THE FALL OF CLARENDON
WHATEVER might be the consternation of the Chancellor at his elder and
favourite daughter’s stolen match, however great his anger and
disappointment at the failure of the duty and confidence which he felt
she owed him—and there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the
feeling he manifested on the disclosure—it is nevertheless evident that
the affectionate terms on which father and daughter lived, suffered but
a very short eclipse.
The Duke of York himself treated his father-in-law with unvarying
respect and consideration, and to Anne the latter was always a welcome
visitor. For a time, at least, it would seem that Clarendon was on the
crest of the wave. High, and deservedly so, in his King’s favour,
reconciled to his once inveterate foe, the queen-mother, his daughter
established on the steps of the throne, his position appeared altogether
unassailable. Still, as in the days before the marriage, the Chancellor
and his daughter spent much of their time together, and at some time
during those happy days, before the breaking of the storm that was to
overwhelm the wisest head in England, we find the record of a pretended
wager between them, a piece of very innocent fooling which no doubt
served its purpose of amusement for the moment:
“Hugh May, Esq^{re} his award of arbitration in a jocular suit
pending between Edward Earl of Clarendon and his daughter Anne
Duchess of York relative to a wager between them.
“Where it was agreed between Anne Dutchess of York Plaintiffe
and Edward Earl of Clarendon Defendant that the value of twenty
pound lost in a wager between the parties aforesaid should be
paid by that party to whom Hew May Esquire Judge of the
Architects should adjudge it to be due. He the said Hew May
having examined both parties and heard their severall witness
doth hereby declare to all whom it may concern and doth order
and decree that the said summe of twenty pound should be forth
with paid by the right Honorable Edward Earl of Clarendon
Defendant to the said Anne Dutchesse of York Plaintiffe and that
it be paid within 8 daies after both parties shall have had a
sight of this decree. It is further ordered by the said Hew May
that forasmuch as the said Edward Earle of Clarendon Defendant
hath put off and deferred the hearing of this cause term after
term during the times of allmost 4 termes to the great dammage
and cost of the said Anne Dutchesse of Yorke Plaintiffe it is
therefore ordered that the said Earle of Clarendon Defendant
shall pay defraye and discharge all the costs and charges
whatsoever of this sute.
“Ordered that this decree be registered.”[207]
Footnote 207:
Clarendon State Papers (Bodleian).
Before very long, however, the heart for such things was wanting, even
if the time was available.
It is a hard task to gauge the inveterate and bitter malignity which
pursued the Chancellor to his final exile from England. Whatever were
the faults in his public service and administration, it could at least
be said of Edward Hyde that “he was in the Court of Charles II. almost
the only man who lived chastely, drank moderately, and swore not at
all,”[208] and that with his lifelong friends, Ormonde and Southampton,
he “projected into this reign” “the high-toned virtues of the old
Cavalier stock.”[209] These, and the friendship already mentioned—just
as long and steadfast—with John Evelyn, should stand the memory of
Clarendon in good stead, putting aside those brilliant gifts which he
used so unsparingly in the service of his sovereign. Of these, Horace
Walpole, no mean critic, declares that “for his comprehensive knowledge
of mankind he should be styled the Chancellor of human nature.”
Footnote 208:
_Encyclopædia Britannica._ “Clarendon.”
Footnote 209:
“Charles II.” Osmund Airy.
