CLARENDON, EDWARD HYDE, 1ST EARL OF (1609 1674), English statesman and the historian of the Great Rebellion, son of Henry Hyde of Dinton, Wiltshire, was born on Feb. 18, 1609. He entered Magdalen hall, Oxford, in 1622 (having been refused a demyship at Magdalen college), and graduated B.A. in 1626. In 1625 he entered the Middle Temple. At the university his abilities were more conspicuous than his industry, and at the bar his time was devoted more to general reading and to the society of eminent scholars and writers than to the study of law treatises. Among his friends were included Ben Jonson, Selden, Waller, Hales, and especially Lord Falkland.
In 1629 he married Anne, daughter of Sir George Ayliffe, who died six months afterwards; and secondly, in 1634, Frances, daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, Master of Requests. In 1633 he was called to the bar and quickly obtained a good practice. His marriages had gained for him influential friends, and in Dec. 1634, he was made keeper of the writs and rolls of the common pleas. He was returned to the Short Parliament in 164o as member for Wootton Bassett. The flagrant violations and perversions of the law which characterized the 12 preceding years of absolute rule drove Hyde into the ranks of the popular party. He assailed the jurisdiction of the earl marshal's court, and in the Long Par liament, in which he sat for Saltash, renewed his attacks and prac tically effected its suppression. In 1641 he served on the commit tees for enquiring into the status of the councils of Wales and of the north, and took an important part in the proceedings against the judges. He supported Strafford's impeachment and did not vote against the attainder, though he made subsequently an un successful attempt through Essex to avert the capital penalty. Hyde's allegiance, however, to the church of England was as staunch as his support of the law, and was soon to separate him from the popular party. He showed special energy in his opposi tion to the Root and Branch bill, and, though made chairman of the committee on the bill on July II in order to silence his op position, he caused by his successful obstruction the failure of the measure. By the beginning of the second session he was regarded as one of the king's ablest supporters in the Commons. He op posed the demand by the parliament to choose the king's ministers, and also the Grand Remonstrance, to which he wrote a reply pub lished by the king.
He now definitely, though not openly, joined the royal cause, and refused office in Jan. 1642, with Colepeper and Falkland in order to serve the king's interests more effectually. Charles under took to do nothing in the Commons without their advice. Never theless a few days afterwards, without their knowledge and by the advice of Lord Digby, he attempted the arrest of the five members, a resort to force which reduced Hyde to despair, and which indeed seemed to show that things had gone too far for an appeal to the law. He persevered, nevertheless, in his legal policy, joined the king openly in June, and continued to compose the king's answers and declarations in which he appealed to the "known Laws of the land" against the arbitrary and illegal acts of a seditious majority in the parliament, his advice to the king being "to shelter himself wholly under the law . . . presuming that the king and the law to gether would have been strong enough for any encounter." Hyde's appeal had great influence, and gained for the king's cause half the nation. It by no means, however, met with universal support among the royalists, Hobbes jeering at Hyde's love for "mixed monarchy," and the courtiers expressing their disapproval of the "spirit of accommodation" which "wounded the regality." It was destined to failure because Charles was simultaneously carrying on another and an inconsistent policy, listening to very different advisers, such as the queen and Digby, and resolving on measures without Hyde's knowledge or approval.
In spite of Clarendon's efforts war broke out. He was expelled from the House of Commons on Aug. 11, 1642, and was one of those excepted later from pardon. He was present at Edgehill, though not as a combatant, and followed the king to Oxford, re siding at All Souls college from Oct. 1642, till March, 1645. On Feb. 22 he was made a privy councillor and knighted, and on March 3 appointed chancellor of the exchequer. He was an influ ential member of the "Junto" which met every week to discuss business before it was laid before the council. (See CABINET.) At the Uxbridge negotiations in Jan. 1645, where he acted as principal manager on the king's side, he tried to win individuals by promises of places and honours. He promoted the assembly of the Oxford parliament in Dec. 1643 as a counterpoise to the Long Parliament. Hyde's policy and measures, however, all failed. They had been weakly and irregularly supported by the king, and were fiercely opposed by the military party, who were urging Charles to trust to force and arms alone and eschew all compromise and con cessions. Charles fell now under the influence of persons devoid of all legal and constitutional scruples.
