Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon — Volume 02

by Sir Henry Craik

CHAPTER XV

PROSPECT FOR THE RESTORED MONARCHY

The task which fell to Hyde during the early months of 1660, in gauging the various influences at work in the country from which he had been banished for fourteen years, was one of acute difficulty. He had been, it is true, in constant correspondence with men whom he could trust; but the letters which reached him from Sheldon, from Lord Mordaunt, from Grenville, and from Brodrick—to name only a few of those who gave him their impressions from week to week—had spoken in various degrees of hope and fear, and given him very different accounts of the state of parties. These parties had greatly shifted their attitude during the years of his banishment. Many of those upon whom dependence had to be placed—such, for instance, as Morrice, the close adherent of Monk, and now Secretary of State—were personally unknown to him. Some of the strongest supporters of a restoration were men who had been conspicuous as adherents of Cromwell, and yet it became increasingly clear to him that their support was even more valuable than that of some whose loyalty was of older date. The Presbyterians and the Roman Catholics had specious claims to advance for consideration; and even the Levellers, the Anabaptists, and the Independents had motives, which dexterous manipulation might foster, and which might make them ready to support the cause of the King, especially now that it was in the ascendant. Amidst the strong tides which were running under the influence of shifting currents of popular opinion, principles were thrust to the wall, and each party, like each individual, was chiefly occupied in looking after personal interests, and adjusting views so as to suit the change of the national situation. No one was sure of anything except that the political quicksands were moving rapidly, and that it behoved them not to be behind others in forming advantageous alliances.

The mood of the time could not be painted in more impressive words than those which Hyde uses, after the manner of Thucydides in describing the moral effects of the Peloponesian war.

"In a word, the nation was corrupted from that integrity, good nature, and generosity, that had been peculiar to it, and for which it had been signal and celebrated throughout the world; in the room whereof the vilest craft and dissembling had succeeded. The tenderness of bowels, which is the quintessence of justice and compassion, the very mention of good nature, was laughed at and looked upon as the mark and character of a fool; and a roughness of manners, or hardheartedness and cruelty, was affected. In the place of generosity, a vile and sordid love of money was entertained as the truest wisdom, and anything lawful that would contribute towards being rich. There was a total decay, or rather a final expiration of all friendship; and to dissuade a man from anything he affected, or to reprove him for anything he had done amiss, or to advise him to do anything he had no mind to do, was thought an impertinence unworthy a wise man, and received with reproach and contempt. These dilapidations and ruins of the ancient candour and discipline were not taken enough to heart, and repaired with that early care and severity that they might have been, for they were not then incorrigible; but by the remissness of applying remedies to some, and the unwariness in giving a kind of countenance to others, too much of that poison insinuated itself into minds not well fortified against such infection, so that much of the malignity was transplanted, instead of being extinguished, to the corruption of many wholesome bodies, which, being corrupted, spread the diseases more powerfully and more mischievously." [Footnote: Life, i. 360.]