The dark clouds were beginning to gather about Hyde as early as 1662,
though possibly only the few persons who were conversant with all State
secrets were cognisant of the fact. In one of de Wiquefort’s despatches
he says of the Chancellor: “He has a strong party against him who will
make the King jealous, and will be favourable to the Queen in order to
oppose the Duchess of York.” If the party against Clarendon was strong,
it must have been a small one at that time, but it is instructive to see
that already two factions were in the forming, trying to establish a
rivalry between the two ladies, though they themselves were entirely
innocent in the matter, but at any rate no one was so likely to suffer
between the contending parties as Clarendon himself. In 1663, Digby,
Earl of Bristol, whose character should not have secured any particular
confidence, attacked the Chancellor, bringing against him a charge of
high treason which, however, at that period fell to the ground.[210] But
as time went on the deep-laid prejudice against him spread and spread
like a canker. He had unhappily tried the unsuccessful experiment of
hunting with the hounds and running with the hare, for he had
endeavoured to reconcile the Presbyterian malcontents by the Act of
Indemnity and the Romanists by the Act of Uniformity, thereby satisfying
neither party. In this way he had unfortunately succeeded in making
enemies in all directions. He was “steady for the Church against
Dissenters and Papists alike,”[211] and consequently both parties hated
him. His blameless life, too, was a tacit reproof of the vices of the
Court, and his chief foe, Buckingham, took full advantage of the
fact.[212] He and his boon companions were accustomed to say to the
King, with a sneer: “There goes your school master!”[213] But it was
above all the irrepressible Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine,
beautiful, unscrupulous, evil in thought and deed, who joined with
others no less guilty in hounding the Chancellor to his disgrace and so
depriving the King of a minister who, if not perfect, had at any rate
done him and the realm great and lasting service. Meanwhile, while all
their discontent and malice were seething under the surface, but not yet
openly active, Clarendon, in execution of the plan he had entertained
from the time of the Restoration, set about building his new house in
1664. We have previously seen that he established himself temporarily at
Worcester House in the Strand, and that it was there that both his
daughter’s marriage and the birth of her elder son took place, but he
had never intended to remain there, and it was not very long before he
acquired a site which suited him. At the time of the public announcement
of Anne’s marriage, York House at Twickenham, originally York Place, was
given to her father, who was accustomed to stay there when the King was
at Hampton Court, and the Duchess’ daughter Anne, afterwards queen, was
born there.[214] But it was in London itself that the Chancellor
proposed to build his new house, and he received a grant from the King
of certain Crown property. It lay west of Burlington House, on the site
of Bond Street, Stafford Street and Albemarle Street, extending
eastwards to Swallow Street, its western boundary being, however,
uncertain. There, then, was built Clarendon House,[215] facing the top
of St James’s Street, and occupying the whole site of Stafford Street.
It stood back from Piccadilly, then newly named, having projecting wings
with a turret in the centre, and Evelyn calls it, with some probable
exaggeration “the first palace in England.”[216] It is said that 74
Piccadilly was built of a portion of the materials.
Footnote 210:
_Chalmers’ Biographical Dictionary._
Footnote 211:
_Ibid._
Footnote 212:
With reference to Lady Castlemaine it must be noted that Clarendon
would allow nothing to pass the Great Seal in which she was named. He
also opposed her appointment as Lady of the Bedchamber, and forbade
his wife to visit her. (“Samuel Pepys and the World He Lived In.”
Wheatley.)
Footnote 213:
_Chalmers’ Biographical Dictionary._
Footnote 214:
“Reign of Queen Anne.” Justin McCarthy.
Footnote 215:
Watford’s “Old and New London”; “The Ghosts of Piccadilly,” G. S.
Street.
Footnote 216:
He also calls it “without hyperbole the best contrived, the most
useful, graceful and magnificent house in England, and I except not
Audley End, which, though larger and full of gaudy and barbarous
ornament, does not gratify judicious spectatore.”
Rather later than the erection of Clarendon House, the City of London
gave the Chancellor a lease of the Conduit Mead, which is now covered by
New Bond Street and Brook Street, and from which Conduit Street takes
its name.
The building of this magnificent palace, no doubt intended by Clarendon
to be a home for his children’s children, excited a positive storm of
wrath. The sale of Dunkirk had lately been completed, and the mob chose
to believe that the house was built with Dutch money, though there is no
proof that Clarendon ever received a penny. Pennant asserts boldly that
the stones used in its erection had been intended for the rebuilding of
old St Paul’s, long in a half-ruinous state, which work had been set on
foot some time before the Great Fire made all such intentions abortive
for the moment. Nicknames were freely bestowed. Holland House, in
allusion to supposed bribes from the Dutch; Dunkirk House for the same
reason; Tangier House, because the Chancellor had obtained the town of
Tangier for England, and no one wanted it. His employment, during the
Plague, of three hundred workmen on his building operations, though done
with the best intentions, only raised another outcry.
