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Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hyde, Edward (1609-1674)
HYDE, EDWARD, Earl of Clarendon (1609–1674), descended from a family of Hydes established at Norbury in Cheshire, son of Henry Hyde of Dinton, Wiltshire, by Mary, daughter of Edward Langford of Trowbridge, was born on 18 Feb. 1608-9 (Lister, Life of Clarendon, i. l; The Life of Clarendon, written by himself, ed. 1857, i. § 1). In Lent term 1622 Hyde entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford; failed, in spite of a royal mandate, to obtain a demyship at Magdalen College, and graduated B.A. on 14 Feb. 1626 (Lister, i. 4; Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, iii. 1018). He left the university 'rather with the opinion of a young man of parts and pregnancy of wit, than that he had improved it much by industry' (Life, i. 8). His father had destined him for the church, but the death of two elder brothers made him heir to the paternal estate, and in 1625 he became a member of the Middle Temple (Lister, i. 6). In spite of the care which his uncle, Chief Justice Sir Nicholas Hyde [q.v.], bestowed on his legal education, he preferred to devote himself to polite learning and history, and sought the society of wits and scholars. In February 1634 Hyde was one of the managers of the masque which the Inns of Court presented to the king as a protest against Prynne's illiberal attack upon the drama (Whitelocke, Memorials, f.19). Jonson, Selden, Waller, Hales, and other eminent writers were among his friends. In his old age he used to say ' that he owed all the little he knew and the little good that was in him to the friendship and conversation of the most excellent men in their several kinds that lived in that age,' but always recalled with most fondness his 'entire and unreserved' friendship with Lord Falkland (Life, i. 25, 35).
In 1629 Hyde married Anne, daughter of Sir George Ayliffe of Gretenham, Wiltshire. She died six months later, but the marriage connected him with the Villiers family, and gained him many powerful friends (Lister, i. 9; Life, i. 13). This connection was one of the motives which induced Hyde to vindicate Buckingham's memory in his earliest historical work, a tract entitled ' The Difference and Disparity between the Estate and Condition of George, Duke of Buckingham, and Robert, Earl of Essex' (Religuics Wottoniance, ed. 1685, pp. 185-202). According to Hyde's friend, Sir John Bramston, Charles I was so pleased with this piece that he wished the author to write Buckingham's life (Autobiography of Sir John Bramston, p.255).
Hyde's second marriage, 10 July 1634, with Frances, daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, one of the masters of requests, still further improved his fortunes (Chester, Westminster Registers, p.167). He had been called to the bar on 22 Nov. 1633, began now seriously to devote himself to his profession, and soon acquired a good practice in the court of requests. In December 1634 he was appointed keeper of the writs and rolls of the common pleas (Bramston, p.255; Doyle, Official Baronage, i. 402). The courage and ability with which Hyde conducted the petition of the London merchants against the late lord treasurer, Portland, gained him the favour of Laud. He was consequently ' used with more countenance by all the judges in Westminster Hall and the eminent practisers, than is usually given to men of his years' (Life, i.23). His income grew, he increased his paternal estate by buying adjoining land, and he made influential friends.
Hyde began his political career as a member of the popular party. Although he did not share the hostility ot the puritans to Laud's ecclesiastical policy, nor the common animosity of the lawyers to the churchmen, he was deeply stirred by the perversions and violations of the law which marked the twelve years of the king's personal rule (1628-40). In the Short parliament of 1640 he sat for Wootton Bassett, was a member of seven important committees, and gained great applause by attacking the jurisdiction of the earl marshal's court (Lister, i. 62; Life, i. 78). According to his own account, which cannot be implicitly trusted, he endeavoured to mediate between the king and the commons, and used his influence with Laud to prevent a dissolution.
In the Long parliament Hyde represented 'Saltash, and, as before, principally directed his reforming zeal to questions connected to the administration of the law. He renewed his motion against the marshal's court, obtained a committee, and produced a report which practically abolished that institution. Hyde also acted as chairman of the committees which examined into the jurisdictions of the council of Wales and the council of the North, and gained great popularity by his speech against the latter (26 April 1641; Rushworth, iv. 230). He took a leading part in the proceedings against the judges, and laid before the lords (6 July 1641) the charge against the barons of the exchequer (ib. iv. 333). In the proceedings against Strafford he acted with the popular party, helped to prepare the articles of impeachment, was added on 25 March 1641 to the committee for expediting the trial, and on 28 April took up a message to the lords begging that special precautions might be taken to prevent Strafford's escape (Commons Journals, ii. 112, 130). Hyde's name does not appear in the list of those voting against the attainder bill, and it is hardly possible to doubt that he voted for that measure. He may have ultimately joined the party who were contented with Strafford's exclusion from affairs of state; but the story of his interview with Essex on this subject contains manifest impossibilities (Rebellion, iii. 161; Gardniner, ix. 840).
Church questions soon led Hyde to separate himself from the popular party. He opposed, in February 1641, the reception of the London petition against episcopacy, and in May the demand of the Scots for the assimilation of the English ecclesiastical system to the Scottish (ib. ix. 281, 377). He opposed also, differing for the first time with Falkland, the bill for the exclusion of the clergy from secular office, and was from the beginning the most indefatigable adversary of the Root and Branch Bill. The house went into committee on that bill on 11 July 1641, and its supporters, hoping to silence Hyde, made him chairman. In this capacity he so successfully obstructed the measure that it was dropped (Rebellion, iii. 150-6, 240-2). Hyde's attitude attracted the notice of the king, who sent for him and urged him to persist in the church's defence (Life, i. 93). At the opening of the second session his severance from his former friends was still more marked, and Secretary Nicholas recommended him to the king as one of the chief champions of the royal prerogative (Evelyn, Diary, ed. 1879, iv. 116). He resisted Pym's attempt to make the grant of supplies for the reconquest of Ireland dependent on parliament's approval of the king's choice of councillors, and opposed the Grand Remonstrance, though admitting that the narrative part of it was `true and modestly expressed' (Gardiner, x. 55, 76; Verney, Notes on the Long Parliament, pp. 121, 126). He sought by an attempted protest to prevent the printing of the Remonstrance, and composed an answer to it, which the king, at Lord Digby's instigation, adopted and published as his own (His Majesty's Declaration, January 1642; Husbands, Collection, 1643, p. 24; Rebellion, iv. 167; Life, ii. l). In January 1642, when Falkland and Colepeper entered the king's service, Charles offered to make Hyde solicitor-general in place of Oliver St. John; but Hyde believed that he could be more useful in a private capacity, and refused the offer. He undertook, however, to confer with Colepeper and Falkland on the management of the king's business in the House of Commons, and to keep him constantly informed of their debates. Charles promised 'that he would do nothing that concerned his service in the House of Commons without their joint advice' (Rebellion, iv. 126; Life, ii. 4). A few days later occurred the attempt to arrest the five members a plan suggested by Digby, and not communicated to Hyde and his friends. They were 'so much displeased and dejected' that only 'the abstracted considerations of duty and conscience' kept them still in the king's service (Rebellion, iv. 158). The resort of Colepeper and Falkland to his lodgings exposed Hyde to suspicion, and he could not communicate with the king except in secret. On 27 Feb., however, being charged with an address from parliament, he obtained an interview with Charles at Greenwich, and was commissioned to write answers to all the messages and declarations of parliament. The king adopted Hyde's suggested reply to the address he had just presented, and promised to transcribe Hyde's answers himself, in order to keep their authorship a secret (Life, ii. 5, 16, 28; Husbands, p. 83). Hyde remained at Westminster till about 20 May 1642, and then, pretending ill-health and the need of country air, left London, and rejoined the king at York about the beginning of June (Life, ii. 14, 15; cf. Gardiner, x. 169).
Hyde recommended Charles to refuse further concessions, and to adhere to strictly legal and constitutional methods. Writing to Charles in March 1642, Hyde urged him to abandon all intention of appealing to force, and to sit as quietly at York as if he were still at Whitehall, relying on the 'affections of those persons who have been the severest assertors of the public liberties, and so, besides their duty and loyalty to your person, are in love with your inclinations to peace and justice, and value their own interests upon the preservation of your rights' (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 139). In Hyde's view, the king was `to shelter himself wholly under the law, to grant anything that by the law he was compelled to grant, and to deny what by the law was in his own power, and which he found inconvenient to consent to: and to oppose and punish any extravagant attempt by the force and power of the law, presuming that the king and the law together would have been strong enough for any encounter' (Rebellion,iv.217,278, vi. 12). This constant appeal to the ' known laws of the land ' against the arbitrary votes of a parliamentary majority is the keynote of all Hyde's manifestos. Courtiers complained that their 'spirit of accommodation wounded the regality,' and Hobbes scoffs at their author as in love with mixed monarchy ' (Memoirs of Sir P. Warwick, p.196; Behemoth, ed. 1682, p. 192). But if Hyde's policy was too purely negative to heal the breach between the king and his subjects, it yet succeeded in gaining him the support of half the nation (Gardiner, x. 169).
From the first, however, Hyde had to struggle against the influence of less constitutional councillors such as the Queen and Lord Digby. The king's plan of going to Ireland, his attempt on Hull, and his dismissal of the Earls of Essex and Holland, were all measures adopted against Hyde's advice or without his knowledge (Life, ii. 17; Rebellion, v. 33, 78, 88). But though Charles might share his confidence with, others, he recognised Hyde's pre-eminent fitness to act as his spokesman. When persuaded to send a message of peace to the parliament, the king would have none but Hyde to draw it, and confessed `that he was better pleased with the message itself than the thought of sending it' (Rebellion, vi. 8n.) Between May 1642 and March 1645 Hyde penned nearly all the ' declarations ' published by the king. The answer to the ' XIX Propositions ' and the apology for the king's attack on Brentford are the only exceptions of importance (Life, ii. 61; Rebellion, vi. 126). He tells us that he also employed his pen in composing a number of lighter pieces, speeches, letters, and parodies directed against the parliament and its leaders (Life, ii. 69). The only one of these at present identified is `Two Speeches made in the House of Peers on Monday, 19 Dec., one for and one against Accommodation, the one by the Earl of Pembroke, the other by the Lord Brooke, 1642' (Somers Tracts, ed. Scott, vi. 576).
