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CLARENDON. man deserves some attention even from a much-occupied generation; and a careful study of Clarendon is the more in place at this moment because Herr von Ranke's estimate of his historical position, recently published in an English dress, has attracted the attention which everything from the pen of Herr von Ranke, whether very right or very wrong, deserves. PART I. BEFORE HIS FIRST EXILE. THE celebrated man whom we know successively as Mr. Hyde of the Inner Temple, as Sir Edward Hyde, and as Earl of Clarendon, measures for us the whole period of what is, in the strict and proper sense, the Puritan revolution. He became a leading statesman when the PuriHe was born in 1609, near Salisbury, tans rose to predominance in England; and where his father, Henry Hyde, resided he beheld the Puritans thrust ignomini- on his own estate of Dinton, and pursued ously from the Church, the universities, the the usual avocations of a cultivated and municipal corporations. He saw the first intelligent country gentleman. Writing at painting of religion on the banners of a time when he had known many of the Puritan and Cavalier; and he may have most remarkable men of his age, Clarenactually heard the noise when Venner and don solemnly avers his father to have his Fifth Monarchy saints, proclaiming been "the wisest man he had ever known." King Jesus in lieu of the restored Charles, Edward, the third son, was originally dewere shot down in the streets of London. signed for the Church, but the death of In loyalty to Church and king he exhibited his two elder brothers made him heir, and a high type of Cavalier heroism; and he he was sent to study law. Leaving Oxford displayed on one occasion a unique and with a reputation for parts and wit, but indescribable meanness, attested under his not for scholarship, he was entered at the own hand in what Macaulay pronounces Inner Temple in 1625. In those years, "the most extraordinary passage in auto- owing to Buckingham's confused wars, biography." He was the founder of the London swarmed with loose swash-buckold High-Church Tory party, repelling ler people of the military sort, and he politely but inexorably the Papists on his hints that he had rather more interright hand, and inexorably but with no course with such characters than was waste of politeness all non-Anglican Prot- good for him. Already, however, he was estants on his left. He is the apologist keenly alive to the claims of decorum, and and sacer vates of the royal martyr, and is conducted himself, as he significantly says, hailed by Tory rhetoricians as "the day- "cautè if not castè," avoiding "notable star of our history." He took part in deli- | scandal of any kind." He frankly informs cate and dangerous negotiations, expe- us that he made his first proposition for rienced startling extremes of good and marriage, happily unsuccessful, with no evil fortune, was in journeyings often, in warmer passion than "appetite to a conperils of waters, in perils of robbers, in venient estate; " but he speaks ardently perils by his countrymen. The confiden- of his first wife, "a young lady very fair tial friend of two kings, the grandfather and beautiful," whose death six months of two sovereigns, he died in exile, vainly after the marriage, “shook all the frame imploring the monarch, whose way he had of his resolutions." Three years later he paved to the throne, to let him set foot in married a daughter of Sir Thomas AylesEngland. He preserved through all vicis-bury, who bore him many children, and situde of fortune an enviable faculty of consuming his own smoke, and amid contradiction of sinners, saints, and circumstances, retained the soul's calm sunshine of a good opinion of himself, always making the most of a quiet hour when Jove told it to leave off thundering.* Such a with whom he lived "very comfortably in the most uncomfortable times, and very joyfully in those times when matter of joy was administered." The six or eight years preceding 1640 were the brightest of his life. Not only was he advancing in his profession and gaining a reputation for talent and eloIxion to Jupiter, in Mr. Disraeli's "Ixion in Heaven."quence, but he indulged the cravings of "I'm glad you told it to leave off thundering." that literary genius which was his deepest | the eyes of Laud, and were encouraged characteristic. Several hours every day by him to seek promotion in the Church. he devoted to reading, and sedulously Hyde was in those days an intimate friend cultivated the society of the most brilliant of Laud's. The prelate of threescore, men of the time. Ben Jonson "had for whom most people know only by Lord many years an extraordinary kindness for Macaulay's portrait of him as a malignant Mr. Hyde," and Selden, Cotton, Sir imbecile, listened with kindly deference to Kenelm Digby, Thomas May, and Thomas his young friend when he descanted on Carew were among his acquaintance. the offence given by Laud's manner at the When in London, Hyde and his asso- council-table, on the evil all men were ciates dined together by appointment, and talking of him, on the extreme desirablethe wit and learning of their talk were much ness of his letting it be known that he spoken of. In the country he either en- was not so harsh as he looked. Raspytertained his friends at Dinton, or formed voiced, sharp-tempered, fiercely impatient one of the circle attracted to Falkland's of pompous speechifiers who insisted on mansion in Oxfordshire by the graceful wasting a man's time, Laud had a sunny hospitality and noble character of its side for congenial and friendly spirits. owner. Never were the viands of intel- Liking Hyde, Laud was not alarmed at lectual banquet more richly provided or the intellectual liberalism of Hyde's circle, more felicitously varied than at Falkland's but, on the contrary, cherished the idea of board. One can fancy how, under the a Church which should have room for the genial influence of the host, Sheldon, frankest Broad Churchmen of the period. Hammond, and Morley would prove that And yet, in those very years, England, as erudition had not blunted their wit or seen by Milton, was an anguish-stricken dulled their observation; how Earle's mother, crowned with ashes, lamenting for humorous sketches of character and her children driven into the wilderness manners would alternate with Waller's