In 1667, the unlucky year when the Dutch sailed up to Gravesend, a mob
proceeded to break the windows of Clarendon House with the usual fatuous
want of reason on such occasions, and setting up a gibbet before the
gates, inscribed on it the words:
“Three sights to be seen:
Dunkirk, Tangier, and a barren Queen.”
In fact the town was deluged with lampoons in the fashion of the day.
Another couplet put it:
“God will avenge too for the stones he took
From aged Paul’s to build a nest for rooks.”
Andrew Marvell, too, chose to take up his parable on the subject, and
dipped his mordant pen in bitterer gall than usual:
“Here lie the sacred bones
Of Paul beguiled of his stones.
Here lie golden briberies
The price of ruined families;
The Cavaliers’ debenture wall
Fixed on an eccentric basis.
Here’s Dunkirk Town and Tangier Hall,
The Queen’s marriage and all
The Dutchman’s templum pacis.”[217]
Footnote 217:
“Poems and Satires of Andrew Marvell: ‘Upon his House’” [Clarendon].
Yet again, in his “Clarendon’s House-warming” are the words:
“He had read of Rhodope, a lady of Thrace,
Who was digged up so often ere she did marry,
And wished that his daughter had had so much grace
To erect him a pyramid out of her quarry.”
The stately house which from the first attracted so much unfriendly
attention had but a short life, and its ill luck dogged it to the end.
Evelyn, who saw the first stone laid, also saw the pulling down of the
whole edifice. Clarendon’s sons, Lord Cornbury and his brother Laurence,
afterwards Lord Rochester, leased it to their father’s friend the Duke
of Ormonde, who, by the way, was driving up St James’s Street on his way
to Clarendon House when the notorious Colonel Blood made his desperate
attempt to kidnap and assassinate him. Later still, after the
Chancellor’s death, the house was sold to Monk’s son, the second Duke of
Albemarle, who called it after himself, but subsequently sold it again
to a syndicate; and it was finally demolished in 1683 by a certain Sir
Thomas Bond, “to build a street of tenements to his undoing.”[218] He,
at least, vindicated his loyalty, for having been Controller of the
Household to the queen-mother, he went into exile in after years in the
train of King James II. His name, of course, survives in the present
Bond Street, which occupies part of the site of Clarendon House, as
Albemarle Street recalls the second appellation of the Chancellor’s
house.
Footnote 218:
Clarendon’s “Correspondence.”
With regard to the rebuilding of St Paul’s, we find Clarendon’s name as
concerned in it in a letter from Henchman, Bishop of London, to
Sancroft, then Dean.
“MR DEANE,—How this evening since five a clock S^r Philip
Warwick sends me frô the Archbp of Canterburie that the Lord
Chancelour hath appointed that his Grace and I should come to
morrow to Worcester House at ten in the morning about St Paul’s
first I doubt whether you may with safety come out, next whether
Mr Webb on such a sodaine warning can be convened. If you may
without prejudice to your health come and Mr Webb can be met
with I hope J^o Tillison hath prepared all that we are to lay
before them. I intend to be there, only I seuerely charge you
that unless J^o Barwick[219] gives leave without scruple you
appeare not.
Footnote 219:
John Berwick was Prebendary of Durham and Chaplain to Bishop
Morton. He was successively Dean of Durham and St Paul’s.
(Walker’s “Sufferings of the Clergy.”)
“Your very affectionate friend,
“HUMFR: LONDON.”
“FULHAM, _March 26, 1666_.”[220]
Footnote 220:
Additional MSS. Harleian, 3785.
It will be seen that this letter is dated just six months before the
Great Fire made all plans for restoration and repair abortive, and also
that the Chancellor was still at Worcester House, his own not being
ready for him. The Bishop wrote again a month later on the same subject.
“DEARE S^R,—At Worcester Howse on Thursday morning about ten the
L. Pres^t will be with some other Lords about the business of St
Paul’s. I desire you to be there and the Deane of Canterburie.
