Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/820

Rh 806 CLARENDON as he retained the regard of the king, who, to do him justice, was unusually mindful of his debts to Hyde. In 1661 the chancellor, on the disclosure of the marriage of his daughter to the duke of York, was created Baron Hyde of Hindon, and shortly after earl of Clarendon, at the same time receiving a gift of 20,000 ; he had already refused the offer of a garter and 10,000 acres. Two years later the attempt to impeach him, made by the earl of Bristol, resulted in a miserable failure, and the accuser sought safety in flight. But in 1667 a second impeachment found him powerless to resist. His dignified censoriousness must always have been disagreeable to the king, who was also annoyed by his strenuous opposition to every scheme for tolerating the Catholics ; and when Clarendon ventured to thwart his plans and interfere with his pleasures, annoyance was turned into hatred. Charles, having become enamoured -of Miss Fanny Stewart, resolved to marry her, and therefore determined to effect a divorce from the qneen. This scheme, which threatened to exclude his descendants from the throne, Clarendon was told enough to oppose ; and it was in sinuated by his enemies that the marriage of Miss Stewart to the duke of Richmond, which put an end to the project, had been brought about partly by his contrivance. Mis fortunes now pressed thick upon him. About the middle of 1667 his wife died ; and a few days after the duke of York was sent to him with a message requesting him to resign the chancellorship. This he could not be persuaded to do ; he so far forgot his dignity as to plead personally with his master to be allowed to retain his office; and he also addressed to him a humble letter, in which he denied that he had been in any way concerned with Miss Stewart s marriage, and declared that he had no acquaintance with either herself or her husband. But his humiliation was in vain ; and on the 30th of August Secretary Morrice was sent to take from him the great seal. On the 6th November the Commons drew up seventeen articles of impeachment against him. It would not have been easy to convict him of high treason. Several of the charges were exag gerated, and one or two were altogether false ; there were some, however, sufficiently serious. The chief articles were : that he had sought to govern by means of a standing army, and without parliament ; that he had confined prisoners uncondemned in places where they could not appeal to the law ; that he had sold Dunkirk ; that he had made a sale of offices, anil obtained money by means of his position in various illegal ways ; that he had introduced arbitrary government into tho colonies ; and that he had deceived the king with regard to foreign affairs, and had betrayed his plans to the enemy. It wa?, however, a general charge of high treason, without specified grounds, which was presented to the Lords, and this they refused to accept. Nevertheless it became plain even to Clarendon himself that he was deserted, and that his cause was hope less. On the 29th November 1667 he left England for ever, after addressing a vindication of his conduct to the Lords, which, being communicated to the Commons, was voted seditious, and burned by the hangman. A bill of attainder was brought in against him, but the Lords rejected it ; and the matter was finally compromised by the passing of an Act which condemned him to perpetual banishment, unless he should appear for trial within six weeks. Meanwhile, sick in body and in mind, he had landed in Franc 3 ; but, before reaching Rouen, he was stopped, and informed that he could not be allowed to remain in the country. After several refusals, however, permission to stay was granted ; and he was conducted to Avignon by a French officer. At Evreux an incident occurred which shows the bitterness of the feeling with which he was regarded by his countrymen. A party of English sailors who happened to be working in the town, on hearing of his arrival, broke into his &quot;bed-room, burst open his trunks, attacked and wounded him with their swords, and were only prevented from murdering him by the arrival of a body of French troops. From Avignon he passed to Montpellier ; and the rest of his life was spent chiefly in this town and in Rouen. His time was thenceforth passed in the quiet pursuit of literature. He resumed his Meditations on the Psalms, concluded his History of the Rebellion, and wrote his Life, A Short View of the State of Ireland, most of his Essays, and his Survey of Hobbes s Leviathan. Twice he humbly appealed to Charles that he might be allowed to die in his native land ; but not even a reply was vouchsafed, and it was at Rouen that he expired on the 9th December 1674. The character of Clarendon is well-marked. In the court of Charles II. he was almost the only man who lived chastely, drank moderately, and swore not at all. Three principles guided his life. The first, from which he never swerved, was a passionate attachment to the religion and polity of the Church of England. The second, to which he was faithful on the whole, though with some declensions, was the determination to maintain what he regarded as the true and ideal English constitution. The third, which he more than once nobly sacrificed to the other two, was a desire for personal advancement. In political practice he sadly wanted both insight and tact, and, though he could plead most cleverly and affectingly in a state paper, he was too apt, when confronted by opposition in Parliament, to lose his temper. He was, however, ready in debate; he could speak well ; and for business he was admirably adapted. In political theory he was intensely conserva tive : no royalist squire who had never seen the king but in moments of dignified ceremony could have cherished a deeper reverence for him than did this courtier, who had watched his every act of crime and selfishness. Cold and haughty as he was towards his equals, at least in the end of his life, in his bearing towards the royal family, he sometimes appeared to abjure every feel ing of manly independence. On two occasions this was miserably exemplified. He was too proud to allow his own wife to visit any woman of disreputable character, whatever her position ; yet, at the command of his master, ho was base enough to urge the queen to admit her husband s favourite mistress as one of her ladies in waiting. And there is another scene in which we cannot help regarding him with still deeper scorn. In his Life he calmly tells us the story. About the time of the Restora tion the duke of York had fallen in love with his eldest daughter, Anne Hyde, and before their intimacy had been discovered had given her a written promise of marriage. Of this Clarendon professes to have been completely ignorant ; and when the affair could no longer be con cealed, he tells us he was the last to be informed of it. Nor is this surprising if his own account of the manner in which he received the news is to be credited in the least. He broke into &quot; a very immoderate passion.&quot; He would turn his daughter from his house. He hoped she was the duke s mistress, and not his wife, for then he could refuse to harbour her. He would have her sent to the Tower; he would have an Act passed to execute her ; nay, he would be the first to propose such an Act. &quot; Whoever knew the man,&quot; he adds, &quot; will know that he said all this very heartily.&quot; Modern historians are perhaps too kind in doubting him. Soon after he told the king that he &quot; so much abominated&quot; the thought of his daughter s becoming the wife of the prince, that he &quot; had much rather see her dead, with all the infamy that is due to her presumption.&quot; He even informed the duke himself when an infamous conspiracy was hatched against her honour, and Sir Charles Berkley swore that she had granted him favours incou-