But he had not sounded the depths of Charles's cowardice. Word came that the King could not grant the pass; it would incense the Parliament; he could not face the risk that he asked his aged and discarded servant to run. Clarendon held to his former resolution. He would not obey even his sovereign in a trick. His decision may have been stubborn and ill-advised; it was at least courageous. His friends vainly sought to bend his will. Ruvigny, the new French ambassador, who had come to deal with Clarendon as first Minister, in his master's affairs, and had soon discerned his altered situation, sent word to him of the intrigues he found at Court, and advised his withdrawal to France, where he would find a ready welcome. Clarendon remained immovable; and all the bluster of enemies, like Seymour, who swore that the mob would wreak their vengeance on Clarendon's adherents, failed to crush hia will. With a pardonable triumph, Clarendon tells us how he scorned to take a mean advantage which offered itself against his adversaries. Arlington had made many enemies by his insolence, and Coventry was deeply involved in charges of malversation in dealing with the monies of the navy, and in selling offices in the Admiralty. Clarendon's friends urged him to divert the storm from himself by betraying the misdeeds of these his foes. The suggestion was made in vain. "No provocation," he declared, "should dispose him to do anything which would not become him." These men were Privy Councillors, and of what he saw amiss in them, he could inform the King. It was no business of his to protect his own innocence by counter charges. He would leave them to their fate. He would neither cower before the storm, nor divert it by spreading scandal against others.
It seemed as if the deadlock between the two Houses, and the tortuous twistings of the King and the angry faction that had acquired his confidence, had come to an insoluble entanglement.
The knot was at length loosed by the Duke of York's intervention. James had now recovered from an attack of small-pox, which had temporarily laid him aside, and he received the personal commands of the King to "advise the Chancellor to be gone." The Duke had no alternative but to convey this message, through the Bishop of Winchester, to Clarendon. The King had yielded to Clarendon's terms, so far as to send, through his brother, what was next to a personal order. Hyde, however reluctant, had no alternative but to obey. On the night of November 29th, he took coach, with two servants only. A boat was ready for him at Erith, and he there embarked. He had a stormy passage, which lasted three days and nights, and, sorely against his will, as he knew the evil construction that would arise from his resting on French soil, he was compelled to land at Calais.
When the Chancellor left, he deemed it right in the interests of his own honour, to leave a letter of explanation, which was read to the House of Lords by the Earl of Denbigh. [Footnote: An early friendship, long interrupted by estrangement during the Civil War, perhaps accounted for Clarendon's choice of an intermediary. Basil Feilding, in age a contemporary of Clarendon, was the son of William Feilding, whose marriage to the sister of the first Duke of Buckingham had procured him advancement at Court and high rank in the peerage as Earl of Denbigh. That Earl had joined the Royalist forces, and died of wounds received in battle in 1643. His son had, in 1628, been called to the House of Lords as Lord Feilding; but for some reason, in spite of his antecedents, and the strong remonstrances of his family, he joined the side of the Parliament, and became one of their leading commanders. When Commissioner at Uxbridge, in 1645, he renewed his old intercourse with Hyde, who formed a high estimate of his abilities, and Denbigh explained to Hyde his desire to get rid of his present allies, and do something for the royal cause. "If any conjunction fell out," he said, "in which by losing his life he might preserve the King, he would embrace the occasion, otherwise he would shift the best he could for himself" (Hist. of Rebellion, viii. 246). He was one of several peers whose pride was wounded, and whose resentment against Parliament was aroused, by the injury to their own order. He took no part in the King's trial, and gradually withdrew from the Parliamentary side. In 1660, he managed to prove himself of sufficient use to the Royalists, to secure indemnity, and a certain degree of favour. He retained enough of his former reputation as an ally of Parliament to be characterized by Ludlow as "a generous man, and a lover of his country.">[
It grieved him, he said, that he should be the cause of difference between the two Houses, and of obstruction to the business of the King. It was his misfortune to stand accused of two charges, neither of which had any foundation: that he had enriched himself wrongfully, and that he had been sole and chief Minister, and was thus responsible for all miscarriages. As to the first, he could only avow that he had received nothing, except by the bounty of the King, beyond the lawful perquisites of his office, as regulated by the traditions of the best holders of that office. For no courtesies or favours, of which he had been the medium, had he ever received as much as five pounds. He was now more than £20,000 in debt, and, when his debts were paid, his estate was not worth two thousand a year. All that he possessed did not amount to what the King in his bounty had granted him—the gift of £20,000 when he first came over; £6000 from the Crown estates in Ireland, and a yearly allowance to supplement the scanty profits of his office. As Minister, he had only shared power and responsibility with others; and it was notorious that, after the dismissal of Secretary Nicholas, his influence had been greatly diminished. The new appointments to the Privy Council had been, none of them, given to his intimates, and many of them had gone to his most implacable enemies. As for the mischief of the war, it had been undertaken against his earnest advice, and his efforts to negotiate alliances, and to introduce order into the conduct of the war, had been thwarted by the very men who now charged him with the results of their own misdeeds. The conduct of foreign affairs rested, not with him, but with the secretaries: and so far from having been sole Minister, his advice had, of recent years especially, been often opposed, solely because it was his. The storm now raised against him was due only to his having discharged his duty without fear or favour. He closes with these dignified words—
"This being my present condition, I do most humbly beseech your lordships to retain a favourable opinion of me, and to believe me to be innocent from those foul aspersions, until the contrary shall be proved: which I am sure can never be by any man worthy to be believed. And since the distemper of the time, and the difference between the two Houses in the present debate, with the power and malice of my enemies, who give out that I shall prevail with his Majesty to prorogue or dissolve this Parliament in displeasure, and threaten to expose me to the rage and fury of the people, may make me looked upon as the cause which obstructs the King's service, and the unity and peace of the kingdom; I humbly beseech your lordships, that I may not forfeit your favour and protection, by withdrawing myself from so powerful a persecution, in hopes I may be able, by such withdrawing, hereafter to appear and make my defence, when his Majesty's justice, to which I shall always submit, may not be obstructed or controlled by the power and malice of those who have sworn my destruction."
Not now only, but in the later years of his lonely banishment, Clarendon's unbending courage saved him from despair, and he continued to hope for brighter days. [Footnote: In his preface to his commentary on the Psalms, addressed to his children, in 1670, he still hopes "that I shall yet outlive this storm.">[ But he underrated the rancour and the twistings of his enemies. The very men who had used every device to force him to retire, and who knew that he was at Calais, now hypocritically urged that the ports should be stopped, and pretended to be eager for his apprehension. The Commons urged that he should be committed, in absence, on the general charge of treason. The Lords declined to accede to their request, and, in impotent revenge, the Commons resolved that his apology should be publicly burned by the hangman. In this innocuous resolution the Lords were persuaded to concur.
From Calais Clarendon addressed the following memorable letter to the
University of Oxford:—
"GOOD MR. VICE-CHANCELLOR,
"Having found it necessary to transport myself out of England, and not knowing when it will please God that I shall return again, it becomes me to take care that the University may not be without the service of a person better able to be of use to them, than I am like to be. And I do therefore hereby surrender the office of Chancellor into the hands of the said University, to the end that they may make choice of some other person better qualified to assist and protect them than I am. I am sure he can never be more affectionate towards it. I desire you as the last suit I am like to make to you, to believe that I do not fly my country for guilt, and how passionately soever I am pursued, that I have not done anything to make the University ashamed of me, or to repent the good opinion they once had of me. And though I must have no further mention in your public devotions, which I have always exceedingly valued, I hope I shall always be remembered in your private prayers, as, good Mr. Chancellor,