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THE LIFE OF EDWARD EARL OF CLARENDON LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND VOLUME II

BY SIR HENRY CRAIK, K.C.B., LL.D.

[Illustration: John Hampden from a miniature by Samuel Cooper in the possession of Earl Spencer]

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II

CHAPTER

XIV. THE RESTORATION

XV. PROSPECT FOR THE RESTORED MONARCHY

XVI. DIFFICULTIES TO BE MET

XVII. SCOTTISH ADMINISTRATION

XVIII. THE PROBLEMS OF IRELAND

XIX. MARRIAGE TREATY AND RELIGIOUS SETTLEMENT

XX. DOMESTIC DISSENSION AND FOREIGN COMPLICATIONS

XXI. THE DUTCH WAR

XXII. ADMINISTRATIVE FRICTION

XXIII. DECAY OF CLARENDON'S INFLUENCE

XXIV. INCREASING BITTERNESS OF HIS FOES

XXV. THE TRIUMPH OF FACTION

INDEX

LIST OF PORTRAITS

VOLUME II

JOHN HAMPDEN From a miniature by Samuel Cooper, in the possession of Earl Spencer

GEORGE MONK, DUKE OF ALBEMARLE From the original by Sir Peter Lely, in the National Portrait Gallery

GENERAL LAMBERT From the original by R. Walker, in the National Portrait Gallery

SIR HENRY VANE, THE YOUNGER From the original by William Dobson, in the National Portrait Gallery

JOHN MAITLAND, DUKE OF LAUDERDALE From the original by Sir Peter Lely, in the National Portrait Gallery

GEORGE DIGBY, SECOND EARL OF BRISTOL From the original by Sir Anthony Vandyke, in the Collection of Earl Spencer

SIR EDWARD NICHOLAS From the original by Sir Peter Lely, in the National Portrait Gallery

ANNE HYDE, DUCHESS OF YORK From the original by Sir Peter Lely

JAMES BUTLER, DUKE OF ORMONDE From the original by Sir Godfrey Kneller

CHAPTER XIV

THE RESTORATION

After the death of Cromwell, on September 3rd, 1658, there ensued for the exiled Court twenty months of constant alternation between hope and despair, in which the gloom greatly preponderated. As the chief pilot of the Royalist ship, Hyde, now titular Lord Chancellor, had to steer his way through tides that were constantly shifting, and with scanty gleam of success to light him on the way. Within the little circle of the Court he was assailed by constant jealousy, none the less irksome because it was contemptible. The policy of Charles, so far as he had any policy apart from Hyde, varied between the encouragement of friendly overtures from supporters of different complexions at home, and a somewhat damaging cultivation of foreign alliances, which were delusive in their proffered help, and might involve dangerous compliance with religious tenets abhorred in England. The friends in England were jealous and suspicious of one another, and their loyalty varied in its strength, and was marked by very wide difference in its ultimate objects. It would have been hard in any case to discern the true position amidst the complicated maze of political parties in England; it was doubly hard for one who had been an exile for a dozen years. To choose between different courses was puzzling. Inaction was apt to breed apathy; but immature action would only lead to further persecution of the loyalists, and to disaster to the most gallant defenders of the rights of the King. With the true instinct of a statesman, Hyde saw that the waiting policy was best; but it was precisely the policy that gave most colour to insinuations of his want of zeal. In spite of his exile, he understood the temper of the nation better than any of the paltry intriguers round him; to study that temper was not a process that commended itself to their impatient ambitions. His pen was unresting: in preparing pamphlets, in writing under various disguises, in carrying on endless correspondence, in drafting constant declarations. But all such work met with little acknowledgment from those who thought that their own intrigues were more likely to benefit the King, and, above all, to advance themselves. They recked nothing of that sound traditional frame of government which it was the aim of Hyde religiously to conserve. Few statesmen have had a task more hard, more thankless, and more hopeless than that which fell to him during these troubled months.

Hyde was saved from despair only by the intense dramatic instinct of the historian that was implanted in him. He could, or—what came to the same thing—he believed that he could, discern the greater issues of the time, and what interested him above all was the vast influence upon those issues of personal forces. When he recalled the events of his time, in the enforced leisure of later years, it was to the action of great personalities that he gave his chief attention, and the passing incidents grouped themselves in his memory as mere accessories to the play of individual character. All through his history it is this which chiefly attracts us, and nowhere is it more striking than when he records the passing of the greatest personal force of the age in Cromwell. It did not occur to Hyde—and, to their credit be it said, it did not occur to any even of the more friendly spectators on the other side—to regard Cromwell as the embodiment of a mighty purifying force in which defects were to be ignored or even justified on account of the heaven-inspired dictates under which he was presumed to have acted. Just as little could Hyde conceive of Cromwell as the great precursor of modern ideas, demanding the obedient homage of every ardent partisan of popular rights. These were eccentricities reserved for later historians under impulses of later origin. Hyde was compelled by all his strongest traditions and most cherished principles to regard Cromwell's work as utterly destructive, and he never pretended to have anything but the bitterest prejudice against him. To his mind, Cromwell was sent as a punishment from Heaven for national defection, and he never concealed his hatred for Cromwell's profound dissimulation or his abhorrence for the tyranny which the Protector succeeded in imposing on the nation. To have assumed an impartial attitude would only have been, to Hyde, an effort of insincerity. It is precisely this which gives its weight to the measured estimate which Hyde forms of his stupendous powers. His appreciation of Cromwell is a pendant to that which he gives of Charles I. The latter is inspired with a clear flame of loyalty; but this does not blind him to the defects of the master for whom he had such a sincere regard. His deadly hatred of Cromwell leaves him equally clear-sighted as to the Protector's supreme ability.

"He was one of those men whom his very enemies could not condemn without commending him at the same time; for he could never have done half that mischief without great parts of courage, industry, and judgment." "He achieved those things in which none but a valiant and great man could have succeeded." "Wickedness as great as his could never have accomplished these trophies without the assistance of a great spirit, an admirable circumspection and sagacity, and a most magnanimous resolution." "When he was to act the part of a great man, he did it without any indecency, notwithstanding the want of custom." "He extorted obedience from those who were not willing to yield it." "In all matters which did not concern the life of his jurisdiction, he seemed to have great reverence for the law." "As he proceeded with indignation and haughtiness with those who were refractory and dared to contend with his greatness, so towards all who complied with his good pleasure and courted his protection, he used a wonderful civility, generosity, and bounty." "His greatness at home was but a shadow of the glory he had abroad." "He was not a man of blood, and totally declined Machiavel's method." When a massacre of Royalists was suggested, "Cromwell would never consent to it; it may be out of too much contempt of his enemies." "In a word, as he had all the wickedness against which damnation is denounced, and for which hell-fire is prepared, so he had some virtues which have caused the memory of some men in all ages to be celebrated; and he will be looked upon by posterity as a brave bad man."

These fierce words are inspired by exceeding hatred. But in spite of that, we can see that Hyde felt himself in the presence of a greatness that compelled respect. He was himself to exercise, in conformity with law, and with a profound respect for it, very considerable power for a few years to come, and was to leave his impress upon a century and a half of English history. But that influence was only to come after a greater and a more forceful spirit had passed away, leaving no one fit to wield the same resistless power. Never has stern denunciation been relieved by a tribute of more dignified admiration of unquestionable greatness. His warmest admirers could not place Cromwell on a higher pedestal of acknowledged grandeur, all untouched by sympathy and all unbending in condemnation though Hyde's verdict is.

The same dramatic element is present in Hyde's picture of the scene that followed. Cromwell's life had closed amidst clouds and thickening trouble. The Earl of Warwick and his grandson and heir (Cromwell's son-in-law), had both died. On that side his alliance with the great aristocracy of England was broken. Another son-in-law, Lord Falconbridge, was alienated from him, and refused to acquiesce in his later ambitions. Desborough, his brother- in-law, was at least doubtful in his allegiance; and Fleetwood, a third son-in-law, was a feeble craven, upon whom no reliance could be placed. The fear of assassination had haunted him; and the death of Syndercombe in prison had snatched away from him the chance of making a striking example of one who had plotted against his life. The death of his daughter, the wife of Claypole, had sorely tried the tenderness that was mingled with his stern ambition, and it may be that the story of her grief at the blood he shed had some foundation, and that the prick of conscience added to his gloom. At least, it is certain that the sun of his success set in clouds and darkness, which might portend the crash of the fabric he had raised.

But Hyde is keenly impressed with the absolute contrast between the portents and the reality.

"Never monarch, after he had inherited a crown by many descents, died in more silence nor with less alteration; and there was the same, or a greater, calm in the kingdom than had been before." "The dead is interred in the sepulchre of the Kings, and with the obsequies due to such. His son inherits all his greatness and all his glory, without that public hate, that visibly attended the other." "Nothing was heard in England but the voice of joy." That state might have continued "if this child of fortune could have sat still." But "the drowsy temper of Richard" was little fitted to benefit by this apparent acceptance, much as it damped the hopes of the exiled Court. The engagements already made with Sweden rendered supplies necessary, and to raise these supplies it was necessary to summon a Parliament. Cromwell's bold scheme of Parliamentary reform, by which he had added to the county representatives and diminished those of the smaller burghs, was departed from, and the burgh representatives were again increased so as to give to the "Court" better opportunities of interfering in elections. Parliament met on January 27th, 1658/9, and it was not long before troublesome disputes again broke out. The votes were carried by small majorities, and there were so many various parties in the House that it was never certain when a combination of adverse factions might outnumber the followers of the "Court." To these followers there was opposed a strong phalanx of ardent Republicans, and the balance was held by a nondescript element called the "Neuters," amongst whom there were some even of Royalist leanings. Hyde was in constant correspondence with Royalist adherents in England, as to the means by which these different parties in Parliament might be used to involve the Government of Richard in trouble, to accentuate such discontent as existed, and, if possible, to steal an occasional adverse vote. But such schemes had little success.

Opposition to the Government, however, came from a source more powerful than a divided Parliament. Lambert had been cashiered by the late Protector; but he still retained an enormous influence in the army, and the army had no mind to submit tamely to extinction by Parliament. A council of the officers met to air their grievances, and Lambert, although no longer an officer, had a place amongst them. They complained that their pay was in arrear; that their services were neglected; that "the good old cause was traduced by malignants"; and that Parliament must be moved to redress their wrongs. With strange impolicy, Parliament passed a resolution against any council of officers, and sought to impose its authority upon a power greater than itself. The ready answer was a demand for the dissolution of Parliament. Richard Cromwell was allowed no choice in the matter; if he did not do it, the army, he was told, would do it for him. He gave an involuntary assent. On April 22nd the dissolution took place, and Richard found himself virtually deposed. For another year there was little but anarchy in England, and any semblance of a constitution was virtually in abeyance.

As the creature of the army, the old Rump Parliament was restored on May 7th. That was the name given to that section of the Long Parliament which sat from 1648 (when "Pride's Purge," as it was called, was applied) to 1653, when Cromwell ejected the remaining members and summarily closed the doors of Parliament. Of 213 members of the Long Parliament only ninety were thus permitted to sit, and of these only seventy actually did sit. Those who were not pronounced Republicans were excluded by the rough-and- ready method of a military guard placed at the door of the House. Such an assembly could have no respect from the nation, and was clearly only an instrument by which the Council of the Army might exercise its power. "The name of the Protector was no longer heard but in derision." [Footnote: Richard Cromwell submitted himself, with abject and craven weakness, to the will of this so-called Parliament. Nor did his younger brother, Henry, the Lieutenant of Ireland, prove to have any larger share of his father's courage.] But nothing was established to take the place of the authority thus cast aside.

Once more, and in even greater degree, the hopes of the Royalists were cast down. The restoration of the House which had destroyed the monarchy seemed, in the words of Hyde, "to pull up all the hopes of the King by the roots." In this despair the Duke of York was ready, at the persuasion of those about him, to accept from the King of Spain the post of Admiral of his Fleet. It offered, what there seemed but little likelihood of his otherwise obtaining, a place of dignity and a means of livelihood. That it necessarily involved a profession of the Roman Catholic religion was sufficient to condemn it in the eyes of Hyde, as at once unprincipled and impolitic. With the Duke's immediate advisers such considerations counted for nothing.

Backed by the visible force of the army, of which Lambert, now restored to his commission, was the virtual leader, the Rump Parliament showed a temporary vigour. All Cavaliers were banished from London. Monk, who commanded in Scotland, accepted the Parliament's authority. The fleet gave in its allegiance, and the relations with foreign powers were for a brief period renewed under the altered administration. The name of Parliament sufficed for a time to carry conviction to the people at large that this was the only means of preserving the Republican institutions which seemed to embody all that they had fought for.

But the real popular support to this fantastic substitute for Government was very small. All over the country discontent was widely spread, and had penetrated deeply into the hearts of the people. The Royalists, detached and ill-organized as they were, yet found themselves able to show some boldness and to appeal more openly for armed support. John Mordaunt, a brother of the Earl of Mordaunt, was daunted by no difficulties, and was able without great danger to carry on correspondence with probable adherents, to pass backwards and forwards between the exiled Court and England, and to concoct armed risings in various parts of the kingdom. The King took up his residence incognito at Calais, in readiness to sail for England and put himself at the head of the levies whose gathering was confidently hoped for. The Duke of York was close at hand at Boulogne. To the more cautious counsellors like Hyde the schemes seemed hazardous and the time unripe for them. But even he could not refuse some response to affections so warm and efforts so courageous as those of Mordaunt. At the beginning of August all, it was hoped, would be ready for a series of successful risings in different parts of the country.

There was indeed abundance of enthusiasm. From all parts of the country offers of risings came. Sir George Booth was to seize Chester; Lord Newport, Shrewsbury; and in Gloucestershire, Devonshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and North Wales, the Royalists were only too eager for the work. The ludicrous weakness of the Parliament made it a matter of no great danger to defy what could hardly be deemed an existing Government. But the Royalists had been too long depressed and deprived of any share in administration to take a just measure of the difficulties. They reckoned without the army that was at the back of Parliament.

