[1] _Life_, i. 25.
[2] _Hist. of the Rebellion_, iii. 164, the account being
substantially accepted by Gardiner, in spite of inaccuracies in
details (_Hist._ ix. 341, note).
[3] _Clarendon St. Pap._ ii. 337.
[4] Ibid.
[5] _Hist. of the Rebellion_, xiii. 140.
[6] _Clarendon State Papers_, iii. 316, 325, 341, 343.
[7] _Hist. MSS. Comm.: MSS. of F.W. Leyborne-Popham_, 227.
[8] Anne Hyde (1637-1671), eldest daughter of the chancellor, was the
mother by James of Queen Mary and Queen Anne, besides six other
children, including four sons who all died in infancy. She became a
Roman Catholic in 1670 shortly before her death, and was buried in
the vault of Mary, queen of Scots, in Henry VII.'s chapel in
Westminster Abbey.
[9] See _Hist. MSS. Comm.: Various Collections_, ii. 118, and _MSS.
of Duke of Somerset_, 94.
[10] _Continuation_, 339.
[11] Ib. 511, 776.
[12] Lister's _Life of Clarendon_, ii. 295; _Hist. MSS. Comm.:
Various Collections_, ii. 379.
[13] _Continuation_, 1170.
[14] _Hist. MSS. Comm.: MSS. of F.W. Leyborne-Popham_, 250.
[15] _Continuation_, 1066.
[16] Macaulay's _Hist. of England_, i. 193.
[17] Pepys's _Diary_, Sept. 2, 1667.
[18] _Hist. MSS. Comm._, 7th Rep. 162.
[19] _Diary_, iii. 95, 96.
[20] _Lives from the Clarendon Gallery_, by Lady Th. Lewis, i. 39;
Burnet's _Hist. of his own Times_, i. 209.
[21] _Continuation_, 88.
[22] Lister's _Life of Clarendon_, ii. 416.
[23] _Continuation_, 1137.
[24] _Clarendon St. Pap._ iii. Suppl. xxxvii.
[25] Evelyn witnessed its demolition in 1683--_Diary_, May 19th, Sept.
18th; _Lives from the Clarendon Gallery_, by Lady Th. Lewis, i. 40.
[26] _Diary_, July 14th, 1664.
[27] _Lister_, ii. 528.
CLARENDON, GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK VILLIERS, 4TH EARL OF (in the
Villiers line) (1800-1870), English diplomatist and statesman, was born
in London on the 12th of January 1800. He was the eldest son of Hon.
George Villiers (1750-1827), youngest son of the 1st earl of Clarendon
(second creation), by Theresa, only daughter of the first Lord
Boringdon, and granddaughter of the first Lord Grantham. The earldom of
the lord chancellor Clarendon became extinct in the Hyde line by the
death of the 4th earl, his last male descendant. Jane Hyde, countess of
Essex, the sister of that nobleman (she died in 1724), left two
daughters; of these the eldest, Lady Charlotte, became heiress of the
Hyde family. She married Thomas Villiers (1709-1786), second son of the
2nd earl of Jersey, who served with distinction as English minister in
Germany, and in 1776 the earldom of Clarendon was revived in his favour.
The connexion with the Hyde family was therefore in the female line and
somewhat remote. But a portion of the pictures and plate of the great
chancellor was preserved to this branch of the family, and remains at
The Grove, their family seat at Hertfordshire. The 2nd and 3rd earls
were sons of the 1st, and, neither of them having sons, the title
passed, on the death of the 3rd earl (John Charles) in 1838, to their
younger brother's son.
Young George Villiers entered upon life in circumstances which gave
small promise of the brilliancy of his future career. He was well born;
he was heir presumptive to an earldom; and his mother was a woman of
great energy, admirable good sense, and high feeling. But the means of
his family were contracted; his education was desultory and incomplete;
he had not the advantages of a training either at a public school or in
the House of Commons. He went up to Cambridge at the early age of
sixteen, and entered St John's College on the 29th of June 1816. In
1820, as the eldest son of an earl's brother with royal descent, he was
enabled to take his M.A. degree under the statutes of the university
then in force. In the same year he was appointed attache to the British
embassy at St Petersburg, where he remained three years, and gained that
practical knowledge of diplomacy which was of so much use to him in
after-life. He had received from nature a singularly handsome person, a
polished and engaging address, a ready command of languages, and a
remarkable power of composition.
