Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon — Volume 02

by Sir Henry Craik

The ignoble struggles of callous selfishness were made all the more desperate by the bewildering confusion of the political situation. The most difficult problem had been the attitude of Monk, and that was all the more baffling from the fact that Monk had no clear discernment of his own line of policy, and with all his accidental command of the situation, was too obtuse to choose his own course and follow it consistently. The Presbyterians were monarchical in sympathy, and dreaded the Independents too much to be willing to revert to republican forms; but their determination to alter the ecclesiastical traditions of the Church could not be encouraged without losing the support of the main body of Royalist opinion. The Roman Catholics hoped for toleration, but their hopes could not be indulged without arousing the anti-Catholic prejudices of the nation. The reviving aspirations of the Church had to be fostered, but the extravagance of her hopes of revenge for past wrongs had to be kept in severe check. Hyde himself was too little known by the new generation to be cordially trusted, and he had to reckon on the implacable opposition of those who believed that his influence over the King would make him absolute as Minister. He was left in no doubt as to the slanders which gathered round his name, and as to the personal jealousy of his power. For a time it seemed doubtful whether the Restoration could be accomplished without an express condition that the King should return without his chief adviser. Between Hyde himself and the Presbyterians the feud was too old to be appeased. The Roman Catholics recognized that their hopes of toleration from the King might be frustrated by Hyde's sturdy Protestantism. Monk was jealous of his influence, and his jealousies were fostered by his wife, who was under the dominion of the Presbyterian clergy. No pains were spared to stir up suspicion against him. "By stories artificially related both to the General and his Lady," writes Lord Mordaunt to him on May 4th, 1660, "your enemies have possessed them both with a very ill opinion of you, which has showed itself by several bitter expressions very lately uttered at St. James's." The Duke of Buckingham, [Footnote: George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, was born only a few months before his father's assassination, in 1628, and, from his affection to the Minister whom he had lost, Charles had his son brought up with his own family. Curiously enough, William Aylesbury, brother-in-law of Hyde, was at one time the tutor of the young Duke. Buckingham took part in the war as a very young man, and was one of the leaders in the second Civil War, in 1648. His property had before this been confiscated, but he had secured favourable terms by an arrangement with the Parliament. This time it was again confiscated, and he narrowly escaped death by flight to the Continent. He was a prominent member of the exiled Court; but his open irreligion, his flighty character, and his continual plotting as an adherent of Prince Rupert, alienated him from the party of Hyde. His wit and personal charms won for him many friends, but his life was one perpetual succession of reckless schemes and bitter quarrels, in which his Royal master was often involved. He fought at Worcester, but his arrogance prompted him to demand the generalship of the army, and he resented the King's refusal by boyish sulkiness. In 1658, he again returned to England, and married the daughter of Fairfax; but this was in defiance of Cromwell, from whose vengeance he was probably saved only by the Protector's death. He was restored to his vast possessions after the King's return, and then began that long and restless career of varied intrigue, which won for him, in later days, the character of Zimri, in Dryden's Satire, and during the next few years made him the embittered foe of Clarendon.] ever a zealot in any design of mischief, was doing all he could, wrote Mr. Brodrick, to spread evil tales of him, and to inspire the Royalists with the opinion that Hyde's influence would destroy their hopes. Hyde himself was ready to remain in exile rather than that his return should prejudice the cause of the King. But the very malice of his enemies overshot the mark. He had friends who knew his worth, and Ormonde and Southampton were staunchly loyal to him. It is to the credit of the King that he spoke in no uncertain tone.

"It is not to be wondered at," he wrote to Sir Arthur Apsley on April 29th, "that at the same time that I have so many enemies, those that are faithful to me should have some; and it is from some of those who are not much my friends, that the report comes that the Chancellor should have lost my favour. The truth of it is, I look upon the spreaders of that lie as more my enemies than his, for he will always be found an honest man, and I should deserve the name of a very unjust master if I should reward him so ill, that hath served me so faithfully."

Hyde's strict constitutionalism was dreaded by those whose ideal of a Restoration Government was one which would lavishly reward its adherents without concerning itself with observance of the law. It was his fidelity at once to the King and to the Constitution that inspired the opposition to his return. Friends and enemies alike recognized that if he returned with the King, his must be the guiding hand in the administration, as his had been the chief task in setting the policy of the exiled Court.