They reckoned also without that treachery which had only too ample opportunity to work, amidst plans and associates so scattered and so lamentably disorganized, A traitor was now, as often in these Royalist plottings, received into their full confidence, and through him a detailed account of all their plans was sent to Thurloe. [Footnote: John Thurloe was born in 1616, and became a lawyer. He obtained active employment under the Parliament, and was Secretary to the Parliamentary Commissioners at Uxbridge. He acted as Secretary to Cromwell for secret correspondence, and amassed enormous experience in the intricacies of foreign diplomacy, which afterwards stood him in good stead when, after the Restoration, he wished to make himself useful to the new Government, and thus escape the penalties which his former political attachments would certainly have involved. Until the Restoration was all but accomplished he gave useful help to Richard Cromwell, but yet was able to ingratiate himself with the new Ministers.] Hyde learned that Sir Richard Willis, [Footnote: Sir Richard Willis had done good service to the royal cause in the war. As a close adherent of Prince Rupert, he became, when Governor of Newark in 1645, involved in one of the many quarrels between the Civil Commissioners and the army officers. Charles I. removed him from the Governorship, but desired to do so without friction by providing him with a post in his own escort. Willis's insolence in refusing this roused the King's anger so far as to lead him to banish Willis from his presence. Willis was a good soldier, rendered mutinous by the bad example of Prince Rupert; but it is hard to account for his present treachery. As Warburton, in his note on the History of the Rebellion (Bk. XVI., para. 31) says, "he could not think of starving for conscience' sake, though he had courage enough to fight for it.">[ who had already played a double game of treachery, was acting as he had acted before, when he betrayed Ormonde's presence in London to Cromwell, and at the same time enabled Ormonde to escape by telling him of Cromwell's knowledge. Willis's betrayal gave the Parliamentary leaders time to collect forces sufficient to meet all attacks; and when he had thus baulked the attempt, Willis was ready to discover enough to prevent those whom he had betrayed from falling into the trap. Messages were sent to delay the rising, and in most cases they were in time to prevent outbreaks which were fore-doomed to failure. Only Sir George Booth, in the seizure of Chester, and Middleton, in the North Wales rising, actually carried out what had been planned. A very brief campaign sufficed for Lambert to crush the nascent rebellion. Booth and Lord Derby [Footnote: Son of the Earl who played so noble a part in the war, and who was executed after the battle of Worcester in 1651.] were prisoners in the hands of Lambert; and Middleton was compelled to consent to the destruction of his house, Chirk Castle. Once more a brief gleam of hope was succeeded by more profound despair, and there was nothing more to be done by Charles and the Duke of York than to return from the French coast to Brussels. But there was no Cromwell to crush future attempts by a policy of ruthless revenge. A few prisoners were taken; but the time was past for trials and executions. Legal processes were beyond the range of the sorry faction that stood for administration in England.

But scarcely had these abortive attempts been crushed before another avenue of hope opened itself to Charles and his adherents. It was one for which Hyde had no great liking, and from which he expected little good result. But obviously it was not to be neglected. After a long, barren, and destructive war, both France and Spain were eager for peace. Neither was ready to make the first overtures, and neither would confess an ardent desire for peace. But an opportunity occurred, now that a wife had to be found for Louis XIV. The Infanta of Spain offered a consort entirely suitable, and a marriage might be arranged with the better augury if it should prove a method of bringing to an end a mutually destructive war. Mazarin viewed the proposal with suspicion, and was unwilling to conclude a peace when the success of French arms seemed already secure. But the Queen-Mother of France ardently desired the marriage, and mainly by her efforts Cardinal Mazarin and Don Lewis de Haro were induced to treat. Most men thought that the design was a vain one, fomented only in the enthusiasm of family ties. But the desire for a cessation of a useless struggle operated more powerfully than Mazarin was able to perceive; and that desire overcame the delays and doubts of diplomatic action. The time and place of meeting to arrange a treaty of peace were fixed; and there was at least a fair prospect that the two Kings might soon find themselves with free hands, and with greater power to prosecute the forcible restoration of Charles II. to his throne. Both had often alleged that only the poverty of their exchequer and the heavy expenses of the war prevented any cordial and effective assistance being rendered to the exiled King. What claim to consideration might Charles not make good, what sound reasons of policy might it not be possible to suggest, if both were relieved of the burdens of war?

Hyde, as we have abundant reason to know, placed no confidence in foreign aid, and looked with suspicion upon the conditions under which it would be granted. But he could interpose no obstacles to the present application. He himself remained at Breda, and held the threads of all the discrepant and varying negotiations; but he did not attempt to dissuade Charles from making a somewhat venturesome and hopeless voyage to Fontarabia, where the Treaty was being discussed in September, 1659. At first Charles attempted to procure a pass from Cardinal Mazarin. But in the face of opposition by the Queen this was hopeless, and, accompanied only by Ormonde and Bristol and a small retinue, he made his way, incognito, through France. Even in the strain of anxiety Charles's natural disposition showed itself in wasting time in order to see parts of France which he had not yet visited. The pleasure of the moment always weighed with him more than the prosecution of business. Adversity, perhaps happily for himself, made him callous rather than despondent.

The business of the treaty between France and Spain meanwhile advanced more quickly than any one had ventured to hope. The difficulties as to France's pledges to Portugal, and those of Spain to the Prince of Condé, were somehow settled—or, at least, ignored. If France had to yield to some pressure on the part of Don Lewis de Haro, she avenged herself by retaining her hold on those former Spanish possessions in Flanders which the fortune of war had placed in her hands. Sir Henry Bennet represented Charles in Spain, and was sorely perplexed when the final ratification approached, and the King made no appearance. Ormonde had been sent to Fontarabia, but Charles lingered at Toulouse, before proceeding from there towards Madrid. His presence there was not desired, and he found himself compelled, after roundabout journeys, to put in an appearance at the scene of the treaty. Both France and Spain held out delusive hopes of aid. Don Lewis presented him with a dole of seven thousand pistoles, and promised a good reception on his return to Flanders. There was nothing for it but to make his way back to Brussels, and join once more in the plans of Hyde and his council there. He found the prospect no more cheerful than before.

During the autumn matters had moved forward in England. Lambert had strengthened his hold upon the army, and now pressed its authority more urgently upon the discredited Parliament. He demanded that Fleetwood (whose weakness made him an easy tool) should be General, and that he himself should be Major-General. The Parliament, under the leading of Hazlerigg and Vane, still resisted his claims, and attempted to defy him. Their resistance was easily overcome. Lambert met Lenthall, the Speaker, on his way to the House, compelled him to return home, and by main force closed the Parliament. In its place was established a Committee of Safety of twenty-three members, to which the administration was entrusted. Besides officers of the army and some London citizens, certain representatives of the Parliament were granted seats upon it. Lambert seemed, for the moment, to be completely master of the situation, and the Royalists conceived hopes that they might secure for their own cause the assistance of the leaders of the army. Fleetwood, however, lost his head, and would not act without the permission of Lambert. In December he escaped from responsibility by resigning his commission. Lambert would have been a stouter ally; and overtures seem to have been made that he should declare for the King, and that his daughter should be the wife of Charles. Such proposals met with no encouragement from Hyde, and were quietly dropped. Once more Lenthall, and the remnant of Parliament which he represented, recovered their courage and showed some energy. They met again on December 12th, and were able to assert their authority enough to cashier some of the officers, and commit Lambert to the Tower. Such was the position when Charles returned to Brussels with the scanty fruits of his mission to Fontarabia. It looked as if once more that Rump Parliament, which had crushed the monarchy and abolished the House of Lords, was master of the situation. To one watching events from a distance like Hyde, parties and persons must have appeared to chase one another in a bewildering dance, like antic figures reflected on a screen.

[Illustration: GEORGE MONK, DUKE OF ALBEMARLE (From the original by Sir
Peter Lely, in the National Portrait Gallery)]

Then it was that there came forward on the scene the man who, under the guidance of circumstances rather than of any fixed line of policy, was to be the main instrument of the restoration of the King. General Monk [Footnote: George Monk was born in 1608, and very early sought his fortune in war abroad, where he showed conspicuous bravery. In 1629 he served for a time with the Dutch; but came back to England when the army was levied in 1639 to act against the Scots. He was afterwards employed against the Irish rebels, but joined the King at Oxford, and when fighting in the Royalist ranks was taken prisoner, and committed by Parliament to the Tower. He was afterwards released to serve in Ireland, apparently with no settled purpose of deserting the Royalist cause. He served there long, and in 1650 went with Cromwell to Scotland, commanding a new regiment, which afterwards became the Coldstream Guards. From that time he became the close friend of Cromwell, and at one time commanded the fleet in some successful actions against Van Tromp. In the later years of the Commonwealth the Government of Scotland was virtually in his hands. His military powers were far greater than his discernment or capacity as a statesman. His wife was the daughter of John Clarges, a farrier in the Savoy, and, to a reputation that was none of the most savoury, added the manners of a kitchen-maid and a slut, and the avarice of a usurer. Her brother, who was an apothecary, became employed through the influence of Monk. He carried over to Charles the flattering message from Parliament in May, 1660, and was then knighted. As Sir John Clarges, he had a long and active Parliamentary career, and did not die till 1695.] was now supreme in Scotland, where Cromwell had placed him in command. Parliament looked to him as the only possible counterpoise to Lambert. Hyde placed no great reliance upon him, and shrewdly judged that he was one whose actions would be governed by events rather than one whose foresight and initiative would direct the progress of those events. He had abundant military experience, was a competent commander, and not only by family tradition, but by his own early action in the war, he was judged to be no obstinate enemy to the royal cause. But long association with Cromwell had committed him, to all appearance, indissolubly to the opposite cause; and, if he had no political prescience, he was, nevertheless, eminently cautious, and was not liable to be led astray by any fervent attachment to special views either in politics or religion. His wife, who was a coarse and low-born drudge, was guided by the fervour of her Presbyterian advisers; but her religious zeal had no influence over the calmer temper of her husband. At a juncture like the present it required no abnormal sagacity to convince Monk that the only possible course open to him was that of impenetrable secrecy as to his designs—even had he been more certain himself as to what these designs might be. With admirable deliberation—for intellectual dulness, on rare occasions, can assume the aspect of Machiavellian design —he laid his plans for a non-committal policy. He made himself safe in Scotland by inducing the Scottish Parliament to give him a considerable grant of money, and by leaving behind him a sufficient portion of his army to maintain a firm hold on the Government there. With a moderate force of about 5000 men, he slowly advanced towards London. Parliament had invited him; but they soon saw that Monk was not likely to be their obedient servant, and would fain have induced him to return. Monk none the less advanced; but it was with the utmost deliberation and circumspection, crossing no Rubicon, and breaking no bridge behind him. No word in favour of a royal restoration passed his lips. He frowned on all who ventured to suggest such a course. At each stage in his advance he pronounced, with edifying conviction, his determination to maintain the authority of Parliament; and if the announcement bore also the condition that the Parliament should be free, that was a condition to which none could fairly object, and which did not seem to lessen the soundness of Monk's Republicanism. If his sphinx-like attitude proceeded more from inability to discern the line of least resistance, than from conscious dissimulation, or any deliberate concealment of a far-seeing policy, it nevertheless was pursued with much adroitness, and no other course of action could have enabled Monk to accomplish all he did. It was this which secured for him an apparently grateful and cordial reception from the Parliament, although it dreaded his presence, and would gladly have heard that he had begun his march back to Scotland. He arrived in London early in February; and his unwilling hosts had no alternative but to bow to an outwardly friendly authority which they had no means of resisting.

In the whole proceedings, from this time forward, there is a distinct element of comedy, which comes as a welcome relief after the long tragedy of Hyde's narrative, and which, even though he wrote it looking back over an interval of checkered years, is apparent in the altered tone of that narrative. Monk had marched slowly on the capital. When he arrived at St. Albans, he halted there, and sent to Parliament to represent the inconvenience that might arise from the presence of troops that had proved unfaithful, and to ask for their removal. There was nothing for it but to obey. Even this was not easy, because the discarded troops proved restive and were on the point of mutiny. But their officers had disappeared, and they were at length persuaded to leave the City clear for Monk's approach. When that was arranged, he marched through the City and the Strand to Westminster, and took up his appointed quarters at Whitehall. He was received in the House of Parliament with every honour. The man whose intentions they more than suspected, and whose presence they would gladly have dispensed with, was told that he was a public benefactor whose happy intervention had saved the State. "His memory would flourish to all ages," and Parliament would ever be grateful for his support in time of need.

"The general was not a man of eloquence, or of any volubility of speech," But he assured them of his unalterable fidelity. He told them of the addresses that had reached him at every stage of his southern march, and of the general desire "for a free Parliament." As that was just what they were not, the avowed profession of his ardent agreement with this desire, however constitutional, was hardly fitted to remove their uneasiness. They were in the utmost straits for money. The exchequer was empty, and their authority was not sufficient effectively to impose taxation. They demanded advances from the City, and were roughly told that no advances would be made except on the authority of a freely elected House. Would Monk support them in this contest? He was asked to march into the City, to restore order, and, as a sign of it, to destroy the ancient city gates. So far Monk seemed to comply with the demands of his nominal masters. He overawed the citizens, and executed the orders of the Parliament upon their portcullises and gates. For the moment Parliament conceived its authority to be vindicated. But with singular folly they accepted, with favour, an absurd petition from Praise-God Barebone and his friends, who inveighed against all who would question the power of the Rump Parliament, and pressed for stern measures on all who presumed so much as to name the restoration of the King, or who would not abjure any Government in the hands of a single person. This roused the keen animosity of the officers, and decided them to press on Monk an alteration of his course. Once more he visited the City; but this time not as an enemy, but as a friend. In good round terms he rated the Parliament for countenancing the wild ravings of a dangerous rabble. He demanded that by a certain date they should issue writs for a free Parliament and bring their own sittings to an end. Their hopes were at once scattered to the winds; and in the wild tumult of bonfires and rejoicings with which Monk's declaration was celebrated in the City, they saw the death-knell of their own power. In the licence of recovered liberty many toasted the King's health, and there was none to say them nay.

Monk returned to Whitehall, and summoning some of the members to his presence, he delivered to them in writing his views—equivalent to his commands—as to the course which must be followed. He pointed out how all Government was now subverted, and how necessary it was that it should be repaired. He indicated his preference for a Commonwealth, and saw in a moderate Presbyterianism the most promising religious settlement. But, in truth, these were only hints as to the future; the immediate matter was the issue of writs for a new Parliament which should decide as to the ultimate arrangement. Only he was careful to give no sign of any readiness to restore the King. At this stage, that might have proved a compromising definition of his intentions.

The first step was to restore to their places in Parliament all who had been excluded in 1648 by Colonel Pride. On February 21st, all those who remained of the Long Parliament once more assembled at Westminster, and the majority soon reversed the action of the Rump. Military commands were taken from the sectarian fanatics, and replaced in the hands of men of station throughout the land. Temporary provision was made for revenue, and the city readily advanced what was required upon the credit of the Parliament that was yet to meet. Writs were issued for a new Parliament to meet on April 25th. On March 17th the Long Parliament was finally dispersed.

The Court of Charles at Brussels had meanwhile undergone all the anxieties of alternating hope and despair. Monk's action against the city had confirmed their worst forebodings; but "these fogs and mists," says Hyde," were soon dispelled." It was only a few days later that better news reached Hyde. Late one evening, Ormonde brought a young man to the Lord Chancellor's lodgings, which were just beneath those of the King. The young man [Footnote: "The man's name was Baily; he had lived most in Ireland, and had served there as a foot-officer under the Marquis (Ormonde)" (Hist. of Rebellion, Bk. xvi. p. 139).] looked "as if he had drank much, or slept little." He had just travelled with all expedition from London. From Lambeth, where he had been in a sort of nominal confinement, with others of the King's friends, he had heard the sound of the bells which had rung out when Monk came back to the city as a friend, and had pronounced for a free Parliament. He had crossed the river and viewed the scene of rejoicing in Cheapside; had seen the bonfires, and heard the health of the King toasted. He had joined in open proposals for the restoration of the rightful sovereign; and straight from those unwonted experiences he had taken post for Dover and crossed to Ostend.

It was hard to say how much comfort could be drawn from this report. The messenger had brought a copy of Monk's published declaration; but that contained no word about the restoration of the King. Even were his friends encouraged to action, it was idle to hope for success in arms without foreign aid; and Charles and Hyde knew how small were the chances of such aid. Were the unpurged Long Parliament restored, what better could be hoped from them than that they would open negotiations upon the basis of the old treaty at Newport, which the late King "had yielded to with much less cheerfulness than he had walked to the scaffold"?

