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LARENDON

EDWARD HYDE, EARL OF CLARENDON. 1608-1674.

THE life of the celebrated Earl of Clarendon is so intimately connected with
the eventful times of Charles L., the Commonwealth, and the Restoration, that
it would be impossible to give any thing more than a meagre outline of it in
the limits to which these biographical sketches are necessarily confined. He
was born at Dinton, in Wiltshire, in 1608, and at the age of fourteen entered
Oxford. After leaving the university he applied himself to the study of the
law, but his father dying soon after, and leaving him in the possession of a
competent fortune, it was not necessary for him to exert himself for support
in the line of his profession. He therefore turned his attention to politics,
and in 1640 was elected a member of parliament. Here he took the side of
the royalists, and had the celebrated Hampden for one of his opponents.
From the zeal and ability which he showed in the royal cause, he soon be
came one of the king's chief advisers, and in 1643 he was made chancellor
of the exchequer, and was sworn a member of the privy council.

From this time the affairs of the royal party became daily more desperate, and it being deemed best for the prince (afterwards Charles II.) to fly from the kingdom, Hyde accompanied him to the island of Jersey. Thence, the prince went to France, but Hyde remained, and there commenced his cele brated work, his "History of the Rebellion." Upon the execution of the king, he went to the continent, living first at Madrid, and afterwards at Antwerp. Here, with other members of the exiled court, he suffered much from pecuniary distress, having, as he said, "neither clothes nor fire to preserve me from the sharpness of the season." He continued to be the chief adviser of the exiled king, and was rewarded by him with the appointment of lord chancellor; an empty title, as the king was then situated, but soon to be one of substantial value; for, in June, 1660, soon after the triumphal entry of Charles II. into London, Hyde took his seat as speaker of the House of Lords, and on the same day be sat in the court of Chancery.

He continued to be the principal conductor of public affairs; but such was the condition of the kingdom in politics, both foreign and domestic, the poverty of the exchequer, the difficulty of raising supplies, the profligacy of the court, and the king's absolute neglect of business on the one hand, and the relation of England to foreign powers, and the Dutch war, on the other, that he had difficulties of no ordinary magnitude to contend with. Discontent reigned through the country, and the public heaped upon Clarendon the odium of every measure and event. To such a height did feelings of anger and disgust at length reach, that articles of impeachment were drawn up against him by the Commons, and as a compromise he agreed to leave the kingdom. He sailed with his family for Calais, November 29, 1667, and resided in various places in France. In 1674 he took a house at Rouen, which was his last residence. Repeated attacks of the gout had enfeebled his frame and constitution, and he died on the 9th of December, 1674, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. His body was taken to England, and interred in Westminste Abbey.

The principal literary work of Lord Clarendon, is his "History of the Re

1 For full information concerning Lord Clarendon, consult Lister's "Life of Clarendon ;""Life of Lord Clarendon, written by imself;" Burnet's "History of his own Times" Campbell's "Lives of the Chancellors;" Hallam's "Constitutional History of England" and "Edinburgh Review," xlvii. 159.

bellion;" for such was the epithet bestowed by the royalists upon that civil war which brought Charles I. to the block. It was commenced, as before remarked, in 1646, in the island of Jersey, and finished at Moulins (France) in 1672-73, while the author was in banishment.2 The Edinburgh Review says "it is one of the noblest historical works in the English language." Some allowance, however, must, in many cases, be made for the strong partisan feelings of the writer; though it is due to him to say, that, considering his position, and the times in which he wrote, his work is characterized by justice and impartiality. Its distinguishing excellence consists in its lively and ac curate delineations of character. Of these we select the following:

JOHN HAMPDEN.3

Mr. Hampden was a man of much greater cunning, and it may be, of the most discerning spirit, and of the greatest address and insinuation to bring any thing to pass which he desired, of any man of that time, and who laid the design deepest. He was a gentleman of a good extraction, and a fair fortune; who, from a life of great pleasure and license, had on a sudden retired to extraordinary sobriety and strictness, and yet retained his usual cheerfulness and affability; which, together with the opinion of his wisdom and justice, and the courage he had showed in oppos ing the ship-money, raised his reputation to a very great height, not only in Buckinghamshire, where he lived, but generally throughout the kingdom. He was not a man of many words, and rarely begun the discourse, or made the first entrance upon any business that was assumed; but a very weighty speaker; and after he had heard a full debate, and observed how the house was

1 The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James II. no private virtues! And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles! A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father! A good husband!-Ample apologies, indeed, for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood.

"For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the phrase, a good man but a bad king. We can as easily conceive a good man and an unnatural father, or a good man and a treacherous friend. We cannot, in estimating the character of an individual, leave out of our consideration his conduct in the most important of all human relations. And if, in that relation, we find him to have been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of all his temperance at table, and all his regularity at Chapel."-Edinburgh Review, xlii. 324.

2 The best edition of it is that of Oxford, 1826, 8 vols. 8vo, with the notes of Bishop Warburton, 8 Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast, The little tyrant of his fields withstood.-GRAY.

It must be remembered that this character of the heroic and venerated champion of English liberty was given by one of the opposite party: yet even by him his unrivalled superiority is unquestioned. Clarendon had measured strength with him in parliament, and therefore speaks from personal knowledge. It will be remembered that Hampden was mortally wounded in a skirmish with Prince Hupert, at Chalgrove, Oxfordshire, June 18, 1643, in his forty-ninth year, and in the dawn of his public life and character. Clarendon says that his death was as great a consternation to all his party as if their whole army had been defeated.

like to be inclined, took up the argument, and shortly, and clearly,
and craftily so stated it, that he commonly conducted it to the con-
clusion he desired; and if he found he could not do that, he was
never without the dexterity to divert the debate to another time,
and to prevent the determining any thing in the negative, which
might prove inconvenient in the future. He made so great a
show of civility, and modesty, and humility, and always of mis-
trusting his own judgment, and esteeming his with whom he con-
ferred for the present, that he seemed to have no opinions or
resolutions, but such as he contracted from the information and
instruction he received upon the discourses of others; whom he
had a wonderful art of governing, and leading into his principles
and inclinations, whilst they believed that he wholly depended
upon their counsel and advice. No man had ever a greater
power over himself, or was less the man that he seemed to be;
which shortly after appeared to everybody, when he cared less to
keep on the mask.