by tyrannous impositions. The summer neat metaphor and sparkling phrase; lightnings of wit and free thought flashed while Hales and Chillingworth, in dialectic around the board of Falkland; and Hyde, fence with the more gravely orthodox with Whitelock, and a throng of bright divines, would practise two of the nim- young fellows of the Inns of Court, blest and sharpest intellectual swordblades that ever mingled in the controversial fray. Clarendon says with generous modesty that "he never was so proud, or thought himself so good a man, as when he was the worst man in the company." The friendship which sprung up at this time between Hyde and Falkland, the gentlest and best of all the Cavaliers, was unbroken until Falkland's death, and continued, during the thirty years of Hyde's subsequent life, to be with him the subject How could these things coexist? The of tender and sacred remembrance. fact need not surprise us. The most The spirit and sentiments of the re- fiery agitations of politics are never comnowned circle in which Hyde and Falk-mensurate with the society in which they land moved were liberal. Nowhere, in the whole range of literature, is there a more just or enlarged conception of toleration, a more intrepid recognition of the claims of reason and conscience, than in the works of Chillingworth and Hales. Nor ought it to be forgotten that both Hales and Chillingworth found favour in resplendent in gold and silver lace, some in coaches-and-six, some on richly caparisoned horses, went masquing in procession from Chancery Lane to Whitehall, to dance under the eyes of majesty and be complimented by the queen: but in Palace Yard ears were being cut off, noses slit, cheeks branded; and, step by step, the conspirators of Thorough were advancing on the last fastnesses of English freedom. take place. In the central agony of the French Revolution, when the tumbrils, with their load of victims, went daily to the guillotine, the theatres of Paris had their jocund audiences. There was room in England in 1637, both for the circle of Hyde and Falkland and for those of Milton, of Hampden, of Prynne. In the tion of the society in which he moved before 1640 once more illustrates the strangely connected, strangely contrasted parts played in history by the speculative intellect and the believing or the impassioned heart. A sure instinct told Laud that the most capriciously sceptical of philosopherdivines would be more manageable in the church than the rugged Puritan who feared God and knew no other fear. The speculative intellect plays with light and lambent flame about the fetters of nations, revealing weak places and rubbing off the gilt of customary reverence, but the fire that melts them is from the the heart. Not Erasmus but Luther originated the Reformation; not Waller but Milton is the poet of the Puritan revolution; not the knowing, glittering, satirical Voltaire, but Rousseau, the half-crazed prophet of philanthropy, inspired Robespierre and his Jacobins. Speculative philosophy and Horatian poetry have always taken kindly to despotism. No pale-faced nun could have shuddered and whimpered at the excesses of liberty in more genuine panic than that of Gibbon when he saw whither their fine-spun theories had led his freethinking friends in France. If Strafford, Laud, and Charles had succeeded in transforming the monarchy of England into a despotism, it would have been a stately and imposing despotism; with pictures by Velasquez and Tintoret in the palace, with Chillingworth in the Church, and Hobbes at the university; but this merely proves that despotism in England would not have been without those alleviations which have not redeemed the malignity of despotism elsewhere. next place, Clarendon's glowing descrip- | victory over the Scots would be the deathknell of freedom in England. But these men had a difficult part to play. The Commons were not disposed to deal hardly with the king, and a grant of money, even though not large, might be interpreted as an approval of the royal policy. Under circumstances, Charles asked for twelve subsidies. The amount was enormous for those times, and Hampden knew that the House would refuse it. He proposed, therefore, that the question should be put simpliciter, grant or not grant twelve subsidies? Hyde suggested that the question should be divided, the vote whether some supply should be granted being taken separately from the vote fixing the amount. He had at this time no connection with the court, but if he had been the confidential adviser of Charles, he could not have adopted a course more likely to baffle the patriots and to secure for the crown the command of the House. Charles, however, was one whom it was difficult to serve. His ministers announced on his part that no smaller supply than that asked for would be accepted. The masterly tactics of Hyde, which might have foiled the dexterous and experienced Hampden, were of no avail. The twelve subsidies were refused, and Charles announced his intention to dissolve the Parliament. Hyde knew that this would be folly. Hurrying to Laud, he implored the archbishop to use his influence to dissuade the king from a dissolution. Laud said he would not counsel a dissolution, but neither would he offer his advice against it. The probability is that Laud,who found convocation manageable, who had his canons to get enacted, and In the Short Parliament, which sat in who would have been pleased beyond exthe spring of 1640, Hyde was member for pression if his ecclesiastical Parliament Wootton-Bassett. The important part could by voting money have enabled the which he played in this Parliament proves king to do without the lay Parliament, that he must have already made a deep was not averse to a dissolution. Though impression on his contemporaries. He he was no imbecile, his conception of the occupied an intermediate position be- interests of the Church may well have tween Charles and the patriots. Hamp- paralyzed his judgment as to what was the den had taken his line. He was resolved best course for his master to adopt in to force upon the court a complete change civil affairs at this critical conjuncture. of policy, and to grant no supplies to be In the Short Parliament Hyde served on employed in the Scotch war. The vet- no fewer than seven committees, and eran patriots were convinced that a royal took a leading part in the attack on the |