Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/819

Rh CLARENDON 805 which procured for him the offer of the post of solicitor- general. This he declined ; but he complied with the request that he would watch over his Majesty s interests in the House of Commons, in conjunction with Falkland and Colepepper. The king s deepest policy, however, was not disclosed to him, and there is no reason to doubt that the arrest of the five members surprised him as much as he professes. After the retreat of Charles from London, Hyde remained for some weeks in his seat in the Commons, maintaining constant but secret communication with the court ; but in May, having been summoned by the king, and being besides alarmed for his own safety, he fled to York. In March 1643 he was made chancellor of the ex chequer. He was also chosen one of the royal commis sioners at Uxbridge, and was employed in many other matters of importance ; and the most persuasive and dignified of the state papers on the royalist side are from his pen. In 1645, after the final ruin of the king s cause at Naseby, Hyde was appointed, with Lord Capel, Lord Hopton, and Sir John Colepepper, to watch over the safety of the prince of Wales. In the spring of the next year they were com pelled to take refuge in Scilly, whence, after six weeks stay, they passed to Jersey. Soon the prince was called by his mother to Paris, against the will of the council, none of whom accompanied him except Colepepper. Hyde resided at Jersey for nearly two years, solacing himself by studying the Psalms and recording the meditations which tbey suggested, and also by composing the first four books of his greatest work, the History of the Rebellion. In April 1648 he drew up an answer to the ordinance which had been issued by the parliament declaring the king guilty of the civil war, and forbidding all future addresses to him. At length, in May, his attendance was required by the princs, who about this time assumed the command of the seventeen ships which had gone over to his side ; but various accidents, of which the most serious was his capture by privateers, prevented him from meeting Charles till August, when he found him at Dunkirk. In the agreement with the Covenanters and in the Scot tish expedition of 1649 Hyde had no share, as he was then absent with Lord Cottington on a f ruitless embassy to Spain. The two years which he passed there were not unpleasantly spent ; for he was free from all serious cares, and had little to do but study Spanish etiquette and write his Animad versions on the Supremacy of the Pope. In 1651, the slights offered by the Spanish ministers having been crowned by a request that he would leave the country, he rejoined Charles at Paris. During the nine weary years which had to elapse before the Restoration he was not the least un fortunate of the exiles. It was no easy matter to fulfil the duty which his office imposed upon him of supplying the wants of his careless master ; and his family and himself were often scarcely able to procure the necessaries of life. Besides, he was far from popular. His attachment to the English church, admitting of compromise with no other sect, brought upon him the aversion alike of the Pres byterians arid of the queen aud the Papists. Charles, however, was wise enough to appreciate his disinterested fidelity. He was recognized as chief adviser of the king, and all state papers were drawn up by him ; he conducted the correspondence with the English Royalists ; and, in 1658, the dignity of lord chancellor was conferred upon him. On the Restoration, Hyde retained his posts of lord chancellor and chancellor of the exchequer, and at once assumed the direction of the Government. What the Episcopalian Royalists now required was not so much a leader to stimulate, as a guide to control. Their fervour and their strength were more than sufficient to replace the king firmly on the throne, and to raise the church to a loftier position than it had ever before attained. The parliament hastened to restore to the Crown the command of the militia, to repeal the Triennial Act, and to vote a revenue of 1,200,000. The Corpor ation Act, the Act of Uniformity, and the Five Mile Act avenged the church on her enemies, and forced all but the most determined of the clergy into her ranks. Thousands showed as much enthusiasm for monarchy as Hyde himself, and he was no longer the most Episcopalian of Episco palians. To some extent, if not to as great an extent as was to be desired, he has the credit of having restrained his party from too insolent a triumph. Desirous as he was of the re-establishment of the full royal prerogative, he had no wish to see it transgress the limits which he believed to be assigned to it by the constitution, for which he cherished the true lawyer s reverence. Strongly as he held that all were guilty who had in any way countenanced the govern ment of Cromwell, he was statesman enough to see that it was necessary to carry out the Declaration of Breda by pressing the Acts of Oblivion and Indemnity on the reluctant parliament. On the other hand, with regard to the triumph of the church over dissent, if he was somewhat alarmed at its completeness, his fear arose from no pity for the dissenters. His opinion of them, and of the policy which ought to be observed towards them, is emphatically stated in his Life (vol. ii. p. 121) : &quot; Their faction is their religion ; nor are those combinations ever entered into upon real and substantial motives of conscience, how erroneous soever, but consist of many glutinous materials of will, and humour, and folly, and knavery, and ambition, and malice, which make men cling inseparably together, till they have satisfaction in all their pretences, or till they are absolutely broken and subdued, which may always be more reasonably done than the other.&quot; But, notwithstanding his exaggerated reverence for the sovereign, his passionate attachment to the church, and his real worth, Hyde rapidly became the most unpopular man in the kingdom. The settlement of landed property which had been made by the Act of Indemnity deeply offended hundreds of the cavaliers ; for, while it restored all they had lost to those who, like Hyde himself, had both escaped the necessity of selling their land and refused to bow to the government of Cromwell, it did nothing for those who had sold their property, even though they had ruined themselves to support the cause of the king. By the people, who had no means of judging for what he was responsible and of what he was innocent, he was blamed for every misfortune. The sale of Dunkirk was the chief crime with which they charged him ; but there is no reason to disbelieve his own declaration that he was at first opposed to the scheme, while it must be allowed that there is force in his excuses that the fortress was expensive to maintain, that the money offered for it was sorely needed, and that its worth to England was by no means great. Still its surrender was a great political mistake ; it displayed to the popular eye in far too striking a light the difference between the government of Clarendon aud the government of Cromwell. He was also held responsible for the marriage of the king with the childless aud Catholic princess of Portugal, and he was even accused of having selected her in order that his own descendants might inherit the throne. And, though his worst political weakness his allowing Charles to accept the bribes of France was not then made known, it was the general belief that his splendid mansion in Piccadilly had been erected with foreign gold. Of all disssnters, Catholic and Protestant, his bitter dislike had made determined enemies ; and his repellent hauteur, his somewhat conceited austerity, offended the courtiers, and aroused their derision. All these enemios. however, he could afford to scorn so long