tenant farmer on an extensive scale".
In 1859 he married Sarah Maria Watson daughter of a former Sheriff of Norwich, and they had four daughters.
In 1865 he was elected as a Conservative member of parliament for East Norfolk. On the redistribution of seats in 1868 he became one of two MPs for South Norfolk. Politically he described himself as a "liberal Conservative", supporting the equitable settlement of the Irish land question. He was also a champion of agricultural interests, and sought the abolition of the malt tax.
In 1874 he was appointed to a junior ministerial post in the Second Disraeli ministry as Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board. He resigned in January 1876 in protest against the government's policy on controlling the spread of foot and mouth disease, when the government failed to extend the Cattle Diseases Act to Ireland. He was presented with a cheque for 5,500 pounds by English farming organisations in recognition of his stand on the issue. He lost his seat in parliament at the 1880 general election by a single vote.
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