The ignoble struggles of callous selfishness were made all the more desperate by the bewildering confusion of the political situation. The most difficult problem had been the attitude of Monk, and that was all the more baffling from the fact that Monk had no clear discernment of his own line of policy, and with all his accidental command of the situation, was too obtuse to choose his own course and follow it consistently. The Presbyterians were monarchical in sympathy, and dreaded the Independents too much to be willing to revert to republican forms; but their determination to alter the ecclesiastical traditions of the Church could not be encouraged without losing the support of the main body of Royalist opinion. The Roman Catholics hoped for toleration, but their hopes could not be indulged without arousing the anti-Catholic prejudices of the nation. The reviving aspirations of the Church had to be fostered, but the extravagance of her hopes of revenge for past wrongs had to be kept in severe check. Hyde himself was too little known by the new generation to be cordially trusted, and he had to reckon on the implacable opposition of those who believed that his influence over the King would make him absolute as Minister. He was left in no doubt as to the slanders which gathered round his name, and as to the personal jealousy of his power. For a time it seemed doubtful whether the Restoration could be accomplished without an express condition that the King should return without his chief adviser. Between Hyde himself and the Presbyterians the feud was too old to be appeased. The Roman Catholics recognized that their hopes of toleration from the King might be frustrated by Hyde's sturdy Protestantism. Monk was jealous of his influence, and his jealousies were fostered by his wife, who was under the dominion of the Presbyterian clergy. No pains were spared to stir up suspicion against him. "By stories artificially related both to the General and his Lady," writes Lord Mordaunt to him on May 4th, 1660, "your enemies have possessed them both with a very ill opinion of you, which has showed itself by several bitter expressions very lately uttered at St. James's." The Duke of Buckingham, [Footnote: George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, was born only a few months before his father's assassination, in 1628, and, from his affection to the Minister whom he had lost, Charles had his son brought up with his own family. Curiously enough, William Aylesbury, brother-in-law of Hyde, was at one time the tutor of the young Duke. Buckingham took part in the war as a very young man, and was one of the leaders in the second Civil War, in 1648. His property had before this been confiscated, but he had secured favourable terms by an arrangement with the Parliament. This time it was again confiscated, and he narrowly escaped death by flight to the Continent. He was a prominent member of the exiled Court; but his open irreligion, his flighty character, and his continual plotting as an adherent of Prince Rupert, alienated him from the party of Hyde. His wit and personal charms won for him many friends, but his life was one perpetual succession of reckless schemes and bitter quarrels, in which his Royal master was often involved. He fought at Worcester, but his arrogance prompted him to demand the generalship of the army, and he resented the King's refusal by boyish sulkiness. In 1658, he again returned to England, and married the daughter of Fairfax; but this was in defiance of Cromwell, from whose vengeance he was probably saved only by the Protector's death. He was restored to his vast possessions after the King's return, and then began that long and restless career of varied intrigue, which won for him, in later days, the character of Zimri, in Dryden's Satire, and during the next few years made him the embittered foe of Clarendon.] ever a zealot in any design of mischief, was doing all he could, wrote Mr. Brodrick, to spread evil tales of him, and to inspire the Royalists with the opinion that Hyde's influence would destroy their hopes. Hyde himself was ready to remain in exile rather than that his return should prejudice the cause of the King. But the very malice of his enemies overshot the mark. He had friends who knew his worth, and Ormonde and Southampton were staunchly loyal to him. It is to the credit of the King that he spoke in no uncertain tone.

"It is not to be wondered at," he wrote to Sir Arthur Apsley on April 29th, "that at the same time that I have so many enemies, those that are faithful to me should have some; and it is from some of those who are not much my friends, that the report comes that the Chancellor should have lost my favour. The truth of it is, I look upon the spreaders of that lie as more my enemies than his, for he will always be found an honest man, and I should deserve the name of a very unjust master if I should reward him so ill, that hath served me so faithfully."

Hyde's strict constitutionalism was dreaded by those whose ideal of a Restoration Government was one which would lavishly reward its adherents without concerning itself with observance of the law. It was his fidelity at once to the King and to the Constitution that inspired the opposition to his return. Friends and enemies alike recognized that if he returned with the King, his must be the guiding hand in the administration, as his had been the chief task in setting the policy of the exiled Court.

Hyde accompanied Charles on his return to England. The King embarked at Scheveningen, on May 24th. On the 26th, as we have already seen, he landed at Dover amidst the thunder of cannon, and that day took coach to Canterbury. The great cathedral had suffered sorely from sacrilegious hands, but there gathered within its walls a goodly company of the notables of the kingdom to join their King in a Service of Thanksgiving. Upon General Monk, the Marquis of Hertford, the Earl of Southampton, and Admiral Montague, [Footnote: Montague was created Earl of Sandwich next month.] he conferred the honour of the Garter; and amidst the acclamations of his people, he proceeded next day to Rochester. On the 29th, his birthday, he entered London, "all the ways from Dover thither being so full of people, and acclamations, as if the whole kingdom had been gathered." At Greenwich he was met by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen "with all such protestations of joy as can hardly be imagined." All the city companies lined the road from London Bridge to Temple Bar, "giving loud thanks to God for his majesty's presence."

