Clench resided in Brownlow Street, Holborn. He was murdered between nine and eleven o'clock on the night of Monday, 4 January 1692. Evelyn wrote that "This week, a most execrable murder was committed on Dr. Clench, father of that extraordinary learned child whom I have before noticed. Under pretence of carrying him in a coach to see a patient, they strangled him in it, and sending away the coachman under some pretence, they left his dead body in the coach, and escaped in the dusk of the evening".