Let not Mr Tillison fayle to attend and give notice of it to Mr
Hugh May and Mr Webb: and lett him be prepared concerning
objections agaynst the Account. I shall be at K. Henry 7th
Chappell to morrow at nine to prorogue the Convocation.
“Your affectionate friend,
“HUMFR. LONDON.”
“FULHAM, _Ap. 23, 1666_.”[221]
Footnote 221:
Additional MSS. Harleian.
It may be noted here that Sancroft’s appointment to the Deanery of St
Paul’s coincided with the battle of Southwold, as when Edward Savage
wrote his congratulations from the Cockpit on the 25th October 1664 he
added: “We shall certainely have warre with the false Dutch, and the
Duke of Yorke is presently going himselfe to sea with the gallantest
ffleete that ever England set forth.”[222]
Footnote 222:
_Ibid._
Sancroft, as we know, was to see many startling changes in Church and
State, and to experience in his own person many vicissitudes, but they
were no greater than such as fell on Edward Hyde.[223]
Footnote 223:
He had been Chaplain to Bishop Cosin, Prebendary of Durham, Master of
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Dean of York and then of St Paul’s. He at
once began to repair the cathedral, and after the fire he set to work
to rebuild, giving £1400 for this purpose. He was Archbishop in 1677,
deprived at the Revolution.
Several reasons, as previously stated, could be given for Clarendon’s
steadily increasing unpopularity and for his final disgrace, but in 1667
he was for the second time impeached. Among the articles of this second
accusation of high treason were “The taking money for the King’s
marriage with Portugall,” “The marrying his daughter to the Duke of
Yorke,” “The obstructing all other marriages for the King.”[224]
Footnote 224:
Scudamore Papers.
As regards the second of the indictments we know that Hyde was entirely
innocent from first to last. The third seems to point at the often
suggested plan of a divorce from Catherine. The King himself wrote
privately to Ormonde that his real reason for parting with his old
servant was “the Chancellor’s intolerable temper,”[225] but it is also
said that he deeply resented the latter’s action in counteracting a
divorce by bringing about the stolen marriage of “La Belle Stuart” to
the Duke of Richmond, seeing that he (Charles) at one time contemplated
getting rid of his wife to marry the lovely, wild, childish girl who,
for the moment, imprisoned his vagrant fancy.[226] His covert irritation
and impatience were diligently fanned by those about him, headed by
Buckingham, who used his great gifts and entire want of scruple, with
deadly effect, to compass the undoing of his foe. It is possible that
Clarendon had at first displayed his personal influence too openly, for
though Charles from sheer indolence would allow himself to be governed
with fatal facility, he was nevertheless, like many people of a like
temperament, very unwilling that the fact should be known. As to the
charge of bribery urged so often, and with such bitter pertinacity,
there is absolutely no proof of any kind of its truth. Clarendon was
accused of receiving bribes right and left, of knowing that the needy
spendthrift King received them from his astute cousin Louis XIV. Of all
this, it must be repeated, Hyde’s enemies could bring no proof, and at
any rate his fall certainly heralded the worst period of the reign of
Charles II. “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” followed fast
upon each other. Clarendon’s old friend, Lord Southampton, one of the
best and wisest of his generation, had died not long before. In August
the King sent for the Seals to be delivered up, and a few days later the
faithful Evelyn came to visit the disgraced minister, and “found him in
his bedchamber very sad.” “He was my particular kind friend on all
occasions,” adds the diarist loyally, and one can fancy that his
presence may have brought a little momentary comfort to the bruised
heart. There was a yet heavier blow to fall, and the cup of sorrow to be
filled to the brim. On 8th December, some months later, Pepys records
that he saw the Duchess of York at Whitehall “in a fine dress of second
mourning for her mother, being black edged with ermine.” To Clarendon
himself the loss of the faithful wife who had shared his poverty and
exile beyond the sea, as well as his short-lived prosperity, came as a
crushing misfortune among all the other burdens pressing upon him on
every side. A few pathetic words written in July from Clarendon House
allude to this sorrow as impending: “Being in noe good disposition the
last weeke, by reason of my Wife’s great Sicknesse.”[227]
Footnote 225:
_Chalmers’ Biographical Dictionary._
Footnote 226:
“Royalty Restored.” E. F. Molloy.