At Whitehall "the two Houses of Parliament cast themselves at his feet with all vows of affection to the world's end." Well might the King exclaim, as he saw the fervency of welcome, "It had been his own fault he had been absent so long; for he saw nobody that did not protest he had ever wished for his return." Hyde saw a dramatic accompaniment of this happy consummation of a long and doubtful struggle, in the death, within three months, of the chief Ministers of France and Spain—Cardinal Mazarin and Don Lewis de Haro—whose schemes of policy it seemed to ruin, and who saw in it the failure of their machinations.

In the beginning of June, Hyde took his place as Speaker of the House of Lords, and presided in the Court of Chancery. To the business of that Court a great part of his labours were now to be devoted; but while he studiously avoided the name of First Minister, he exercised, in addition to his judicial functions, far more of the authority of supreme Minister than fell to the lot of any officer of the Crown for some generations after his day. For a few years he seemed to enjoy the unbounded confidence of the King; but that confidence he had earned by no subserviency, and in spite of marked lack of sympathy. For the first time in our history a man of no high birth or commanding station, to whom the personal favour of his sovereign had so far brought nothing but hardship and exile, found himself indisputably marked out, by a long course of services devotedly given, for what was virtually the position of First Minister of the Crown. His judgment and his experience of men taught him how exposed such a position was to every blast of envy. It was partly owing to his consciousness of rectitude, partly to a certain unbending rigidity of character, that Hyde neglected the caution that might have enabled him to shelter himself against these blasts. With all his experience of Courts, Hyde never learned the arts of a courtier. He was naively unconscious how little the steadfast honesty of his purpose could render his blunt plainness of diction palatable to a master, the chief feature of whose character was callous selfishness, and whose self-love might for the moment allow him to overlook, but never permitted him to forget, the liberty that presumed to curb his caprices or to criticize his conduct.

But for the time the relations between Charles and his Minister were cordial enough; [Footnote: These relations, in their intimacy and apparent freedom from restraint, are perhaps best reflected in what are known as the "Council notes," preserved in the Bodleian, and consisting of scraps of memoranda passing between Charles and his Chancellor. Most of them are, no doubt, mere notes passed across the table during a discussion in the Council, and abound in those hieroglyphics on the margin, which sufferers from tedious colloquies are impelled to make, and which perhaps indicate the frequent boredom of the King. But others are evidently messages transmitted from Whitehall to the Chancellor. In all alike there is a singular lack of formality, or even of orderliness, and they might have passed between business colleagues, who were on terms of close intimacy and easy familiarity. Clarendon's tone is almost uniformly brusque and off-hand, and he must have tried the King's patience terribly by the infamous illegibility of his handwriting. Charles's writing is a schoolboy scrawl, but it is uniformly legible.] and amongst his colleagues Hyde could count some who were his warmest and most trusted friends. They formed an inner circle, with common sympathies at once in their memories and in their aims, and unassailed as yet by the coarse profligacy, the vulgar buffoonery, and the ignoble selfishness that were soon to become dominant in Charles's Court. Such were Ormonde, now Lord Steward, whose loyalty was as untarnished as his position was above the assaults of slander and envy, and whose unbroken friendship was a powerful buttress to Hyde, and warded off the slights to which his own more humble birth might have subjected him. Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, represented the very best type of courtier of an older generation, and his acceptance of the post of Lord High Treasurer gave security that the full tide of corruption, which bid fair to spread its taint over the Court, should find some check so far as the financial administration was concerned. In even closer relation to Hyde's official sphere was Sir Edward Nicholas, the Principal Secretary of State, between whom and Hyde there was the sacred tie of common service and common veneration for the late King. Nicholas was no brilliant statesman, and had no ambitious schemes to serve. But amongst those who played an active, albeit unselfish, part in the varied field of administrative work from the days of Strafford downwards, there was none more industrious, none more loyal, and none less selfish than he. It was all to his credit that he was unlikely to consort on easy terms with the motley crew that now thronged the Court.