The portents, however, continued to be favourable. Addresses were received from many whose favour for the royal cause had, hitherto, been unsuspected, and whose new-found loyalty might well be accepted as an indication of a change in the temper of the nation. Patience was still the watchword urged by Hyde. The issues were ripening, and even now he may have anticipated that bloodless restoration towards which the current was quickly carrying the people.

A new danger suddenly arose, by the escape of Lambert from the Tower in April. His influence in the army was unrivalled, and he alone could raise a counterpoise to the power of Monk. So long as his rival was at large, Monk could not, except at imminent risk, have declared himself more decidedly. To do so would have aroused opposition that would have strengthened that rival's hands. But Lambert's efforts were unavailing. Had he been able to remain in London, Hyde thinks he might, in time, have organized an effective opposition. Instead of this he felt it needful to strike at once. He made his way to Buckinghamshire, and from that county and Warwickshire he was able to collect a considerable force. Colonel Ingoldsby was despatched in pursuit of him, and soon overtook him at Daventry in Northamptonshire. Ingoldsby had been a strong adherent of Cromwell, and (as he asserted, against his will) had been forced to sign the death warrant of the King. He had now an opportunity of rendering a service that might wipe out some heavy scores against him. Lambert at first endeavoured to detach Ingoldsby from his allegiance to Monk, by offering to espouse the cause of Richard Cromwell. But Ingoldsby rightly judged that such a scheme was doomed to failure. Lambert's troops refused to fight and fast deserted him, and he was easily made prisoner and once more committed to the Tower.

[Illustration: GENERAL LAMBERT. (From the original by Robert Walker, in the National Portrait Gallery.)]

During the interval between the Dissolution on March 17th, and the meeting of the new Parliament, the administration was in the hands of a Council of State, which acted with Monk's concurrence. The hopes of the Royalists grew apace, and prominent members of the party no longer hesitated to take an open part in political discussion. The command of the Fleet was put into the hands of Monk—"the General," as he was called—and Admiral Montague, and the latter was known as one well disposed to the King, and ready, even at an earlier date, to have taken active steps for his restoration. Monk alone kept up his prudent reserve. Even in April he continued to express himself as strongly averse to the restoration of monarchy, A conference of some leading men took place at Northumberland House. The Earl of Northumberland, the Earl of Manchester, Sir William Waller and others whose political inclinations were in sympathy, joined in that conference, and Monk took part in it. Even then, amongst men whose leanings were all in favour of the King, he deemed it necessary to maintain an attitude of doubt, and refused to consider the possibility of a Restoration without conditions as stringent as those that had been pressed in the last stages of the civil war.

The final steps were carried out through the agency of well-tried adherents of the King, who were connected by old ties of friendship with Monk. A gentleman of Devonshire—with which county Monk was closely connected by ties of property—named William Morrice, had there spent a studious life, but was understood to have leanings towards the Royalist party, A friend of that unsullied loyalist, Sir Bevil Grenville, Morrice had been left in charge of his family, now represented by young Sir John Grenville, the son of Sir Bevil. Monk and Morrice had both been chosen members of the new Parliament, which was to meet on April 25th, and Morrice, who was in close touch with Monk, was vexed to find that all proposals for the restoration of the King were coupled with severe conditions, and were to be based upon acknowledgment of the binding force of the Covenant. Monk took note of the dominance of the Royalist party in that new Parliament, and soon concluded that matters were likely to move in the direction of a Restoration, whether with his aid or no. Day by day he became more inclined to be the foremost instrument of that now inevitable Restoration. Grenville was of too pronounced Royalist tendencies to be given any active part in what were still unavowed designs; but he might be a useful instrument in the confidential negotiations. He had credit enough with Hyde and the counsellors of the King to be accepted without those written credentials with which it would have been dangerous to entrust him. Morrice brought him secretly to Monk, who bade him confer with Morrice as to the terms of the communication to the King. Morrice fully instructed him as to the position. Monk's good inclinations were to be conveyed to Charles, and he was to write in terms which Monk could make public at the convenient time. The King was to promise a very wide pardon for past offences, full liberty of conscience, the payment of arrears of pay to the army, and the confirmation of all sales of forfeited lands. Without such stipulations, the waverers, it was thought, would be driven by despair to resist any scheme of restoration. As a special charge, Monk bade Grenville insist that Charles should move from Brussels to Breda. No trust could be placed in the fickle favour of the Spanish Crown. Thus primed, Grenville sailed, early in April, with Mordaunt, and arrived in due course at Brussels. The over subtlety of the Spanish ministers made them believe that the Restoration, if accomplished at all, would be brought about by the Levellers and Independents, who would bring back the King with nothing more than a semblance of power. An alliance with them alone, it was thought, would be the safest course for Spain. Nothing could persuade Cardenas and Don Lewis de Haro that Charles would be restored on conditions that virtually obliterated all the changes that the civil war had brought about.

It was evident to Hyde that the conditions laid down by Monk could only be complied with under very strict reservations. There was no wish to revive old quarrels, or to deny any fair measure of indemnity, and just as little did Charles desire to alienate the whole body of religious feeling outside the Church. But it was not consistent with the honour of the King that the indemnity should extend to the murderers of his father; nor was it possible to leave order in the Church at the mercy of contending fanatics. It was not difficult to devise a course which should make every reasonable concession to the proposals of Monk, and yet not destroy the hopes of those who looked forward with passionate earnestness to the restoration of the old order, and were not prepared to accept as partners in their future Government those who had formed the Court which had condemned the King. In spite of his long absence from England, Hyde had kept himself well informed on the trend of general feeling, and he judged that such matters could safely be left to the national tribunal. All the disputed points were left to be settled by Parliament. The action of the King was left free; but on the other hand no constitutional objection could be raised to the reservation of doubtful matters for the judgment of a free Parliament.

It was on these lines that the letters which Grenville was to carry from the King to Monk were drafted by Hyde. One letter was addressed to Monk and the Army; one to the House of Commons, and one to the House of Lords. Montague received one addressed to the Navy; and the last was addressed to the Lord Mayor and the City of London. When these letters were prepared, the return of Grenville and Mordaunt from their secret mission was delayed only in order that they might carry back word to Monk that the condition upon which he insisted would be carried out, and that the King would move from Flanders to Dutch territory. That design had to be carried out promptly if it were to be carried out at all. There was good reason to fear treachery on the part of Spain, and she might even so far break the laws of hospitality as to prevent the King's change of abode, and so cripple negotiations that might spoil her alliance with the anti-Royalist party. It was only by the unexpected promptitude of the move that Charles and his little Court were saved from possible delays which Spain could, under the guise of punctilious courtesy, have interposed. Hyde had sure information from an Irishman, then in Cardenas's employment, that such a design was on foot. He at once communicated with Charles, and by three o'clock in the morning, the King had started from Antwerp—which he had already reached in his journey from Brussels to Breda. Before his departure was known, he had already crossed the border.

From Breda, Grenville and Mordaunt were despatched to England, with their batch of all-important letters. No pains were spared to confirm the new- found loyalty of the General, and to assure him of the gratitude of the King. It was in compliment to him, and on Grenville's suggestion, that William Morrice was appointed to the Secretaryship of State, vacant in consequence of the Earl of Bristol having joined the Roman Catholic Church. All the letters were entrusted to the General, and although those other than his own were sealed, copies were supplied to him, so that he might know their contents before they were delivered and read. At the same time a Declaration was issued under the Privy Seal, pledging the King "to grant a free and general pardon" to all his subjects who, within forty days, should throw themselves upon his mercy, "excepting only such persons as shall hereafter be excepted by Parliament." For religious differences, it was provided that they should be settled by Act of Parliament, to which the King pledged his consent.

The messengers reached London a week before Parliament was to meet. The General approved the letters, and found no difficulty in the reference to Parliament of those points on which the King was not prepared to give an unlimited pledge. The fact was that the time was already past for haggling about terms. The tide of loyalty was now flowing with a rush that nothing could stem. A month ago, careful observers might say that the question was no longer whether the King was to be restored, but only as to the terms on which the Restoration was to take place. Now, the question of terms was already settled; the only point remaining was, who were to have the prominent parts as agents, and were to be counted as deserving the chief share of gratitude.

On April 25th the new Parliament met, and Sir Harbottle Grimston, who had been one of the Long Parliament members, excluded in 1648, was chosen Speaker. There was no long doubt as to the spirit of the new House. The memory and the deeds of Cromwell were condemned with no uncertain voice. They waited only for the oracle to speak before they resolved to take the final step, and vote the restoration of the King. Not till May 1st did Monk think fit to disclose his intention. He then announced that Sir John Grenville was present with letters to himself and to Parliament. With almost unnecessary parade of ceremony he stated that both were sealed and that he would read his own only by their direction. With due gravity the pretence was carried out, and the letters and Declaration produced a joy, which arose not so much from their terms as from the fact that their delivery by the General opened the door for the free flow of pent-up loyalty. It was no moment for weighing details, or for balancing conditions. The nation was sick to death of the heavy burden that had crushed their life for twenty years. The voice of the constitutionalist was silenced as effectually as the murmurs of the fanatic and the growls of the defeated republican. The Presbyterians spoke in vain of the Covenant; the more moderate found themselves little heeded when they spoke of taking securities before the King was restored. "The warmer zeal of the House threw away all those formalities and affectations." They were not "to offend the King with colder expressions of their duty." The letter that was sent left nothing to be desired in the lavishness of its loyalty. Sir John Grenville was complimented, and before he was despatched with their reply to the King's letter, he was presented with £500, "to buy a jewel to wear, as an honour for being the messenger of so gracious a message." "So great a change was this," says Hyde. Three months before Grenville might have suffered a shameful death if he had been known to have interviewed the King; he was now rewarded for bringing a message from him.

Amidst the general rejoicings the sons of the great Protector passed ignominiously and unheeded from the scene. Never had a great edifice of power, raised by consummate strength of will, and proud ambition, toppled so easily to the ground. Richard—that "child of fortune" as Clarendon calls him—and his brother Henry, the Lieutenant of Ireland, were puppets in the hands of each successive faction. They had readily yielded any phantom of power they possessed into the hands of the army officers, and when the Restoration took place they did not receive even the compliment of notice, as items to be counted in the sweeping change. Amidst the national joy, the poor wretch upon whom there had descended an inheritance that he was not fit to bear, "found it necessary to transport himself into France, more for fear of his debts than of the King, who thought it not necessary to inquire after a man so long forgotten." [Footnote: Rebellion, xvi. 374.] Clarendon points the dramatic contrast of this contemptible exit by introducing a story of a later day. In his subsequent wanderings abroad, Richard Cromwell visited Pezenas, in Languedoc, where the Prince of Conti was Governor, and according to usage he waited upon the Prince, but had the caution to make the visit under another name. The Prince "received him with great civility and grace, according to his natural custom, and, after a few words, began to discourse of the affairs of England and asked many questions concerning the King." He proceeded to discuss the late Protector. "Well," said the Prince, "Oliver, though he was a traitor and a villain, was a brave fellow, had great parts, great courage, and was worthy to command; but that Richard, that coxcomb, coquin, poltron, was surely the basest fellow alive. What is become of that fool? How was it possible he could be such a sot?" His visitor did his best to lay the blame of the miscarriage on the betrayal of Richard by his advisers. But, fearing to be known, he speedily withdrew, and next day left the town. To such abasement had the name of Cromwell fallen; and with this strange episode it disappears from Clarendon's pages.

On May 8th, the King was proclaimed at Westminster Hall and in the city; and bonfires and rejoicings took place, on a scale more prodigious even than when Monk had declared for a free Parliament. The happy news soon spread, and the exiled court was the resort of those who came post-haste to renew old bonds of loyalty, or to lay the foundations of a reputation for new-born zeal for their King. It was not long before those very lukewarm allies, Spain and France, broke down the barriers of their selfish caution, and vied with one another in protestations of friendship and offers of help that was no longer necessary. The unaccustomed warmth of their congratulations adds a new touch of comedy to the surprising scene. The Marquis of Carracena, Governor of Flanders, who had turned a deaf ear to all suggestions of alliance, and had not been slow to hint the inconvenience of the King's prolonged stay in Flanders, now craved his return to Brussels, and when the invitation was politely declined, could only vent his rage on Cardenas, whose dense stupidity had left him so ignorant of all English affairs, after a residence there of sixteen years. Cardinal Mazarin persuaded Queen Henrietta to send Jermyn (now Earl of St. Albans) to invite the King to France. Against that suggestion also, good excuse was pleaded—"the King had declined to return to Brussels, and could not therefore pass through Flanders in order to go to France." The mockery of these shameless overtures of belated friendship might well add to that cynicism which his experiences had done so much to imprint on Charles's heart and brain.

Crowds now came to Breda, no longer as disguised fugitives, but in eager rivalry to have their loyalty published and recognized. Their money offerings were welcome, as they enabled the King to pay his servants their arrears of wages and clear himself from the burden of debt to which he had been long accustomed. The States-General of Holland besought him "to grace the Hague with his royal presence," and received him with all the honour that an anxious ally could display, and all the pomp of magnificence which their wealth enabled them to lavish on the festivities with which they marked his visit. A few days later, letters were brought from Montague, who commanded the fleet, to announce his presence on the Dutch coast, and to ask the orders of the King. The Duke of York assumed the supreme command, and a day was passed in receiving the catalogue of the Fleet, and renaming those ships which recalled dismal memories of the Commonwealth. Soon after, the deputation from the Lords and Commons arrived at the Hague, bearing the supplication of both Houses "that his Majesty would be pleased to return, and take the Government of the kingdom into his hands," and as an earnest of their loyal duty they presented £50,000 to the King, £10,000 to the Duke of York, and £5000 to the Duke of Gloucester. A deputation from the City attended at the same time, to tender their loyalty to the King, and to make an offering of £10,000. It was little wonder that the King, who a few weeks before was hard put to it to borrow a few pistoles, and was deep in debt for the maintenance of his household, should receive such messengers with overflowing welcome. The citizens of London were sent home rejoicing in the honour of knighthood—in abeyance for twenty years, and now conferred on the whole of the deputation.

At the same time there arrived a deputation of the Presbyterian clergy who had different aims in view. They could lay no lavish offerings at the King's feet, and could bring no contribution to the tide of spontaneous loyalty. But they could plead that they had had no lot or part in the fight against the monarchy or in the murder of the King, and that they had given some effective aid in the resistance to the Commonwealth. Could they not manage to secure beforehand some compliance with their religious views, some concessions to tender consciences, some hope that the ceremonies, which their souls hated, would be dispensed with? The Book of Common Prayer had been long disused; might it not be relegated to permanent abeyance, like the feudal tenures, which all agreed should be swept away? Might not, at least, only parts of it be revived, to be mingled with more edifying forms of extempore prayer?

This was precisely what Hyde was not prepared to concede, and Charles answered in the spirit that he would have wished, and must have prompted. The King was ready to give toleration to tender consciences, but he claimed liberty also for himself. In his own presence and by his own chaplain, the Common Prayer Book should certainly be restored. "He would never discountenance the good old order of the Church in which he had been bred." We can have little doubt by whom this answer was inspired. The Presbyterian ambassadors were forced to return with the consciousness that the day of their triumph was gone, and that the Church would oppose to their pretensions a front of resistance as determined as that of the Independents.