When the war began, Hyde applied himself to the task of raising money. It was partly through his agency that the king obtained a loan of 10,000l. from Oxford. He was specially selected to raise a loan from the catholics, and negotiated the sale of a peerage to Sir Richard Newport (Rebellion, vi. 57, 65, 66). He was present at Edgehill, though he took no actual part in the battle (ib. vi. 79 n.) The House of Commons expelled him (11 Aug. 1642), and he was one of the eleven persons who were to be excepted from pardon (21 Sept.), an exception which was repeated in subsequent propositions for peace (Husbands, p.633).
During his stay at Oxford, from October 1642 to March 1645, Hyde lived in All Souls College. In the spring of 1643 he at last exchanged the position of secret adviser for that of an avowed and responsible servant of the crown. On 22 Feb. he was admitted to the privy council and knighted, and on 3 March appointed chancellor of the exchequer (Life, ii. 77; Black, Oxford Docquets, p.351). The king wished to raise him still higher. 'I must make Ned Hyde secretary of state, for the truth is I can trust nobody else,' said an intercepted letter from Charles to the queen. But Hyde was unwilling to supersede his friend Nicholas, and refused the offered post both now, and later after Falkland's death. Promotion so rapid for a man of his age and rank aroused general jealousy, especially among the members of his own profession. Courtiers considered him an upstart, and soldiers regarded him with the hostility which they felt for the privy council in general (cf. Rebellion, vii. 278-82; Life, ii. 73, iii. 37). As chancellor of the exchequer Hyde, in his endeavours to raise money for the support of the war, was concerned in procuring the loan known as 'the Oxford engagement,' and became personally bound for the repayment of some of the sums lent to the king (Cal. Committee for Advance of Money, p. 1002; Clarendon State Papers, ii. 154). His attempt to bring the Bristol custom-dues into the exchequer brought him into collision with Ashburnham, the treasurer of the army (Life, iii. 33).
In the autumn of 1643 the king created a secret committee, or 'junto,' who were consulted on all important matters before they were discussed in the privy council. It consisted of Hyde and five others, and met every Friday at Oriel College (Life, iii. 37, 58; Clarendon State Papers, ii. 286, 290). In the different conferences for peace Hyde was habitually employed in the most delicate personal negotiations, a duty for which his former intimacy with many of the parliament's commissioners specially qualified him. Over-estimating, as his history shows, the influence of personal causes in producing the civil war, he believed that judicious concessions to the leaders would suffice to end it. In the summer of 1642 he had made special efforts to win over the Earl of Pembroke (ib. ii. 144-8; Rebellion, vi. 401 n.) During the Oxford negotiations in March 1643 he intrigued to gain the Earl of Northumberland, and vainly strove to persuade the king to appoint him lord high admiral (Life, iii. 4-12). In the following summer, when Bedford, Clare, and Holland deserted the parliament, Hyde stood almost alone in recommending that the deserters should be well received by king, queen, and court, and held the failure to adopt this plan the greatest oversight committed by the king (Rebellion, vii. 185, 244). When it was too late, Hyde's policy was adopted. In February 1645, during the Uxbridge negotiations, he and three others were empowered to promise places of profit to repentant parliamentarians, but his conferences with Denbigh, Pembroke, Whitelocke, and Hollis led to no result (ib. viii. 243-8; Whitelocke, Memorials, f. 127; Harleian Miscellany, vii. 559).
Throughout these negotiations Hyde opposed any real concessions on the main questions at issue between king and parliament. At Uxbridge (January 1645) he was the principal figure among the king's commissioners, prepared all the papers, and took the lead in all the debates (Rebellion, vii. 252). He defended Ormonde's truce with the Irish rebels, and disputed with Whitelocke on the question of the king's right to the militia (ib. viii. 256). Already, in an earlier negotiation with the Scottish commissioners (February 1643), he had earned their detestation by opposing their demands for "ecclesiastical uniformity, and at Uxbridge he was as persistent in defending episcopacy. Nevertheless, he was prepared to accept a limited measure of toleration, but regarded the offers made at Uxbridge as the extreme limit of reasonable concessions (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 237).
The most characteristic, result of Hyde's influence during this period was the calling of the Oxford parliament (December 1643). He saw the strength which the name of a parliament gave the popular party, and was anxious to deprive them of that advantage. Some of the king's advisers urged him to dissolve the Long parliament by proclamation, and to declare the act for its continuance invalid from the beginning. Hyde opposed this course, arguing that it would alienate public opinion (Life, iii. 40). His hope was to deprive the Long parliament of all moral authority by showing that it was neither free nor representative (Rebellion, vii.326). With this object, when the Scots accepted the Long parliament's invitation to send an army into England, Hyde proposed the letter of the royalist peers to the Scottish privy council, and the summoning of the royalist members of parliament to meet at Oxford (ib. vii. 323). Both expedients proved ineffectual. The Oxford parliament was helpful in raising money, but useless in negotiating with the parliament at Westminster, while the king resented its independence and its demands for peace.
With the failure of Hyde's policy the king fell completely under the influence of less scrupulous and less constitutional advisers. On 4 March 1645 Hyde was despatched to Bristol as one of the council charged with the care of the prince of Wales and the government of the west. The king was anxious to place so trustworthy a servant near the prince, and glad no doubt to remove so strong an opponent of his Irish plans. Already Charles had given to Glamorgan 'those strange powers and instructions ' which Hyde subsequently pronounced to be 'inexcusable to justice, piety, and prudence' (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 337; Life, iii. 50; Rebellion, viii. 253).
The arrival of the prince in the west was followed by a series of disputes between his council and the local military commanders. Hyde, who was the moving spirit of the council, paints in the blackest colours the misconduct of Goring and Grenville; but the king's initial error in appointing semi-independent military commanders, and then setting a board of privy councillors to control them, was largely responsible for the failure of the campaign. Hyde complains bitterly that, but for the means used at court to diminish the power of the council, they would have raised the best army that had been in England since the rebellion began, and, with Hopton to command it, might have effected much (Lister, iii. 20; Rebellion, ix. 7 n, 43). But when Hopton at last took over the command of Goring' s 'dissolute, undisciplined, beaten army,' it was too late for success, and his defeat at Torrington (16 Feb. 1646) obliged the prince's councillors to provide for the safety of their charge.
The king had at first ordered the prince to take refuge in France, and then, on the remonstrance of his council, suggested Denmark. Hyde's aim was to keep the prince as long as possible in English territory, and as long as possible out of France. As no ship could be found fit for the Danish voyage, the prince and his council established themselves at Scilly (4 March 1646), and, when the parliamentary fleet rendered the islands untenable, removed to Jersey (17 April). On the pretext that Jersey was insecure, the queen at once ordered the prince to join her in France, and, against the advice of Hyde and his council, the prince obeyed (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 240, 352; Rebellion, x. 3-48). Hyde distrusted the French government, feared the influence of the queen, and was afraid of alienating English public opinion (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 235, 287).
Though Hyde's opposition to the queen in this matter was the main cause of her subsequent hostility to him, his policy was in other respects diametrically opposed to that which she advocated. She pressed the king to buy the support of the Scots by sacrificing the church. Hyde expected nothing good from their aid, and would not pay their price (ib. ii. 291, 339). He was equally hostile to her plans for restoring the king by French or foreign forces (ib. ii. 307, 329, 339). He was resolved not to sacrifice a foot of English territory, and signed a bond with Hopton, Capel, and Carteret to defend Jersey against Lord Jermyn's scheme for its sale to France (19 Oct. 1646; ib. ii. 279). During the king's negotiations with the parliament and the army Hyde's great fear was that Charles should concede too much. 'Let them,' he wrote, 'have all circumstantial 'temporary concessions, …. distribute as many personal obligations as can be expected, but take heed of removing landmarks and destroying foundations. … Either no peace can be made, or it must be upon the old foundations of government in church and state' (ib. ii. 326, 333, 379). Hyde faithfully practised the principles which he preached, declining either to make his peace with the parliament or to compound for his estate. 'We must play out the game,' he wrote, `with that courage as becomes gamesters who were first engaged by conscience against all motives and temptations of interest, and be to let the world know that we were carried on only by conscience ' (ib. iii. 24). Hyde was already in great straits for money. But he told Nicholas that they had no reason to blush for a poverty which was not brought upon them by their own faults (ib. ii. 310). Throughout the fourteen years of his exile he bore privation with the same cheerful courage.
During his residence in Jersey Hyde lived first in lodgings in St. Helier, and afterwards with Sir George Carteret in Elizabeth Castle. He occupied his enforced leisure by keeping up a voluminous correspondence, and by composing his 'History of the Rebellion,' which he began at Scilly on 18 March 1646. In a will drawn up on 4 April 1647 he directed that the unfinished manuscript should be delivered to Secretary Nicholas, who was to deal with it as the king should direct. If the king decided that any part of it should be published, Nicholas and other assistant editors were empowered to make whatever suppressions or additions they thought fit (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 289, 357). Hyde had also an immediate practical purpose in view. As soon as I found myself alone,' he wrote to Nicholas, 'I thought the best way to provide myself for new business against the time I should be called to it, was to look over the faults of the old, and so I resolved to write the history of these evil times ' (ib. ii. 288). By April 1648 he had carried his narrative down to the commencement of the campaign of 1644. Meanwhile, in February 1648 the Long parliament resolved to present no further addresses to the king, and published a scandalous declaration of its reasons. Hyde at once printed a vindication of his master: 'A full Answer to an infamous and traitorous Pamphlet entitled A Declaration of the Commons of England expressing their reasons of passing the late Resolutions of no further addresses to be made to the King' (published July 28, 1648. An earlier and briefer version of the same answer was published 3 May).