Footnote 227:
Harleian MS.
We see Evelyn again visiting his friend about this time, and finding
“him in his garden at his new-built palace, sitting in his gowt wheel
chayre and seeing the gates setting up towards the north and the fields.
He looked and spoke very disconsolately.” It was no wonder. Everything
was crumbling round him like the wall of a falling house. The fortune he
had built up through so many strenuous years was toppling over, honour
and reputation were smitten, and he sat—alone. The “new-built palace”
could yield him now but little solace, and forth from it he must go,
like Wolsey, “naked to his enemies.” Truly he must have said to himself,
as he looked round him in utter loneliness: “Vanity of vanities.”
Meanwhile in the ancient palace at the foot of the hill, not many
hundred yards away, sorrow of another kind was brooding.
To the Duchess of York herself, this year was especially marked by grief
and misfortune. In one direction there was the keen mortification caused
by the Duke’s short-lived passion for Lady Denham, whose tragic and
mysterious death has been already recorded; in another the blow
inflicted by the disgrace and final exile of her father—and this of
itself must have been a sore trouble, considering the close affection
between them. Sadder still came the death of her mother and of her young
children. Andrew Marvell’s unsparing pen was again busy, and surely no
crueller couplet was ever written:
“Kendal is dead, and Cambridge riding post,
What fitter sacrifice for Denham’s ghost?”[228]
Footnote 228:
“Poems and Satires.”
Among the many pictures of the time which its history unfolds before us,
there is one which stands out here in sombre relief.[229]
Footnote 229:
Knight’s “London.”
Across the Park, which he has already done much to improve, having laid
out the Mall and planted avenues, comes King Charles at his usual swift
pace. He has been, according to his custom, feeding the ducks, of which
he is very fond. Two or three courtiers keep up with him as best they
may, and a crowd of little dogs run and dance round him, snapping at
each other. Now and then the King throws a careless word or two to his
attendants, who laugh dutifully, or try to cap them, as the case may be.
Down another path from the direction of Spring Gardens,[230] where he
now lives—it used to be in the Barbican[231]—advances a tall figure
carrying himself with a certain stately swing. Those keen quick eyes and
high aquiline features can only belong to Prince Rupert, fresh perhaps
from some of his experiments, the transmuting of silver, and the like.
As he takes off his wide plumed hat in a sweeping salute and bows
profoundly, the King nods cheerfully, glad of the meeting, glad of any
distraction. A few desultory words—he has shot a duck, it seems, and one
of the dogs retrieved it; then he seems suddenly to remember that his
brother’s boys are ailing. “Let’s go and see Cambridge and Kendal,” he
says with a stifled yawn, as he passes his arm through that of his
cousin. It reads callously, but Charles is a man of strange and
unexpected reserves, and he may feel more than he allows to be seen. So
the pair walk on under the spreading trees, while the King’s attendants
fall back to a more respectful distance. The Prince Palatine somehow
always inspires something like awe. It is but a little way, and they
come to the ancient grave palace, above which the standard with the
leopards and lilies, and the crescent for difference, hangs its heavy
folds in the still air.
Footnote 230:
“Old Royal Palace of Whitehall.” E. Sheppard, D.D.
Footnote 231:
“Diary of Dr Edward Lake.” (Camden Miscellany.)
Another and greater King is entering the door unseen—for two dying
children lie under that goodly roof. Kendal and Cambridge are indeed
“riding post” to the edge of the dark river into whose waters those
small feet are already almost plunged, and over them, tearless for all
her bleeding heart, hangs the mother. Is it for sin of hers—is it a
judgment on ambition—that no living son of her blood may carry on the
line of English royalty? Can she give nothing, do nothing, to avert the
coming doom?[232]
Footnote 232:
The poor Duchess was in doubt which would die first. (Pepys.)
Someone, no doubt, tells the King that his errand is vain. The frail
little lives are passing out of sight, and he turns away silent. He is
moved and sorry. He is good-natured, even kind-hearted, when he
remembers to be, but Prince Rupert’s noble face is clouded and the
luminous eyes are misty, for no sorrow appeals to him in vain.
