Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon — Volume 02

by Sir Henry Craik

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.