On the outbreak of the second civil war, Hyde was summoned by the queen and the prince to join them at Paris. He left Jersey 26 June 1648, and made his way to Dieppe, whence he took ship for Dunkirk (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 406; Hoskins, Charles II in the Channel Islands, ii. 202). Finding at Dunkirk that the prince was with the fleet in the Thames, he followed him thither. On his way he fell into the hands of an Ostend corsair (13-23 July), who robbed him of all his clothes and money, nor did he succeed in joining Prince Charles till the prince's return to the Hague (7-17 Sept.: Life, v. 10-23; Rebellion, xi. 23, 78). There he found the little court distracted by feuds and intrigues. Hyde set himself to reconcile conflicting interests and to provide the fleet with supplies for a new expedition (Rebellion, xi. 127, 152; Warburton, Prince Rupert, iii. 274, 276, 279). He advised the prince not to trust the Scots, whose emissaries were urging him to visit Scotland, and was resolved that he himself would go neither to Scotland nor to Ireland. In any case, the Scots would not have allowed him to accompany the prince, and he held it safer to see the result of the negotiations at Newport before risking himself in Ireland. The king's concessions during the treaty had filled him with disgust and alarm. `The best,' he wrote, `which is proposed is that which I would not consent to, to preserve the kingdom from ashes' (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 459). When the army interrupted the treaty and brought the king to trial, Hyde vainly exerted himself to save his master's life. He drew up a letter from the prince to Fairfax, and after the king's death a circular to the sovereigns and states of Europe, invoking their aid to avenge the king's execution (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1649-50, p. 5; Cal. Clarendon Papers, i. 465; cf. Warburton, iii. 283). Hyde's enemies thought his influence then at an end, but in spite of the queen's advice, Charles II retained as councillors all the old members of his father's privy council who were with him at the Hague (Rebellion, xii. 2).
The question whether the new king should establish himself in Scotland or Ireland required immediate decision. As the presbyterian leaders demanded the king's acceptance of the covenant, and ' all the most extravagant propositions which were ever offered to his father,' Hyde advised the refusal of their invitation. He had conferred with Montrose, and expected more good from his expedition than from a treaty with Hamilton and Argyll. The Scots and their partisans regarded Hyde as their chief antagonist, and succeeded in suppressing the inaugural declaration which he drew up for the new king (ib. xii. 32; Clarendon State Papers, ii. 467, 473, 527). In the end Charles resolved to go to Ireland, but to pay a visit to his mother in France on the way. Hyde, who termed Ireland the nearest road to Whitehall, approved the first half of the plan, but objected to the sojourn in Paris. Accordingly, when Cottington proposed that they both should go on an embassy to Spain, Hyde embraced the chance of an honourable retreat (Nicholas Papers, i. 124; Rebellion, xii. 34). His friends complained that he was abandoning the king just when his guidance was most necessary. But Hyde felt that a change of counsellors would ultimately re-establish his own influence, and expected to rejoin the king in Ireland within a few months.
The chief objects of the embassy were to procure a loan of money from the king of Spain, to obtain by his intervention aid from the pope and the catholic powers, and to negotiate a conjunction between Owen O'Neill and Ormonde for the recovery of Ireland. The ambassadors left Paris on 29 Sept. 1649, and reached Madrid on 26 Nov. The Spanish government received them coldly (Guizot, Cromwell, transl. 1854, i. 419-26). Their money was soon exhausted, and Hyde was troubled by the ' miserable wants and distresses ' of his wife, whom he had left in Flanders (Lister, i. 361). The subjugation of Ireland, and the defeat of Charles II at Dunbar, destroyed any hope of Spanish aid, while the share taken by a servant of the ambassadors in Ascham's murder made their presence inconvenient to the Spanish government. In December 1650 they were ordered to leave Spain. Hyde was treated with personal favour, and promised the special privileges of an ambassador during his intended residence at Antwerp (Rebellion, xiii. 25, 31). He left Spain in March 1651, and rejoined his family at Antwerp in the following June.
In November 1651 Charles II, immediately after his escape from Worcester, summoned Hyde to Paris. He joyfully obeyed the summons, and for the rest of the exile was, the king's most trusted adviser. He was immediately appointed one of the committee of four with whom the king consulted in all his affairs, and a member of the similar committee which corresponded with the Scottish royalists (Rebellion, xiii. 123, 140). Till August 1654 he filled Nicholas's place as secretary of state. He accompanied the king in his removals to Cologne (October 1654) and Bruges (April 1658), and was formally declared lord chancellor on 13 Jan. 1658 (Lister, i. 441).
For the first two years of this period repeated attempts were made to shake the king's confidence in Hyde. Papists and presbyterians both petitioned for his removal (Rebellion, xiv. 63). In 1653 Sir Robert Long incited Sir Richard Grenville to accuse Hyde of secret correspondence with Cromwell, but the king cleared him by a declaration in council, asserting that the charge was a malicious calumny (13 Jan. 1654; Lister, i. 384, iii. 63, 69, 75). Long also combined with Lord Gerard and Lord-keeper Herbert to charge Hyde with saying that the king neglected his business and was too much given to pleasure. Charles coolly answered 'that he did really believe the chancellor had used those words, because he had often said that and much more to himself' (ib. iii. 74; Rebellion, xiv. 77). Of all Hyde's adversaries, the queen was the most persistently hostile. He made many efforts to conciliate her, and in 1651 had persuaded the Duke of York to obey her wishes and return to Paris (1651; Rebellion, xiii. 36, 46). But she was so displeased at Hyde's power over the king that she would neither speak to him nor notice him. 'Who is that fat man next the Marquis of Ormonde?' asked Anne of Austria of Charles II during an entertainment at the French court. 'The king told her aloud that was the naughty man who did all the mischief and set him against his mother; at which the queen herself was little less disordered than the chancellor was, who blushed very much.' At the king's request Henrietta allowed Hyde a parting interview before he left France, but only to renew her complaints of his want of respect and her loss of credit (ib. xiv. 62, 67, 93). 'The Marquis of Ormonde and the chancellor believed that the king had nothing at this time (1652) to do but to be quiet, and that all his activity was to consist in carefully avoiding to do anything that might do him hurt, and to expect some blessed conjuncture from the amity of Christian princes, or some such revolution of affairs in England, as might make it seasonable for his majesty to show himself again' (ib. xiii. 140). In the meantime Hyde endeavoured to prevent any act which might alienate English royalists and churchmen. He defeated Berkeley's appointment as master of the court of wards, lest the revival of that institution should lose the king the affection of the gentry; and dissuaded Charles from attending the Huguenot congregation at Charenton, lest it should injure the church. Above all, he opposed any attempt to buy catholic support by promising a repeal of the penal laws or holding out hopes of the king's conversion (cf. Burnet, Own Time, ed. 1836, i. 135; Ranke, Hist. of England, vi. 21).
The first favourable conjuncture which presented itself was the war between the English republic and the United Provinces (1652). Charles proposed a league to the Dutch, and intended to send Hyde as ambassador to Holland, but his overtures were rejected (Rebellion, xiii. 165; Clarendon State Papers, iii. 91-141). When war broke out between Spain and Cromwell, Hyde applied to Don Lewis de Haro, promising in return for aid in restoring his master `to give the usurper such trouble in his own quarters that he may not have leisure to pursue and supply his new conquests.' Spain agreed to assist Charles with six thousand foot and ships for their transport, whenever he `could cause a good port town in England to declare for him' (12 April 1656). Thereupon two thousand Irish soldiers in French service deserted and placed themselves at the disposal of Charles II (Rebellion,xv.22; Clarendon State Papers, iii. 276, 303). But Hyde now as before objected to isolated or premature movements in England, and in the end rested his hopes mainly on some extraordinary accident, such as Cromwell's death or an outbreak of the levellers (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 198, 330, 401). As early as 1649 he had drawn up a paper of considerations on future treaties, showing the advantages of an agreement with the levellers rather than the presbyterians. In 1656 their emissaries applied to Charles, were favourably received, and were promised indemnity for all except actual regicides. Hyde listened to their plots for the assassination of Cromwell without any sign of disapproval (ib. iii. 316, 325, 341, 343; Nicholas Papers, i. 138). On the Protector's death Hyde instructed the king's friends not to stir till some other party rose, then to arm and embody themselves without mentioning the king, and to oppose whichever party was most irreconcilable to his cause. When the Long parliament had succeeded Richard Cromwell, the king's friends were bidden to try to set the army and the parliament by the ears (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 411, 436, 482). The zeal of the royalist leaders in England obliged the king to sanction a rising in August 1659. The date fixed was earlier than Hyde's policy had contemplated, but the fear lest some vigorous dictator should seize power, and the hope of restoring the king without foreign help, reconciled him to the attempt. After its failure he went back to his old policy. 'To have a little patience to sit still till they are in blood' was his advice when Monck and Lambert quarrelled; to obstruct a settlement and demand a free parliament his counsel when the Rump was again restored (ib. iii. 436, 530, 534).
Of Hyde's activity between Cromwell's death and the Restoration the thirteen volumes of his correspondence during that period give ample proof. The heads of all sections of the royalists made their reports to him, and he restrained their impatience, quieted their jealousies, and induced them to work together. He superintended the negotiations, and sanctioned the bargains by which opponents of influence were won to favour the king's return (ib. iii. 417, 443, 497, 673; Burnet, Own Time, i. 61). Hyde's aim was, as it had been throughout, to restore the monarchy, not merely to restore the king. A powerful party wished to impose on Charles II the conditions offered to his father in 1648. Left to himself, Charles might have consented. But, during the negotiations with the levellers in 1656, Hyde had suggested to Ormonde the expedient which the king finally adopted. `When they are obstinate to insist on an unreasonable proposition that you find it necessary to consent to, let it be with this clause, "If a free parliament shall think fit to ask the same of his majesty"' (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 289). By the declaration of Breda the exceptions to the general amnesty, the limits to toleration, and the ownership of forfeited lands, were left, in accordance with this advice, to be determined by parliament. If the adoption of Hyde's policy rendered some of the king's promises illusory, it insured the co-operation of the two powers whose opposition had caused the civil war.