Hyde accompanied Charles on his return to England. The King embarked at Scheveningen, on May 24th. On the 26th, as we have already seen, he landed at Dover amidst the thunder of cannon, and that day took coach to Canterbury. The great cathedral had suffered sorely from sacrilegious hands, but there gathered within its walls a goodly company of the notables of the kingdom to join their King in a Service of Thanksgiving. Upon General Monk, the Marquis of Hertford, the Earl of Southampton, and Admiral Montague, [Footnote: Montague was created Earl of Sandwich next month.] he conferred the honour of the Garter; and amidst the acclamations of his people, he proceeded next day to Rochester. On the 29th, his birthday, he entered London, "all the ways from Dover thither being so full of people, and acclamations, as if the whole kingdom had been gathered." At Greenwich he was met by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen "with all such protestations of joy as can hardly be imagined." All the city companies lined the road from London Bridge to Temple Bar, "giving loud thanks to God for his majesty's presence."

At Whitehall "the two Houses of Parliament cast themselves at his feet with all vows of affection to the world's end." Well might the King exclaim, as he saw the fervency of welcome, "It had been his own fault he had been absent so long; for he saw nobody that did not protest he had ever wished for his return." Hyde saw a dramatic accompaniment of this happy consummation of a long and doubtful struggle, in the death, within three months, of the chief Ministers of France and Spain—Cardinal Mazarin and Don Lewis de Haro—whose schemes of policy it seemed to ruin, and who saw in it the failure of their machinations.

In the beginning of June, Hyde took his place as Speaker of the House of Lords, and presided in the Court of Chancery. To the business of that Court a great part of his labours were now to be devoted; but while he studiously avoided the name of First Minister, he exercised, in addition to his judicial functions, far more of the authority of supreme Minister than fell to the lot of any officer of the Crown for some generations after his day. For a few years he seemed to enjoy the unbounded confidence of the King; but that confidence he had earned by no subserviency, and in spite of marked lack of sympathy. For the first time in our history a man of no high birth or commanding station, to whom the personal favour of his sovereign had so far brought nothing but hardship and exile, found himself indisputably marked out, by a long course of services devotedly given, for what was virtually the position of First Minister of the Crown. His judgment and his experience of men taught him how exposed such a position was to every blast of envy. It was partly owing to his consciousness of rectitude, partly to a certain unbending rigidity of character, that Hyde neglected the caution that might have enabled him to shelter himself against these blasts. With all his experience of Courts, Hyde never learned the arts of a courtier. He was naively unconscious how little the steadfast honesty of his purpose could render his blunt plainness of diction palatable to a master, the chief feature of whose character was callous selfishness, and whose self-love might for the moment allow him to overlook, but never permitted him to forget, the liberty that presumed to curb his caprices or to criticize his conduct.

But for the time the relations between Charles and his Minister were cordial enough; [Footnote: These relations, in their intimacy and apparent freedom from restraint, are perhaps best reflected in what are known as the "Council notes," preserved in the Bodleian, and consisting of scraps of memoranda passing between Charles and his Chancellor. Most of them are, no doubt, mere notes passed across the table during a discussion in the Council, and abound in those hieroglyphics on the margin, which sufferers from tedious colloquies are impelled to make, and which perhaps indicate the frequent boredom of the King. But others are evidently messages transmitted from Whitehall to the Chancellor. In all alike there is a singular lack of formality, or even of orderliness, and they might have passed between business colleagues, who were on terms of close intimacy and easy familiarity. Clarendon's tone is almost uniformly brusque and off-hand, and he must have tried the King's patience terribly by the infamous illegibility of his handwriting. Charles's writing is a schoolboy scrawl, but it is uniformly legible.] and amongst his colleagues Hyde could count some who were his warmest and most trusted friends. They formed an inner circle, with common sympathies at once in their memories and in their aims, and unassailed as yet by the coarse profligacy, the vulgar buffoonery, and the ignoble selfishness that were soon to become dominant in Charles's Court. Such were Ormonde, now Lord Steward, whose loyalty was as untarnished as his position was above the assaults of slander and envy, and whose unbroken friendship was a powerful buttress to Hyde, and warded off the slights to which his own more humble birth might have subjected him. Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, represented the very best type of courtier of an older generation, and his acceptance of the post of Lord High Treasurer gave security that the full tide of corruption, which bid fair to spread its taint over the Court, should find some check so far as the financial administration was concerned. In even closer relation to Hyde's official sphere was Sir Edward Nicholas, the Principal Secretary of State, between whom and Hyde there was the sacred tie of common service and common veneration for the late King. Nicholas was no brilliant statesman, and had no ambitious schemes to serve. But amongst those who played an active, albeit unselfish, part in the varied field of administrative work from the days of Strafford downwards, there was none more industrious, none more loyal, and none less selfish than he. It was all to his credit that he was unlikely to consort on easy terms with the motley crew that now thronged the Court.

