Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon — Volume 02

Produced by Anne Soulard, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
JOHN HAMPDEN From a miniature by Samuel Cooper, in the possession of Earl Spencer
GEORGE MONK, DUKE OF ALBEMARLE From the original by Sir Peter Lely, in the National Portrait Gallery
GENERAL LAMBERT From the original by R. Walker, in the National Portrait Gallery
SIR HENRY VANE, THE YOUNGER From the original by William Dobson, in the National Portrait Gallery
JOHN MAITLAND, DUKE OF LAUDERDALE From the original by Sir Peter Lely, in the National Portrait Gallery
GEORGE DIGBY, SECOND EARL OF BRISTOL From the original by Sir Anthony Vandyke, in the Collection of Earl Spencer
SIR EDWARD NICHOLAS From the original by Sir Peter Lely, in the National Portrait Gallery
ANNE HYDE, DUCHESS OF YORK From the original by Sir Peter Lely
JAMES BUTLER, DUKE OF ORMONDE From the original by Sir Godfrey Kneller
After the death of Cromwell, on September 3rd, 1658, there ensued for the exiled Court twenty months of constant alternation between hope and despair, in which the gloom greatly preponderated. As the chief pilot of the Royalist ship, Hyde, now titular Lord Chancellor, had to steer his way through tides that were constantly shifting, and with scanty gleam of success to light him on the way. Within the little circle of the Court he was assailed by constant jealousy, none the less irksome because it was contemptible. The policy of Charles, so far as he had any policy apart from Hyde, varied between the encouragement of friendly overtures from supporters of different complexions at home, and a somewhat damaging cultivation of foreign alliances, which were delusive in their proffered help, and might involve dangerous compliance with religious tenets abhorred in England. The friends in England were jealous and suspicious of one another, and their loyalty varied in its strength, and was marked by very wide difference in its ultimate objects. It would have been hard in any case to discern the true position amidst the complicated maze of political parties in England; it was doubly hard for one who had been an exile for a dozen years. To choose between different courses was puzzling. Inaction was apt to breed apathy; but immature action would only lead to further persecution of the loyalists, and to disaster to the most gallant defenders of the rights of the King. With the true instinct of a statesman, Hyde saw that the waiting policy was best; but it was precisely the policy that gave most colour to insinuations of his want of zeal. In spite of his exile, he understood the temper of the nation better than any of the paltry intriguers round him; to study that temper was not a process that commended itself to their impatient ambitions. His pen was unresting: in preparing pamphlets, in writing under various disguises, in carrying on endless correspondence, in drafting constant declarations. But all such work met with little acknowledgment from those who thought that their own intrigues were more likely to benefit the King, and, above all, to advance themselves. They recked nothing of that sound traditional frame of government which it was the aim of Hyde religiously to conserve. Few statesmen have had a task more hard, more thankless, and more hopeless than that which fell to him during these troubled months.