See Lord Clarendon, The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon (3 vols., Oxford, 1827); Edward Foss, The Judges of England (London, 1848-1864); Anthony à Wood, Athenae oxonienses (London, 1813-1820); Samuel Pepys, Diary and Correspondence, edited by Lord Braybrooke (4 vols., London, 1854).
HYDE, THOMAS (1636-1703), English Orientalist, was born at Billingsley, near Bridgnorth, in Shropshire, on the 29th of June 1636. He inherited his taste for linguistic studies, and received his first lessons in some of the Eastern tongues, from his father, who was rector of the parish. In his sixteenth year Hyde entered King’s College, Cambridge, where, under Wheelock, professor of Arabic, he made rapid progress in Oriental languages, so that, after only one year of residence, he was invited to London to assist Brian Walton in his edition of the Polyglott Bible. Besides correcting the Arabic, Persic and Syriac texts for that work, Hyde transcribed into Persic characters the Persian translation of the Pentateuch, which had been printed in Hebrew letters at Constantinople in 1546. To this work, which Archbishop Ussher had thought well-nigh impossible even for a native of Persia, Hyde appended the Latin version which accompanies it in the Polyglott. In 1658 he was chosen Hebrew reader at Queen’s College, Oxford, and in 1659, in consideration of his erudition in Oriental tongues, he was admitted to the degree of M.A. In the same year he was appointed under-keeper of the Bodleian Library, and in 1665 librarian-in-chief. Next year he was collated to a prebend at Salisbury, and in 1673 to the archdeaconry of Gloucester, receiving the degree of D.D. shortly afterwards. In 1691 the death of Edward Pococke opened up to Hyde the Laudian professorship of Arabic; and in 1697, on the deprivation of Roger Altham, he succeeded to the regius chair of Hebrew and a canonry of Christ Church. Under Charles II., James II. and William III. Hyde discharged the duties of Eastern interpreter to the court. Worn out by his unremitting labours, he resigned his librarianship in 1701, and died at Oxford on the 18th of February 1703. Hyde, who was one of the first to direct attention to the vast treasures of Oriental antiquity, was an excellent classical scholar, and there was hardly an Eastern tongue accessible to foreigners with which he was not familiar. He had even acquired Chinese, while his writings are the best testimony to his mastery of Turkish, Arabic, Syriac, Persian, Hebrew and Malay.
In his chief work, Historia religionis veterum Persarum (1700), he made the first attempt to correct from Oriental sources the errors of the Greek and Roman historians who had described the religion of the ancient Persians. His other writings and translations comprise Tabulae longitudinum et latitudinum stellarum fixarum ex observatione principis Ulugh Beighi (1665), to which his notes have given additional value; Quatuor evangelia et acta apostolorum lingua Malaica, caracteribus Europaeis (1677); Epistola de mensuris et ponderibus serum sive sinensium (1688), appended to Bernard’s De mensuris et ponderibus antiquis; Abraham Peritsol itinera mundi (1691); and De ludis orientalibus libri II. (1694).
With the exception of the Historia religionis, which was republished by Hunt and Costard in 1760, the writings of Hyde, including some unpublished MSS., were collected and printed by Dr Gregory Sharpe in 1767 under the title Syntagma dissertationum quas olim ... Thomas Hyde separatim edidit. There is a life of the author prefixed. Hyde also published a catalogue of the Bodleian Library in 1674.
HYDE, a market town and municipal borough in the Hyde parliamentary division of Cheshire, England, 71⁄2 m. E. of Manchester, by the Great Central railway. Pop. (1901) 32,766. It lies in the densely populated district in the north-east of the county, on the river Tame, which here forms the boundary of Cheshire with Lancashire. To the east the outlying hills of the Peak district of Derbyshire rise abruptly. The town has cotton weaving factories, spinning mills, print-works, iron foundries and machine works; also manufactures of hats and margarine. There are extensive coal mines in the vicinity. Hyde is wholly of modern growth, though it contains a few ancient houses, such as Newton Hall, in the part of the town so called. The old family of Hyde held possession of the manor as early as the reign of John. The borough, incorporated in 1881, is under a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 3081 acres.
HYDE DE NEUVILLE, JEAN GUILLAUME, Baron (1776-1857), French politician, was born at La Charité-sur-Loire (Nièvre) on the 24th of January 1776, the son of Guillaume Hyde, who belonged to an English family which had emigrated with the Stuarts after the rebellion of 1745. He was only seventeen when he successfully defended a man denounced by Fouché before the revolutionary tribunal of Nevers. From 1793 onwards he was an active agent of the exiled princes; he took part in the Royalist rising in Berry in 1796, and after the coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire (November 9, 1799) tried to persuade Bonaparte to recall the Bourbons. An accusation of complicity in the infernal machine conspiracy of 1800-1801 was speedily retracted, but Hyde de Neuville retired to the United States, only to return after the Restoration. He was sent by Louis XVIII. to London to endeavour to persuade the British government to transfer Napoleon to a remoter and safer place of exile than the isle of Elba, but the negotiations were cut short by the emperor’s return to France in March 1815. In January 1816 de Neuville became French ambassador at Washington, where he negotiated a commercial treaty. On his return in 1821 he declined the Constantinople embassy, and in November 1822 was elected deputy for Cosne. Shortly afterwards he was appointed French ambassador at Lisbon, where his efforts to oust British influence culminated, in connexion with the coup d’état of Dom Miguel (April 30, 1824), in his suggestion to the Portuguese minister to invite the armed intervention of Great Britain. It was assumed that this would be refused, in view of the loudly proclaimed British principle of non-intervention, and that France would then be in a position to undertake a duty that Great Britain had declined. The scheme broke down, however, owing to the attitude of the reactionary party in the government of Paris, which disapproved of the Portuguese constitution. This destroyed his influence at Lisbon, and he returned to Paris to take his seat in the Chamber of Deputies. In spite of his pronounced Royalism, he now showed Liberal tendencies, opposed the policy of Villèle’s cabinet, and in 1828 became a member of the moderate administration of Martignac as minister of marine. In this capacity he showed active sympathy with the cause of Greek independence. During the Polignac ministry (1829-1830) he was again in opposition, being a firm upholder of the charter; but after the revolution of July 1830 he entered an all but solitary protest against the exclusion of the legitimate line of the Bourbons from the throne, and resigned his seat. He died in Paris on the 28th of May 1857.
His Mémoires et souvenirs (3 vols., 1888), compiled from his notes by his nieces, the vicomtesse de Bardonnet and the baronne Laurenceau, are of great interest for the Revolution and the Restoration.