Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon — Volume 02

by Sir Henry Craik

It was on April 3rd, 1668, that he was strong enough to begin his journey. We are again reminded of the hardships of travel in the France of the Grand Monarch, when we read of repeated overturnings of his coach, and of perils both by land and water that pursued the poor Chancellor, even under the careful escort of attentive Court messengers. It was not till April 23rd that he left Rouen, and the stay for the next day was at Evreux, where he had a most untoward experience. It chanced that a company of English sailors, who appear to have been serving as a mercenary troop of artillery in the French army, heard of the Chancellor's arrival. The drunken crowd got out of hand, and vague memories of the naval pay of which they had been bilked prompted them to take vengeance for old arrears upon the luckless Chancellor, whom they deemed responsible for all the misdeeds of the Admiralty. Old echoes of "Dunkirk House," and the ill- gotten gains of Ministers who fattened on the plunder of poor men, were doubtless ringing in their muddled heads.

It would be absurd to attribute any political meaning to the incident, or to suppose that it had any connivance from the French Government. The inn where Clarendon alighted was attacked by the riotous mob. The local magistrates were incapable of dealing with the riot, and were perplexed as to the limits of their jurisdiction. Clarendon's attendants made what defence they could, and Le Fonde, his former persecutor, and now his courteous escort, received a dangerous wound in his defence. It was like to go hard with the Chancellor himself. At the beginning of the fray, he was struck a violent blow on the head with the flat of a broadsword. The rioters used him with great violence, rifled his pockets and his baggage, and dragged him into the courtyard to dispatch him with their swords. Not a moment too soon, the commanding officer of the English sailors, with some magistrates and a guard, broke into the inn, and rescued Clarendon, when he seemed at the point of death. It looked as if his troubles were not over; the magistrates were ready to fight upon the question of their own jurisdiction, and would allow no one else to show that vigour of resistance to the rioters of which they were themselves incapable. It was only on Le Fonde's vigorous remonstrance, and his threats of the royal vengeance on their remissness, that proper steps were taken for the safety of the company. The Chancellor and his attendants obtained lodgings in the neighbouring castle of the Duc de Bouillon. Having escaped from the perils of the mob, Clarendon had to resist the equally dangerous designs of the French physicians, who wished to perform the operation of trepanning. With what haste he might, he pressed on to Bourbon, and, after some stay there, he reached Avignon in June, Such satisfaction as he could find, in the exemplary punishment of the rioters and in the gracious apologies of the King, was readily accorded by his hosts of France.

At Avignon he reached a haven of refuge, where he might rest from the troubled experiences of the year that was past. It had, indeed, been one of trial sufficient to test the staunchest courage. Within little more than twelve months, he had lost his oldest and most trusted colleague, Lord Southampton. His home had been made desolate by the death of his wife. He had seen the growing boldness of his enemies, had detected their ruthlessness in falsehood and in knavery, and had found that his loyalty to the Crown was to go for nothing, and that his trust in the honour of the King was based on no sound foundation. Against his own judgment, he had resigned the seal, in order that the King's business might prosper, and that the bitterness of his enemies might be assuaged. When he had been persuaded to resign, he had found that his resignation was to be a new ground of triumph for his enemies, and that it was a foothold for a new attack. By the threat of prosecution they strove to drive him to fly, and when he refused to yield to their threats, they contrived to make the King the agent in their knavish schemes, and procured from him the peremptory message which made Clarendon quit the field. No sooner was he gone, than the very flight which they had contrived was made the ground of new accusations, and he was sentenced to perpetual banishment for avoiding a trial for which no summons had been issued, no indictment laid, no commitment made. Stricken down by illness, he could not meet their challenge by the date enjoined, and the beginning of February found him a proscribed exile, a persecuted fugitive, hounded from post to post, a stricken invalid, longing for the release of death. A few weeks brought some relief at least to the stout spirit that had borne so much. His enemies at home had sped their last bolt, and were fast becoming absorbed in their own sordid quarrels. The French King had abandoned the barbarity of which his own servants were ashamed, and addressed the honoured exile in terms of gracious and almost fulsome courtesy. That exile reached the haven of Avignon, to be received there not only without any of the annoyance of suspicious espionage, but with all the courtesies that could be paid to an honoured guest. The Vice-Legate and the Archbishop vied with one another in the formal stateliness of their reception. The consuls and the magistrates attended him with all ceremony, and paid him their service in a Latin oration. The Court of St. James's might reject him, but the high functionaries of European diplomacy accorded to him all that tribute of respect which was due to the man who had shaped the policy of the restored English monarchy, and had raised the standard of English statesmanship. Clarendon was not too proud to feel his sense of self- complacency flattered by such homage, and we like him none the less because he allows his satisfaction to appear.

