"At Yarmouth the Presbyterian party raised the cry of treachery because there had been an attempt to leave the place in charge of Major Markham, who was disliked as being a Papist; and because the trained bands had been sent for to Newmarket, and none others sent in their room, and, therefore the town left defenceless."—June 21, 1667.
[523] State Papers. Same date.
[524] The peace with Holland, which was proclaimed August 24th, 1667, was very popular. At Weymouth "it, as it were, raised the dead to life, and made them rich in thought, though their purses are empty. At Lynn the bells have hardly lain still since the news of peace."—State Papers, Cal., 1667–8, pref. lv.
[525] Of the disgrace of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, the notes in the State Papers, as Mrs. Green says, are "provokingly few and unimportant."
[526] Hallam's Constit. Hist., ii. 69.
[527] Baxter, iii. 26. Holles the Presbyterian protested against the banishment of Clarendon—Hallam, ii. 69. The fall of Clarendon comes but incidentally within the range of this history. For a legal and constitutional view of his impeachment, I must refer the reader to Mr. Hallam, and Lord Campbell. In the Life of James II. edited by Clarke, vol. i. 431, it is stated that the Presbyterian party made overtures to Clarendon, to stand by him, if he would stand by himself, and join with the Duke in opposing his enemies; hoping thereby to separate the Duke from his brother, and to "bring low the regal authority." This is a very improbable story.
[528] Clarendon's State Papers, iii. Sup. xxxviii. Lister's Life of Clarendon, ii. 483.
[529] Historical Inquiries respecting the character of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, by the Hon. George Agar Ellis, has just come in my way. He paints the Chancellor in very dark colours indeed: but adds nothing to the facts of his history as given by popular historians. I cannot adopt all Mr. Ellis' condemnatory conclusions.
[530] One great blot on Cecil's character was the perjury involved in his signing the Device of Edward VI. To say he signed as a witness is a subterfuge.
The following passage on Nonconformity from Clarendon's pen is equally deficient in charity and wisdom:—"Their faction is their religion: nor are those combinations ever entered into upon real and substantial motives of conscience, how erroneous soever, but consist of many glutinous materials, of will, and humour, and folly, and knavery, and ambition, and malice, which make men inseparably cling together, till they have satisfaction in all their pretences, or till they are absolutely broken and subdued, which may always be more easily done than the other."—Life of Clarendon by Lister, ii. 121.