Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon — Volume 02

by Sir Henry Craik

We need not, then, be surprised that his indignation knew no bounds. The love he had borne for his daughter only increased his anger. He broke out against "her wickedness," and swore "that he would turn her out of his house, as a strumpet, to shift for herself." Ormonde and Southampton strove to moderate his rage by telling him that they believed his daughter to be already married to the Duke.

His answer was astounding enough.

"If it were true, he was well prepared to advise what was to be done; that he had much rather his daughter should be the duke's whore than his wife; in the former case nobody could blame him for the resolution he had taken, for he was not obliged to keep a whore for the greatest prince alive; and the indignity to himself he would submit to the good pleasure of God. But if there were any reason to suspect the other, he was ready to give a positive judgment, in which he hoped their lordships would concur with him; that the King should immediately cause the woman to be sent to the Tower, and to be cast into a dungeon under so strict a guard, that no person living should be admitted to come to her; and then that an Act of Parliament should be immediately passed for the cutting off of her head, to which he would not only give his consent, but would very willingly be the first man that should propose it."

"And who ever knew the man," adds Hyde, in all the leisure of reminiscence, and of exile, "will believe that he said all this very heartily."

A strange and frenzied utterance, indeed, to come from a father's lips! No wonder that, on the King entering the room, Southampton should have made the comment, "That his Majesty must consult with soberer men; that he (pointing to the Chancellor) was mad, and had proposed such extravagant things, that he was no more to be consulted with." We can only try to judge the words with such leniency as we may, bearing all the circumstances in mind.

The tidings had first come to Hyde as an announcement of his daughter's dishonour. After that first blow had fallen, a new aspect was given to the case, by the avowal of his friends that his daughter had covered her dishonour by a formal marriage, and by becoming a participant in a plot, which, to the mind of Hyde and his contemporaries, was of a treasonable character. The Act which prevented any member of the royal family from contracting a marriage without the formal assent of the King was not passed until the following generation. But its absence from the Statute Book was due only to the fact that such an offence against the dignity of the Crown was forbidden under weightier sanction, and the treason it involved admitted of no doubt. The days were past when the crime of a secret marriage within the royal line could be punished, as in the case of Lady Arabella Stuart, by life-long imprisonment; but it did not follow that to one nurtured on these traditions the crime had lost its heinousness. It struck a deadly blow at that ideal of the royal dignity which it was Hyde's chief aim to restore. By a freak of frivolous licentiousness, he saw the foundations of his life's work sapped. Into none of the love affairs of Charles II. and his brother did the tragedy of passion ever enter. Like the rest, this was a bit of vulgar, commonplace intrigue. It was scarcely wonderful that the revelation of its sordid details stirred to frenzy that temper the heat of which Hyde himself so often laments.

But the resolution of the Chancellor, frantic as it might appear, was not to be shaken. The King personally called for his advice, and it was repeated to exactly the same effect. He would rather, he said, submit to the disgrace than that it should be repaired by the Duke's making her his wife:

"the thought whereof," he said, deliberately, "I do so much abominate, that I had much rather see her dead, with all the infamy that is due to her presumption." "I beseech you," he said to the King," to pursue my counsel, as the only expedient that can free you from the evils that this business will otherwise bring upon you."

With still greater freedom he went on, noticing that the King did not relish his advice.

"I am the dullest creature alive, if, having been with your Majesty so many years, I do not know your infirmities better than other men. You are of too easy and gentle a nature to contend with those rough affronts which the iniquity and license of the late times is like to put upon you before it be subdued and reformed. The presumption all kind of men have upon your temper is too notorious to all men, and lamented by all who wish you well; and, trust me, an example of the highest severity in a case that so nearly concerns you, and that relates to the person who is nearest to you, will be so seasonable, that your reign, during the remaining part of your life, will be the easier to you, and all men will take heed how they impudently offend you."