Thus closes the political career which we have endeavoured to trace from its first beginnings, through the period of long and arduous struggle, amidst the clouds of exile and poverty, and once more in the full sun of a triumphant restoration, largely contrived by his wisdom, and dominated by his guiding hand. We have seen the disappointments that marred that triumph, and the ignoble stain that smirched the ideal of a restored monarchy which he had formed. We have seen how, one by one, his cherished aims had been defeated, and how a King, the slave of selfish libertinism, and a Court, the scene of gross debauchery and undisguised corruption, had tempted him to despair of England. We have seen how high he bore himself amidst the degraded crew, and how boldly he attacked the scandals of the Court, and rebuked the craven self-indulgence of the King. We have marked how the various factions that felt uneasy under his sway, gradually coalesced into a rancorous opposition, that knew no bounds in the meanness of their intrigues, and in the barefaced falsehood of their accusations. We have seen how the King stooped to be their instrument, and allowed himself to be the tool of their deceptions. Clarendon became an exile, and, after a brief period of inhuman persecution from a false view of diplomatic expediency, he received the homage of European Powers, as an honoured guest. In honouring him, they showed what they thought of England under the Cabal. Of what England lost in Clarendon, we can allow the sordid history that followed his fall to afford a sufficiently sure and graphic indication.

It is no part of Clarendon's biography to linger over the revolting details of that disgraceful time. Even in Clarendon's day, the King had lamentably failed to maintain his dignity or to discharge his task. His life now outraged all decency, and his Court fell below the standard of the common bagnio. His prime favourite and his chief Minister was Buckingham, stained by every crime, at once coward and bully, haughty in his arrogant insolence, and yet stooping to intrigues that would have disgraced the veriest rogue from the hulks. In the course of what seems to have been rather a riotous brawl, than an honourable duel—a brawl in which seconds as well as principals took part, and in which more than one life was lost—the King's First Minister killed Lord Shrewsbury, the husband of his paramour. The town was filled with the scandal, but by the personal influence of the King, it was withdrawn from the courts of law. Buckhurst and Sedley, the chosen associates of the King in his notorious bouts of drunken debauchery, roused disgust by a freak of sickening lewdness; the only result was the committal to prison, by the order of the Lord Chief Justice, and at the behest of the King, of the constable who interfered with the indecent escapade. We have a proof of the change that had come since Clarendon's controlling hand had gone, when we remember that some three years before, the same Buckhurst, for a similar outbreak of indecency, was rated in terms of scornful rebuke by the King's Bench Judges, and was bound over to good behaviour by a bond of £5000. The King's harem was augmented by a flower-girl, who had attracted attention on the stage, and was the discarded mistress of two of the King's associates. Clarendon lamented what he had seen, as a sad lapse from dignity, a grievous fall from the ideals that he had hoped for. What followed was nothing but a carnival of mad obscenity. Samuel Pepys was no squeamish critic; but even he was moved to some earnestness of indignation at the foul orgies in which Charles and his new associates indulged, in shameless publicity. As was natural, such advisers were no careful guardians of Parliamentary or popular liberty. What attention could be spared from debauchery was given to degrading compacts by which the King was to be the submissive pensioner of Louis; to plans for thwarting the prerogative of Parliament; to secret intrigues for subverting the Protestant religion. If the cost to England of his fall was to be measured by the depth of dishonour, and the flagrantly treasonable plots, of those who followed him, Clarendon was triumphantly vindicated, and his wrongs were amply avenged.

In spite of the cordiality of his reception, Clarendon did not find Avignon a desirable residence in the heat of summer. The streets had an ill savour "by the multitude of dyers and of silk manufactures, and the worse smell of the Jews," and he presently moved on to Montpelier, where he made a lengthened stay. His reception was as courteous as before, and this he ascribed to the good offices of Lord and Lady Mordaunt, old friends whom he recommends to the good offices of his children. "When any English came thither," he tells us, "none forbore to pay respect to the Chancellor"; and, with a certain pride, he records how Sir Richard Temple's refusal to visit Clarendon caused "a general aversion towards him," so that he was compelled to quit the town, where "he left behind him the reputation of a very vain, humorous, and sordid person." The good Chancellor was not above the human capacity of a very cordial hatred, or the inclination to feel piqued at a failure of kindly courtesy.