Hyde saw, without any displeasure, the Earl of Manchester [Footnote: Edward Montague, second Earl of Manchester, who succeeded to the title on the death of his father, in 1642, very early joined the Puritan, and afterwards the Presbyterian party. He was one of the leading Parliamentary generals until the Self-Denying Ordinance deprived him of command. He was a man much beloved, and with marvellous suavity of manner. But to this there was not added any marked ability, or any firmness of will. He had long ceased to be in sympathy with the leaders of the Commonwealth, and rendered powerful assistance in the Restoration. "By his extraordinary civilities and behaviour to all men, he did not only appear the fittest person the King could have chosen for that office (Lord Chamberlain) in that time, but rendered himself so acceptable to all degrees of men, that none, but such who were implacable towards all who had ever disserved the King, were sorry to see him so promoted. He was mortally hated and persecuted by Cromwell, even for his life, and had done many acts of merit towards the King; so he was of all men, who had ever borne arms against the King, both in the gentleness and justice of his nature, in the sweetness and evenness of his conversation, and in his real principles for monarchy, the most worthy to be received into trust and confidence"— Clarendon, Life, i. 368. Manchester was hardly the stuff out of which effective revolutionists are made.] created Lord Chamberlain, although he was the avowed patron of the Presbyterian party; and Manchester's easy courtesy and recognized probity were no unwelcome ingredients in the Court. But there were others within the official pale, not reckoning the newer courtiers who were destined soon to push their way to power, who were less congenial partners for Hyde and his friends. Monk had earned an unquestionable right to lavish reward, and the King bestowed it with no grudging hand. But Monk's ambition aimed rather at wealth and position than at administrative power; and as Duke of Albemarle, as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—an office of which the duties were left to others— as Commander-in-Chief, and as Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Monk found himself with titular rank, and with financial gains, which were more in accordance with the tastes of himself and his wife than would have been the burden and responsibility of laborious State business. Between the Duke and the Chancellor there could never be close sympathy, and, for a time, slanderous tongues came near to making active mischief. [Footnote: We find a certain Thomas Dowde writing to Hyde on May 4, 1660, to tell him how Edward Progers had been questioned by Mrs. Monk about Hyde, who had been represented to her as "proud, insolent, contemning all counsel but his own, disposing of all monies for his pleasure, and the delicacies of a riotous table." The authority given is that of "a person of the French interest," whom we may perhaps identify as Jermyn (Bodleian MSS.).] But as they knew one another better they learned mutual toleration at least, if not respect. Others were still more distasteful to Hyde. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, [Footnote: Afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury.] destined to play a leading part at a later day, as leader of dangerous factions both for and against the Crown, and to figure in Dryden's Satire as Achitophel, was scarcely likely, with his spirit of restless intrigue and of daring cynicism, to prove a congenial colleague, even had he not been prominent as a member of the clique which lost no opportunity for undermining the influence of the older statesmen. He was now made Chancellor of the Exchequer, with some hope that "his slippery humour might be held in check by Southampton, whose niece he had lately married."

In the Comptroller, Lord Berkeley, [Footnote: John Berkley or Berkeley, belonged to the house of the Berkeleys of Bruton, and was employed as ambassador in Sweden, in 1636, after which embassy he was knighted. He fought in the Royalist army, and at the close of the war, attempted to carry out some unsuccessful negotiations between the army and the King. He accompanied Charles in the escape from Hampton Court, and must share with Ashburnham the folly or treachery which betrayed the King into the hands of Hammond, and made him a prisoner at Carisbrooke. Afterwards he went abroad, and managed to gain the post of Governor to the Duke of York, by whose influence he was created Lord Berkeley of Stratton, in 1658. After the Restoration, he contrived to secure lucrative posts. His mansion was on the site now marked by Berkeley Square. The names of the streets in that neighbourhood sufficiently indicate the localities inhabited by the aristocracy of the Restoration.

He was uncle to Sir Charles Berkeley, afterwards Lord Palmouth, the favourite of the Duke of York, whose foul slanders against the Duchess have earned for him a lasting infamy.] Hyde found one for whom he had a profound contempt, and of whose vile kinsman, Sir Charles Berkeley, he was soon to have very odious experience. Hyde writes of the elder Berkeley, "If he loved any one it was those whom he had known a very little while, and who had purchased his affection at the price of much application, and very much flattery; and if he had any friends, they were likewise those who had known him very little." [Footnote: Clarendon State Papers, vol. iii. Supp. p. lxxx.]