Hyde's influence was much diminished, and on March 4, he left the king for Bristol as one of the guardians of the prince of Wales and governors of the west. After Hopton's defeat on Feb. 16, 1646, at Torrington, Hyde accompanied the prince, on March 4, to Scilly, and on April 17, for greater security, to Jersey. He strongly disapproved of the prince's removal to France by the queen's order and of the schemes of assistance from abroad, re fused to accompany him, and signed a bond to prevent the sale of Jersey to the French supported by Jermyn. He refused to com pound for his own estate. While in Jersey he resided first at St. Helier and afterwards at Elizabeth Castle with Sir George Carteret. He composed the first portion of his History and kept in touch with events by means of an enormous correspondence. In 1648 he published A Full answer to an infamous and traitorous Pamphlet . . . , a reply to the resolution of the parliament to present no more addresses to the king and a vindication of Charles. On the outbreak of the second Civil War Hyde left Jersey (June 26, 1648) to join the queen and prince at Paris. He landed at Dieppe, sailed from that port to Dunkirk, and thence followed the prince to the Thames, where Charles had met the fleet, but was captured and robbed by a privateer, and only joined the prince in September after the latter's return to The Hague. He strongly disapproved of the king's concessions at Newport. When the army broke off the treaty and brought Charles to trial he endeavoured to save his life, and after the execution drew up a letter to the several European sovereigns invoking their assistance to avenge it. Hyde strongly opposed Charles II.'s ignominious surrender to the Covenanters, the alliance with the Scots, and the Scottish expedi tion, desiring to accomplish whatever was possible there through Montrose and the royalists, and inclined rather to an attempt in Ireland. His advice was not followed and he gladly accepted a mission with Cottington to Spain to obtain money from the Roman Catholic powers, and to arrange an alliance between Owen O'Neill and Ormonde for the recovery of Ireland, arriving at Madrid on Nov. 26, 1649. The defeat, however, of Charles at Dunbar and the confirmation of Cromwell's ascendancy influenced the Spanish Government against them, and they were ordered to leave in Dec. 165o. Hyde arrived at Antwerp in Jan. 1651, and in Dec. rejoined Charles at Paris after the latter's escape from Worcester. He now became one of his chief advisers, accom panying him in his change of residence to Cologne in Oct. 1654 and to Bruges in 1658, and was appointed lord chancellor on Jan. 13, 1658. His influence was henceforth maintained in spite of the intrigues of both Romanists and Presbyterians, as well as the violent and openly displayed hostility of the queen, and was employed unremittingly in the endeavour to keep Charles faithful to the Church and Constitution, and in the prevention of unwise concessions and promises which might estrange the general body of the royalists. In 1656, during the war between England and Spain, Charles received offers of help from the latter power provided he could gain a port in England, but Hyde discouraged small isolated attempts. He expected much from Cromwell's death. The same year he made an alliance with the Levellers, and was informed of their plots to assassinate the protector, without apparently expressing any disapproval. (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 316, 341, 343.) He was well supplied with information from England (Hist. mss. Comm.: mss. of F. W. Leyborne Popham, 227) and guided the action of the royalists with great ability and wisdom during the interval between Cromwell's death and the Restoration, urged patience, and advocated the obstruc tion of a settlement between the factions contending for power and the fomentation of their jealousies, rather than premature risings.
The Restoration was a complete triumph for Hyde's policy. In his history he lays no stress on his own great part in it, but it was owing to him that the Restoration was a national one, by the consent and invitation of parliament representing the whole people and not through the medium of one powerful faction enforcing its will upon a minority, and that it was not only a restoration of Charles but a restoration of the monarchy. By Hyde's advice concessions to the inconvenient demands of special factions had been avoided by referring the decision to a "free parliament," and the declaration of Breda reserved for parliament the settlement of the questions of amnesty, religious toleration, and the proprietor ship of forfeited lands.