He was now at ease, and in peace of mind. His health, although undermined by long and painful illness, was sufficiently restored to enable him to indulge his old habits of intellectual activity. "It pleased God in a short time, after some recollections, and upon his entire confidence in Him, to restore him to that serenity of mind, and resignation of himself to the disposal and good pleasure of God, that they who conversed most with him could not discover the least murmur of impatience in him, or any unevenness in his conversations." Clarendon is none the less lovable, because a good conscience preserved for him his old self-complacency. His studies were again renewed. He made himself master of the French language so far as the reading of its literature was concerned. The power of speaking the language he, like many another, found "many inconveniences in." He made a competent progress also in Italian.

But his chief work was the preparation of his defences against the seventeen clauses of the charges formulated against him in the Commons. These were so extravagant that his accusers never sought to make them the foundation of an indictment, and he had little difficulty in showing their baselessness, and how much they contradicted the clearest features of his policy, and the most notorious evidence as to his acts. The Vindication carefully avoided anything that reflected on the King, and he left it to his children, to whom it was conveyed by Lord and Lady Mordaunt, to choose their own time for making it public. He was careful not to prejudice that position at Court which they still owed to Charles's sense of justice.

His serenity was disturbed only by two lingering apprehensions. The first was the insufficiency of his means to maintain the establishment which his crippled health rendered necessary. For that he could only trust the affection and piety of his children, who, he doubted not, would do their best to transmit to him, from their estates or his own, enough to secure the decencies of life in a foreign land. The other more serious apprehension was the fear that the machination of his enemies might still have power to prejudice the French Court against him. He saw enough to know that that Court still viewed his presence on French soil with some nervousness. He could only soothe his anxieties by his trust in Providence, and by the company of his books. "God blessed him very much in this composure and retreat."

He did not spare himself in his reflections on what had been amiss in his own conduct. "There was nothing of which he was so ashamed, as he was of the vast expense he had made in the building of his house." He could only excuse, but not justify it. This is an old topic of accusation, to which we have already alluded, but we may revert to it once again. Since the Restoration, Clarendon had commanded little leisure to find a suitable house, and had moved frequently from one to another. At first he had resided at Dorset House, in Fleet Street, once occupied by Bacon, and formerly the town house of the Bishop of Salisbury. From there he went to Worcester House, [Footnote: The residence of the Marquis of Worcester (previously Lord Glamorgan), and used by Cromwell during the Commonwealth] for which he paid the large rent of £500 a year. After the Fire, he moved to Berkshire House, in St. James (on the site of the present Bridgewater House), which became known as Cleveland House when adopted as the residence of Lady Castlemaine, then Duchess of Cleveland, in 1668. York House, Twickenham, was assigned to him after the marriage of his daughter to the Duke of York, and there the Princess, afterwards Queen Anne, was born. It was only after many changes that he ventured, in the full tide of his prosperity, and with the encouragement of the King, to provide a house of his own; but his ignorance of architecture—and probably also his absorption in weightier affairs—made him the victim of the architect, [Footnote: The architect was Pratt. The house was built during Clarendon's absence from London in the Plague year, when Parliament sat at Oxford.] who estimated the cost at less than one-third of what it came to, which was £50,000. He found himself not only involved in debt, but the mark of envious scandal for the pride and ostentation of his dwelling. Yet when its sale was proposed to him "he remained so infatuated with the delight he had enjoyed, that, though he was deprived of it, he hearkened very unwillingly to the advice." A lingering hope remained that he might still live there, in all the pride of a restored good name. A weakness so confessed may readily be forgiven. The harm it did was only to his own estate. [Footnote: Evelyn, as we have seen (ante, p. 254) had praised the house more guardedly than Pepys, but in a letter to Lord Cornbury (Jan. 20, 1665/6) he speaks of it with perhaps courteous excess of admiration. "Let me speak ingenuously," he says: "I went with prejudice, and a critical spirit, incident to those who fancy they know anything in art. I acknowledge to your Lordship that I have never seen a nobler pile…. It is, without hyperbolies, the best contrived, the most useful, graceful, and magnificent house in England." He enters into the details of the building, and concludes thus: "May that great and illustrious person, whose large and ample heart has honoured his country with so glorious a structure, and by an example worthy of himself, showed our nobility how they ought indeed to build, and value their qualities, live many long years to enjoy it; and when he shall be passed to that upper building, not made with hands, may his posterity (as you, my lord) inherit his goodness, this palace, and all other circumstances of his grandeur, to consummate their felicity."