In the earlier part of the reign the business of Government was chiefly transacted by a committee, nominally for the consideration of Foreign Affairs, but really bearing a fairly close analogy to the more modern Cabinet Council. The King and the Duke of York were constantly present at its meetings, and the other members were the Chancellor, Ormonde, Southampton, the Duke of Albemarle, and the Secretaries of State, Nicholas and Morrice. Its deliberations extended far beyond the sphere of foreign affairs, and really comprised every branch of the executive, as well as consideration of the policy which was to be followed in Parliamentary affairs. Hyde was unquestionably the dominant power in that Council, and however much a careful observer might have detected the signs of coming dissension, his influence was as yet unimpaired. It rested upon his well- tried loyalty, his unrivalled administrative capacity, and his thorough command of detail; and while it was cemented by the cordial friendship of some of his colleagues, it was smoothed, for the present at least, by an absence of marked friction with any.

We must, however, guard ourselves against a misconception which has imposed itself upon many in forming their estimate of Hyde's new position. It would be utterly wrong to fancy that he entered upon these heavy responsibilities with any sense of triumph or elation, and inspired by any pride of power. This would have been singularly out of harmony with his character and disposition. Though he was ready to assume the burden of administration from a sense of duty, we shall look in vain, throughout all the critical epochs of his life, for any grasping after the prizes of ambition. No letter and no utterance of Hyde's can be adduced in which he put forward a claim for advancement or bargained for any office for himself. The political arena had strong attractions for him, and his principles, or, if we please to call them so, his prejudices, were definite and keen. He was willing to spend his strength in the effort to realize these, and success in that effort brought him rich satisfaction. But he was too proud to make them aids in his own personal advancement. Greatness was thrust upon him; and if disaster chafed him, it was not because of the loss of personal advantages, but because the spirit of the combatant felt defeat to be irksome, and because it involved a suspicion of disgrace. The cause for which he fought was always more to him than his own fortunes; and to plead on his behalf the excuse of natural elation at his triumphal return to power is a singular ineptitude. [Footnote: Strangely enough, this plea is advanced with little sense of proportion by that most luke-warm of all biographers, Mr. Lister. Hyde's fame owes little to such misplaced apologies.]

Apart from Hyde's own history, and from the character which stands out so clearly at once from his actions and his own record, such a conception is unsupported by the actual facts of the case. Severe as had been the hardships of his exile, tangled as had been the mazes through which he had to steer his course, and baffling as had been his difficulties, we may well doubt if Hyde did not, in the years that now follow, look back with regret on the days when he had to fight against heavy odds with an ever- growing confidence in his ultimate success. Against overwhelming forces, his pen had successfully maintained the righteousness of the cause of his late and of his present master, and had, by its undisputed superiority, earned the fear and hatred of his triumphant foes. He had done much to compose restless animosities in the exiled Court, and had introduced something like order into its tangled economy. He had handled with marvellous dexterity the selfish intrigues of foreign Courts, which he could approach only as the powerless agent of a discredited and bankrupt exile. From first to last he had insisted that the Restoration should not be brought about at the expense of conditions to any foreign Power. He had imparted much of his own undying confidence to his English correspondents, and had kept alive the flame of loyalty under untoward circumstances. He had compromised the cause by no dangerous engagement, and had maintained, with unswerving rectitude, his own convictions of constitutional principle. He had been sustained by the sure confidence that, in poverty and exile, quite as much as when in the possession of ample power, he was making history, and was shaping the foundations of a restored monarchy.