Hyde saw, without any displeasure, the Earl of Manchester [Footnote: Edward Montague, second Earl of Manchester, who succeeded to the title on the death of his father, in 1642, very early joined the Puritan, and afterwards the Presbyterian party. He was one of the leading Parliamentary generals until the Self-Denying Ordinance deprived him of command. He was a man much beloved, and with marvellous suavity of manner. But to this there was not added any marked ability, or any firmness of will. He had long ceased to be in sympathy with the leaders of the Commonwealth, and rendered powerful assistance in the Restoration. "By his extraordinary civilities and behaviour to all men, he did not only appear the fittest person the King could have chosen for that office (Lord Chamberlain) in that time, but rendered himself so acceptable to all degrees of men, that none, but such who were implacable towards all who had ever disserved the King, were sorry to see him so promoted. He was mortally hated and persecuted by Cromwell, even for his life, and had done many acts of merit towards the King; so he was of all men, who had ever borne arms against the King, both in the gentleness and justice of his nature, in the sweetness and evenness of his conversation, and in his real principles for monarchy, the most worthy to be received into trust and confidence"— Clarendon, Life, i. 368. Manchester was hardly the stuff out of which effective revolutionists are made.] created Lord Chamberlain, although he was the avowed patron of the Presbyterian party; and Manchester's easy courtesy and recognized probity were no unwelcome ingredients in the Court. But there were others within the official pale, not reckoning the newer courtiers who were destined soon to push their way to power, who were less congenial partners for Hyde and his friends. Monk had earned an unquestionable right to lavish reward, and the King bestowed it with no grudging hand. But Monk's ambition aimed rather at wealth and position than at administrative power; and as Duke of Albemarle, as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—an office of which the duties were left to others— as Commander-in-Chief, and as Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Monk found himself with titular rank, and with financial gains, which were more in accordance with the tastes of himself and his wife than would have been the burden and responsibility of laborious State business. Between the Duke and the Chancellor there could never be close sympathy, and, for a time, slanderous tongues came near to making active mischief. [Footnote: We find a certain Thomas Dowde writing to Hyde on May 4, 1660, to tell him how Edward Progers had been questioned by Mrs. Monk about Hyde, who had been represented to her as "proud, insolent, contemning all counsel but his own, disposing of all monies for his pleasure, and the delicacies of a riotous table." The authority given is that of "a person of the French interest," whom we may perhaps identify as Jermyn (Bodleian MSS.).] But as they knew one another better they learned mutual toleration at least, if not respect. Others were still more distasteful to Hyde. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, [Footnote: Afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury.] destined to play a leading part at a later day, as leader of dangerous factions both for and against the Crown, and to figure in Dryden's Satire as Achitophel, was scarcely likely, with his spirit of restless intrigue and of daring cynicism, to prove a congenial colleague, even had he not been prominent as a member of the clique which lost no opportunity for undermining the influence of the older statesmen. He was now made Chancellor of the Exchequer, with some hope that "his slippery humour might be held in check by Southampton, whose niece he had lately married."

In the Comptroller, Lord Berkeley, [Footnote: John Berkley or Berkeley, belonged to the house of the Berkeleys of Bruton, and was employed as ambassador in Sweden, in 1636, after which embassy he was knighted. He fought in the Royalist army, and at the close of the war, attempted to carry out some unsuccessful negotiations between the army and the King. He accompanied Charles in the escape from Hampton Court, and must share with Ashburnham the folly or treachery which betrayed the King into the hands of Hammond, and made him a prisoner at Carisbrooke. Afterwards he went abroad, and managed to gain the post of Governor to the Duke of York, by whose influence he was created Lord Berkeley of Stratton, in 1658. After the Restoration, he contrived to secure lucrative posts. His mansion was on the site now marked by Berkeley Square. The names of the streets in that neighbourhood sufficiently indicate the localities inhabited by the aristocracy of the Restoration.

He was uncle to Sir Charles Berkeley, afterwards Lord Palmouth, the favourite of the Duke of York, whose foul slanders against the Duchess have earned for him a lasting infamy.] Hyde found one for whom he had a profound contempt, and of whose vile kinsman, Sir Charles Berkeley, he was soon to have very odious experience. Hyde writes of the elder Berkeley, "If he loved any one it was those whom he had known a very little while, and who had purchased his affection at the price of much application, and very much flattery; and if he had any friends, they were likewise those who had known him very little." [Footnote: Clarendon State Papers, vol. iii. Supp. p. lxxx.]