Walter Clarke was born about 1638 in Newport, Rhode Island, United States. He was the son of Jeremiah (or Jeremy) Clarke and his wife Frances (Latham) Dungan, the former of East Farleigh, Kent, and the latter of Kempston, Bedford, England. Jeremiah came to New England about 1637 and settled at Newport, Rhode Island.
Clarke was an office-holder most of his life. He was a deputy in 1667, 1670, 1672 and 1673; an assistant in 1673-1675 and 1699; deputy- governor from May 1679 to May 1686 and from May 1700 to his death in 1714; he also served as governor from May 1676 to May 1677, from May 1686 to June 29, 1686 (when the charter was suspended), and from January 1696 to March 1698.
On December 22, 1686, Sir Edmund Andros named him as one of the seven men from Rhode Island to serve on his Council, and eight days later demanded of them the delivery of the colonial charter. Clarke and his colleagues replied that it could not be brought from Newport because of the bad weather. In November of the following year when Andros went to Rhode Island with the intention of obtaining possession of the charter, Governor Clarke sent it to his brother with orders that it should be hidden in some place outside the Governor’s knowledge, and when Andros was courteously entertained at the Governor’s house, the document could not be found. The Governor, however, surrendered the seal of the colony, which Andros broke.
When Andros left, the charter was returned to Clarke, who retained it until the fall of Andros. He declined to surrender it to a committee of the Assembly (though he told them they might break into the chest which contained it) and he did not deliver it up until after the election of May 1690. After the fall of Andros, Clarke was one of the two men to sign a call to the people to meet and consult as to whether or not they would resume their former charter government on April 23, 1689 and on May 1 signed the declaration proclaiming that they had done so. He was, however, extremely cautious and when called upon to serve as governor declined to do so, the colony remaining without a chief executive for ten months, during which time, the Deputy Governor, who had more courage, acted in that capacity. In 1698 when Lord Bellomont was examining into conditions in Rhode Island, he inquired closely into Clarke’s possible connection with piracy. As a Quaker, Clarke had refused to take the required oaths under the Acts of Trade and it was suggested that he be impeached as an example.
He resigned his office in 1698 in favor of his nephew, and the Quaker regime came to an end. In that same year a small tract, called Lithobolia, or the Stone Throwing Devil, was published in London, recounting the remarkable and terrifying happenings in the home of George Walton in New Hampshire where devils or witches had been throwing around stones, cooking utensils, crowbars and other objects. Clarke was one of the witnesses who attested the truth of the facts.
Walter was a member of the Religious Society of Friends.
Clarke was married four times: first, in 1660, to Content Greenman, who died March 27, 1666; second, in February 1667 to Hannah Scott, who died July 24, 1681; third, in March 1682/3 to Freeborn (Williams) Hart, who died December 10, 1709; fourth, on August 31, 1711, to Sarah (Prior) Gould, who died in 1714. He had, in all, nine children, three by his first wife and six by his second, but all of his male issue died in infancy.