On May 24th, Charles sailed in the ship, lately named the Protector, but now rechristened as The Prince. On the 26th he landed at Dover, and on May 29th, he was back in the Palace of his fathers, and the universal acclaim evinced the heartfelt joy with which his people hailed the restoration of their King. The ship which Hyde had steered so long and warily was safe in port. A new and perhaps harder task awaited the pilot.

CHAPTER XV

PROSPECT FOR THE RESTORED MONARCHY

The task which fell to Hyde during the early months of 1660, in gauging the various influences at work in the country from which he had been banished for fourteen years, was one of acute difficulty. He had been, it is true, in constant correspondence with men whom he could trust; but the letters which reached him from Sheldon, from Lord Mordaunt, from Grenville, and from Brodrick—to name only a few of those who gave him their impressions from week to week—had spoken in various degrees of hope and fear, and given him very different accounts of the state of parties. These parties had greatly shifted their attitude during the years of his banishment. Many of those upon whom dependence had to be placed—such, for instance, as Morrice, the close adherent of Monk, and now Secretary of State—were personally unknown to him. Some of the strongest supporters of a restoration were men who had been conspicuous as adherents of Cromwell, and yet it became increasingly clear to him that their support was even more valuable than that of some whose loyalty was of older date. The Presbyterians and the Roman Catholics had specious claims to advance for consideration; and even the Levellers, the Anabaptists, and the Independents had motives, which dexterous manipulation might foster, and which might make them ready to support the cause of the King, especially now that it was in the ascendant. Amidst the strong tides which were running under the influence of shifting currents of popular opinion, principles were thrust to the wall, and each party, like each individual, was chiefly occupied in looking after personal interests, and adjusting views so as to suit the change of the national situation. No one was sure of anything except that the political quicksands were moving rapidly, and that it behoved them not to be behind others in forming advantageous alliances.

The mood of the time could not be painted in more impressive words than those which Hyde uses, after the manner of Thucydides in describing the moral effects of the Peloponesian war.

"In a word, the nation was corrupted from that integrity, good nature, and generosity, that had been peculiar to it, and for which it had been signal and celebrated throughout the world; in the room whereof the vilest craft and dissembling had succeeded. The tenderness of bowels, which is the quintessence of justice and compassion, the very mention of good nature, was laughed at and looked upon as the mark and character of a fool; and a roughness of manners, or hardheartedness and cruelty, was affected. In the place of generosity, a vile and sordid love of money was entertained as the truest wisdom, and anything lawful that would contribute towards being rich. There was a total decay, or rather a final expiration of all friendship; and to dissuade a man from anything he affected, or to reprove him for anything he had done amiss, or to advise him to do anything he had no mind to do, was thought an impertinence unworthy a wise man, and received with reproach and contempt. These dilapidations and ruins of the ancient candour and discipline were not taken enough to heart, and repaired with that early care and severity that they might have been, for they were not then incorrigible; but by the remissness of applying remedies to some, and the unwariness in giving a kind of countenance to others, too much of that poison insinuated itself into minds not well fortified against such infection, so that much of the malignity was transplanted, instead of being extinguished, to the corruption of many wholesome bodies, which, being corrupted, spread the diseases more powerfully and more mischievously." [Footnote: Life, i. 360.]

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.]

In the earlier part of the reign the business of Government was chiefly transacted by a committee, nominally for the consideration of Foreign Affairs, but really bearing a fairly close analogy to the more modern Cabinet Council. The King and the Duke of York were constantly present at its meetings, and the other members were the Chancellor, Ormonde, Southampton, the Duke of Albemarle, and the Secretaries of State, Nicholas and Morrice. Its deliberations extended far beyond the sphere of foreign affairs, and really comprised every branch of the executive, as well as consideration of the policy which was to be followed in Parliamentary affairs. Hyde was unquestionably the dominant power in that Council, and however much a careful observer might have detected the signs of coming dissension, his influence was as yet unimpaired. It rested upon his well- tried loyalty, his unrivalled administrative capacity, and his thorough command of detail; and while it was cemented by the cordial friendship of some of his colleagues, it was smoothed, for the present at least, by an absence of marked friction with any.

We must, however, guard ourselves against a misconception which has imposed itself upon many in forming their estimate of Hyde's new position. It would be utterly wrong to fancy that he entered upon these heavy responsibilities with any sense of triumph or elation, and inspired by any pride of power. This would have been singularly out of harmony with his character and disposition. Though he was ready to assume the burden of administration from a sense of duty, we shall look in vain, throughout all the critical epochs of his life, for any grasping after the prizes of ambition. No letter and no utterance of Hyde's can be adduced in which he put forward a claim for advancement or bargained for any office for himself. The political arena had strong attractions for him, and his principles, or, if we please to call them so, his prejudices, were definite and keen. He was willing to spend his strength in the effort to realize these, and success in that effort brought him rich satisfaction. But he was too proud to make them aids in his own personal advancement. Greatness was thrust upon him; and if disaster chafed him, it was not because of the loss of personal advantages, but because the spirit of the combatant felt defeat to be irksome, and because it involved a suspicion of disgrace. The cause for which he fought was always more to him than his own fortunes; and to plead on his behalf the excuse of natural elation at his triumphal return to power is a singular ineptitude. [Footnote: Strangely enough, this plea is advanced with little sense of proportion by that most luke-warm of all biographers, Mr. Lister. Hyde's fame owes little to such misplaced apologies.]

Apart from Hyde's own history, and from the character which stands out so clearly at once from his actions and his own record, such a conception is unsupported by the actual facts of the case. Severe as had been the hardships of his exile, tangled as had been the mazes through which he had to steer his course, and baffling as had been his difficulties, we may well doubt if Hyde did not, in the years that now follow, look back with regret on the days when he had to fight against heavy odds with an ever- growing confidence in his ultimate success. Against overwhelming forces, his pen had successfully maintained the righteousness of the cause of his late and of his present master, and had, by its undisputed superiority, earned the fear and hatred of his triumphant foes. He had done much to compose restless animosities in the exiled Court, and had introduced something like order into its tangled economy. He had handled with marvellous dexterity the selfish intrigues of foreign Courts, which he could approach only as the powerless agent of a discredited and bankrupt exile. From first to last he had insisted that the Restoration should not be brought about at the expense of conditions to any foreign Power. He had imparted much of his own undying confidence to his English correspondents, and had kept alive the flame of loyalty under untoward circumstances. He had compromised the cause by no dangerous engagement, and had maintained, with unswerving rectitude, his own convictions of constitutional principle. He had been sustained by the sure confidence that, in poverty and exile, quite as much as when in the possession of ample power, he was making history, and was shaping the foundations of a restored monarchy.

But the hour of apparent triumph brought with it none of the solaces of the long struggle. No one appreciated more fully the splendid chances that were offered to the restored King; no one discerned more plainly how blindly these chances were thrown away. Nor had he long to wait to realize the depth of his disappointment. The blaze of triumph which surrounded the Restoration; the universal joy with which the King was welcomed; the strength of the tide of loyalty that swept over the nation—all these were visible enough. But Hyde was under no delusionment as to the canker that was soon to wither all his hopes. He draws no flattering picture of the work in which his own part was so large. He recognizes that there "must have been some unheard-of defect of understanding in those who were trusted by the King with the administration of his affairs." [Footnote: Life, i. 315.] His disappointment is too great to permit him to waste words in any attempt to dissociate himself from the failure.

Hyde saw clearly enough the danger that lurked in the very suddenness with which the nation allowed itself to be swept away by the tide of loyalty. It did not blind him to the wide diversity of opinion which prevailed, and which made the royal authority so much smaller in fact than "the general noise and acclamation, the bells, and the bonfires, proclaimed it to be." A sedulous cultivation of his own dignity on the part of the King, a respect for public opinion, the most unwearied attention to public business, might indeed have allowed the seeds of loyalty to grow into a strong plant. But the King had need not only of character and industry on his own part, but of a high standard of public spirit and of duty in those who were to be his Ministers. It is hard to say in which of the two the failure was most complete. No one had better opportunity of measuring its extent than Hyde; and it is in this that the tragedy of these few years of gradually increasing disappointment consists. He saw how "all might have been kneaded into a firm and constant obedience and resignation to the King's authority, and to a lasting establishment of monarchic power, in all the just extents which the King could expect, or men of any public or honest affections could wish or submit to." [Footnote: Life, i. 321.]

It is in these last words that we have the keynote of Hyde's deliberate policy. He never lost what had been his guiding principle from his first entry into the world of politics—a balance between Crown and Parliament, and the maintenance of a constitutional monarchy. It is true that Hyde assigned to the Crown a far more preponderating weight in the balance than later constitutional theories admitted. Parliament, according to his theory, was to be kept in a sort of tutelage, and the limits of its power were to be strictly observed. But he felt that the Crown and the Parliament were essential complements, one of the other; and he had no wish to go back to the days when Parliament might be suspended, or the Crown relieved from its dependence on the grants of the nation's representatives. No underlying prerogative was to impose itself as ultimately supreme. King and Parliament were alike to be subject to the law; and the law courts were to be independent of dictation either from one or the other. The last generation had seen each party alike attempting to trample under foot that supremacy of the law; and Hyde hoped that each had learned the lesson of their error. What he did not recognize was, that new guarantees were necessary before the limitations of constitutional monarchy were fully established. He had yet to learn how much the lessons of adversity had been wasted on Charles II., and how mere shiftiness and lack of principle might betray the Crown into errors even more fatal than those of Strafford and of Charles I. These last had striven after an ideal which was inacceptable to the English people, and they failed in the struggle. Charles II, with incomparably better chances, threw these chances away in mere wantonness, and he brought upon the Crown not defeat only, but what was much worse, contempt. It was the very result from which Hyde most recoiled.

Hyde had not had long to wait for experience of one sort of difficulty which he and his master had to meet. Charles had reached Canterbury about three hours after he landed at Dover; and there he had been met by a host of prospective recipients of royal favours. Some of them were too powerful to brook denial; and first amongst these stood General Monk.

The crowd of those who saw their own merits in an exaggerating mirror, and whose shamelessness in urging their claims was often in inverse proportion to their merits, roused only the contemptuous cynicism of the King. But Monk was a claimant of another type; and it startled the King when Monk placed in his hands a list of some seventy names as proper recipients for the dignity of Privy Councillors, Some of these names were of such unquestionable weight that application on their behalf was so unnecessary as to be ridiculous. It did not need Monk's advocacy to recommend Southampton and Ormonde and Hertford for any honour which the Crown could bestow. But with their names were found those of men whose advancement would have provoked a storm of opposition, and whose reputation for loyalty rested upon the flimsiest basis. Charles thrust the paper in his pocket, and dismissed Monk with the most flattering commendation of his own merits. In his perplexity he turned to Hyde, and desired him to expostulate with the General, and his dependant, Mr. Morrice. Hyde had never before met either Monk or Morrice, and his first interview promised to be a disagreeable one-preceded, as it was, by suspicions which had been sedulously impressed upon Monk by Hyde's ill-wishers. He addressed himself first to Morrice, whose character he soon learned to respect, as that of an honest and capable man, although something too much of the scholar and recluse, and with some lack of experience in action. To his surprise, he found the difficulty less than he expected. The General, said Morrice, had no thoughts of his recommendations being accepted wholesale. He had been compelled to promise his favour, and had included many names only to redeem that promise. But the King was not to understand that all these names were meant for his acceptance. The difficulty was solved for the time. But it had taught Hyde how slippery was the ground on which he stood, and how fatal it would be to interpret, as sincere, suggestions which were only formally made, and which might breed anger rather than gratitude if accepted to the letter.

Incidents like this—one only amongst many—soon disillusioned Hyde. The great hopes which he had formed from estimating the splendid chances opened by the Restoration, were grievously dispelled. He learned how selfish and how flimsy was much of the noisy loyalty. He soon learned, also, to take a just estimate of the character of the King. During the time of exile he had formed a high opinion of Charles's abilities, and had frequent cause to appreciate his tact and abundant fund of humour and of common-sense. What he had not fully observed was the extent to which the canker of cynicism had undermined the King's character, and how low was his judgment of his fellow-men. He now discovered this, and found how little he could depend upon him for that careful attention to business, and that sense of responsibility, which, amidst all his errors, had never been lacking in Charles I. It was a splendid opportunity. The Church had recovered its power, and, it might be hoped, had learned wisdom from adversity. The reign of that fanaticism which Hyde detested had passed away. The Crown was restored, and its dignity and solid influence might be increased and not diminished, by the recognition of the constitutional limits on the power of the monarch. Parliament was again strong, and it had learned enough to know that a straining of its powers to a tyranny was distasteful to the people, and in reality, a danger to those very powers. Law, which Hyde regarded as the keystone of the arch, was, he might fondly fancy, fixed on a surer foundation. The sound principles which, as he had once hoped, had been attained in the early days of the Long Parliament, were again in sight. Parliamentary government had been vindicated, and yet the dignity and influence of the Crown were safe. As trusted Minister of the Crown, it might be his task to buttress securely the elaborate and delicate mechanism of a free and constitutional monarchy, resting upon the aid of Parliament, but secured in all amplitude of loyalty and reverence. A few years—nay, rather a few months—served to show him how far the reality was to fall short of his ideal.

How did matters really stand between Charles and his people? Weariness, full as much as loyalty, was the operative cause of the mood that brought about the Restoration. Only a few weeks before, the gaunt and serried ridges of national conflict stood out as threatening as ever. The grim rocks of Episcopalianism and Presbytery, of Independence and Anabaptism, of divine right and republicanism, stood opposed to one another. Suddenly, almost like a dream, the wave of a new and over-mastering impulse had risen and submerged them all. For the moment it was strong and deep enough to overpower all other currents. On its smooth surface, Charles had floated back to the throne. But the favouring wave had only covered for a time—it had not swept away—the rocks underneath. These were soon to be once more exposed.

Charles had accepted the tribute of adulation with the smooth smile, the superficial good-nature, the half-contemptuous courtesy, and the inherent insincerity, of the cynic. His ruling passion was the innate selfishness of the libertine. For constitutional principles, or even for any settled ideas of government, he knew and cared nothing. If he had any ideal of kingly power, it was framed according to the model of the French Court, and was shaped to suit the gratification of his own tastes, and the satisfaction of his appetites. The constitution was best neither as it extended the limits of his own power, nor as it met the aspirations of his people, but as it ensured the security of a sensual Court, and did not interfere with his own love of ease. To this all thought of kingly prerogative or of parliamentary influence, all care for the privileges of the Church or of toleration, were alike subservient. The Minister who desired to govern according to settled principles, and who based his confidence on Charles, was building on the veriest quicksand. And yet of all Ministers, Hyde was the one in whom temperament, tradition, taste and sad experience, had most implanted the belief in rigid adherence to principle. The ill-effect of such a conjunction could not be long postponed.