But the hour of apparent triumph brought with it none of the solaces of the long struggle. No one appreciated more fully the splendid chances that were offered to the restored King; no one discerned more plainly how blindly these chances were thrown away. Nor had he long to wait to realize the depth of his disappointment. The blaze of triumph which surrounded the Restoration; the universal joy with which the King was welcomed; the strength of the tide of loyalty that swept over the nation—all these were visible enough. But Hyde was under no delusionment as to the canker that was soon to wither all his hopes. He draws no flattering picture of the work in which his own part was so large. He recognizes that there "must have been some unheard-of defect of understanding in those who were trusted by the King with the administration of his affairs." [Footnote: Life, i. 315.] His disappointment is too great to permit him to waste words in any attempt to dissociate himself from the failure.

Hyde saw clearly enough the danger that lurked in the very suddenness with which the nation allowed itself to be swept away by the tide of loyalty. It did not blind him to the wide diversity of opinion which prevailed, and which made the royal authority so much smaller in fact than "the general noise and acclamation, the bells, and the bonfires, proclaimed it to be." A sedulous cultivation of his own dignity on the part of the King, a respect for public opinion, the most unwearied attention to public business, might indeed have allowed the seeds of loyalty to grow into a strong plant. But the King had need not only of character and industry on his own part, but of a high standard of public spirit and of duty in those who were to be his Ministers. It is hard to say in which of the two the failure was most complete. No one had better opportunity of measuring its extent than Hyde; and it is in this that the tragedy of these few years of gradually increasing disappointment consists. He saw how "all might have been kneaded into a firm and constant obedience and resignation to the King's authority, and to a lasting establishment of monarchic power, in all the just extents which the King could expect, or men of any public or honest affections could wish or submit to." [Footnote: Life, i. 321.]

It is in these last words that we have the keynote of Hyde's deliberate policy. He never lost what had been his guiding principle from his first entry into the world of politics—a balance between Crown and Parliament, and the maintenance of a constitutional monarchy. It is true that Hyde assigned to the Crown a far more preponderating weight in the balance than later constitutional theories admitted. Parliament, according to his theory, was to be kept in a sort of tutelage, and the limits of its power were to be strictly observed. But he felt that the Crown and the Parliament were essential complements, one of the other; and he had no wish to go back to the days when Parliament might be suspended, or the Crown relieved from its dependence on the grants of the nation's representatives. No underlying prerogative was to impose itself as ultimately supreme. King and Parliament were alike to be subject to the law; and the law courts were to be independent of dictation either from one or the other. The last generation had seen each party alike attempting to trample under foot that supremacy of the law; and Hyde hoped that each had learned the lesson of their error. What he did not recognize was, that new guarantees were necessary before the limitations of constitutional monarchy were fully established. He had yet to learn how much the lessons of adversity had been wasted on Charles II., and how mere shiftiness and lack of principle might betray the Crown into errors even more fatal than those of Strafford and of Charles I. These last had striven after an ideal which was inacceptable to the English people, and they failed in the struggle. Charles II, with incomparably better chances, threw these chances away in mere wantonness, and he brought upon the Crown not defeat only, but what was much worse, contempt. It was the very result from which Hyde most recoiled.

Hyde had not had long to wait for experience of one sort of difficulty which he and his master had to meet. Charles had reached Canterbury about three hours after he landed at Dover; and there he had been met by a host of prospective recipients of royal favours. Some of them were too powerful to brook denial; and first amongst these stood General Monk.

The crowd of those who saw their own merits in an exaggerating mirror, and whose shamelessness in urging their claims was often in inverse proportion to their merits, roused only the contemptuous cynicism of the King. But Monk was a claimant of another type; and it startled the King when Monk placed in his hands a list of some seventy names as proper recipients for the dignity of Privy Councillors, Some of these names were of such unquestionable weight that application on their behalf was so unnecessary as to be ridiculous. It did not need Monk's advocacy to recommend Southampton and Ormonde and Hertford for any honour which the Crown could bestow. But with their names were found those of men whose advancement would have provoked a storm of opposition, and whose reputation for loyalty rested upon the flimsiest basis. Charles thrust the paper in his pocket, and dismissed Monk with the most flattering commendation of his own merits. In his perplexity he turned to Hyde, and desired him to expostulate with the General, and his dependant, Mr. Morrice. Hyde had never before met either Monk or Morrice, and his first interview promised to be a disagreeable one-preceded, as it was, by suspicions which had been sedulously impressed upon Monk by Hyde's ill-wishers. He addressed himself first to Morrice, whose character he soon learned to respect, as that of an honest and capable man, although something too much of the scholar and recluse, and with some lack of experience in action. To his surprise, he found the difficulty less than he expected. The General, said Morrice, had no thoughts of his recommendations being accepted wholesale. He had been compelled to promise his favour, and had included many names only to redeem that promise. But the King was not to understand that all these names were meant for his acceptance. The difficulty was solved for the time. But it had taught Hyde how slippery was the ground on which he stood, and how fatal it would be to interpret, as sincere, suggestions which were only formally made, and which might breed anger rather than gratitude if accepted to the letter.

