The original manuscript has disappeared, and the edition of 1806 is the only authoritative text. It has been many times reprinted. It was edited with introduction, notes, and appendices by C.H. Firth in 1885 (new edition, 1906).
The Memoirs as a whole are the best picture we possess of a puritan soldier and household of the seventeenth century. They were written by his widow as a consolation to herself and for the instruction of her children. To 'such of you as have not seene him to remember his person', she leaves, by way of introduction, 'His Description.' It is this passage which is here reprinted.
44, 45, 46, 47, 48.
Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 212-15; History, Bk. VI, ed. 1703, vol. ii, pp. 158-62; ed. Macray, vol. ii, pp. 541-8.
These five characters of Parliamentary peers follow one another at the conclusion of Clarendon's sixth book, and are part of his 'view of those persons who were of the King's Council, and had deserted his service, and stayed in the Parliament to support the rebellion'. A short passage on the Earl of Holland, between the characters of Warwick and Manchester, is omitted.
Taken as a group, they are yet another proof of Clarendon's skill in portraiture. Each character is clearly distinguished.
Page 159, ll. 7-10. His grandfather was William Cecil (1520-98), Lord Burghley, the great minister of Elizabeth; his father was Robert Cecil (1563-1612), created Earl of Salisbury, 1605, Secretary of State at the accession of James.
Page 160, l. 9. He was member for King's Lynn in 1649, and
Hertfordshire in 1654 and 1656.
ll. 13-16. Hic egregiis, &c. Seneca, De Beneficiis, iv, cap. 30.
Page 161, ll. 3-19. 'Clarendon's view that Warwick was a jovial hypocrite is scarcely borne out by other contemporary evidence. The "jollity and good humour" which he mentions are indeed confirmed. "He was one of the most best-natured and cheerfullest persons I have in my time met with," writes his pious daughter-in-law (Autobiography of Lady Warwick, ed. Croker, p. 27). Edmund Calamy, however, in his sermon at Warwick's funeral, enlarges on his zeal for religion; and Warwick's public conduct during all the later part of his career is perfectly consistent with Calamy's account of his private life (A Pattern for All, especially for Noble Persons, &c., 1658, 410, pp. 34-9).'—C.H. Firth, in the Dictionary of National Biography.