But worse evils are coming on England than even the loss of the
seed-royal. The Dutch fleet is in the river, and coming up to Gravesend,
intent on vengeance.
Charles II. has been unsparingly blamed for this disaster, but he was
not altogether guilty. After the terrible visitations of the Plague and
the Fire, he greatly impoverished himself to help the many destitute
sufferers, refusing to press the Parliament to pay the sums voted for
supplies, when those disastrous years made them fall short.[233] This
led to the necessity of laying up ships which should have been kept in
commission, contrary to the advice of the Duke of York and the emphatic
warnings of Prince Rupert. No doubt the King had also yielded to the
persuasions of Louis XIV., backed by Henrietta Maria, whose advice was
always unlucky, and France was at this time but too ready to pull the
strings in the background. Meanwhile another division of the Dutch,
advancing up the Medway, had forced the boom laid across it for
protection, and had actually burnt three men-of-war.
Footnote 233:
Green’s “Short History of the English People.”
In the great palace of Whitehall all is in uproar, and wild confusion is
reigning.[234] Rumours of fire and sword lose nothing by transmission
from one to another. Some of the maids of honour believe anything and
everything, even an immediate sack of London. Beautiful, brazen
Castlemaine, carefully dishevelled like a Bacchante, is bewailing
herself and hysterically protesting that she will be the first to be
torn in pieces. Probably the person most unmoved by the clamour and its
cause is the King himself, looking on cynically from the outside, as it
were, with the quality of aloofness which has always stood him in good
stead. And now, as we know, the mob, always prejudiced, always fickle,
just because the Dutch are in the Thames, streams off tumultuously to
Clarendon House and breaks the windows with great enthusiasm. To the
builder and owner of that ill-omened mansion such an incident was
probably but a slight and momentary aggravation. Clarendon himself
writes from Whitehall on 14th June: “I had writt this farr, the case is
much altred by the Dutch Fleete entring into the Ryver and tryumphing
there to our great damage and how farr it may extend farther we yett
know not; the particulars I leave to others (but upon the whole) matters
not though a peace may be bought deare and usually when an unreasonable
price asked for it it is an infallible sign that it is not to be had yet
a peace in this conjunction would be very reasonable.”[235] This letter
was originally partly written in cypher. The Chancellor’s signature is
very tremulous, testifying possibly to agitation of mind easily
conceivable.
Footnote 234:
“A Royal Cavalier: The Romance of Rupert, Prince Palatine.” Mrs
Steuart Erskine.
Footnote 235:
Harleian MS.
Thus for the Chancellor the end had truly come. A career of singular if
varying brilliance was closing, alas! ingloriously. At his impeachment,
his son-in-law, the Duke of York, who had never failed to stand by him
since their connection, and who now wished to soften the blow, sent his
old friend Bishop Morley to the fallen minister to say that the King
wished him to leave the country. It needed only this. He over whose
youth Edward Hyde had watched so faithfully, to the utmost of his power,
had done with him. He did not want to see his face any more, and he
never did see it. Clarendon bent his head to the storm, and submitted.
Perhaps his strong heart broke then, and nothing else mattered very
much. At any rate he obeyed the royal mandate, the last he was to
receive, and before the year was out he had left England, as it proved,
for ever.
He went first to Calais, then to Rouen, covering ground that must have
been very familiar to him in earlier days. At Evreux, where he stayed
for a time, his life was actually attempted by some English sailors, on
the grounds that he had sold his country and robbed them of their
pay.[236] This danger he escaped, and later, with the restlessness born
of despondency and lack of occupation, he wandered south to Montpellier,
proceeding thence to Moulins. Finally, however, he retraced his steps to
Rouen. It was nearer, after all, to England; and there, at no great
distance from the country he loved so well, he died in December
1673.[237]
Footnote 236:
_Chalmers’ Biographical Dictionary._
Footnote 237:
He was buried in Westminster Abbey, on the north side of the Chapel of
Henry VII.