Upon his return to England in 1823 he was appointed to a
commissionership of customs, an office which he retained for about ten
years. In 1831 he was despatched to France to negotiate a commercial
treaty, which, however, led to no result. On the 16th of August 1833 he
was appointed minister at the court of Spain. Ferdinand VII. died within
a month of his arrival at Madrid, and the infant queen Isabella, then in
the third year of her age, was placed by the old Spanish law of female
inheritance on her contested throne. Don Carlos, the late king's
brother, claimed the crown by virtue of the Salic law of the House of
Bourbon which Ferdinand had renounced before the birth of his daughter.
Isabella II. and her mother Christina, the queen regent, became the
representatives of constitutional monarchy, Don Carlos of Catholic
absolutism. The conflict which had divided the despotic and the
constitutional powers of Europe since the French Revolution of 1830
broke out into civil war in Spain, and by the Quadruple Treaty, signed
on the 22nd of April 1834, France and England pledged themselves to the
defence of the constitutional thrones of Spain and Portugal. For six
years Villiers continued to give the most active and intelligent support
to the Liberal government of Spain. He was accused, though unjustly, of
having favoured the revolution of La Granja, which drove Christina, the
queen mother, out of the kingdom, and raised Espartero to the regency.
He undoubtedly supported the chiefs of the Liberal party, such as
Espartero, against the intrigues of the French court; but the object of
the British government was to establish the throne of Isabella on a
truly national and liberal basis and to avert those complications,
dictated by foreign influence, which eventually proved so fatal to that
princess. Villiers received the grand cross of the Bath in 1838 in
acknowledgment of his services, and succeeded, on the death of his
uncle, to the title of earl of Clarendon; in the following year, having
left Madrid, he married Katharine, eldest daughter of James Walter,
first earl of Verulam.
In January 1840 he entered Lord Melbourne's administration as lord privy
seal, and from the death of Lord Holland in the autumn of that year Lord
Clarendon also held the office of chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster
until the dissolution of the ministry in 1841. Deeply convinced that the
maintenance of a cordial understanding with France was the most
essential condition of peace and of a liberal policy in Europe, he
reluctantly concurred in the measures proposed by Lord Palmerston for
the expulsion of the pasha of Egypt from Syria; he strenuously
advocated, with Lord Holland, a more conciliatory policy towards France;
and he was only restrained from sending in his resignation by the
dislike he felt to break up a cabinet he had so recently joined.
The interval of Sir Robert Peel's great administration (1841-1846) was
to the leaders of the Whig party a period of repose; but Lord Clarendon
took the warmest interest in the triumph of the principles of free trade
and in the repeal of the corn-laws, of which his brother, Charles Pelham
Villiers (q.v.), had been one of the earliest champions. For this
reason, upon the formation of Lord John Russell's first administration,
Lord Clarendon accepted the office of president of the Board of Trade.
Twice in his career the governor-generalship of India was offered him,
and once the governor-generalship of Canada;--these he refused from
reluctance to withdraw from the politics of Europe. But in 1847 a sense
of duty compelled him to take a far more laborious and uncongenial
appointment. The desire of the cabinet was to abolish the
lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, and Lord Clarendon was prevailed upon to
accept that office, with a view to transform it ere long into an Irish
secretaryship of state. But he had not been many months in Dublin before
he acknowledged that the difficulties then existing in Ireland could
only be met by the most vigilant and energetic authority, exercised on
the spot. The crisis was one of extraordinary peril. Agrarian crimes of
horrible atrocity had increased threefold. The Catholic clergy were
openly disaffected. This was the second year of the Irish famine, and
extraordinary measures were required to regulate the bounty of the
government and the nation. In 1848 the revolution in France let loose
fresh elements of discord, which culminated in an abortive insurrection,
and for a lengthened period Ireland was a prey to more than her wonted
symptoms of disaffection and disorder. Lord Clarendon remained viceroy
of Ireland till 1852, and left behind him permanent marks of
improvement. His services were expressly acknowledged in the queen's
speech to both Houses of Parliament on the 5th of September 1848--this
being the first time that any _civil_ services obtained that honour; and
he was made a knight of the Garter (retaining also the grand cross of
the Bath by special order) on the 23rd of March 1849.