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He was rather of reputation in his own country, than of public discourse, or fame in the kingdom, before the business of shipmoney; but then he grew the argument of all tongues, every man inquiring who and what he was, that durst, at his own charge, support the liberty and property of the kingdom, and rescue his country, as he thought, from being made a prey to the court. His carriage, throughout this agitation, was with that rare temper and modesty, that they who watched him narrowly to find some advantage against his person, to make him less resolute in his cause, were compelled to give him a just testimony. He was of that rare affability and temper in debate, and of that seeming humility and submission of judgment, as if he brought no opinion of his own with him, but a desire of information and instruction; yet he had so subtle a way of interrogating, and under the notion of doubts, insinuating his objections, that he infused his own opinions into those from whom he pretended to learn and receive them. And even with them who were able to preserve themselves from his infusions, and discerned those opinions to be fixed in him, with which they could not comply, he always left the character of an ingenious and conscientious person. He was, indeed, a very wise man, and of great parts, and possessed with the most absolute spirit of popularity, and the most absolute faculties to govern the people, of any man I ever knew.

In the first entrance into the troubles, he undertook the command of a regiment of foot, and performed the duty of a colonel. upon all occasions, most punctually. He was very temperate in diet, and a supreme governor over all his passions and affections and had thereby a great power over other men's. He was of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out, or wearied by the most

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laborious; and of parts not to be imposed upon by the subtle or sharp; and of a personal courage equal to his best parts: so that he was an enemy not to be wished, wherever he might have been made a friend; and as much to be apprehended where he was so, as any man could deserve to be. And therefore his death was no less pleasing to the one party, than it was condoled in the other.

LORD FALKLAND.1

In this unhappy battle was slain the Lord Viscount Falkland; a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war, than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity.

He was a great cherisher of wit, and fancy, and good parts, in any man; and if he found them clouded with poverty or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron towards them, even above his fortune; of which, in those administrations, he was such a dispenser, as, if he had been trusted with it to such uses, and if there had been the least of vice in his expense, he might have been thought too prodigal. He was constant and pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, and not to be wearied by any pains that were necessary to that end. And, therefore, having once resolved not to see London, which he loved above all places, till he had perfectly learned the Greek tongue, he went to his own house in the country, and pursued it with that indefatigable industry, that it will not be believed in how short a time he was master of it, and accurately read all the Greek historians.

In this time, his house being within little more than ten miles of Oxford, he contracted familiarity and friendship with the most polite and accurate men of that university; who found such an immenseness of wit, and such a solidity of judgment in him, so infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination, such a vast knowledge, that he was not ignorant in any thing, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had known nothing, that they frequently rescrted and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer air; so that his house was a university in a less volume, whither they came not so much for repose as study; and to examine and refine those grosser propositions, which laziness and consent made current in vulgar conversation

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He was superior to all those passions and affections which at tend vulgar minds, and was guilty of no other ambition than of knowledge, and to be reputed a lover of all good men; and that

! He was killed September 20, 1643, at Newbury, in the battle between the parliament forces under the Earl of Essex, and the royalists commanded by Prince Rupert.

made him too much a contemner of those arts, which must be indulged in the transactions of human affairs.

The great opinion he had of the uprightness and integrity of those persons who appeared most active, especially of Mr. Hampden, kept him longer from suspecting any design against the peace of the kingdom; and though he differed from them commonly in conclusion, he believed long their purposes were honest. When he grew better informed what was law, and discerned in them a desire to control that law by a vote of one or both houses, no man more opposed those attempts, and gave the adverse party more trouble by reason and argumentation; insomuch as he was, by degrees, looked upon as an advocate for the court; to which he contributed so little, that he declined those addresses, and even those invitations which he was obliged almost by civility to entertain. And he was so jealous of the least imagination that he should incline to preferment, that he affected even a moroseness to the court, and to the courtiers; and left nothing undone which might prevent and divert the king's or queen's favor towards him, but the deserving it.

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When there was any overture, or hope of peace, he would be more erect and vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous to press any thing which he thought might promote it; and sitting among his friends, often after a deep silence, and frequent sighs, would, with a shrill and sad accent, ingeminate the word Peace, Peace; and would passionately profess, "that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and desolation the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart." This made some think, or pretend to think, "that he was so much enamored of peace, that he would have been glad the king should have bought it at any price;" which was a most unreasonable calumny. As if a man that was himself the most punctual and precise in every circumstance that might reflect upon conscience or honor, could have wished the king to have committed a trespass against either.

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In the morning before the battle, as always upon action, he was very cheerful, and put himself into the first rank of the Lord Byron's regiment, then advancing upon the enemy, who had lined the hedges on both sides with musketeers; from whence he was shot with a musket, in the lower part of the belly, and in the instant falling from his horse, his body was not found till the next morning; till when, there was some hope he might have been a prisoner; though his nearest friends, who knew his temper, received small comfort from that imagination. Thus fell that incomparable young man, in the four-and-thirtieth year of his age, having so much dispatched the true business of life, that the eldest rarely attain to that immense knowledge, and the youngest enter

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