[Illustration:
EDWARD, EARL OF CLARENDON
]
It is a pitiful story. Whether Clarendon was entirely blameless of all
the accusations against him, it is useless to speculate, but at least it
must be conceded that from the first he had set before him high ideals,
and if he fell short of these, it was no more than many—nay most—had
done. It was an age, pre-eminently, when it was said that every man had
his price. If so, then Edward Hyde’s was a very high one; but it is much
pleasanter and indeed more reasonable to believe in his innocence, as
such belief is far more consonant with his character as it is presented
to us by his contemporaries. And at least he knew heavy griefs.
Estranged more and more as time went on from the daughter he loved so
deeply, severed altogether from her and from his sons, driven in
disgrace from his country to spend in exile a lonely old age, the close
of Clarendon’s story presents a very sorrowful picture, and if one were
inclined to moralise, preaches an eloquent sermon on the vanity of human
greatness. But it is not likely that the ex-Chancellor himself needed
any such reminders. He had seen too much of the mutability of all things
here, to be quite unprepared for vicissitudes, and he had at last learnt
how to face with dignity the trials which he was destined to suffer. For
one thing we certainly owe him a debt of gratitude, namely, for his
“History of the Rebellion.” In that noble record he has painted for us,
as no other hand could have done it, the actors in that great drama,
perhaps the greatest ever presented on the stage of English history, and
has made them live for all time to his readers.
This great and important work Clarendon wrote at a house in Swallowfield
in Berkshire, which was the home of his eldest son’s second wife,
Flower, the widow of Sir William Buckhouse. Lord Cornbury’s first wife
had been Theodosia, the daughter of the gallant and hapless Arthur, Lord
Capel, one of the most perfect heroes of a time which produced not a few
such.[238]
Footnote 238:
Evelyn’s “Correspondence.” To Mr Sprat, Chaplain to the Duke of
Buckingham, afterwards Bishop of Rochester.
As before said, if Clarendon was indeed guilty of himself receiving
bribes, or of the knowledge that the King’s hands were not clean in this
respect, there exists no proof of either, and if he needed or desired
any revenge for his disgrace and broken fortunes, he might have found it
in the decadence of the government of his country which immediately
followed. He had at least one satisfaction—that his royal son-in-law had
voted against his sentence of banishment, but it was probably only an
aggravation of his trials that Bishop Morley, whom he had been wont to
call “the best man alive,” was involved in his disgrace. On this account
the bishop was removed from his post of spiritual director to the
Duchess of York, an office which he had filled with little intermission
since the Flemish days when he had found a shelter under Hyde’s
hospitable roof.[239] But such a reverse was inevitable. The great tree
in its fall was destined to drag down with it the lesser ones whose
roots were twisted with its own. “None of us liveth to himself,” are
words which hold good of more than Clarendon and his friends.
Footnote 239:
When Morley was translated to Winchester he took Izaak Walton and his
son with him, and the former died there in 1683. Winchester House at
Chelsea was bought by Morley, and belonged to the See until Bishop
Tomlin’s day. (Dean Plumptre’s “Life of Ken.”)
So Edward Hyde passes out of the arena of his day and country, a
conspicuous figure through many stormy years, and his place knows him no
more. His rival, Buckingham, remains to hold the stage a little longer,
and in some eyes he may be all-sufficient, since Reresby can call him
“the finest gentleman of person and wit I think I ever saw”; and King
Louis, against whose judgment there can surely be no appeal, pronounces
him “the only English gentleman” he had ever seen. In the light of such
shining attributes, the sombre colours wherein Chancellor Hyde is
invested retire altogether into the shade; yet perhaps when the two
figures are placed side by side in the estimation of a later age,
opinions may be reversed as to which is after all the finer gentleman.
The blood of the Hydes was to the full as ancient as that of the
Villiers, and for the rest who can doubt which served with the stancher
devotion God and the king, or lived the more blameless and unstained
life? Many great names stand out from the record of the England of that
day, names of which she has reason to be proud—Falkland, Hopton, Bevil
Grenville, Southampton, Capel—yet to his honour it may be said that
Edward Hyde is not unworthy of a place among them.
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