On the eve of the Restoration an attempt was made to exclude Hyde from power. Catholics and presbyterians regarded him as their greatest enemy, and the French ambassador, Bourdeaux, backed their efforts for his removal. A party in the convention claimed for parliament the appointment of the great officers of state, and wished to deprive Hyde of the chancellorship. But he was strongly supported by the constitutional royalists, and the intrigue completely failed. Hyde entered London with the king, and took his seat in the court of chancery on 1 June 1660 (Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors, iii. 187). As the king's most trusted adviser he became virtually head of the government. He was the most important member of the secret committee of six, which, although styled the committee for foreign affairs, was consulted on all important business before it came to the privy council (Cont. of Life, § 46). For a time he continued to hold the chancellorship of the exchequer, but surrendered it finally to Lord Ashley (13 May 1661; Campbell, iii. 191). Ormonde urged Hyde to resign the chancellorship also, in order to devote himself entirely to the management of public business and to closer attendance on the king. He refused, on the ground that `England would not bear a favourite, nor any one man who should out of his ambition engross to himself the disposition of public affairs,' adding that `first minister was a title so newly translated out of French into English, that it was not enough understood to be liked' (ib. p. 85).
On 3 Nov. 1660 Hyde was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Hyde of Hindon, and at the coronation was further created Viscount Cornbury and Earl of Clarendon (20 April, 1661; Lister, ii. 81). The king gave him 20,000l. to support his new dignity, and offered him also a grant of ten thousand acres in the great level of the Fens. Clarendon declined the land, saying that if he allowed the king to be so profuse to himself he could not prevent extravagant bounties to others. But he accepted at various times smaller estates: ten acres of land in Lambeth, twenty in Westminster, and three manors in Oxfordshire forfeited by the attainder of Sir John Danvers [q.v.] In 1662 he was granted, without his knowledge, 20,000l. in rents due from certain lands in Ireland, but never received more than 6,000l. of this sum, and contracted embarrassing obligations in consequence. Though public opinion accused him of avarice, and several articles of his impeachment allege pecuniary corruption, it is plain that Clarendon made no attempt to enrich himself. Charles mocked at his scruples, but the legitimate profits of the chancellorship were large, and they sufficed him (Cont. p. 180; Lister, ii. 81; iii. 522).
The revelation (3 Sept. 1660) of the secret marriage of the Duke of York to Clarendon's daughter Anne [q.v.] seemed to endanger, but really confirmed his power. According to his own account he was originally informed of it by the king, received the news with passionate indignation, urged his daughter's punishment, and begged leave to resign. Afterwards, finding the marriage perfectly valid, and public opinion less hostile than he expected, he adopted a more neutral attitude. On his part the king was reluctant to appeal to parliament to dissolve the marriage, was resolved not to part with Clarendon, and hoped through Anne's influence to keep the duke's public conduct under some control. Accordingly he supported the duke in recognising the marriage, which was publicly owned in December 1660 (Cont. pp. 48-76; Burnet, i. 302; Ranke, iii. 340; Lister, ii. 68). Clarendon's position thus seemed to be rendered unassailable. But at bottom his views differed widely from the king's. He thought his master too ready to accept new ideas, and too prone to take the French monarchy as his model. His own aim was to restore the constitution as it existed before the civil war. He held that the secret of good government lay in a well-chosen and powerful privy council.
At present king and minister agreed on the necessity of carrying out the promises made at Breda. Clarendon wished the convention to pass the Indemnity Act as quickly as possible, although, like the king, he desired that all actual regicides should be excepted. He was the spokesman of the lords in their dispute with the commons as to the number of exceptions (Old Parl. Hist. xxii. 435, 446, 487). But of the twenty-six regicides condemned in October 1660 only ten were executed, and when in 1661 a bill was introduced for the capital punishment of thirteen more, Charles and the chancellor contrived to prevent it from passing (Lister, ii. 117, iii. 496; Clarendon State Papers, iii. App. xlvi). In his speech at the opening of the parliament of 1661, Clarendon pressed for a confirmation of the acts passed by the convention. He steadily maintained the Act of Indemnity, and opposed the provisos and private bills by which the angry royalists would have destroyed its efficacy. The merit of this firmness Hyde attributes partly to the king. According to Burnet, 'the work from beginning to end was entirely' Clarendon's. At all events the chancellor reaped most of the odium caused by the comprehensiveness of the Act of Indemnity (Burnet, i. 193, 297; Lords' Journals, xi. 240, 379; Cont. pp. 130, 184, 285; Pepys, 20 March 1669). He believed that 'the late rebellion could never be extirpated and pulled up by the roots till the king's regal power should be fully vindicated and the usurpations in both houses of parliament since the year 1640 disclaimed.' In declaring the king's sole power over the militia (1661), and in repealing the Triennial Act (1664), parliament fulfilled these desires (Cont. pp. 284, 510, 990). On ecclesiastical questions Charles and the chancellor were less in harmony. Clarendon's first object was to gradually restore the church to its old position. He seems to have entertained a certain doubt whether the king's adherence to episcopacy could be relied upon, and was anxious to give the presbyterians no opportunity of putting pressure upon him. Hence the anxiety to provide for the appointment of new bishops shown by his correspondence with Barwick in 1659, and the rapidity with which in the autumn of 1660 vacant sees were filled up. In 1661, when the Earl of Bristol, in the hope of procuring some toleration for the catholics, prevailed on the king to delay the progress of the bill for restoring the bishops to their place in the House of Lords, Clarendon's remonstrances converted Charles and frustrated the intrigue (ib. p. 289; Clarendon State Papers, iii. 613, 732; Life of Dr. Barwick, ed. 1724, p.205; Ranke, iii. 370).
On the question of the church lands Clarendon's influence was equally important. After the convention had decided that church and crown lands should revert to their owners, a commission was appointed to examine into sales, compensate bona-fide purchasers, and make arrangements between the clergy and the tenants. Clarendon, who was a member of the commission, admits that it failed to prevent cases of hardship, and lays the blame on the clergy. Burnet censures Clarendon himself for not providing that the large fines which the bishops raised by granting new leases should be applied to the use of the church at large (Own Time, i. 338; Cont. p.189; Somers Tracts, vii. 465).
Of the two ways of establishing the liberty for tender consciences promised in the Declaration of Breda the king preferred toleration, Hyde comprehension (cf. Lords' Journals, xi. 175). In April 1660 he sent Dr. Morley to England to discuss with the presbyterian leaders the terms on which reunion was possible (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 727, 738). After the Restoration bishoprics were offered to several presbyterians, including Baxter, who records the kindness with which Clarendm treated him (Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, ii. 281, 302, 381). Clarendon drafted the king's declaration on ecclesiastical affairs (25 Oct. 1660), promising limited episcopacy, a revision of the Prayer Book, and concessions in ritual; but when it was proposed in the convention to turn the declaration into a law the bill was thrown out by a government majority. It has been, therefore, argued that the proposal of such a compromise was merely a device to gain time, and Clarendon has been accused of treachery. On the other hand, the declaration itself stated that the arrangement was merely provisional, and it seems probable that his object in preventing the passing of the bill was simply to reserve the settlement of the question to the expected synod and a parliament of more undoubted authority (Masson, Life of Milton, vi. 111; Kennett, Register, p. 289; Old Parl. Hist, xxiii. 27). The synod took the shape of the Savoy conference, and ended in no agreement. The parliament of 1661, zealously and exclusively anglican, began by passing the Corporations Act (20 Dec. 1661) and the Act of Uniformity (19 May 1662). The Parliament's zeal exceeded Clarendon's, who, while asserting the necessity of establishing tests and enforcing conformity, deprecated severity (Lords' Journals, xi. 242). He exerted himself to obtain the confirmation of the act continuing presbyterian ministers in vacant livings which had been passed by the convention, and obtained the special thanks of the presbyterians through Calamy and Baxter (Rawdon Papers, p.137). He joined the majority of the lords in proposing an amendment which would have allowed a maintenance to ministers deprived by the Act of Uniformity. On 17 March 1662 he presented to the House of Lords from the king a proviso which enabled Charles, 'in regard of the promises made before his happy restoration,' to dispense with the observance of the Act of Uniformity in the case of ministers now holding ecclesiastical cures,' of whose merits towards his majesty and peaceable and pious disposition his majesty shall be sufficiently informed ' (ib. pp. 141, 143; Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. p. 162).
When every attempt at comprehension had definitely failed, Clarendon's attitude altered. He 'would have been glad,' he says, that the act had not been so rigorous, but ' when it was passed he thought it absolutely necessary to see obedience paid to it without any connivance.' Only tenderness for the king's honour prevented him from openly opposing the fulfilment of his majesty's promise to suspend the operation of the act for three months, an expedient which was frustrated by the opposition of the bishops and lawyers (Cont. pp. 337-41). Bennet, the probable author of the Declaration of Indulgence published by the king on 26 Dec. 1662, asserts that Clarendon not only approved but applauded it, both of which statements Clarendon denied (Lister, iii. 232-3). In February 1663 Lord Robartes introduced a bill empowering the king to dispense with the laws enforcing conformity or requiring oaths (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. p. 167). Clarendon was strongly opposed to the measure, and represents himself as speaking against it with great vehemence; but the accuracy of his recollections is very doubtful (Cont. pp. 583-93). The French ambassador describes him as appearing ' to take no side in the matter,' gaining great credit in the House of Commons at first by his opposition to the bill, and losing it by the ambiguity of his later conduct (Christie, Life of Shaftesbury, i. 268). In his own letters to Ormonde he complains that Bennet persuaded the king that because 'I did not like what was done, I have raised all the evil spirit that hath appeared upon and against it. On the contrary, God knows I have taken as much pains to prevent those distempers as if I had been the contriver of the councells ' (Lister, iii. 244).
Clarendon's opposition to the policy of toleration, which has been attributed to personal hostility to the promoters of the declaration, deeply incensed the king. `Bennet, Bristol, and their friends,' writes Pepys on 15 May 1663, `have cast my lord chancellor on his back, past ever getting up again.' Although discouraged by Charles, Bristol seized the opportunity to bring forward a long-prepared charge of high treason against Clarendon (10 July 1663). The attack was ' a complete failure. Clarendon in his place denied the charges altogether, the judges reported that even if true they did not amount to high treason, and the king sent to tell the lords that to his certain knowledge many of the facts alleged were untrue.