CHAPTER XVI

DIFFICULTIES TO BE MET

With that genial self-complacency, which sits so well on him, Hyde records that he took his seat in the House of Lords as Lord Chancellor (but not a peer) "with a general acceptation and respect." He found on the benches round him those who had been his associates in the days before his exile, or their sons. The old peers, or their successors, excluded from Parliament so long, now took their places without any formal resolution, and as a matter of routine; so easily had things slid back into their old position. In the other House, there was a preponderance of "sober and prudent men," after Hyde's own heart. Those who had but lately been declared to be "malignants and delinquents" now gloried in the name; and the ordinances which had, at the very summoning of the Convention, excluded them, were now treated with contemptuous neglect.

There was, indeed, a considerable leaven of the Presbyterian element, and against its adherents Hyde bore a prejudice which even his prudence could not suppress. Their disaffection to the Church was cloaked by an emphatic assertion of their zeal for the Crown. They claimed, with some justice, no mean share in the Restoration. The Covenant, they argued, assured their loyalty, and its admission to the Churches, from which Cromwell had banished it, had, they averred, contributed powerfully to the success of the Royalist cause. Hyde refused to acquiesce in the theory that a common hatred of the Independents ensured the continued alliance or the sure loyalty of the Presbyterians, or that the Covenant, under the cover of which they had levied war against the King in his own name, was a proper object of grateful recognition. But, for the moment at least, their self- interest was a sufficient safeguard against their proving troublesome to the royal cause.

In his first speech, Hyde, in the name of the King, urged upon both Houses the necessity of passing the Bill of Indemnity and Oblivion, as necessary in order to calm alarms, which might at any moment have disturbed the public peace. That Bill of Indemnity and Oblivion had to be shaped in accordance with the Declaration issued by the King from Breda. Personally, Hyde had endeavoured to restrain the impulse which tempted the King to clinch a promising bargain by over-lavish concessions. He always held that the dignity of the King could not be satisfied without vengeance on the murderers of his father, and that the security of the Crown rendered a severe example necessary. But if his caution led him to look askance on extravagant promises, his sense of honour taught him that whatever promises were given, must be fulfilled. The question was, To what did Charles's Declaration at Breda pledge him?

Not once, but many times, from 1649 onwards, when his affairs were in the most hopeless plight, Charles had clearly announced that he could make no terms with those "who voted or acted in that bloody murder." Amongst the vast majority in all parties who accepted the Restoration, there were few who ever contemplated oblivion for that act. The Declaration had promised a free pardon to all who, within forty days, "shall lay hold upon this our grace and favour, and by any public act declare their doing so." It excepted "only such persons as shall hereafter be excepted by Parliament." Technically, this did not close the door even upon the agents in the death of Charles I. Practically, it must be interpreted in the light of previous Declarations. Strictly interpreted, it did not reserve to the Crown the right to reject any proposed exemption, even for a regicide; and this, perhaps, involved that Court influence should not be used against such an exemption. [Footnote: In the letter from the King enclosing the Declaration, words were used which served as a sort of gloss upon it: "If there be a crying sin for which the nation may be involved in the infamy which attends it, we cannot doubt but that you will be as solicitous to redeem and vindicate the nation from that guilt and infamy as we can be." These words were clear enough.] As a fact, there is no evidence that the mercy which Parliament was disposed to show was in any way restricted by such influence. Hyde, at least, made no effort to curtail the exemptions made by Parliament. His only anxiety was that the Act should pass speedily, so that the sense of insecurity should disappear, and the path of reconciliation should be open. In his own words, "It was then, and more afterwards, imputed to the Chancellor, that there were no more exceptions in the Act of Indemnity, and that he laboured for expedition of passing it, and for excluding any extraordinary exceptions; which reproach he neither then, nor ever after, was solicitous to throw off." Not the least of Hyde's trials was the difficulty of curbing the zeal—often prompted by selfish motives—of the more hot-headed Royalists.

As to the actual number of exceptions, the opinion of Parliament varied and gradually increased in severity. Before the King's return it was resolved that seven of the King's judges should be excluded from pardon. After his return, on June 6th, a Proclamation was issued (after the presentation of a joint address from both Houses), summoning all regicides to surrender within fourteen days on pain of exclusion from pardon. This was held to mean only that obedience to the proclamation would exempt them from punishment without trial, and from exclusion from hope of pardon; and, indeed, the Declaration had given up the King's power to do more without the assent of Parliament. But as time went on, the mood of Parliament became more severe. Three more—not the King's judges—were excepted; and subsequently twenty more were made liable to punishment short of death. The Peers proceeded still further in the direction of severity; and when the Act received the Royal Assent in August, it excepted forty-nine persons who were instrumental in the death of Charles, with a proviso that nineteen, who had surrendered, should not suffer death, without the sanction of an Act of Parliament; and certain others were made amenable to punishment short of death. Finally, in October, the excepted persons were brought to trial. All were found guilty, but of these, ten only actually suffered death. Hyde's influence is plainly to be seen in this degree of leniency, which certainly went beyond the prevailing mood of Parliament.

The two chief offenders whose fate had to be settled were Sir Henry Vane and General Lambert. The Convention Parliament had petitioned that their lives should be spared, and Clarendon, at least, was not unwilling that this should be done. But the new Parliament, [Footnote: The Convention Parliament met again in November, 1660, after its short recess. It was dissolved on the 29th of December, 1660, and the new, and duly elected, Parliament met on the 8th of May, 1661.] when it met, was in a more angry mood, and repeatedly applied to the King that they should be brought to trial. These petitions were referred by the King to the Chancellor, whose answer indicates that he was inclined to find pretexts for delay.

[Illustration: SIR HENRY VANE, THE YOUNGER. (From the original by
William Dobson, in the National Portrait Gallery.)]

To follow their fate, we may anticipate a little the sequence of events. The trial ultimately took place in June, 1662. Vane took what may have been the courageous, but was certainly not the prudent, course of defending his own action, and defying the Court. He was protected, so he argued, by the Statute of Henry VII., which gave exemption from a charge of treason to those who had served a King de facto, even against a King de jure. It was clear that no such plea was valid in the case of one who, by compassing the death of a King, had aided in establishing a Commonwealth. Vane was convicted, and met his fate with marvellous courage on June 14th, 1662.

Vane was a strange compound of incongruous qualities—at once enthusiast and philosopher, statesman and intriguer, a model of chivalrous courage, and a profound dissembler. We cannot compass his character by adopting the wayward estimate given of him by Anthony a Wood, who tells us that his common nickname was Sir Humorous Vanity, and who dismisses him as "a hotchpotch of religion," "an inventor of whimseys in religion, and crotchets in the State." Just as little can we trust to Milton's lavish praise:

"Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old
Than whom a better senator ne'er held
The helm of Rome."

Perhaps the soundest judgment, albeit an unsympathetic one, is that of Hyde: [Footnote: Rebellion, vii. 267.] "He was, indeed, a man of extraordinary parts; a pleasant wit, a great understanding, which pierced into and discerned the purpose of other men with wonderful sagacity, while he had himself vultum clausum…. If he were not superior to Mr. Hampden, he was inferior to no other man in all mysterious artifices."

Lambert showed no such bold front to his judges. In his case imprisonment was substituted for death, and he was kept in honourable and easy confinement in Guernsey. In a subsequent letter, he expressed his gratitude to Clarendon for his good offices in procuring this degree of mercy. [Footnote: Bodleian MSS. Printed by Lister, vol. iii. p. 310.]

But the question of settling the measure of indemnity to be granted was only the first of many difficulties that craved wary walking on the part of Hyde. Other weighty problems faced him. The most urgent of these was the settlement of the Revenue, in regard to which Hyde had again to mediate between two extremes. There were, doubtless, some who wished that the complete supremacy of Parliament should be secured by making the Crown depend entirely upon casual and arbitrary Parliamentary grants. In Hyde's view this was inconsistent with the dignity of the Crown, was certain to lead to friction, and would inevitably make Parliament the sole sovereign power in the State. But just as little did he wish to fix a Revenue which would have made the Crown entirely independent of Parliament, and would have dispelled the scheme of a limited monarchy. However little it might be to the taste of Charles and the crowd of grasping courtiers, Hyde determined that, for all extraordinary expenses, the King should be obliged to have recourse to the generosity of Parliament, and that the ordinary expenditure should be kept within reasonable limits. If we are to believe the account given to Pepys by Sir William Coventry, [Footnote: See Pepys, Diary, March 20, 1669.] the Lord Treasurer, Lord Southampton, would gladly have postponed the Indemnity Bill until an ample revenue had been settled upon the King, so as to secure his independence. According to Burnet, [Footnote: Hist. of His own Time, i. 286.] Hyde could readily have obtained the consent of Parliament to a revenue of £2,000,000, and deliberately refrained from doing so.

A much more moderate, and, as it turned out, an inadequately secured, revenue was fixed. Inquiries were instituted, which showed that the revenue in the years immediately preceding the Civil War had been rather less than £900,000, and that the expenditure had been £1,100,000. The necessary expenses had, since then, materially increased, and could not now be placed at less than £1,200,000. Towards this, the existing sources of revenue, with the deduction of the Feudal dues and wardships, which it was proposed to abolish, would not contribute more than one-half, or £600,000. The remaining half was to be supplied from Excise—a new device, as we have seen, contrived by Parliament during the Civil War, and destined, as Hyde foresaw, to become a permanency. But, as a fact, the assigned resources did not reach this amount of £1,200,000. Further, it had to be taken into account that, when existing debts were added to the necessary cost of disbanding the army, a burden of debt, amounting to about two millions and a half, would have to be met. It must be kept in mind also that there was no clear distinction between the Civil List, or the personal expenses of the King's household, and the General Revenue. All these circumstances, combined with the lavish extravagance of the Court, soon led to financial deficits, and to hopeless confusion of accounts. Such a condition of matters was certain to swell all other causes of discontent. To meet them, an economy of administration, which Hyde vainly hoped for and strove to bring about, was the only possible expedient, assuming that the King were not to be made financially independent. Possibly it would not have been beyond Hyde's power to adopt the latter course; and that he had failed to provide the easy resource of a lavish revenue was one of the causes that contributed to his subsequent unpopularity at Court. He soon found that under such a master, and in such a Court, economy of administration was a hopeless ideal. He irritated the crowd of selfish and grasping sycophants, and yet he failed to lay a secure foundation of sound financial administration. The difficulties of the situation rendered that an impossible task. The financial settlement, such as it was, was not reached till December, after a short adjournment in September and October. Meanwhile, another, and equally threatening, problem had to be faced, and it was faced with promptitude and success. The Restoration found a force of 60,000 trained and seasoned men under arms. Had the Chief Minister of Charles felt it consistent with his duty to conciliate that force and keep it embodied, the hopes of constitutional monarchy would have been vain. The cost would have been heavy, but it would have been itself the best security against resistance. It would, doubtless, have rallied to its paymaster, and would have been an effectual check upon the growing power of Parliament. But such a course would have been absolutely contradictory to Hyde's deepest convictions of constitutional rectitude, and it would have been in deadly opposition to all the traditions of the nation—traditions which were tenaciously held even after the institution of a standing army had become a necessity of the European position of this country, and after the necessary absorption of that army in the stirring tasks imposed upon it abroad had made its use as an instrument of tyrannical power impossible. Hyde saw that his ideal of Government demanded that the army should be disbanded, and that promptly. He did not conceal from himself the danger that the disbanding involved. It was soon apparent that the political leanings which had been submerged in the rest of the nation survived in threatening force amongst the ranks of the army. There were many in the ranks who disliked monarchy in any shape, and Monk, who had been their all-powerful leader so long as his designs were uncertain, was now the object of their sullen hatred, and his life was threatened by designs of assassination cherished amongst his old soldiery. The army, it was evident, must be master of the nation, or it must cease to exist. Hyde dealt skilfully with the problem in his speech to Parliament on the eve of the adjournment on September 13th. The King, he said, did not resent the common belief that he would not disband the army.

"It was a sober and a rational jealousy." "No other prince in Europe would be willing to disband such an army—an army to which victory is entailed, and which, humanly speaking, could hardly fail of victory, wheresoever he should lead it. And if God had not restored his Majesty to that felicity as to be without apprehension of danger at home or from abroad, and without any ambition of taking from his neighbours what they are possessed of, himself would never disband this army—an army whose order and discipline, whose sobriety and manners, whose courage and success, have made it famous and terrible all over the world."

The words were admirably framed to conciliate the army, to indicate the danger, and to show clearly the moderate policy of the Crown. No financial straits were allowed to prevent the prompt disbandment, which was carried out with singular success. Before November more than half of that army was peaceably paid off; and a few months more saw the end of almost the whole force. The disturbances which soon after arose led to the retention of Monk's Coldstream Guards, a regiment of Horse Guards, and another regiment from Dunkirk. These formed the King's guards, deemed essential for the security of the King's person; and they were the nucleus of the future standing army. During Hyde's later administration they never exceeded 5000 men. The magic of discipline and cohesion gone, Cromwell's Ironsides ceased to be an effective instrument of war. But, spread throughout the villages of England, they powerfully leavened the national character, and prevented the effacement of a type which the strain of Civil War and the white-heat of religious enthusiasm had served to create. The threatenings of a sullen temper on the part of the army, who found their occupation gone, were happily averted. But Hyde recognized that a deeper danger lay behind, in the still more sullen and dangerous temper of many amongst the Royalist party. They represented every type. There were the old Cavaliers, who had fought in the earlier years of the war, had seen their dearest and best fall in the King's service, and had permanently crippled, or entirely lost, their estates for the Royalist cause. Twenty years of poverty and hardship, if it had not slackened their loyalty, had taught them caution. They knew by experience the hopelessness of plots, and had recognized that the Royalist cause must look, not to forlorn hopes, but to a slowly ripening change of national feeling. In the dark days they had distrusted the feverish energy of younger men, whose record of loyalty was short, and who had sought to retrieve the lateness of their adherence to the Royalist cause by its restless zeal. Amongst these last, there were, indeed, many whose services could not be disparaged, such as young Lord Mordaunt, who had repeatedly risked his life in passing between England and the quarters of the exiled Court. But it was no selfish motive that prompted caution to men like Ormonde, Hertford, and Southampton. Ormonde himself, as we have seen, had ventured to visit London secretly under Cromwell's rule, in order to keep alive the zeal of the Royalist party. Hertford and Southampton had refused all overtures from the Protector, and their loyalty was beyond cavil. But much as they had suffered and were ready to suffer again, they dreaded, with good reason, the recklessness of the more militant section, and knew the risks that it involved. Repeatedly they had urged the King "to sit still, and expect a reasonable revolution, without making any unadvised attempt;" and their policy had been consistently maintained by Hyde. Hyde's own position and his influence with the King was, as we have seen, suspected by the more daring spirits. The Royalist party, amidst all its depression, had been injured by inherent defects and crippled by its own inappeasable dissensions. Many of the older Royalists were dead, and those who had taken their place had no experience in public affairs, were unknown to one another, and were suspicious of those whose views in any way differed from their own. The most trustworthy were cautious, and, before they declared their adherence to any scheme, had made it a condition that their designs should be imparted only to Ormonde and Hyde. But negotiations could not be confined to them, without discouraging those whose zeal was undoubted. The network of suspicion increased and left permanent marks.