Hyde entered London with the king and immediately obtained the chief place in the Government, retaining the chancellorship of the exchequer till May 13, - 661, when he surrendered it to Lord Ashley. He took his seat as speaker of the House of Lords and in the court of chancery on June 1, 166o. On Nov. 3, 166o, he was made Baron Hyde of Hindon, and on April 20, 1661, Vis count Cornbury and earl of Clarendon, receiving a grant from the king of f 20,00o and at different times of various small estates and Irish rents. By the marriage of his daughter Anne to James, duke of York, celebrated in secret in Sept. 166o, he became re lated to the royal family and the grandfather of two English sovereigns—Queen Mary and Queen Anne.
A rare occasion now offered itself of settling the religious question on a broad principle of comprehension or toleration ; for the monarchy had been restored not by the supporters of the Church alone but largely by the influence and aid of the Non conformists and also of the Roman Catholics, who were all united at that happy moment by a common loyalty to the throne. Claren don appears to have approved of comprehension but not of toleration. He had already in April 166o sent to discuss terms with the leading Presbyterians in England, and after the Restora tion offered bishoprics to several, including Richard Baxter. He drew up the nyal declaration of October, promising limited epis copacy and a revised prayer-book and ritual, which was subse quently thrown out by parliament, and he appears to have antici pated some kind of settlement from the Savoy Conference which sat in April 1661. The failure of the latter proved perhaps that the differences were too great for compromise, and widened the breach. The parliament immediately proceeded to pass, between 1661 and 1665, the series of narrow and tyrannical measures against the dissenters known as the Clarendon Code ; the Corpo rations act, the Act of Uniformity, the Conventicle act, and the Five-Mile act. Though not the originator of the Conventicle act or of the Five-Mile act, Clarendon recorded his approval (Con tinuation, 511, 776) and he ended by taking alarm at plots and ru mours and by regarding the great party of Nonconformists, through whose co-operation the monarchy had been restored, as a danger to the state whose "faction was their religion." (Lister's Life of Clarendon, ii. 29 5 ; Hist. mss. Comm.: Various Collec tions, ii. 379.) Meanwhile Clarendon's influence and direction had been pre dominant in nearly all departments of State. He supported the exception of the actual regicides from the Indemnity, but only ten out of the 26 condemned were executed, and Clarendon, with the king's support, prevented the passing of a bill in 1661 for the execution of 13 more. He upheld the Act of Indemnity against all the attempts of the royalists to upset it. The conflicting claims to estates were left to be decided by the law. The confiscations of the usurping Government accordingly were cancelled, while the properly executed transactions between individuals were necessar ily upheld. There can be little doubt that the principle followed was the only safe one in the prevailing confusion. The settlement of the Church lands which was directed by Clarendon presented equal difficulties and involved equal hardships. In settling Scot land, Clarendon's aim was to uphold the Cromwellian union. He proposed to establish a council at Whitehall to govern Scottish affairs, and sought to restore episcopacy through the medium of Archbishop Sharp. His influence, however, ended with the as cendancy of Lauderdale in 1663. In Ireland, while anxious for an establishment upon a solid Protestant basis, he urged "temper and moderation and justice" in securing it. He supported Ormonde's wise and enlightened Irish administration, and opposed the pro hibition of the import of Irish cattle into England, incurring there by great unpopularity. He was a member of the council for foreign plantations, and one of the eight lords proprietors of Carolina in 1663; and in 1664 sent a commission to settle disputes in New England. In the department of foreign affairs he had less influence. In 1664 he demanded, on behalf of Charles, French support, and a loan of £50,00o against disturbance at home, and thus initiated the ignominious system of pensions and dependence upon France. But he was the promoter neither of the sale of Dunkirk on Oct. 27, 1662, the author of which seems to have been the earl of Sandwich (Hist. mss. Comm.: mss. of F. TV. Leyborne-Popham, 250), nor of the Dutch war. He attached con siderable value to the possession of Dunkirk, but when its sale was decided he conducted the negotiations and effected the bar gain. He had concluded a treaty for the settlement of disputes with Holland on Sept. 4, 1662. But when hostilities were declared on Feb. 22, 1665, Clarendon gave his support to the war, asserted the extreme claims of the English Crown over the British seas, and contemplated fresh cessions from the Dutch and an alliance with Sweden and Spain. According to his own account he initiated the policy of the Triple Alliance (Continuation, io66), but it seems clear that his inclination towards France continued in spite of French intervention in favour of Holland ; and he took part in the negotiations for ending the war by an undertaking with Louis XIV. implying neutrality, while the latter seized Flanders. The crisis in this feeble foreign policy and in the general official mis management was reached in June 1667, when the Dutch burned several ships at Chatham.
