Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/821

Rh CLARENDON 807 sistent with her duty to her husband that since she had deceived himself he could not answer for her fidelity to any other man. The conclusion of the affair displays a depth of meanness which could not have been credited on any other testimony than his own. In fear of death Mary of Orange confessed that the accusation was false, and Berkley admitted his perjury ; but in Clarendon s breast there does not appear to have been kindled a spark of the burning indignation which an honourable stranger could not have repressed ; Berkley himself had only to ask forgiveness. It is possible that this humiliating story this basest display of the &quot; besotted loyalty &quot; of the time, is altogether true. Much of it is beyond denial ; and if we hold that in the rest Clarendon was merely acting a part, we miserably save a very small portion of his man liness at the expense of all his sincerity. It is in literature that Clarendon s name best daserves to be remembered. His Essays (which are chiefly didactic) and his Survey of Hobbes s Leviathan scarcely rise above the commonplace, but his History of the Rebellion and his Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon have a high and per manent value. That he was a historian of wide grasp and deep insight cannot be maintained ; his works are pro fessedly pleadings on behalf of the Episcopalian Royalists and himself ; but, though it would be too much to allege that his accuracy is never warped by his purpose, we may in general accept his statements of fact as correct. It is, however, as works of literary art that his histories have at tained to the position they hold. They charm ITS by their calm and never-failing grace, by their quiet humour, by their general tone of lofty dignity, but perhaps most of all by the exquisite portraits which they contain. It is true he cannot penetrate to the innermost recesses of men s souls, and let us read the motives of their lives ; but he can in troduce them to us, as it were, in society, can let us observe their career, watch their humours, and listen to their talk. Clarendon s style, too, though extremely loose and often amusingly un grammatical, has many beauties. His sentences are of extraordinary length, and usually contain numerous involved parentheses ; but while these qualities threaten obscurity, obscurity is always avoided ; and they have the merit of enabling the writer to produce a slow, stately, graceful music, of which the short sentence is altogether incapable. (T. M. w.) CLARENDOX, GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK VILLIERS, FOURTH EARL OF, diplomatist and statesman, was born in London 12th January 1800, and died 27th June 1870. He was the eldest son of the Honourable George Yilliers, brother of the third earl of Clarendon (second creation), by Theresa, only daughter of the firstLord Boringdou,ancl granddaughter of the first Lord Grantham. The earldom of the Lord Chancellor Clarendon became extinct in 1756 by the death of the fourth earl, his last male descendant. Jane Hyde, countess of Essex, the sister of that nobleman (who died in 1724), left two daughters ; of these the eldest, Lady Charlotte, became heiress of the Hyde family. She married Thomas Villiers, second son of the second earl of Jersey, who served with distinction as English minister in Germany, and in 1776 the earldom of Clarendon was revived in his favour. Theconnection 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 pre served to this branch of the family, and remains at the Grove, their family seat at Hertfordshire, to this day. Young George Yilliers, the subject of this notice, entered upon life under 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 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 ; and in the same year he was appointed attache* to the British embassy at St Petersburg, where he remained three years, and acquired that practical knowledge of the business of diplomacy which was of so much use to him in after-life. He had received from nature a singularly hand some person, a polished and engaging address, a ready command of languages, and a remarkable power of com position. Upon his return to England in 1823, Mr Yilliers was appointed to a commissionership of customs, an office which he retained for about ten years. Part of this time was spent in Ireland in the work of fusing the revenue boards of England and Ireland into those of the United Kingdom. It was the period of the liveliest excitement that preceded Catholic Emancipation, and the young English official incurred the censure of the Tory Government of the day for having presumed to cultivate the acquaintance of the most accomplished of the Catholic leaders. These official duties trained Mr Villiers in the business of civil administration, and likewise enabled him to acquire some useful experience of the Irish character. In 1831 he was despatched to France to negotiate a commercial treaty, which, however, led to no result. The time was come which was to open to him a wider and more congenial field of action in the politics of Europe. On the 16th of August 1833 Mr Villiers 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 April 22, 1834, France and England pledged themselves to the defence of the constitutional thrones of Spain and Portugal. For six years Mr 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 imdoubtedly supported the chiefs of tke Liberal party, such as Olozaga and 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 compli cations, dictated by foreign influence, which eventually proved so fatal to that princess. Spain never forgot what she owed in those years to the youthful and energetic minister of Great Britain, and he, on his part, retained a cordial interest in her welfare. He re ceived 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. In this capacity he made his first appearance in parliament, and although he always regretted the want of a previous training in the House of Commons, he was from the first listened to by the House of Peers as a speaker well qualified to assist the deliberations of parliament on questions of foreign policy. But on these questions he was not heartily united with the spirit that then animated the Foreign Office. 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&quot; to break up a cabinet he had so recently joined. Lord Palmerston s policy (as is shown by his own published letters) was constantly governed by the belief that France must be regarded by England as a rival and an enemy, with whom war was, sooner or