All these various and mutually suspicious groups in the Royalist party had, now that the cause had triumphed, to be satisfied in some way or other, and their deserts had to receive such recognition as would leave only a minimum of rankling discontent. The first question that had to be settled was the restitution of property. How far was it possible, consistently with the claims of justice and the paramount supremacy of law?

Claims of restitution arose from three sources—the Crown, the Church, and the impoverished adherents of the cause. The Crown lands had been seized by Parliament in 1648. No claim of prescription could be allowed to operate there; and the Crown was reinstated in possession of these lands, whether they had been granted or sold to their present possessors. The same summary method was applied to estates of which the original owners had been dispossessed, and which had passed as rewards for services to Parliament, or had been sold by that authority. But a much more troublesome question arose with regard to lands which had been sold by Royalist owners, in order to meet their own necessities, to satisfy the exactions levied by Parliament on "malignants," or to permit the loyal owner to contribute to the necessities of the Crown. Such cases involved fully as much hardship, and it made little difference to the impoverished landlord whether his estate had been impounded by the triumphant rebels, or had been sold by himself in order to meet the fines imposed by the usurping power. But it was felt that, except by a dangerous unsettlement of all legal process, and by destroying all public confidence, no universal cancelling of voluntary and legal transactions could take place. The Declaration of Breda had left all such matters to the decision of Parliament; and Hyde refused to depart from it, or to face the certain destruction of all public confidence which more drastic action in the way of restitution would have produced. But the murmurings of those whose sufferings were in no wise lessened by the technicalities of the law, were deep and enduring. The King was deemed to be ungrateful for the sacrifices, and careless of the sufferings of his adherents; and the heaviest part of the blame fell upon Hyde. Burnet tells us, repeating the talk of the day, that the Act of Indemnity was currently spoken of "as an Act of Indemnity for the King's enemies and of Oblivion for his friends"; and he avers that "the whole work, from beginning to end, was Hyde's." [Footnote: Burnet's History of His own Time, i. 298.] There is no reason to accept anything on Burnet's sole authority; but at least there is nothing in this inconsistent with Hyde's general attitude, nor is it, indeed, easy to see how any other course could have been followed without leading to widespread confusion and an undermining of public credit.

An even more crucial question, and one bristling with difficulties, arose with regard to Church property. Upon none had the sufferings of the time fallen with more severity than on the Church and her clergy. She had shared the tribulations of the Royal Martyr, and the best tribute that could be paid to his memory was surely to secure that she should now feel the sunshine of a new dawn. If the history of these twenty years had proved anything, it had proved how faithfully the Church reflected the spirit of the English people, and how deeply their traditional love for that Church was implanted in their hearts. She, too, had produced her own martyr in Laud, and the aims with which he had inspired her were recovering their hold over the nation. The pages of Pepys's Diary tell us how even his sprightly self-complacency could be moved to enthusiasm by the revival of her dignified ceremonial; and the harmony of her ritual had charms for those who had none of Pepys's musical taste and skill, but might well have a deeper love for its essential beauty, and a better appreciation of all that it meant for the heart of the nation. The survivors amongst her scattered bishops, and the long train of her ejected clergy, represented not only a tale of individual suffering, but an insult offered to the cherished traditions of a people singularly prone to be touched by an appeal to history. The yoke of the Presbyterians and Independents had been a hard one, and the Church Restored was the outward sign of release from bondage to those whom that yoke had galled. Her dignitaries had suffered the direst straits of poverty, and her clergy had sought a meagre livelihood in menial employment, or had lived in dependence upon the secret benevolence of impoverished loyalists, in whose households they were often well-loved inmates. They had full need of money, not only for their own subsistence, but to repair their desecrated shrines and to obliterate the marks which civil strife and an iconoclastic spirit had left upon those great cathedrals and those well-loved parish churches that symbolized the faith of the nation. They would have been more or less than human had they not been stirred by zeal to repair the ravages which sacrilegious hands had wrought upon the national Sion, and eager, with that end, to seize upon the booty which the plunderer was to be made to disgorge. To share that zeal was one of the constituent elements in Hyde's character, and he was not likely to abandon it in the face of a careless group of profligate courtiers, to whom the Church Restored was at best but a sign of the triumph of their party, and who were ready to toast the Church in their cups, but in their sober hours to allow it to starve as a new form of martyrdom.

Hyde's task in this matter was one of no small difficulty. The Presbyterians were able to point to their services to the Crown and their adherence to the principles of monarchy. In many cases they had proved acceptable to their parishioners, and where the Episcopal incumbent no longer survived, the removal of the existing pastor might seem to involve needless hardship, and would certainly irritate a large section of the nation. Even where the incumbent did survive, it would have been hopeless to demand the repayment of tithes over a long series of past years. The surviving clergy must be restored, but restored without payment of arrears. The bishops entered on their sees, and policy demanded that in dealing with the revenues they should interfere as little as might be with the rights of existing tenants of Church property.

But the constitution of the Church of England permitted the observance of no arbitrary rule, however expedient, in dealing with the revenues of individual bishops or incumbents. They possessed rights which the law must uphold, and they had abundant need of the resources placed at their command. Dilapidations had to be made good; debts necessarily incurred left little room for generosity. On the whole, their rights were not unduly strained, and Hyde declares that special instances, where bishops or incumbents pressed with rigour on their tenants, were comparatively rare, however much they were magnified by the rancour of their enemies. It was suggested that some of the revenues of the larger sees should be diverted for the benefit of the smaller incumbencies. To do this would have been to alter the constitution of the Church, and the moment of restitution after long suffering was not the time for such a change. Nor was there any machinery of the law by which it could have been carried out. Some of the surviving bishops were old and inactive. Others were appointed from the ranks of Royalist adherents on grounds of ardent partisanship rather than of fitness for the position; and it would have been too much to expect that in reaching a haven of prosperity after the storm of persecution they should not have been, at times, unduly attentive to worldly advantage. Hyde had long been conscious that wary and wise policy could not always be looked for from the clerical profession. But he had no wish, even had he possessed the power, to deprive them of the advantages which were theirs by law.

Behind the question of material interests there was another of far more consequence. What was to be the texture of the restored Church, and how far could a compromise be reached between the Church and the Nonconformists?

There can be no doubt that the position was affected by the terms of the Declaration of Breda, which constituted a sort of treaty between the Crown and the Parliament. That Declaration gave a full promise of toleration. But it is idle to maintain that toleration for tender consciences involved a reconstitution of the Church to suit those consciences. [Footnote: It is the failure to distinguish between these two things that vitiates the arguments of those who, in our own day, have reflected most severely on the action of Hyde. He had not the power, even if he had had the desire, to alter the framework of the Church. With regard to toleration, he had to take account of the fears of the nation, that such toleration was a device of Charles in favour of the Roman Catholics, and of the conviction that, as an act of the Crown alone, it was illegal. After his day, it was aided by the compliance of the most corrupt and unscrupulous Ministry which England has ever known. This confusion is the flaw which runs throughout a careful and painstaking monograph on the subject, published in 1908, by Mr. Frank Bate, under the powerful ægis of Professor Firth.] There was a large body of Presbyterian clergy whose incumbencies were not interfered with by any claims of ejected and surviving Episcopalians. If a compromise could be reached which would bring these incumbents within the pale of the Church, it might be well. But they could not found a claim to such a compromise on the terms of the Declaration. That secured to them only toleration for their scruples, not a revolution in the Church to suit their views. Charles II., while distinctly asserting his intention of maintaining the ritual of the Church in his own chapel, was ready, with his usual complaisance, to indicate a willingness to accept a compromise and to modify some of the usages of the Church, which, under Laud's rule, had become a part of her constitution. But in doing so he really went beyond, not only the terms of the Declaration, but the power of his own prerogative. The alteration desired could only be carried out by the action of Parliament; and it remained to be seen whether the temper of Parliament would permit it. As a fact, the ready compliance and easy temper of the King raised hopes in the breasts of the Presbyterians which were doomed to disappointment. At their first interview some of their appointed representatives shed tears of joy for the happy settlement which it seemed to portend. For a time a compromise seemed possible; but it could only have been achieved by offending the strongest party within the Church. Sincerely as he was attached to the ceremonies of the Church, Hyde was statesman first, and churchman only second. According to his view, the Church, as an institution of the State, was subject to the Civil power. He would have resented the intrusion of the State into fundamental points of doctrine; but if, upon non-essential matters of ceremonial, a working compromise could be attained, he was anxious that such a compromise should receive confirmation at the hands of the State. It soon appeared that such a consummation was scarcely to be hoped for. Angry debates arose in Parliament when the question of religion was touched. The proposals made by the Presbyterians might well provoke the anger of those who saw in them the subordination of ecclesiastical tradition to the tenets of a party which had been overbearing in their hour of triumph, and were ready now, by a cunning appeal for peace, to make their austere and unattractive ritual trample over the cherished customs of the Church. The fact that ritual, rather than doctrine, was concerned, made the fight only the more real, and the passions on either side the more eager. For one man who cared for doctrine there were a hundred to whom the familiar ritual of their Church embodied and represented its very essence. Apostolical succession and the Real Presence were matters for theologians. A stately liturgy, the dignity of worship—nay, even the wearing of the surplice— these stirred the hearts of the average Englishman ten times more deeply. Surrender on these matters would have meant that at every Sunday's service they would have been reminded that the usages that were enshrined in their memories had passed away, and that the Church they had fought for was transformed at the will of her triumphant enemies. The Convention Parliament was adjourned on September 13th, before any settlement was reached, and leaving any placating of the Presbyterians as unpopular as ever.

Charles still desired compromise from very weariness of the fight. Hyde was ready to help that compromise so far as it could be gained without substantial injury to the Church. Meetings took place at Worcester House, [Footnote: The house built by the Marquis of Worcester. It was confiscated during the Commonwealth, and had for a time been occupied by Cromwell.] where Hyde resided as Chancellor, at which the King himself was present, with certain of the bishops and the leading Presbyterian divines. Difficulties soon arose. It was no part of Charles's scheme that the Presbyterians should have the triumph all to themselves. In terms of the Declaration of Breda toleration was to be granted to all, and Hyde distinctly announced that it was the intention of the King to carry out that obligation to all. That was no part of the Presbyterian view, and portended a laxity which their consciences would not permit them to accept, and which might even embrace the hated Roman Catholics. If it was Hyde's intention by this announcement to countercheck their demand for a compromise which, in the pliancy of the King's temper, might have conceded all their main tenets, and to expose the hollowness of their demand for release from an over-strict conformity, his design succeeded admirably. The Presbyterians were forced into an illogical position. At the moment when they prayed for lenient treatment which was to help them to share in Church endowments, they were shown to be ready to enforce a yoke of intolerance upon those Dissenters who stood outside their own pale, and who sought only for liberty to carry on an unendowed worship after their own fashion.

But the hopes of compromise were even yet not at an end. Charles was still eager for it as an escape from harassing disputes. A Declaration was published which went strangely far in its concessions to the Presbyterians, if Hyde is to be considered as concurring in its proposals. Episcopacy was recognized as worthy of support because it was established by law, was expedient for the circumstances of the nation, and had a long tradition—but not as being a matter of divine institution. Its framework was to be modified so as to reduce materially the aristocratic government of the Church, and regulations were to be introduced which savoured strongly of Presbyterian republicanism of rule. The Liturgy was to be revised, and the outstanding accompaniments of ritual—genuflection, the sign of the Cross, the wearing of the surplice—were not to be enforced. Subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles was not to be required.

If Hyde really assented to these proposals, it proves how urgent he considered the necessity of some settlement to be. The devout adherents of the Church might well suspect a betrayal of their cause. The Presbyterians were elated, not without due reason. All that they asked for seemed to be conceded; and perhaps, in the circumstances, they might have deigned to overlook the laxity which permitted toleration to those whose doctrines they held to be intolerable. Their triumph seemed so assured that they might look forward with confidence to the time when the Independent and the Anabaptist would be crushed out of existence. No wonder that one of their number, Reynolds, was persuaded to accept the Bishopric of Norwich, and that others found no reason to resent a similar offer to themselves, although their Presbyterianism did not, at the moment, fully warrant its acceptance.

But there remained a danger to be faced by this specious scheme of compromise. Parliament met after the adjournment, on November 6th. No Declaration could prevail until it had received Parliamentary confirmation; and Charles was to find that a Royalist Parliament might refuse to endorse even a royal compromise which sacrificed principle for the sake of an apparent peace. The Church was able to prove herself stronger than the King, and, at her bidding, Parliament declined to surrender the distinctive character of her Government and her ritual. It required no great prescience to foresee that concessions to Nonconformity were apt to have, as their chief result, the speedy formulating of new demands for modification at once of government and of ritual. Whatever was the motive, Parliament declined to accept the Bill which embodied the terms of the King's Declaration. Its second reading was rejected by 183 votes to 157. This happened at the close of November, and a month later the Convention Parliament was dissolved. It had still to be seen what further negotiations might lead to, and whether a new Parliament would be less zealous in maintaining the prerogatives of the Church, or whether new events might not sharpen the vengeance of the now dominant faction. As for Hyde himself, he knew well how much easier his task would be made if any compromise or conciliation could be effected. But such ease would have been bought too dear if it involved undue concessions to that Presbyterianism which his soul detested, a weakening of the Church which, in its broad features, he held to be indissolubly bound up with the constitution, or a betrayal of the cause for which Charles I and Laud had given their lives. Besides his own convictions, loyalty to these memories, that were sacred for him, kept Hyde true to the Church.

Before following further the events which were to shape his policy as Minister, it is well to turn to others which had a more immediate personal concern for him. The first of these struck home to his feelings as a father, and was to have far-reaching consequences in a wider field. Separated though he was, during most of the long years of exile, from his family, Hyde had none the less kept the warmest domestic affections. These affections were now to be hardly tried; and the manner in which he bore the trial was strangely characteristic both of the man and of the age.

We have already seen how Anne Hyde, his eldest daughter, had, during the years of exile, attracted the favour of the Princess of Orange, the eldest sister of Charles II. When a vacancy occurred amongst her Maids of Honour, the Princess had offered the post to Anne Hyde. The offer, however flattering, did not attract her father, who dreaded, for his daughter, the slippery paths of Court life and appreciated the envy which such an appointment might excite. He knew that the Queen-Mother, with her usual desire for domination, would wish to choose her daughter's confidants, and he strove, as far as respect for the Princess would permit, to avoid the pitfalls that it might involve for his daughter. He pleaded the consideration that the appointment might not be acceptable to Queen Henrietta; but the Princess had insisted upon her exclusive right to select her own household. Driven from this refuge he had alleged the difficulty of separating mother and daughter, and agreed to refer the decision to his wife in full confidence that she would share his own fears. But if she had doubts they were overcome, and to Hyde's surprise, she cordially accepted the gracious offer of the Princess. [Footnote: Amongst the Bodleian papers there is a submissive letter from Anne Hyde to her father, dated October 19th, 1654, in which she states her readiness to accept any decision which he may make, and to accept the new life, much as she dreads the parting from her mother (Calendar of Clarendon Papers, vol. ii. p. 401.)] Anne Hyde possessed no special charm of person, and had no claim to rank amongst the beauties of the Court. But she was gifted with much sprightliness and humour, and although the scandals that assailed her virtue were triumphantly refuted she was frank enough not to hide such attraction of manner as she possessed, nor harshly to reject advances. She soon made a deep impression on the morose spirit of the Duke of York, and in the autumn of 1659, there was a secret but solemn contract of marriage between them, and they regarded themselves as man and wife. It was not till September 3rd, 1660, that they were secretly married at Worcester House, the residence of Hyde, although her father knew as little as any one of the contract; and on September 22nd their eldest son was born. Already the Duke had confided the secret to his brother, the King, and Charles received it with that complacent humour that redeemed many of his faults.