Nevertheless the breach was real and serious. Unwilling to accept the king's ecclesiastical policy, Clarendon was obliged to accept that of the commons. He was not directly Responsible for the Conventicle Act (1664) and the Five Mile Act (1665), both of which originated in the lower house, but refers approvingly to both (Cont. pp. 511, 776). His later view was that the king had fully complied with the promises made at Breda, which simply bound him to indulge tender consciences until parliament should make some legal settlement, and that the same promises now obliged him to concur in the settlement which parliament had made (ib. pp. 144, 332; Lister, iii. 483). Plots and rumours of plots had strengthened him in the belief that non-conformists were a danger to the peace of the state. 'Their faction,' he concludes, 'is their religion' (Lister, ii. 295-303; Lords' Journals, xi. 237, 242, 476, 688).
The settlement of Scotland and Ireland, and the course of colonial history also, owed much to Clarendon. The aims of his Scottish policy were to keep Scotland dependent on England and to re-establish episcopacy. He opposed the withdrawal of the Cromwellian garrisons, and regretted the undoing of the union which Cromwell had effected. Mindful of the ill results caused by the separation of Scottish and English affairs, which the first two Stuarts had so jealously maintained, he proposed to set up at Whitehall a council of state for Scotland to control the government at Edinburgh (Rebellion, ii. 17; Cont. pp. 92-106; Burnet, i. 202). His zeal to restore episcopacy in Scotland was notorious. Baillie describes him as corrupting Sharp and overpowering Lauderdale, the two champions on whom the presbyterian party had relied (Letters, iii. 464, 471; Burnet, i. 237). At Clarendon's persuasion the English bishops left Sharp to manage the reintroduction of episcopacy (ib. i. 240). Middleton's selection as the king's commissioner was largely due to his friendship with the chancellor (cf. ib. pp. 273, 365), and Middleton's supersession by Lauderdale in May 1663 put an end to Clarendon's influence over Scottish affairs (Memoir of Sir George Mackenzie, pp. 76, 112; `Lauderdale and the Restoration in Scotland,' Quarterly Review, April 1884).
Hyde's share in the settlement of Ireland is less easy to define. The fifteenth article of his impeachment alleges that he 'procured the bills for the settlement of Ireland, and received great sums of money for the same' (Miscellaneous Tracts, p. 39). His answer is that he merely acted as one member of the Irish committee, and had no special responsibility for the king's policy; but his council-notes to Charles seem to disprove this plea (Cont. p. 277; Clarendon State Papers, iii. App. xlvii). Sympathising less strongly with the native Irish than the king did, he yet supported the settlement-commissioners against the clamour of the Irish parliament. 'No man,' he wrote to the Earl of Anglesey, 'is more solicitous to establish Ireland upon a true protestant English interest than I am, but there is as much need of temper and moderation and justice in the composing that establishment as ever was necessary in any affair of this world' (ib. iii. App. xxxiv, xxxvi). He was anxious that the king should carry out his original intention of providing for deserving Irishmen out of the confiscated lands which had fallen to the crown, but was out-generalled by the Earl of Orrery (Cont. p. 272). His influence in Ireland increased after the Duke of Ormonde became lord-lieutenant (December 1661), and he supported Ormonde's policy. He did not share the common jealousy of Irish trade, and opposed the prohibition of the importation of Irish cattle (1665-6) with a persistency which destroyed his remaining credit with the English House of Commons (Carte, Ormonde, ed. 1851, iv. 244, 263-7; Cont. pp. 9, 55-9, 89).
In the extension of the colonial dominions of England, and the institution of a permanent system of colonial administration, Hyde took a leading part. He was one the eight lords proprietors to whom on 24 March 1663 the first Carolina charter was granted, and the settlement they established at Cape Fear was called after him Clarendon County. He helped Baxter to procure the incorporation of the Company for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, of which he was himself a member (7 Feb. 1662). He joined the general council for foreign plantations (1 Dec. 1660), and the special committee of the privy council charged to settle the government of New England (17 May 1661; Cal. State Papers, Colonial, 1574-1660 p. 492, 1661-8 pp. 30, 71, 125; Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, ii. 290). The policy, which Clarendon probably inspired, endeavoured `to enforce the Acts of Parliament for the control of the shipping trade, to secure for members of the Church of England civil rights equal to those enjoyed by nonconformists, and to subordinate the Colonial jurisdiction by giving a right of appeal to the Crown in certain cases' (Doyle, The English in America; The Puritan Colonies, ii. 150). To prevent the united resistance of the New England states he supported measures to divide them from each other and to weaken Massachusetts (Cal. State Papers, Colonial, 1661-1668, pp. 198-203, 377; Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts, ed. 1795, i. 544). In dealing with the colonies circumstances made Clarendon tolerant. He granted freedom of conscience to all settlers in Carolina, and instructed the governors of Virginia and Jamaica not to molest nonconformists (Cal. State Papers, Colonial, 1661-8, p. 155; Stoughton, Ecclesiastical History of England, iii. 310). The worst side of his policy is shown in his support of the high-handed conduct of Lord Willoughby in Barbadoes, which was made the basis of the fifteenth article of his impeachment in 1667.
Hyde, although playing a conspicuous part in foreign affairs, exerted little influence upon them. His views were purely negative. He thought a firm peace between the king and his neighbours `necessary for the reducing his own dominions into that temper of obedience they ought to be in,' and desired to avoid foreign complications (Cont. p. 1170; Courtenay, Life of Temple, i. 127). But his position and his theory of ministerial duty obliged him to accept the responsibility of a policy which he did not originate, and a war of which he disapproved.
Hyde wished the king to marry, but was anxious that he should marry a protestant The marriage between Charles and Catherine of Braganza was first proposed by the Portuguese ambassador to the king in the summer of 1660, and by the king to the lord chancellor (Ranke, iii. 344). Carte, on the authority of Sir Robert Southwell, describes Clarendon as at first remonstrating against the choice, but finally yielding to the king's decision (Carte, Ormonde, iv. 107, ed. 1851; Burnet, Own Time, i. 300). The council unanimously approved of the marriage, and the chancellor on 8 May 1661 announced the decision to parliament, and prepared a narrative of the negotiations (Lords' Journals, xi. 243; Cont. pp. 149-87; Lister, ii. 126, iii. 119, 513). When it became evident that the queen would give no heir to the throne, it was reported that Clarendon knew she was incapable of bearing children and had planned the marriage to secure the crown for his daughter's issue (Reresby, Memoirs, p.53, ed. Cartwright; Pepys, 22Feb.1664). Clarendon refused a bribe of 10,000l. which Bastide the French agent offered him, but stooped to solicit a loan of 50,000l. for his master and a promise of French support against domestic disturbances. The necessities of the king led to the idea of selling Dunkirk a transaction which the eleventh article of Clarendon's impeachment charged him with advising and effecting. In his 'Vindication' he replied that the parting with Dunkirk was resolved upon before he heard of it, and that 'the purpose was therefore concealed from him because it was believed he was not of that opinion ' (Miscellaneous Tracts, p.33). The authorship of the proposal was subsequently claimed by the Earl of Sandwich, and is attributed by Clarendon to the Earl of Southampton (Cont. p.455; Pepys, 25 Feb. 1666). Clarendon had recently rebuked those who murmured at the expense of Dunkirk, and had enlarged on its value to England. But since it was to be sold, he advised that it should be offered to France, and conducted the bargain himself. The treaty was signed on 27 Oct. 1662 (Lister, ii. 167; Ranke, iii. 388; Clarendon State Papers, iii. App. xxi-ii, xxv) Bristol charged him with having got 100,000l. by the transaction, and on 20 Feb. 1665 Pepys notes that the common people had already nicknamed the palace which the chancellor was building near St. James's, ' Dunkirk House.' At the beginning of the reign Mazarin had regarded Clarendon as the most hostile to France of all the ministers of Charles II, but he was now looked upon as the greatest prop of the French alliance (Chéruel, Mazarin, iii. 291, 320-31; Ranke, iii. 339).
Contrary to his intentions, Clarendon also became engaged in the war with Holland. When his administration began, there were disputes of long standing with the United Provinces, and the Portuguese match threatened to involve England in the war between Holland and Portugal. Clarendon endeavoured to mediate between those powers, and refused to allow the English negotiations to be complicated by consideration of the interests of the prince of Orange. He desired peace with Holland because it would compose people's minds in England, and discourage the seditious party which relied on Dutch aid. A treaty providing for the settlement of existing disputes was signed on 4 Sept. 1662. De Witt wrote that it was Clarendon's work, and begged him to confirm and strengthen the friendly relations of the two peoples (Pontalis, Jean De Witt, i. 280; Lister, iii. 167, 175). Amity might have been maintained had the control of English foreign policy been in stronger hands. The king was opposed to war, and convinced by the chancellor's arguments against it (Cont. pp. 450-54). But Charles and Clarendon allowed the pressure of the trading classes and the Duke of York to involve them in hostilities which made war inevitable. Squadrons acting under instructions from the Duke of York, and consisting partly of ships lent from the royal navy, captured Cape Corso (April 1664) and other Dutch establishments on the African coast, and New Amsterdam in America (29 Aug. 1664). The Dutch made reprisals, and war was declared on 22 Feb. 1665. Clarendon held that the African conquest had been made `without any shadow of justice,' and asserted that, if the Dutch had sought redress peaceably, restitution would have been granted (Lister, iii. 347). Of the attack on the Dutch settlements in America he took a different view, urging that they were English property usurped by the Dutch, and that their seizure was no violation of the treaty. He was fully aware of the intended seizure of the New Netherlands, and appears to have helped the Duke of York to make out his title to that territory (Cal State Papers, Colonial, 1661-1668, pp. 191, 200; Brodhead, History of New York, ii. 12, 15; Life of James II, i. 400). The narrative of transactions in Africa, laid before parliament on 24 Nov. 1664, was probably his work. After the war began Clarendon talked openly of requiring new cessions from the Dutch, and asserted in its extremest form the king's dominion over the British seas (Lords' Journals, xi. 625, 684; Lister, iii. 424; Ranke, iii. 425; Pepys, 20 March 1669). Rejecting the offered mediation of France, he dreamt of a triple alliance between England, Sweden, and Spain, 'which would be the greatest act of state and the most for the benefit of Christendom that this age hath produced' (Lister, iii. 422; Lords' Journals, xi. 488). Later still, when France had actively intervened on the side of Holland, Clarendon's eyes became open to the designs of Louis XIV on Flanders, and he claims to have prepared the way for the triple alliance (Cont. p. 1066). But the belief that he was entirely devoted to French interests was one of the chief obstacles to the conclusion of any league between England and Spain (Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart, i. 145, 192; Courtenay, Life of Temple, i. 128). Nor was that belief—erroneous though it was—without some justification. When Charles attempted to bring the war to an end by an understanding with Louis XIV, Clarendon drew the instructions of the Earl of St. Albans (January 1667); and though it is doubtful whether he was cognisant of all his master's intentions, he was evidently prepared to promise that England should remain neutral while France seized Flanders.