Upon the formation of the coalition ministry between the Whigs and the
Peelites, in 1853, under Lord Aberdeen, Lord Clarendon became foreign
minister. The country was already "drifting" into the Crimean War, an
expression of his own which was never forgotten. Clarendon was not
responsible for the policy which brought war about; but when it occurred
he employed every means in his power to stimulate and assist the war
departments, and above all he maintained the closest relations with the
French. The tsar Nicholas had speculated on the impossibility of the
sustained joint action of France and England in council and in the
field. It was mainly by Lord Clarendon at Whitehall and by Lord Raglan
before Sevastopol that such a combination was rendered practicable, and
did eventually triumph over the enemy. The diplomatic conduct of such an
alliance for three years between two great nations jealous of their
military honour and fighting for no separate political advantage, tried
by excessive hardships and at moments on the verge of defeat, was
certainly one of the most arduous duties ever performed by a minister.
The result was due in the main to the confidence with which Lord
Clarendon had inspired the emperor of the French, and to the affection
and regard of the empress, whom he had known in Spain from her
childhood.
In 1856 Lord Clarendon took his seat at the congress of Paris convoked
for the restoration of peace, as first British plenipotentiary. It was
the first time since the appearance of Lord Castlereagh at Vienna that a
secretary of state for foreign affairs had been present in person at a
congress on the continent. Lord Clarendon's first care was to obtain the
admission of Italy to the council chamber as a belligerent power, and to
raise the barrier which still excluded Prussia as a neutral one. But in
the general anxiety of all the powers to terminate the war there was no
small danger that the objects for which it had been undertaken would be
abandoned or forgotten. It is due entirely to the firmness of Lord
Clarendon that the principle of the neutralization of the Black Sea was
preserved, that the Russian attempt to trick the allies out of the
cession in Bessarabia was defeated, and that the results of the war were
for a time secured. The congress was eager to turn to other subjects,
and perhaps the most important result of its deliberations was the
celebrated Declaration of the Maritime Powers, which abolished
privateering, defined the right of blockade, and limited the right of
capture to enemy's property in enemy's ships. Lord Clarendon has been
accused of an abandonment of what are termed the belligerent rights of
Great Britain, which were undoubtedly based on the old maritime laws of
Europe. But he acted in strict conformity with the views of the British
cabinet, and the British cabinet adopted those views because it was
satisfied that it was not for the benefit of the country to adhere to
practices which exposed the vast mercantile interests of Britain to
depredation, even by the cruisers of a secondary maritime power, and
which, if vigorously enforced against neutrals, could not fail to
embroil her with every maritime state in the world.
Upon the reconstitution of the Whig administration in 1859, Lord John
Russell made it a condition of his acceptance of office under Lord
Palmerston that the foreign department should be placed in his own
hands, which implied that Lord Clarendon should be excluded from office,
as it would have been inconsistent alike with his dignity and his tastes
to fill any other post in the government. The consequence was that from
1859 till 1864 Lord Clarendon remained out of office, and the critical
relations arising out of the Civil War in the United States were left to
the guidance of Earl Russell. But he re-entered the cabinet in May 1864
as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster; and upon the death of Lord
Palmerston in 1865, Lord Russell again became prime minister, when Lord
Clarendon returned to the foreign office, which was again confided to
him for the third time upon the formation of Mr Gladstone's
administration in 1868. To the last moment of his existence, Lord
Clarendon continued to devote every faculty of his mind and every
instant of his life to the public service; and he expired surrounded by
the boxes and papers of his office on the 27th of June 1870. No man owed
more to the influence of a generous, unselfish and liberal disposition.
If he had rivals he never ceased to treat them with the consideration
and confidence of friends, and he cared but little for the ordinary
prizes of ambition in comparison with the advancement of the cause of
peace and progress.
He was succeeded as 5th earl by his eldest son, EDWARD HYDE VILLIERS (b.
1846), who became lord chamberlain in 1900.
See also the article (by Henry Reeve) in _Fraser's Magazine_, August
1876.