Before this, Hyde had welcomed his daughter to her English home with special joy. "He had always had a great affection for her; and she, being his eldest child, he had more acquaintance with her than with any of his children." [Footnote: Life, i. 377.]

He had a project of marriage for her, which he deemed advantageous, and according to the notions of the days of his own youth, such arrangements were best made by parents. Other views had become current since these days, and the Chancellor's matrimonial schemes were rudely shattered.

It was not surprising that rumours as to the marriage were rife, although they did not reach the Chancellor's ears. His absorption in his work perhaps prevented him from gaining that confidence in his own family which an idler man would have commanded. Such stories were soon spread abroad by the gossip of the Court, and shrewd observers guessed the truth. Ashley Cooper, on one occasion soon after the Restoration, quitting the dinner- table of the Chancellor, in the company of Lord Southampton, declared to him that he was convinced that Anne Hyde was married to one of the brothers. The half-suppressed respect with which her mother treated her, and carved to her of every dish, had revealed the state of affairs to him. Pepys and Burnet repeat to us the tittle-tattle of the circles in which they moved, and the various estimates which were made as to the effect of the impending disclosure upon the Chancellor's power. The ambition which made her mother accept for Anne the post of Maid of Honour to the Princess of Orange, now made her an abettor in the scheme, which she evidently concealed from her husband.

Charles had imbibed too much of the vagrant humours of his own Court in exile to feel any tragic indignation over his brother's confidences. We can fancy what view would have been taken of such a daring breach of royal etiquette, either at the Court of James I., or of Charles I., where lesser matrimonial crimes had received the punishment of life-long imprisonment. But alien as such bygone theories were to the temperament of Charles II., yet even he felt that the complication was awkward. The humour of the situation might appeal to him; but he knew his Chancellor well enough to be sure that such a revelation would come as a thunderbolt to him. Hyde's principles were those of the older generation. The intrigue would be hateful to him no less as treason to the Crown than as a trespass upon the good name and dignity of his own family. That ideal of simplicity and directness which he regarded as the very essence of domestic morality had been blurred and marred within his own home by the taint of that poison which he believed to threaten the perversion of English life. From its encroachments he would fain have kept his own household free; but it was in that household that he saw that poison first assert itself, and even encroach upon the royal dignity which, by tradition and by principle, was to Hyde a sacred thing. Charles correctly gauged the storm that was brewing. In his perplexity he sent for Ormonde and Southampton, the Chancellor's dearest friends, and bade them broach to him the revelations of the Duke.

The meeting accordingly took place. Ormonde told the Chancellor "that he had a matter to inform him of that he doubted would give him much trouble," and advised him to compose himself to hear it. He then gave him the news: "That the Duke of York had owned a great affection for his daughter to the King, and that he much doubted that she was with child by the Duke, and that the King required the advice of them and of him what he was to do."

The result was, as they had good reason to expect, and as they did expect. "The manner of the Chancellor's receiving this advertisement made it evident enough that he was struck with it to the heart." Most fathers would have felt such indignation; but to appreciate Hyde's feelings, we must remember at once the ideas of the time with which Hyde's memories dwelt, and the distinctive features of his own character. The monarchy for which he had wrought and suffered, and which he would fain have seen restored in all its ample dignity, even if curbed by the supreme authority of the law, and by the balance of the constitution, was one which, even in the days of his own manhood, had been draped in "the divinity that doth hedge a King." For him, behind the frivolous and wayward personality of Charles II., there loomed, clear and distinct, the imperishable stateliness and dignity, and the unapproachable pride, of his father.

That presence, made sacred by martyrdom, was enshrined in Hyde's heart of hearts, and shaped his ideals. His aim was to restore the monarchy to all its former dignity and stateliness, secured and not weakened by constitutional limitations. But if this were to be accomplished, there must be no stain on the royal prestige by an alliance with a family which was little above bourgeois rank. What he would have deemed worthy of dire punishment in another, now presented itself to him as something in which his own family was primarily involved. It was in violent antagonism to all his traditions and convictions; and men like Hyde do not lightly suffer a shock to their convictions.

We must not forget that there was another and even more natural cause for his anger. Because Hyde's family held no high place among the nobility of England, it did not follow that he had no legitimate ground for family pride. He belonged to the proudest stock in existence—the ancient yeomanry of the land. Men of his race had held high and responsible office, and their name was without a taint. The Chancellor could not but realize that his own work had even already made history, and that it had secured for his family name a high and permanent place in the annals of England. He had no mind to learn the lesson of a new and foreign fashion, and to find in left-handed alliances with royalty a flimsy pretext to consideration and a stepping-stone to power. It must be noted, also, that in the story, as presented to him, there was a mere tale of unguarded love, and that his daughter's honour was to be at the hazard of any arrangement that might be patched up on grounds of policy and convenience. He might not unreasonably deem that honour which was to be so preserved was scarcely worth preserving. His soul abhorred the fetid turpitudes that stained the purlieus of the Court, and if he served in that Court, he was determined that his own character, and that of his family, should not be besmeared. Hyde was no strait-laced moralist. He had been familiar in his earlier days with a society that was by no means puritanical, and he could discern fine points of character, and find attractive friendships, amongst men whose morality was avowedly lax. But it was the vulgar obscenity of Charles II.'s Court that moved his contempt; and he was suddenly brought face to face with the announcement that his own family was involved in it, and that, too, in circumstances which must inevitably give rise to the suspicion that laxity of morals was allied with the sordid promptings of selfish ambition. For a man so proud as he, it was the chief tragedy of his life.

We need not, then, be surprised that his indignation knew no bounds. The love he had borne for his daughter only increased his anger. He broke out against "her wickedness," and swore "that he would turn her out of his house, as a strumpet, to shift for herself." Ormonde and Southampton strove to moderate his rage by telling him that they believed his daughter to be already married to the Duke.

His answer was astounding enough.

"If it were true, he was well prepared to advise what was to be done; that he had much rather his daughter should be the duke's whore than his wife; in the former case nobody could blame him for the resolution he had taken, for he was not obliged to keep a whore for the greatest prince alive; and the indignity to himself he would submit to the good pleasure of God. But if there were any reason to suspect the other, he was ready to give a positive judgment, in which he hoped their lordships would concur with him; that the King should immediately cause the woman to be sent to the Tower, and to be cast into a dungeon under so strict a guard, that no person living should be admitted to come to her; and then that an Act of Parliament should be immediately passed for the cutting off of her head, to which he would not only give his consent, but would very willingly be the first man that should propose it."

"And who ever knew the man," adds Hyde, in all the leisure of reminiscence, and of exile, "will believe that he said all this very heartily."

A strange and frenzied utterance, indeed, to come from a father's lips! No wonder that, on the King entering the room, Southampton should have made the comment, "That his Majesty must consult with soberer men; that he (pointing to the Chancellor) was mad, and had proposed such extravagant things, that he was no more to be consulted with." We can only try to judge the words with such leniency as we may, bearing all the circumstances in mind.

The tidings had first come to Hyde as an announcement of his daughter's dishonour. After that first blow had fallen, a new aspect was given to the case, by the avowal of his friends that his daughter had covered her dishonour by a formal marriage, and by becoming a participant in a plot, which, to the mind of Hyde and his contemporaries, was of a treasonable character. The Act which prevented any member of the royal family from contracting a marriage without the formal assent of the King was not passed until the following generation. But its absence from the Statute Book was due only to the fact that such an offence against the dignity of the Crown was forbidden under weightier sanction, and the treason it involved admitted of no doubt. The days were past when the crime of a secret marriage within the royal line could be punished, as in the case of Lady Arabella Stuart, by life-long imprisonment; but it did not follow that to one nurtured on these traditions the crime had lost its heinousness. It struck a deadly blow at that ideal of the royal dignity which it was Hyde's chief aim to restore. By a freak of frivolous licentiousness, he saw the foundations of his life's work sapped. Into none of the love affairs of Charles II. and his brother did the tragedy of passion ever enter. Like the rest, this was a bit of vulgar, commonplace intrigue. It was scarcely wonderful that the revelation of its sordid details stirred to frenzy that temper the heat of which Hyde himself so often laments.

But the resolution of the Chancellor, frantic as it might appear, was not to be shaken. The King personally called for his advice, and it was repeated to exactly the same effect. He would rather, he said, submit to the disgrace than that it should be repaired by the Duke's making her his wife:

"the thought whereof," he said, deliberately, "I do so much abominate, that I had much rather see her dead, with all the infamy that is due to her presumption." "I beseech you," he said to the King," to pursue my counsel, as the only expedient that can free you from the evils that this business will otherwise bring upon you."

With still greater freedom he went on, noticing that the King did not relish his advice.

"I am the dullest creature alive, if, having been with your Majesty so many years, I do not know your infirmities better than other men. You are of too easy and gentle a nature to contend with those rough affronts which the iniquity and license of the late times is like to put upon you before it be subdued and reformed. The presumption all kind of men have upon your temper is too notorious to all men, and lamented by all who wish you well; and, trust me, an example of the highest severity in a case that so nearly concerns you, and that relates to the person who is nearest to you, will be so seasonable, that your reign, during the remaining part of your life, will be the easier to you, and all men will take heed how they impudently offend you."

Whatever we may think of the Chancellor's advice, it was unquestionably sincere. Hyde was not the man to make a show of severity merely in order to clear himself of the suspicion of being privy to the plot. It is hardly necessary to say that, as a practical matter, his advice was extravagantly absurd. Charles's sense of humour, if nothing else, would have saved him from any such proposal. The day was gone when the machinery of English law could be used to magnify an intrigue of gallantry into the dignity of tragedy. Anne Hyde's head was perfectly safe; and had any other suggestion ever been made public it would have been laughed out of Court. Her character might, indeed, have been ruined; she might have been denied recognition as a wife; and steps might have been taken for her quiet seclusion from public life. But a State trial would have been a grotesque absurdity; and Charles was acute enough to take the frenzied advice of his honest Minister at its just value.

Meanwhile the Chancellor tried to put into operation within his own house his drastic views of parental authority. His daughter was commanded "to keep her chamber, and not to admit any visitors." Even the remonstrances of the King and the Duke of York did not avail to make him abate this exercise of his rights. It is not surprising that his severity was rendered nugatory, and that his daughter found means of admitting her husband's visits "by the administration" (as Hyde quaintly puts it) "of those who were not suspected by him, and who had the excuse, that they knew that they were married." Lady Hyde evidently thought that there were better ways of arranging matters than the dungeon and the block.

But there were other exalted personages to be placated, and they were less likely to take a lenient view. The Princess of Orange could scarcely be expected to see with equanimity her protégée and maid of honour advanced to a position superior to her own. Queen Henrietta was not apt to tolerate any invasion of her rights. Both these ladies were soon to visit England, and between them poor Anne Hyde stood little chance of a welcome within the guarded circle of royalty.

It was partly to smooth the way for the alliance, and partly out of no unnatural gratitude, that Charles now declared his intention of conferring a peerage on the Chancellor, and gave him a grant of £20,000 out of the amount which Parliament had sent to him at the Hague. Hyde had previously refused the peerage, as likely to provoke jealousy; but now the juncture seemed opportune, and he accepted it with gratitude. On November 6th, he took his seat in the House of Lords as Baron Hyde of Hindon. [Footnote: Hindon is a small village in Wilts, surrounded by down lands, and situated a few miles from Hatch House, the home of Lawrence Hyde, and from Dinton, the Chancellor's birthplace. Until the Reform Bill of 1832, it returned two members to Parliament.]

But this moderate step of advancement in no way mitigated the sense of the degradation of the alliance felt by the Princess and the Queen. Henrietta was not in the habit of veiling her feelings in any language of moderation; and her anger was shown at once, by action and by words. Once more she allowed full swing to the fury of her temper against the Chancellor, who had experienced it before. Her irritation was speedily observed, and the baser spirits that haunted the Court readily discerned and welcomed a means by which they could earn a degrading gratitude. Scandals were soon propagated against the virtue of Anne Hyde, and they were forced upon the ears of the Duke by those who were his intimate and trusted friends, and who professed themselves impelled, forsooth, by conscience and loyalty, to betray to him their own share in the infidelities of his wife. It is a picture of revolting turpitude, and not the least strange feature about it is the tolerance with which that turpitude was treated, in a society, and at a Court, where honour and manliness were professedly esteemed, and where, even if morality was little regarded, a standard of polite manners was supposed to be observed.

According to Hyde's own account, there was one man only who took upon himself the degrading task of fabricating lies which might satisfy the prejudices of the Queen, and might afford to the Duke a convenient pretext for breaking his plighted faith. This was Sir Charles Berkeley, [Footnote: Sir Charles Berkeley was the nephew of Sir John Berkeley, created Lord Berkeley of Stratton (see ante, p. 40). This Charles Berkeley received, by the doting favour of the Duke, promotion of which he was entirely unworthy. He was given high command in the Fleet, and created first Lord Hardinge, and then Earl of Falmouth. Few regretted the cannon-ball that ended, in 1665, his brief and ignoble career.]captain of the Duke's guard, and notable, even in that dissolute Court, for his pre-eminence in licentious disorder. He, at least, was prepared to publish himself in two of the most contemptible characters which human nature knows—the seducer who proclaims his stolen love, and the wretch that accepts the cast-off mistress of his patron. The author of the "Mémoires de Grammont," adds Lord Arran, [Footnote: With regard at least to Lord Arran, the son of Hyde's own chosen friend, Ormonde, we prefer to believe that the Grammont scandal is a falsehood.] Jermyn, Talbot and Killigrew—whom he characterizes as "all gentlemen of honour"—in making up a vile crew of conspirators. But whether the infamy was that of one man, or was shared amongst these gentlemen of honour, it prevailed for a time to shake the faith of the Duke, who was further persuaded, against the evidence of his own ears, that it was the Chancellor's intention to insist upon his daughter's rights, and to appeal to Parliament. That threatened opposition, the Duke met by cowardly bluster, which the Chancellor was easily able to rebuff by an indignant denial of such tales. For the injury the Duke had done him, he said, he was answerable to "One Who is as much above him as his highness was above him." The Chancellor's sense of proportion is curious, but may perhaps be condoned as of a piece with the fulsomeness of the day.

"He was not concerned," he added, "to vindicate his daughter from any of the most improbable scandals and aspersions; she had disobliged and deceived him too much for him to be over-confident that she might not deceive any other man, [Footnote: Brabantio's words were doubtless ringing in his ears: "She has deceived her father, and may thee.">[ and therefore he would leave that likewise to God Almighty, upon Whose blessing he would always depend, whilst himself remained innocent and no longer."

The Duke had the grace to see that he was in the wrong, and that, whatever the truth of Berkeley's story, he had no grievance against the Chancellor.