The whole responsibility for the national calamity and disgrace was unjustly thrown on the shoulders of Clarendon. He was unpopular among all classes : among the royalists on account of the Act of Indemnity, among the Presbyterians because of the Act of Uniformity. Every kind of maladministration was cur rently ascribed to him, of designs to govern by a standing army, and of corruption. He was credited with having married Charles purposely to a barren queen in order to raise his own grandchildren to the throne, with having sold Dunkirk to France, and his magnif icent house in St. James's was nicknamed "Dunkirk House," while on the day of the Dutch attack on Chatham the mob set up a gibbet at his gate and broke his windows. He was disliked by the royal mistresses, whose favour he did not condescend to seek, and whose presence often aroused his reproaches. Surrounded by such general and violent animosity, Clarendon's only hope could be in the support of the king. But Charles, long weary of the old chancellor's rebukes, was especially incensed at this time owing to his failure in securing Frances Stuart (la Belle Stuart) for his seraglio—a disappointment which he attributed to Clarendon— and was now alarmed by the hostility which his administration had excited. He did not scruple to sacrifice at once the old adherent of his house and fortunes. By the direction of Charles, James ad vised Clarendon to resign before the meeting of parliament, but in an interview with the king on Aug. 26, Clarendon refused to deliver up the seal unless dismissed. On Aug. 3o he was deprived of the great seal, for which the king received the thanks of the parliament on Oct. 16. On Nov. 12 his impeachment was brought up to the Lords, but the latter refused to order his committal, on the ground that the Commons had only accused him of treason in general without specifying any particular charge. Clarendon wrote humbly to the king asking for pardon and that the prosecution might be prevented, but Charles had openly taken part against him, and, though desiring his escape, would not order or assist his departure for fear of the Commons. Through the bishop of Here ford, however, on Nov. 29 he pressed Clarendon to fly, promising that he should not during his absence suffer in his honour or for tune. Clarendon embarked the same night for Calais, where he arrived on Dec. 2. The Lords immediately passed an act for his banishment and ordered the petition forwarded by him to parlia ment to be burnt.
The rest of Clarendon's life was passed in exile in various parts of France. His sudden banishment entailed great personal hard ships. On arriving at Calais he fell dangerously ill; and Louis XIV., anxious to propitiate England, sent him peremptory and repeated orders to quit France. At Evreux, on April 23, 1668, he was the victim of a murderous assault by English sailors, who attributed to him the non-payment of their wages. For some time he was not allowed to see any of his children ; even corre spondence with him was rendered treasonable by the Act of Banishment.
Clarendon bore his troubles with great dignity and fortitude. He found consolation in religious duties, and devoted a portion of every day to the composition of his Contemplations on the Psalms and of his moral essays. He now finished his History and his Auto biography. Soon of ter reaching Calais he had written, on Dec. 17, 1667, to the university of Oxford, desiring as his last request that the university should believe in his innocence and remember him, though there could be no further mention of him in their public devotions, in their private prayers. (Clarendon St. Pap. iii., suppl. xxxvii.) He entertained to the last hopes of obtaining leave to return to England, but his petitions were not even answered or noticed. He died at Rouen on Dec. 9, 1674. He was buried in Westminster Abbey at the foot of the steps leading to the Henry VII. chapel. He left two sons, Henry, 2nd earl of Claren don, and Lawrence, earl of Rochester, and a daughter Anne, duchess of York; a third son, Edward, having predeceased him.
