Anne Hyde, Duchess of York

by J. R. Henslowe

To return to the Aylesbury tutor of the Villiers brothers; he lived abroad in exile for a time, and having been obliged to return to England in 1650, he again left the country, and died six years later in Jamaica, being then secretary to Major-General Sedgwick.

Another of Edward Hyde’s friends was Sir Edmund Verney, “of great courage and generally beloved,”[^[9]] that gallant standard-bearer who was destined to fall at Edgehill at the beginning of the war, but who as long as he lived, with Hyde and Falkland, might be considered to represent the moderate or constitutional loyalists. Having in 1634 been appointed keeper of writs and rolls of Common Pleas, we find Hyde later emerging into the arena of public life. In 1640 he organised the royal party in the Commons, and on the eve of the outbreak drew up the state papers for the Royalist press.[^[10]] With Colepepper, afterwards famous as a general, and his friend Falkland, Hyde joined the King at York. At this time he was member for Wotton Basset in his own county of Wilts, having been also called to serve for Shaftesbury, which however he declined. At the dissolution of the Short Parliament in 1640 he was again, in the constitution of the Long Parliament, returned for his own constituency. At some time he also seems to have represented Saltash. At any rate, from the date above referred to, he gave up his practice at the Bar, and devoted himself to “public business.”

[9]. “Life of the Earl of Clarendon,” by himself.

[10]. “Short History of the English People.” Green.

We have it under his hand that as late as 1639 the “three kingdoms” were “flourishing in entire Peace and universal Plenty,” yet we cannot but think that any one so far-seeing and sagacious as Edward Hyde must have detected the first low mutterings of the gathering storm by that time. His personal enmity to Cromwell began early, and at the beginning of the Long Parliament he was attacked by the bitter Puritan Fiennes for his steady attachment to the Church.[^[11]] It was then that he was first sent for by the King, who wished to thank him personally for his defence both of himself and of the Church, and from this date begins his close association with Charles. With Prince Rupert, loyal nephew and gallant soldier as he showed himself to be, Hyde was never on good terms, neither were his two colleagues,[^[12]] and the trio before mentioned, whether for good or evil, steadily opposed the sometimes headlong counsels of the brilliant Prince Palatine.

[11]. “Life of the Earl of Clarendon,” by himself.

[12]. “A Royal Cavalier: The Romance of Rupert, Prince Palatine,” by Mrs Steuart Erskine.

One of Hyde’s first actions after his election was to secure the suppression of the Earl Marshal’s Court, while soon after his dispute with Fiennes, the King wished to appoint him Solicitor-General, though Hyde declined the post. The triumvirate, Colepepper, Falkland and Hyde himself, steadfast, upright and loyal, constantly met to consult on the King’s affairs, in the hope—a vain one as it proved—of stemming the incoming tide of misfortune. At the beginning of 1643, Hyde was sworn of the Privy Council, and made Chancellor of the Exchequer, but in common with many other of the King’s most faithful and wisest servants, we find him deploring the Queen’s unbounded influence over her husband, who, since Buckingham’s untimely and tragic death from the dagger of Felton, had had no supreme adviser. Before Henrietta left for Holland on her expedition to procure supplies with the jewels she pledged there, she exacted from the King two utterly preposterous promises: first, to receive no one who had ever “disserved him” into favour, and secondly, not to make peace without her consent. After the fatal loss of Falkland at Newbury fight in this year, the King was anxious to make Hyde Secretary of State, but the latter declined this office also, and it was conferred on Digby.[^[13]] But early in the succeeding year the Chancellor received a proof of his master’s absolute confidence, as he was entrusted with the care of the Prince of Wales.

[13]. “Life of the Earl of Clarendon,” by himself.

On the 4th March 1644, though neither master nor servant was to know it, Edward Hyde parted from King Charles for the last time on earth, and set out for the west of England with the boy whose life for the next sixteen years was to be one of weary and ceaseless wandering.