William Clevland (seaman)

Commander William Clevland (1664–1734), (alias Cleuland) of Tapeley in the parish of Westleigh, North Devon, was a Scottish-born Royal Navy commander who served as Controller of Storekeepers' Accounts (23 April 1718 – 24 May 1732). In 1704, he purchased the estate of Tapeley which today is still owned and occupied by his descendants (via two female lines) the Christie family, also of Glyndebourne House, East Sussex.

He was the eldest son of Archibald Cleuland (sic) of Knowhoblehill, Lanarkshire, Scotland. The family claimed descent from the ancient Scottish clan of Cleland (alias Cleuland) of Faskine, Lanarkshire, south-east of Glasgow, with which it shares similar armorials.

At some time before 1700, he acquired Rayhouse, the principal estate at Woodford Bridge in Essex, which he sold in 1732 to Alvar Lopez Suasso. In 1702, he received the Freedom of the cities of Edinburgh and Hamilton in Lanarkshire. In 1702, having sailed into the North Devon port of Bideford, then one of the leading tobacco importation ports of Great Britain, he is said to have viewed from his ship the ancient mansion of Tapeley, in the parish of Westleigh, situated on an eminence overlooking the estuary of the River Torridge, and to have been so impressed by the beauty of its position that in 1704 he purchased the estate from the Giffard family of Brightley, which thenceforth he made his residence.

In 1704, he married Ann Davie (1689–1726), a daughter of the prominent Bideford tobacco merchant John Davie (died 1710), of Orleigh Court, Buckland Brewer and Colonial House, East-the-Water, Bideford. Davie's armorials appear as one of about ten armorials of prominent North Devon persons, sculpted on the frieze of the Mercantile Exchange (or "Queen Anne's Walk"), built in 1708 on Barnstaple Quay. The arms of his two sons-in-law William Clevland and Henry Incledon (1671–1736) of Buckland House, Braunton, also appear. The significance of the arms is unknown, for example whether the persons so represented had contributed to the cost of the building or were prominent in the trade of that port, like Bideford a centre of the tobacco trade. By his wife he had children including:

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