As a statesman Clarendon had obvious limitations and failings. He brought to the consideration of political questions an essen tially legal but also a narrow mind, conceiving the law, "that great and admirable mystery," and the constitution as fixed, unchange able, and sufficient for all time, in contrast to Pym, who regarded them as living organisms capable of continual development and evolution ; and he was incapable of comprehending and governing the new conditions and forces created by the civil wars. His char acter, however, and therefore, to some extent, his career bear the indelible marks of greatness. He maintained his self-respect and dignity at a licentious court, and his integrity in an age of almost universal corruption. His industry and devotion to public business were rendered all the more conspicuous by the negligence, in feriority in business, and frivolity of his successors. As lord chan cellor Clarendon made no great impression in the court of chan cery. His early legal training had long been interrupted, and his political preoccupations probably rendered necessary the delega tion of many of his judicial duties to others. As chancellor of Oxford university, Clarendon promoted the restoration of order and various educational reforms. In 1753 his manuscripts were left to the university by his grandson Lord Cornbury, and in 1868 the money gained by publication was spent in erecting the Claren don laboratory, the profits of the History having provided in 1713 a building for the university press adjoining the Sheldonian theatre, known since the removal of the press to its present quar ters as the Clarendon building.
As a writer and historian Clarendon occupies a high place in English literature. His great work, the History of the Rebellion, is composed in the grand style. A characteristic feature is the wonderful series of well-known portraits, drawn with great skill and liveliness and especially praised by Evelyn and by Macaulay. The book is overloaded, however, with State papers, misplaced and tedious in the narrative. The published History is mainly a compilation of two separate original manuscripts, the first being the history proper, written between 1646 and 1648, with the ad vantage of a fresh memory and the help of various documents and authorities, and ending in March, 1644, and the second being the Life, extending from 1609-60, but composed long afterwards in exile and without the aid of papers between 1668 and 167o. The value of any statement, therefore, in the published History de pends chiefly on whether it is taken from the History proper or the Life. In 1671 these two manuscripts were united by Clarendon with certain alterations and modifications making Books i.–vii. of the published History, while Books viii.–xv., were written sub sequently, and, being composed for the most part without mate rials, are generally inaccurate, with the notable exception of Book ix., made up from two narratives written at Jersey in 1646, and containing very little from the Life. The inaccuracies are due not to wilful misrepresentation, but to failure of memory and to the disadvantages under which the author laboured in exile. In gen eral, Clarendon, like many of his contemporaries, failed signally to comprehend the real issues and principles at stake in the great struggle, laying far too much stress on personalities and never understanding the real aims and motives of the Presbyterian party.
2. Other works: Among Clarendon's other works may be mentioned A Brief View . . . of the dangerous . . . errors in . . . Mr. Hobbes's book entitled "Leviathan" (1676) ; The History of the Rebellion and Civil War in Ireland (1719) ; Essays moral and entertaining on the various faculties and passions of the human mind (pr. 1815, and in British Prose Writers, vol. i., 1819) ; a large number of declarations and manifestos in various collections of tracts and several anonymous tracts, a list of which will be found in the authorities quoted below.
3. Correspondence: Clarendon's correspondence, amounting to over loo volumes, is in the Bodleian library at Oxford, and other letters are to be found in Additional mss. in the British Museum. Selections have been published under the title of State Papers Collected by Edward, earl of Clarendon (Clarendon State Papers) between 1767 and 1786, and the collection has been calendared up to 1657 in 1869, 1872, 1876. Other letters of Clarendon are to be found in Lister's Life of Clarendon, iii.; Nicholas Papers (Camden Soc., 1886) ; Diary of J. Evelyn, appendix; Sir R. Fanshaw's Original Letters (1724) ; Warburton's Life of Prince Rupert (1849) ; Barwick's Life of Barwick (1724) ; Hist. mss. Comm. loth Rep. pt. vi. pp. 193-216, and in the Harleian Miscellany.
4. Life: See Clarendon's autobiographical works and Letters enumer ated above, and the ms. collection in the Bodleian library. The Lives of Clarendon by T. H. Lister (1838) and by C. H. Firth in the Dict. of Nat. Biography (with authorities there collected) completely supersede all earlier accounts.
See also S. R. Gardiner, History of England, of the Civil War and of the Commonwealth (1886-1901) ; a series of articles by C. H. Firth in the Eng. Hist. Review (19o4) and Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, as Statesman, Historian, and Chancellor of tke University (19o9), by the same author; Sir Henry Craik, The Life of Edward, earl of Clarendon (191I) .