In June 1667 the Dutch fleet burnt the ships in the Medway, and on 21 July the treaty of Breda was concluded. Public opinion held Clarendon responsible for the ill-success of the war and the ignominious peace. On the day when the Dutch attacked Chatham, a mob cut down the trees before his house, broke his windows, and set up a gibbet at his gate (Pepys, 14 June 1667; cf. ib. 24 June). According to Clarendon's own account, he took very little part in the conduct of the war, 'never pretending to understand what was fit to be done,' but simply concurring in the advice of military and naval experts (Cont. p. 1026). Clarendon's want of administrative skill was, however, responsible for much. He disliked the new system of committees and boards which the Commonwealth had introduced, and clung to the old plan of appointing great officers of state, as the only one suitable to a monarchy. He thought it necessary to appoint men of quality who would give dignity to their posts, and underrated the services of men of business, while his impatience of opposition and hatred of innovations hindered administrative reform.
As the needs of the government increased, the power of the House of Commons grew, and Clarendon's attempt to restrict their authority only diminished his own. He opposed the proviso for the appropriation of supplies (1665) 'as an introduction to a commonwealth and not fit for a monarchy.' He opposed the bill for the audit of the war accounts (1666) as 'a new encroachment which had no bottom,' and urged the king not to 'suffer parliament to extend its jurisdiction. He opposed the bill for the prohibition of the Irish cattle trade (1666) as inexpedient in itself, and because its provisions robbed the king of his dispensing power; spoke slightingly of the House of Commons, and told the lords to stand up for their rights. In 1666, finding the House of Commons 'morose and obstinate,' and 'solicitous to grasp as much power and authority as any of their predecessors had done,' he proposed a dissolution, hoping to find a new house more amenable. Again, in June 1667 he advised the king to call a new parliament instead of convening the existing one, which had been prorogued till October (Cont. pp. 964, 1101; Lister, ii. 400). This advice and the immediate prorogation of parliament when it did meet (25-9 July 1667) deeply incensed the commons, and gave Clarendon's enemies an opportunity of asserting that he had advised the king to do without parliaments altogether (Pepys, 25 July 1667; Lister, ii. 402). Still more serious, with men who remembered the Protectorate, was the charge that he had designed to raise a standing army and to govern the kingdom by military power. What gave colour to the rumour was that, during the invasion of June 1667, Clarendon had recommended the king to support the troops guarding the coast by the levy of contributions on the adjacent counties until parliament met (Cont. p. 1104). In private the king himself owned the charge was untrue, but refused to allow his testimony to be used in the chancellor's defence. Popular hatred turned against Clarendon, and poets threatened Charles with the fate of his father unless he parted with the obnoxious minister (Marvell, Last Instructions to a Painter, 1. 870).
The court in general had long been hostile to Clarendon, and the king's familiar companions took every opportunity of ridiculing him. Lady Castlemaine and he were avowed enemies. The king suspected him of frustrating his designs on Miss Stewart, and was tired of his reproofs and remonstrances. 'The truth is,' explained Charles to Ormonde, 'his behaviour and humour was grown so unsupportable to myself and to all the world else, that I could no longer endure it, and it was impossible to live with it, and do those things with the parliament that must be done, or the government will be lost' (Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd ser. iv. 39). The king therefore decided to remove the chancellor before parliament again met, and commissioned the Duke of York to urge him to retire of his own accord. Clarendon obtained an interview at Whitehall on 26 Aug. 1667, and told the king that he was not willing to deliver up the seal unless he was deprived of it; that his deprivation of it would mean ruin, because it would show that the king believed him guilty; that, being innocent of transgressing the law, he did not fear the justice of the parliament. `Parliaments,' he said, `were not formidable unless the king chose to make them so; it was yet in his own power to govern them, but if they found it was in theirs to govern him, nobody knew what the end would be.' The king did not announce his decision, but seemed deeply offended by some inopportune reflections on Lady Castlemaine. For two or three days the chancellor's friends hoped the king would change his purpose, but finally Charles declared `that he had proceeded too far to retire, and that he should be looked upon as a child if he receded from his purpose.' On 30 Aug. Sir William Morrice was sent to demand the great seal. When Morrice brought it back to Whitehall, Charles was told by a courtier `that this was the first time he could ever call him king of England, being freed from this great man' (Pepys, 27 Aug., 7 Oct. 1667; Cont. p. 1134 ; Lister, iii. 468). On Clarendon himself the blow fell with crushing severity (cf. Carte, Ormonde, v. 57), but he confidently expected to vindicate himself when parliament met.
The next session opened on 10 Oct. 1667. The king's speech referred to the chancellor's dismissal as an act which he hoped would lay the foundation of greater confidence between himself and parliament. The House of Commons replied by warm thanks, which the king received with a promise never to employ the Earl of Clarendon again in any public affairs whatsoever (16 Oct.). Clarendon's enemies, however, were not satisfied, and determined to arraign him for high treason. The attack was opened by Edward Seymour on 26 Oct., and on 29 Oct. a committee was appointed to draw up charges. Its report (6 Nov.) contained seventeen heads of accusation, but the sixteenth article, which accused Clarendon of betraying the king's counsels to his enemies, was the only one which amounted to high treason. The impeachment was presented to the House of Lords on 12 Nov., but they refused (14 Nov.) to commit Clarendon as requested, `because the House of Commons have only accused him of treason in general, and have not assigned or specified any particular treason.' As they persisted in this refusal, the commons passed a resolution that the non-compliance of the lords was `an obstruction to the public justice of the kingdom and a precedent of evil and dangerous consequences' (2 Dec.) The dispute between the two houses grew so high, that it seemed as if all intercourse between them would stop, and a paralysis of the government ensue (Lister, iii. 474). The king publicly supported the chancellor's prosecutors, while the Duke of York stood by his father-in-law, but an attack of small-pox soon deprived the duke of any further power to interfere. As it was, York's conduct had increased the hostility of the chancellor's enemies, and they determined to secure themselves against any possibility of his return to power if James became king (4 Nov. 1667; Life of James II, i. 433; Cont. p. 1177).
By the advice of friends Clarendon wrote to the king protesting innocence of the crimes alleged in his impeachment. `I do upon my knees,' he added, `beg your pardon for any overbold or saucy expressions I have ever used to you … a natural disease in old servants who have received too much countenance.' He begged the king to put a stop to the prosecution, and to allow him to spend the small remainder of his life in some parts beyond seas (ib. p. 1181). Charles read the letter, burnt it, and observed 'that he wondered the chancellor did not withdraw himself.' He was anxious that Clarendon should withdraw, but would neither command him to 'go nor grant him a pass for fear of the commons. Indirectly, through the Duke of York and the Bishop of Hereford, he urged him to fly, and promised `that he should not be in any degree prosecuted, or suffer in his honour or fortune by his absence' (ib. p. 1185). Relying on this engagement, and alarmed by the rumours of a design to prorogue parliament and try him by a jury of peers, Clarendon left England on the night of 29 Nov., and reached Calais three days later. With Clarendon's flight the dispute between the two houses came to an end. The lords accepted it as a confession of guilt, concurred with the commons in ordering his petition to be burnt, and passed an act for his banishment, by which his return was made high treason and his pardon impossible without the consent of both houses (19 Dec. 1667; Lister, ii. 415-44, iii. 472-77; Cont. pp. 1155-97 ; Carte, Ormonde, v. 58 ; Lords' Journals, xii. 178; Commons' Journals, ix. 40-3).
The rest of Clarendon's life was passed in exile. From Calais he went to Rouen (25 Dec.), and then back to Calais (21 Jan. 1668), intending by the advice of his friends to return to England and stand his trial. In April 1668 he made his way to the baths of Bourbon, and thence to Avignon (June 1668). For nearly three years he lived at Montpelier (July 1668-June 1671), removing to Moulins in June 1671, and finally to Rouen in May 1674 (Lister, ii. 478, 481, 487; Cont. p. 1238). During the first part of his exile his hardships and sufferings were very great. At Calais he lay for three months dangerously ill. At Evreux, on 23 April 1668, a company of English sailors in French service, holding Clarendon the cause of the non-payment of their English arrears, broke into his lodgings, plundered his baggage, wounded several of his attendants, and assaulted him with great violence. One of them stunned him by a blow with the flat of a sword, and they were dragging him into the courtyard to despatch him, when he was rescued by the town guard (ib. pp. 1215, 1225). In December 1667 Louis XIV, anxious to conciliate the English government, ordered Clarendon to leave France, and, in spite of his illness, repeated these orders with increasing harshness. After the conclusion of the Triple League had frustrated the hope of a close alliance with England, the French government became more hospitable, but Clarendon always lived in dread of fresh vexations (Cont. pp. 1202-1220, 1353). The Archbishop of Avignon, the governor and magistrates of Montpelier, and the governor of Languedoc, treated him with great civility, and he was cheered by the constant friendship of the Abbé Montague and Lady Mordaunt. His son, Laurence, was twice allowed to visit him, and Lord Cornbury was with him when he died (Correspondence of Henry Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, ed. Singer, i. 645; Lister, iii. 488).