CLARENDON, HENRY HYDE, 2ND EARL OF (1638-1709), English statesman,
eldest son of the first earl, was born on the 2nd of June 1638. He
accompanied his parents into exile and assisted his father as
secretary, returning with them in 1660. In 1661 he was returned to
parliament for Wiltshire as Lord Cornbury. He became secretary in 1662
and lord chamberlain to the queen in 1665. He took no part in the life
of the court, and on the dismissal of his father became a vehement
opponent of the administration, defended his father in the impeachment,
and subsequently made effective attacks upon Buckingham and Arlington.
In 1674 he became earl of Clarendon by his father's death, and in 1679
was made a privy councillor. He was not included in Sir W. Temple's
council of that year, but was reappointed in 1680. In 1682 he supported
Halifax's proposal of declaring war on France. On the accession of James
in 1685 he was appointed lord privy seal, but shortly afterwards, in
September, was removed from this office to that of lord-lieutenant of
Ireland. Clarendon was embarrassed in his estate, and James required a
willing agent to carry out his design by upsetting the Protestant
government and the Act of Settlement. Clarendon arrived in Dublin on the
9th of January 1686. He found himself completely in the power of
Tyrconnel, the commander-in-chief; and though, like his father, a
staunch Protestant, elected this year high steward of Oxford University,
and detesting the king's policy, he obeyed his orders to introduce Roman
Catholics into the government and the army and upon the bench, and clung
to office till after the dismissal of his brother, the earl of
Rochester, in January 1687, when he was recalled and succeeded by
Tyrconnel. He now supported the church in its struggle with James,
opposed the Declaration of Indulgence, wrote to Mary an account of the
resistance of the bishops,[1] and visited and advised the latter in the
Tower. He had no share, however, in inviting William to England. He
assured James in September that the Church would be loyal, advised the
calling of the parliament, and on the desertion of his son, Lord
Cornbury, to William on the 14th of November, expressed to the king and
queen the most poignant grief. In the council held on the 27th, however,
he made a violent and unseasonable attack upon James's conduct, and on
the 1st of December set out to meet William, joined him on the 3rd at
Berwick near Salisbury, and was present at the conference at Hungerford
on the 8th, and again at Windsor on the 16th. His wish was apparently to
effect some compromise, saving the crown for James. According to Burnet,
he advised sending James to Breda, and according to the duchess of
Marlborough to the Tower, but he himself denies these statements.[2] He
opposed vehemently the settlement of the crown upon William and Mary,
voted for the regency, and refused to take the oaths of the new
sovereigns, remaining a non-juror for the rest of his life. He
subsequently retired to the country, engaged in cabals against the
government, associated himself with Richard Graham, Lord Preston, and
organizing a plot against William, was arrested on the 24th of June 1690
by order of his niece, Queen Mary, and placed in the Tower. Liberated on
the 15th of August, he immediately recommenced his intrigues. On
Preston's arrest on the 31st of December, a compromising letter from
Clarendon was found upon him, and he was named by Preston as one of his
accomplices. He was examined before the privy council and again
imprisoned in the Tower on the 4th of January 1691, remaining in
confinement till the 3rd of July. This closed his public career. In
1702, on Queen Anne's accession, he presented himself at court, "to talk
to his niece," but the queen refused to see him till he had taken the
oaths. He died on the 31st of October 1709, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey.
His public career had been neither distinguished nor useful, but it
seems natural to ascribe its failure to small abilities and to the
conflict between personal ties and political convictions which drew him
in opposite directions, rather than, following Macaulay, to motives of
self-interest. He was a man of some literary taste, a fellow of the
Royal Society (1684), the author of _The History and Antiquities of the
Cathedral Church of Winchester ... continued by S. Gale_ (1715), and he
collaborated with his brother Rochester in the publication of his
father's _History_ (1702-1704). He married (1) in 1660, Theodosia,
daughter of Lord Capel, and (2) in 1670, Flower, daughter of William
Backhouse of Swallowfield in Berkshire, and widow of William Bishopp and
of Sir William Backhouse, Bart. He was succeeded by his only son, Edward
(1661-1724), as 3rd earl of Clarendon; and, the latter having no
surviving son, the title passed to Henry, 2nd earl of Rochester
(1672-1753), at whose death without male heirs it became extinct in the
Hyde line.