Incidents like this—one only amongst many—soon disillusioned Hyde. The great hopes which he had formed from estimating the splendid chances opened by the Restoration, were grievously dispelled. He learned how selfish and how flimsy was much of the noisy loyalty. He soon learned, also, to take a just estimate of the character of the King. During the time of exile he had formed a high opinion of Charles's abilities, and had frequent cause to appreciate his tact and abundant fund of humour and of common-sense. What he had not fully observed was the extent to which the canker of cynicism had undermined the King's character, and how low was his judgment of his fellow-men. He now discovered this, and found how little he could depend upon him for that careful attention to business, and that sense of responsibility, which, amidst all his errors, had never been lacking in Charles I. It was a splendid opportunity. The Church had recovered its power, and, it might be hoped, had learned wisdom from adversity. The reign of that fanaticism which Hyde detested had passed away. The Crown was restored, and its dignity and solid influence might be increased and not diminished, by the recognition of the constitutional limits on the power of the monarch. Parliament was again strong, and it had learned enough to know that a straining of its powers to a tyranny was distasteful to the people, and in reality, a danger to those very powers. Law, which Hyde regarded as the keystone of the arch, was, he might fondly fancy, fixed on a surer foundation. The sound principles which, as he had once hoped, had been attained in the early days of the Long Parliament, were again in sight. Parliamentary government had been vindicated, and yet the dignity and influence of the Crown were safe. As trusted Minister of the Crown, it might be his task to buttress securely the elaborate and delicate mechanism of a free and constitutional monarchy, resting upon the aid of Parliament, but secured in all amplitude of loyalty and reverence. A few years—nay, rather a few months—served to show him how far the reality was to fall short of his ideal.

How did matters really stand between Charles and his people? Weariness, full as much as loyalty, was the operative cause of the mood that brought about the Restoration. Only a few weeks before, the gaunt and serried ridges of national conflict stood out as threatening as ever. The grim rocks of Episcopalianism and Presbytery, of Independence and Anabaptism, of divine right and republicanism, stood opposed to one another. Suddenly, almost like a dream, the wave of a new and over-mastering impulse had risen and submerged them all. For the moment it was strong and deep enough to overpower all other currents. On its smooth surface, Charles had floated back to the throne. But the favouring wave had only covered for a time—it had not swept away—the rocks underneath. These were soon to be once more exposed.

Charles had accepted the tribute of adulation with the smooth smile, the superficial good-nature, the half-contemptuous courtesy, and the inherent insincerity, of the cynic. His ruling passion was the innate selfishness of the libertine. For constitutional principles, or even for any settled ideas of government, he knew and cared nothing. If he had any ideal of kingly power, it was framed according to the model of the French Court, and was shaped to suit the gratification of his own tastes, and the satisfaction of his appetites. The constitution was best neither as it extended the limits of his own power, nor as it met the aspirations of his people, but as it ensured the security of a sensual Court, and did not interfere with his own love of ease. To this all thought of kingly prerogative or of parliamentary influence, all care for the privileges of the Church or of toleration, were alike subservient. The Minister who desired to govern according to settled principles, and who based his confidence on Charles, was building on the veriest quicksand. And yet of all Ministers, Hyde was the one in whom temperament, tradition, taste and sad experience, had most implanted the belief in rigid adherence to principle. The ill-effect of such a conjunction could not be long postponed.