To find occupation, and to divert his mind from his misfortunes, Clarendon 'betook himself to his books,' and studied the French and Italian languages. Never was his pen more active than during these last seven years of his life. His most important task was the completion and revision of his ' History of the Rebellion ' together with the composition of his autobiography. In June 1671, and again in August 1674, he petitioned for leave to return to England, and begged the queen and the Duke of York to intercede for him (Clarendon State Papers, iii. App. xliv, xlv). These entreaties were unanswered, and he died at Rouen on 9 Dec. 1674 (Lister, ii. 488). He was buried in Westminster Abbey on 4 Jan. 1675, at the foot of the steps ascending to Henry VII's chapel, where his second wife had been interred on 17 Aug. 1667 (Chester, Westminster Abbey Register, pp. 167, 185). His two sons, Henry, earl of Clarendon (1638-1709), and Laurence, earl of Rochester (1642-1711), and his daughter, Anne, duchess of York (1637-1671), are separately noticed. A third son, Edward Hyde, baptised 1 April 1645, died on 10 Jan. 1665, and was also buried in Westminster Abbey (ib. p. 161). Clarendon's will is printed in Lister's 'Life of Clarendon' (ii. 489).
As a statesman, Clarendon's consistency and integrity were conspicuous through many vicissitudes and amid much corruption. He adhered faithfully to the principles he professed in 1641, but the circle of his ideas was fixed then, and it never widened afterwards. No man was fitter to guide a wavering master in constitutional ways, or to conduct a return to old laws and institutions; but he was incapable of dealing with the new forces and new conditions which twenty years of revolution had created.
Clarendon is remarkable as one of the first Englishmen who rose to office chiefly by his gifts as a writer and a speaker. Evelyn mentions his 'eloquent tongue,' and his 'dexterous and happy pen.' Some held that his literary style was not serious enough. Burnet finds a similar fault in his speaking. 'He spoke well; his style had no flow [flaw?] in it, but had a just mixture of wit and sense, only he spoke too copiously; he had a great pleasantness in his spirit, which carried him sometimes too far into raillery, in which he showed more wit than discretion.' Pepys admired his eloquence with less reserve. `I am mad in love with my lord chancellor, for he do comprehend and speak out well, and with the greatest ease and authority that ever I saw man in my life. … His manner and freedom of doing it as if he played with it, and was informing only all the rest of the company, was mighty pretty ' (cf. Warwick, Memoirs, p. 195; Evelyn, ii. 296; Pepys, Diary, 13 Oct. 1666).
Apart from his literary works, the mass of state papers and declarations drawn by his hand and his enormous correspondence testify to his unremitting industry. His handwriting is small, cramped, and indistinct. During his residence in Jersey 'he writ daily little less than one sheet of large paper with his own hand,' and seldom spent less than ten hours a day between his books and his papers (Life, v.5; Clarendon State Papers, ii. 375).
Lord Campbell holds that Clarendon's knowledge of law, and more especially of equity practice, was too slight to qualify him for the office of lord chancellor (Lives of the Chancellors, iii. 188). According to Speaker Onslow he never made a decree in chancery without the assistance of two of the judges (Burnet, i. 172 note). He endeavoured, however, to reform the abuses of his court, and framed, in conjunction with Sir Harbottle Grimston [q. v.], master of the rolls, a series of regulations known as ' Lord Clarendon's Orders' (Lister, ii. 528). Burnet praises him for appointing good judges, and concludes that ' he was a very good chancellor, only a little too rough, but very impartial in the administration of justice' (i. 171, 316).
Clarendon's chancellorship of the university of Oxford left a more lasting impression. He was elected on 27 Oct. 1660 to succeed the Duke of Somerset, and was installed on 15 Nov. (Kennett, Register, pp. 294, 310). His election is celebrated in Latin and English verses by Robert Whitehall of Merton. On 7 Dec. 1667 Clarendon resigned his office in a pathetic letter to the vice-chancellor, which is still exhibited in the Bodleian Library (Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library, ed. 1890, p. 462). Clarendon was not blind to the defects of Oxford as a place of education. At the beginning of his chancellorship he specially recommended the restoration of its ancient discipline (Kennett, p. 378), and he was well seconded by Dr. John Fell [q. v.] In his `Dialogue on Education' he suggests various remedies and reforms, proposing among others the foundation of an academy to teach fencing, dancing, and riding, and the revival of the old practice of acting English and Latin plays (Clarendon Tracts, 1727, pp. 325, 344). His great-grandson, Henry, lord Cornbury, left to the university of Oxford in 1753 all the chancellor's manuscripts, with directions that the proceeds of publication should be employed in setting up an academy for riding and other exercises. In 1868 the fund thus accumulated was applied to the establishment of a laboratory attached to the university museum, and called the Clarendon Laboratory (Macray, p. 225; cf. Collectanea, vol. i. Oxf. Hist. Soc.) The profits of the copyright of the ' History of the Rebellion ' were used to provide a building for the university press, which was erected in 1713 on the east side of the Sheldonian Theatre. It was called the Clarendon printing-house, and its southern face was adorned by a statue of the chancellor set up in 1721. Since the removal of the university press to its present site in 1830, the edifice has been known as the Clarendon Building.
A portrait of Clarendon by Lely is in the university gallery at Oxford. There is another by the same artist, and one by Gerrard Zoust in the collection at Grove Park, Watford, Hertfordshire (Lewis, Lives of the Friends of Lord Clarendon, 1851, iii. 357). The Sutherland ' Clarendon' in the Bodleian Library contained over fifty engraved portraits of Clarendon.
A traveller who saw Clarendon at Rouen in 1668 terms him 'a fair, ruddy, fat, middle-statured, handsome man' (Rawlinson MS. C. 782-7, Bodleian Library). In his younger days Clarendon relates that he indulged his palate very much, and took even some delight in eating and drinking well, but without any approach to luxury, and in truth rather discoursed like an epicure than was one' (Life, i. 72). In March 1645 he was first attacked by the gout, which after the Restoration frequently disabled him. For the greater part of his second exile, even when he enjoyed most health, he could not walk without the help of two men (Cont. p. 1352; Lister, ii. 534). Of his habits and tastes during his early years, and of his pursuits during his exile, Clarendon gives full details in his autobiography, but says nothing of his private life during the time of his greatness. We learn from others that he was fond of state and magnificence, verging on ostentation. Nothing stirred the spleen of satirists more than the great house which he built for himself in St. James's, and his own opinion was that it contributed more than any alleged misdemeanours to 'that gust of envy' which overthrew him. Designed to cost 20,000l., it finally cost 50,000l., and involved him in endless difficulties. Evelyn describes it as ' without hyperbole the best contrived, most useful, graceful, magnificent house in England.' In the end it was sold to the Duke of Albemarle for 25,000l., and pulled down to make room for new buildings (Evelyn, Diary, ed. Wheatley, ii. 417, iii. 341; Marvell, Works, ed. Grosart, i.384; Cont. p. 1358). Evelyn describes also the great collection of portraits of English worthies—chiefly contemporary statesmen and men of letters—which Clarendon brought together there (Evelyn, iii. 443; for the later history of the collection see Lady Theresa Lewis's Lives of the Contemporaries of Lord Clarendon, i. 15).
According to Evelyn, Clarendon was 'a great lover of books,' and ' collected an ample library.' To Clarendon Evelyn dedicated in 1661 his translation of 'Naudaeus on Libraries,' and addressed his proposals for the improvement of English printing. The only present which Louis XIV could prevail on Clarendon to accept was a set of all the books printed at the Louvre (Evelyn, iii. 346, 446; Clarendon State Papers, iii. App. xi. xiii). Clarendon was an assiduous reader of the Roman historians. He quotes Tacitus continually in the 'History of the Rebellion,' and modelled his character of Falkland on that of Agricola. He was familiar with the best historical writers of his own period, and criticises Strada, Bentivoglio, and Davila with acuteness. Of English writers, Hooker, whose exordium he imitates in the opening of the 'History of the Rebellion,' seems to have influenced him most. But he did not disdain the lighter literature of his age, praised the amorous poems of Carew, prided himself on the intimacy of Ben Jonson, and thought Cowley had made a flight beyond all other poets. The muses, as Dryden remarks, were once his mistresses, and boasted his early courtship; but the only poetical productions of Clarendon which have survived are some verses on the death of Donne, and the lines prefixed to Davenant's 'Albovine ' in 1629.
Clarendon's 'History' is the most valuable of all the contemporary accounts of the civil wars. Clarendon was well aware of one cause of its superiority. 'It is not,' he says, ' a collection of records, or an admission to the view and perusal of the most secret letters and acts of state [that] can enable a man to write a history, if there be an absence of that genius and spirit and soul of an historian which is contracted by the knowledge and course and method of business, and by conversation and familiarity in the inside of courts, and [with] the most active and eminent persons in the government' (Tracts, p. 180). But both from a literary and from an historical point of view the book is singularly unequal. At its best Clarendon's style, though too copious, is strong and clear, and his narrative has a large and easy flow. Often, however, the language becomes involved, and the sentences are encumbered by parentheses. As a work of art the history suffers greatly from its lack of proportion. Some parts of the civil war are treated at disproportionate length, others almost entirely neglected. The progress of the story is continually broken by constitutional digressions and lengthy state papers. The 'History' was, however, originally intended rather as an exact memorial of passages ' than 'a digested relation.' It was not to be published as it stood, but to serve as 'a store' out of which 'somewhat more proper for the public view' might be collected (Rebellion, i. 3). The ' History ' itself is to some extent a manifesto, addressed, in the first place, to the king, but appealing still more to posterity. It was designed to set forth a policy as well as to relate events, and to vindicate not so much the king as the constitutional royalists. To celebrate the memories of eminent and extraordinary persons ' Clarendon held one of the principal ends of history. Hence the portraits which fill so many of his pages. His characters are not simply bundles of characteristics, but consistent and full of life, sketched sometimes with affection, sometimes with light humour. Evelyn described them as 'so just, and tempered without the least ingredient of passion or tincture of revenge, yet with such natural and lively touches, as shew his lordship well knew not only the persons' outsides but their very interiors; whilst he treats the most obnoxious who deserved the severest rebuke, with a becoming generosity and freedom, even where the ill-conduct of those of the pretended loyal party, as well as of the most flagitious, might have justified the worst that could be said of their miscarriages and demerits.' Clarendon promised Berkeley that there should not be 'any untruth nor partiality towards persons or sides ' in his narrative (Macray, Clarendon, i., preface, p. xiii), and he impartially points out the faults of his friends. But lack of insight and knowledge prevented him from recognising the virtues of opponents. He never understood the principles for which presbyterians and independents were contending. In his account of the causes of the rebellion he under-estimates the importance of the religious grievances, and attributes too much to the defects of the king's servants, or the personal ambition of the opposition leaders.
