[233]. Green’s “Short History of the English People.”
In the great palace of Whitehall all is in uproar, and wild confusion is reigning.[[234]] Rumours of fire and sword lose nothing by transmission from one to another. Some of the maids of honour believe anything and everything, even an immediate sack of London. Beautiful, brazen Castlemaine, carefully dishevelled like a Bacchante, is bewailing herself and hysterically protesting that she will be the first to be torn in pieces. Probably the person most unmoved by the clamour and its cause is the King himself, looking on cynically from the outside, as it were, with the quality of aloofness which has always stood him in good stead. And now, as we know, the mob, always prejudiced, always fickle, just because the Dutch are in the Thames, streams off tumultuously to Clarendon House and breaks the windows with great enthusiasm. To the builder and owner of that ill-omened mansion such an incident was probably but a slight and momentary aggravation. Clarendon himself writes from Whitehall on 14th June: “I had writt this farr, the case is much altred by the Dutch Fleete entring into the Ryver and tryumphing there to our great damage and how farr it may extend farther we yett know not; the particulars I leave to others (but upon the whole) matters not though a peace may be bought deare and usually when an unreasonable price asked for it it is an infallible sign that it is not to be had yet a peace in this conjunction would be very reasonable.”[[235]] This letter was originally partly written in cypher. The Chancellor’s signature is very tremulous, testifying possibly to agitation of mind easily conceivable.
[234]. “A Royal Cavalier: The Romance of Rupert, Prince Palatine.” Mrs Steuart Erskine.
[235]. Harleian MS.
Thus for the Chancellor the end had truly come. A career of singular if varying brilliance was closing, alas! ingloriously. At his impeachment, his son-in-law, the Duke of York, who had never failed to stand by him since their connection, and who now wished to soften the blow, sent his old friend Bishop Morley to the fallen minister to say that the King wished him to leave the country. It needed only this. He over whose youth Edward Hyde had watched so faithfully, to the utmost of his power, had done with him. He did not want to see his face any more, and he never did see it. Clarendon bent his head to the storm, and submitted. Perhaps his strong heart broke then, and nothing else mattered very much. At any rate he obeyed the royal mandate, the last he was to receive, and before the year was out he had left England, as it proved, for ever.
He went first to Calais, then to Rouen, covering ground that must have been very familiar to him in earlier days. At Evreux, where he stayed for a time, his life was actually attempted by some English sailors, on the grounds that he had sold his country and robbed them of their pay.[[236]] This danger he escaped, and later, with the restlessness born of despondency and lack of occupation, he wandered south to Montpellier, proceeding thence to Moulins. Finally, however, he retraced his steps to Rouen. It was nearer, after all, to England; and there, at no great distance from the country he loved so well, he died in December 1673.[[237]]
[236]. Chalmers’ Biographical Dictionary.
[237]. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, on the north side of the Chapel of Henry VII.
EDWARD, EARL OF CLARENDON