As a record of facts the 'History of the Rebellion' is of very varying value. It was composed at different times, under different conditions, and with different objects. Between 1646 and 1648 Clarendon wrote a ' History of the Rebellion' which ended with the defeat of Hopton at Alresford in March 1644. In July 1646 he wrote, by way of defending the prince's council from the aspersions of Goring and Grenville, an account of the transactions in the west, which is inserted in book ix. Between 1668 and 1670 he wrote a 'Life' of himself, which extended from 1609 to 1660. In 1671 he reverted to his original purpose, took up the unfinished ' History ' and the finished 'Life,' and wove them together into the narrative published as the 'History of the Rebellion.' During this process of revision he omitted passages from both, and made many important additions in order to supply an account of public transactions between 1644 and 1660, which had not been treated with sufficient fulness in his `Life.' As the original 'History' was written when Clarendon's memory of events was freshest, the parts taken from it are much more accurate than those taken from the 'Life.' On the other hand, as the ' Life ' was written simply for his children, it is freer in its criticisms, both of men and events. Most of the characters contained in the 'History of the Rebellion' are extracted from the 'Life.'
The authorities at Clarendon's disposal when the original 'History' was written supply another reason for its superior accuracy. He obtained assistance from many quarters. From Nicholas he received a number of official papers, and from Hopton the narrative of his campaigns, which forms the basis of the account of the western war given in books vi. and vii. At the king's command Sir Edward Walker sent him relations of the campaigns of 1644 and 1645, and many cavaliers of less note supplied occasional help. When the ' Life ' was written Clarendon was separated from his friends and his papers, and relied upon his memory, a memory which recalled persons with great vividness, but confused and misrepresented events. The additions made in 1671 are more trustworthy, because Clarendon had in the interval procured some of the documents left in England. Ranke's 'History of England' (translation, vi. 3-29) contains an estimate of the 'History of the Rebellion,' and Mr. Gardiner criticises Clarendon's general position as an historian (History of the Great Civil War, ii. 499). George Grenville, lord Lansdowne, attempted to vindicate his relative, Sir Richard Grenville, from Clarendon's censures (Lansdowne, Works, 1732, i. 503), and Lord Ashburnham examines minutely Clarendon's account of John Ashburnham (A Narrative by John Ashburnham, 2 vols. 1830). An excellent dissertation by Dr. Ad. Buff deals with parts of book vi. of the 'Rebellion' (Giessen, 1868).
The 'True Historical Narrative of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England,' generally termed the ' History of the Rebellion,' was first published at Oxford in 1702-4, in three folio volumes, with an introduction and dedications by Laurence, earl of Rochester. The original manuscripts of the work were given to the university at different dates between 1711 and 1753 (Macray, Annals of the Bodl. Lib. p.225). The first edition was printed, not from the originals, but from a transcript of them made under Clarendon's supervision by his secretary, William Shaw. This was copied for the printers under the supervision of the Earl of Rochester, who received some assistance in editing it from Dr. Aldrich, dean of Christ Church, and Sprat, bishop of Rochester. The editors, in accordance with the discretion given them by Clarendon's will, softened and altered a few expressions, but made no material changes in the text. A few years later, however, John Oldmixon published a series of attacks on them, and on the university, for supposed interpolations and omissions (Clarendon and Whitelocke compared, 1727; History of England during the Reigns of the Royal House of Stuart, preface, pp. 9, 227). These charges, based on utterly worthless evidence, were refuted by Dr. John Burton in 'The Genuineness of Lord Clarendon's History vindicated,' 1744, 8vo. Dr. Bandinel's edition, published in 1826, was the first printed from the original manuscripts. It restores the phrases altered by the editors, and adds in the appendix passages omitted by Clarendon in the revision of 1671-2. The most complete and correct text is that edited and annotated by the Rev. W. D. Macray (Oxford, 1888, 6 vols., 8vo). An account of the manuscripts of the 'History of the Rebellion' is given in the prefaces of Dr. Bandinel and Mr. Macray, and in Lewis's ' Lives of the Contemporaries of Lord Clarendon' (vol. i. Introduction, pt. ii.)
A list of editions of the 'History' is given in Bliss's edition of Wood (Athenæ Oxon. iii. 1017). A supplement to the 'History of the Rebellion,' containing eighty-five portraits and illustrative papers, was published in 1717, 8vo. The Sutherland 'Clarendon' presented to the Bodleian Library in 1837 contains many thousand portraits, views, and maps, illustrating the text of Clarendon's historical works. A catalogue of the collection (2 vols. 4to) was published in 1837 (Macray, Annals of the Bodl. Lib. p.331). The work usually known as the 'Life of Clarendon' was originally published in 1759 ('The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon. … Being a Continuation of the History of the Grand Rebellion from the Restoration to his Banishment in 1667. Written by Himself,' Oxford, 1759, folio). It consists of two parts: the 'Life' proper, written between 1668 and 1670, dealing with the period before 1660; and the 'Continuation,' commenced in 1672. The first consists of that portion only of the original life which was not incorporated in the 'History of the Rebellion.' The second contains an account of Clarendon's ministry and second exile. The 'History of the Reign of King Charles II, from the Restoration to the end of the year 1667,' 2 vols. 4to, n.d., is a surreptitious edition of the last work, published about 1755 (Lowndes, p. 468).
The minor works of Clarendon are the following:
- 'The Difference and Disparity between the Estate and Condition of George, Duke of Buckingham, and Robert, Earl of Essex' (Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, ed. 1685, p.185).
- Speeches delivered in the Long parliament on the lord president's court and council in the north, and on the impeachment of the judges (Rushworth Historical Collections, iv. 230, 333).
- Declarations and manifestos written for Charles I between 1642 and 1648. These are too numerous to be mentioned separately; the titles of the most important have been already given. Many are contained in the 'History of the Rebellion ' itself, and the rest may be found in Rushworth's 'Collections,' in Husband's Collection of Ordinances and Declarations' (1643), and in the old ' Parliamentary History' (24 vols. 1751-62).
- Anonymous pamphlets written on behalf of the king. 'Two Speeches made in the House of Peers on Monday, 19 Dec. 1642' (Somers Tracts, ed. Scott, vi. 576). 'Transcendent and Multiplied Rebellion and Treason, discovered by the Laws of the Land,' 1645; `A Letter from a True and Lawful Member of Parliament … to one of the Lords of his Highness's Council,' 1656 (see Cal. Clarendon State Papers, i. 295, iii. 79; History of the Rebellion, ed. Macray,vi.l,xiv. 151).
- 'Animadversions on a Book entitled Fanaticism fanatically imputed to the Church of England, by Dr. Stillingfleet, and the imputation refuted and retorted by Sam. Cressy,' 1674, 8vo (Lister, ii. 567).
- 'A Brief View and Survey of the dangerous and pernicious errors to Church and State in Mr. Hobbes's book entitled Leviathan, ' Oxford, 1676 (see Clarendon State Papers, iii. App. p. xlii).
- 'The History of the Rebellion and Civil War in Ireland,' 1720, 8vo. This is a vindication of Charles I and the Duke of Ormonde from the Bishop of Ferns and other catholic writers. It was made use of by Nalson in his 'Historical Collections,' 1682, and by Borlase in his 'History of the Irish Rebellion,' 1680. A manuscript is in the library of Trinity College, Dublin (Hist. MSS. Comm. 8th Rep. p.583).
- 'A Collection of several Tracts of Edward, Earl of Clarendon,' 1727, fol. This contains (a) the 'Vindication' written by Clarendon in 1668 in answer to the articles of impeachment against him, the substance of which is embodied in the ' Continuation;' (b) `Reflections upon several Christian Duties, Divine and Moral, by way of Essays;' (c) `Two Dialogues on Education, and on the Respect due to Age;'(d) `Contemplations on the Psalms.'
- 'Religion and Policy, and the Countenance and Assistance each should give to the other, with a Survey of the Power and Jurisdiction of the Pope in the dominion of other Princes,' Oxford, 1811, 2 vols. 8vo.
A work entitled 'A Collection of several Pieces of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, to which is prefixed an Account of his Lordship's Life, Conduct, and Character, by a learned and impartial pen,' was published in 1727, 8vo. The second volume is a reprint of the 'History of the Rebellion in Ireland.' The first contains a reprint of Clarendon's speeches between 1660 and 1666 extracted from the 'Journals of the House of Lords.' Bliss and the Bodleian ' Catalogue ' attribute to Clarendon (on insufficient evidence) a tract entitled 'A Letter sent from beyond seas to one of the chief Ministers of the Nonconforming Party. By a Lover of the Established Government both of Church and State,' dated Saumur, 7 May 1674. Two letters written by Clarendon in 1668 to the Duke and Duchess of York on the conversion of the latter to Catholicism, are printed in the 'Harleian Miscellany' (iii. 555, ed. Park); with the letter he addressed to the House of Lords on his flight from England (v. 185), under the title of 'News from Dunkirk House.' The great collection of Clarendon's correspondence, acquired at different times by the Bodleian Library, comprises over one hundred volumes. A selection from these papers, edited by Dr. Scrope and Thomas Monkhouse, was published between 1767 and 1786 (State Papers collected by Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 3 vols. folio, Oxford). They are calendared up to 1657 (3 vols. 8vo; vol. i. ed. by Ogle and Bliss, 1872; vols. ii. and iii. ed. by W. D. Macray, 1869, 1876). A number of the post-restoration papers are printed in the third volume of Lister's 'Life of Clarendon.' Letters to Sir Edward Nicholas are printed in the `Nicholas Papers,' edited by G. F. Warner, Camden Society, 1886; to Sir Richard Browne, in the appendix to the `Diary of John Evelyn,' edited by Bray, 1827, and by Wheatley, 1879; to Prince Rupert, in Warburton's 'Prince Rupert' (3 vols. 1849); to Dr. John Barwick in Barwick's `Life of Barwick,' 1724; to Lord Mordaunt and others in 1659-60 (Hist. MSS. Comm. 10th Rep. pt. vi. pp. 189-216).
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.163
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
|Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon: for contained read contains