Anne Hyde's attraction consisted, not in personal charms, but in a sprightliness of humour, and in no inconsiderable mental gifts; and she certainly played her cards well at this juncture. When her fate was at its crisis; assailed by the vilest and most unscrupulous calumny; the object of her father's indignation, and of her husband's suspicion; the mark of the Queen's violent jealousy—she kept her head, and managed to reach harbour safely. The royal family was visited by other griefs. The Duke of Gloucester and the Princess of Orange both died of smallpox within a few days of one another. Queen Henrietta found that her comfortable return to France was unlikely, if she came back in avowed hostility with her sons. For her, even the violence of her temper never obscured what was for her personal advantage; and her jealousy of a plebeian daughter-in-law began to wane. She no longer swore that "when that woman entered Whitehall by one door, she would leave it by another." By degrees she became less obstinate; and the propagator of the scandal found that his lies were likely to cost him dear. With the changed atmosphere, Berkeley learned that safety lay in recantation; and, with undiminished shamelessness, he now sought reconciliation with the new Duchess, the victim of his doubly loathsome lies. With craven hypocrisy he represented to the Duke that these lies had been the fruit only of over-eager solicitude for his master's peace. Now that the marriage was to be recognized, he confessed the baselessness of his charges, and made his humble amends to the Duchess and her father. The Duchess received him graciously; "he came likewise to the Chancellor, with those professions that he could easily make; and the other was obliged to receive him graciously." A reconciliation was patched up between the Queen and the Chancellor. All agreed that the best must be made of what was a bad business; and the Chancellor was content to find that he could drag himself out of a degrading business with his personal honour unassailed, and that his power was confirmed by the failure of his enemies' intrigues. In April, 1661, he was raised to the further dignities of Earl of Clarendon, and Viscount Cornbury. [Footnote: Evelyn tells us "that his supporters were the earls of Northumberland and Sussex; that the Earl of Bedford carried the cap and coronet, Earl of Warwick the sword, and the Earl of Newport the mantle," The new earl did not look amongst his oldest comrades for those who were to assist him in his accession to new rank. His new title was taken from the famous Royal domain of Clarendon, near Salisbury, of which a lease had been granted to Hyde. He appears never to have held the fee simple of the manor from which he drew the title by which he is known to history.

His second title of Viscount Cornbury was taken from the Manor of Cornbury, in the Royal forest of Wychwood, in Oxfordshire, of which Clarendon was made Ranger, on August 19th, 1661. Cornbury Park had been occupied in the past by men great in English history, including Elizabeth's favourite, the Earl of Leicester. Some parts of the house date from the sixteenth century. Hyde planned, and began, large additions, which were not completed until after his death, and no part of which he ever saw. The architect was Hugh May, who was employed in the repairs of Old St. Paul's. The stone of the Cornbury quarry was of peculiar excellence, as is shown in the present fabric. May, no doubt, used the stone which he had there tested, for St. Paul's, as well as for Clarendon House, in St. James's; and this easily gave rise to the scandal that Clarendon had used the stone intended for St. Paul's for his own residence.

Hyde was greatly attached to Cornbury, and he probably had as much reason to blame himself for lavish expenditure on that, as he admits that he had for the extravagant scale of his town house. Cornbury was sold to the Duke of Marlborough in 1751.

An admirable account of Cornbury has recently been given in a splendid volume privately printed by the present owner, Mr. Vernon Watney, of which there is a copy in the Bodleian.] A further offer from the King of 10,000 acres of Crown land, he respectfully declined; and knowing well how easily he could stir the envy of other courtiers by receiving too lavish honours, he also declined the offer of the Garter. Even more firmly he repelled the suggestion of Ormonde that, in the place of the Chancellorship, he should accept the position of Prime Minister. The proposal was absolutely opposed to Clarendon's theory of the English Constitution, and savoured, too much for his taste, of the fashion of the French Court. He knew better than his friends, how uncertain was his hold upon the fickle disposition of the King.

"England," he said, "would not bear a favourite, nor any one man who should out of his ambition engross to himself the disposal of the public affairs." "No honest man would undertake that province; and for his own part, if a gallows were erected, and he had only the choice to be hanged or to execute that office, he would rather submit to the first than the last."

It was characteristic of Hyde to give dramatic expression to his own objections.

"The King," he reminded Ormonde, "was so totally unbent from his business, and addicted to pleasures, that the people generally began to take notice of it; that there was little care to regulate expenses when he was absolutely without supply; that he would on a sudden be so overwhelmed with such debts, as would disquiet him and dishonour his counsels." "The confidence the King had in him, besides the assurance he had of his integrity and industry, proceeded more from his aversion to be troubled with the intricacies of his affairs than from any violence of affection, which was not so fixed in his nature as to be like to transport him to any one person."

New men would soon supplant him in these fickle affections; "it being one of his Majesty's greatest infirmities, that he was apt to think too well of men at the first or second sight." Without the Chancellorship, he "would haunt the King's presence with the same importunity as a spy upon his pleasures, and a disturber of the jollity of his meetings; his Majesty would quickly be nauseated with his company, which for the present he liked in some seasons." If the King were happily married, and his revenue settled, they might have some hope of better things. Meanwhile he could only try to wean the King from his pleasures, to habituate him to business, and so to prevent the worst consequences of ill-company. He gave the same answer to the Duke, when he pressed the same suggestion. [Footnote: It may be well here to refer to the Treatise of Advice to Charles II. written in 1660 or 1661, which is preserved amongst the Clarendon MSS. in the Bodleian, and which was long accepted as the work of Clarendon. This view is discredited by the production itself, which appears to me to be stupid, vapid, commonplace and silly, and, in some respects (e.g. the Government of Scotland) is actually opposed to Clarendon's known views. But I am indebted to that eminent master of this domain of history, Professor Firth, of Oxford, for the guidance which, on sound and conclusive reasons, assigns the authorship to the Duke of Newcastle, who had been tutor to Charles II., and to whose views and diction it is much more akin. In the Duchess of Newcastle's Life of her husband, some of the observations ascribed to him are taken from the "Advice," to which she incidentally refers. There is another MS. copy at Welbeck.]

Clarendon was under no false impression. He knew well how slippery was the path before him, and how slight was the hold he had upon the wayward humours of the King. His friends might urge that he might, by becoming First Minister, secure his position and render himself impregnable against attack. He knew better the virulence of his foes, and could only hope to disarm it by conforming to those constitutional principles which his conscience told him were the only hope of an issue from the present entanglements. He soothed, as well as he might, the susceptibilities of the Duke, who thought his refusal proceeded from his being too proud to accept promotions suggested by his son-in-law. He could only promise that he would receive no advancement that was not procured by the Duke's own aid. As a fact, he accepted no further honours.

Amidst such treacherous currents Clarendon could only trim his sails as best he might, and steer the course his sense of duty taught him. He was not deceived as to the dangers that threatened him.

CHAPTER XVII

SCOTTISH ADMINISTRATION

The Chancellor had declined the suggestion that he should change his present office for the doubtfully constitutional one of Prime Minister. He would fain have confined himself to his legal duties, and have only interfered by general advice in regard to matters of administration. But, as a fact, such abstention was not possible. A thousand questions had to be settled; if any consistency of policy were to be maintained the influence of one guiding spirit must be felt. Order had to be reduced out of chaos, and some semblance of business methods must be observed. If that could be done by any one, it must be by the Chancellor. It forced him into many uncongenial spheres. Amongst these none was more out of the reach of his sympathy than the turbid stream of Scottish politics.

Under the rule of Cromwell all that had been distinctively national, either in religion or civil Government in Scotland, had been rudely and unsparingly crushed under foot. English law was administered by English deputies. The pretensions of Presbyterian autocracy had, for the time at least, been effectually curbed. English garrisons terrorized the country. The nobility and the commonalty alike had been disciplined into obedience with a rigour that speaks volumes for Cromwell's coercive power. A very moderate representation in such English Parliaments as had occasionally been summoned by Cromwell, was all that was permitted to Scottish claims. In the death of the Protector and the fall of his successor all parties in Scotland alike saw the birth of new hopes. All were alike monarchical in sympathy, and made speed to avow that sympathy, as soon as Monk withdrew his adherence to a Commonwealth. But, beyond that, what shape was the Restoration to take in Scotland? Were the older cavaliers to be uppermost, and with them was Episcopacy to be restored? Or was Presbytery to assume its former domination, and to dictate to the sovereign the terms on which he was to be permitted to reign? The whole thing came too suddenly for any settled plan to be formed. At Breda no such terms were even discussed for Scotland as were embodied in the Declaration for England. Repression in Scotland had produced its natural fruit, a host of men for whom politics meant little else than adroit deception and cunning intrigue. Political morality was at its lowest ebb, and amongst the motley crew it is hard to pick out one man whose standard of decency of life or honesty of principle can face even lenient criticism.

The various claimants addressed themselves, very early in the day, to Hyde. In adversity he had learnt to suspect the honesty of Scotsmen, had been alienated from them by their religious views, and dreaded the obstinacy of their political independence. He was not likely to welcome its revival now that the Cromwellian yoke was removed; and all the overtures that came from them were to his mind open to suspicion of duplicity. Even at Breda he found himself courted by different applicants for his favour. The chief of these was the Earl of Lauderdale, who, in spite of his former close association with the Covenanters, and his pretence of rigid Presbyterianism, had solid claims to Royalist consideration. He had supported the present King during the rigorous days of his nominal reign in Scotland, had marched with him to Worcester, and had been kept a prisoner by Cromwell since 1651. Such titles to consideration Lauderdale was eminently fitted to turn to good use. Under an uncouth exterior, with a clumsy frame and a gross countenance, further disfigured by a tongue too big for his mouth, Lauderdale concealed a power of crafty insinuation in which he repeated some of the dexterity of his kinsman of a former generation, Maitland of Lethington, known in the Courts of Elizabeth and James VI. as "the Chameleon." To natural talent Lauderdale added a scholarship and linguistic acquirements which were rare in his age. Intellectually he towered above his contemporaries. Creeds and principles, for which his countrymen were ready to do battle or to die, were for Lauderdale mere playthings in the game of intrigue. The Covenant, the orthodox standards of Presbyterianism, nay even the foundations of religion, were subjects of his mockery. The liberties of his country were only useful to him as a specious pretence, which might be roughly trampled on when the opportunity came. To Hyde he had always been an object at once of suspicion and dislike. At times during the days of the royal banishment they had come to an open rupture. Now Lauderdale was full of flattery to the Chancellor. He recognized, as the products of wisdom, schemes of Hyde's which he had before derided. He endeavoured to appease Hyde and he managed to capture Charles. He derided the Covenant; laughed at his own folly in formerly supporting it; confessed his repentance for his days of rebellion; was convinced of the sound loyalty, and episcopalian compliance of his country. But, only, caution was necessary. Nothing must be done too quickly. And Lauderdale alone was fitted to advise as to time and opportunity.

Hyde had other applications from Scotland. Lauderdale had some strong adherents. The old Earl of Crawford had just claims to consideration. He was a stout fighter and a strong and faithful Royalist, whose Presbyterian sympathies did not shake his loyalty. His son-in-law, the Earl of Rothes, had attracted the friendship of Charles, and his coarse profligacy had not yet had time to weigh down his reputation. The Earls of Tweeddale and Kincardine were both respectable in comparison with many of their political associates, and if they did not bring great talents to their party, they at least were not the source of flagrant scandal to any cause to which they adhered. All these represented that section of the nation which did not drop its Presbyterianism with its assumption of increased Royalist zeal, and which claimed to have made ample atonement for any former rebel sympathies by the efficacy of its new adherence to the cause of the Crown. They all belonged to the party which supported Lauderdale.

But there was a very different faction which was bitterly jealous of Lauderdale and his party. These were the older Royalists, who had never been tainted with Cromwellian sympathies, and who had forgotten any former acceptance of the Covenant which might now have been brought up against them. They reflected with almost greater bitterness the jealousy with which the older English cavaliers regarded those who had gained their influence at Court by a belated, and, it might be held, selfish, adherence to the Restoration schemes. Amongst them were the Earl of Glencairn, who had kept strictly aloof from the late régime, and had withdrawn to the Highland fastnesses from the reach of Cromwell's troops; the Earl of Middleton, a rough soldier of fortune, who had none of the dexterity nor of the learning of Lauderdale; and Sir Archibald Primrose, who supplied to his party some of the eloquence and political experience which his companions lacked.

For the moment all parties vied with one another in a common desire to pose as the enemies of Argyle. He was looked upon, by all alike, as the craftiest and most powerful enemy of monarchical power. The carefully limited deference—approaching closely to thinly veiled insolence—which he had shown towards the King during his stay in Scotland, was now recalled as at once overbearing and deceitful. His grasping ambition, and the marvellous dexterity with which he had overreached all parties in turn, made him the object of a common hatred and jealousy—perhaps of a common fear. All these passions might now be satisfied by an obtrusive assumption of heartiness in resenting his former treatment of the King, and his early sympathy with the rebels. As Clarendon himself says, [Footnote: Life, i 425.] "They were all, or pretended to be, the most implacable enemies to the Marquis of Argyle; which was the 'Shibboleth' by which the affections of that whole nation were best distinguished."

The two most interesting figures in Scotland during the twenty years just past had unquestionably been Montrose and Argyle. The first had been well known to Clarendon, and the spell of Montrose's heroism and romance had earned his enthusiastic admiration. Argyle had been the object of his suspicion from days long past; and striking as were Argyle's abilities, his character was as little fitted to rouse enthusiasm in Clarendon as it was to command the veneration of posterity. Montrose and Argyle offered the strangest contrast. The one was a type of high-souled chivalry; a consummate strategist, whose genius was inflamed by the very hopelessness of the cause for which he fought. His was no half-hearted loyalty, and in his later years he had been proud to sacrifice himself for the causes that were dear to Clarendon's soul. To Clarendon, Montrose was the one conspicuous example of the unselfish Scottish Royalist, and Argyle was regarded not only as the contriver of Montrose's death, but as the insulter of his latest hours. Argyle was the most finished type of crafty politician, pursuing a selfish game of duplicity. His insinuating manners and the superficial humour with which he could cloak his designs did not in any degree compensate for the ugly taint of personal cowardice which could not but be distasteful to an age of fighting men. With extraordinary skill Argyle had managed to conciliate popular support, while he remained the one overpowering territorial magnate in Scotland, whose unquestioned sway over the western islands was as dangerous to popular liberties as to the authority of the Crown. Clarendon fitly paints him in the words with which Virgil describes Drances:—

"Largus opum, et lingua melior, sed frigida bello
Dextera, consiliis habitus non futilis auctor,
Seditione potens."

But unfitted as he was to shine in camp or to attract enthusiasm, Argyle none the less commands our respect by the abilities which raised him far above the crowd of smaller men around him. He was under no delusion as to the extent of hatred which his power had bred, and as to the vengeance to which Montrose's death prompted all who had been Montrose's friends. But he could still base hopes upon his own dexterity, and he faced the danger with a courage which showed that his lack of warlike prowess did not prove him altogether a coward. He repaired to London and sought to throw himself at the feet of the King, hoping to recover some of that personal influence which he had managed to exert even in the irksome days before the fight at Worcester. He was met by a solid front of irreconcilable hostility, and instead of being received at Court he found himself a prisoner in the Tower. From thence he was sent to Scotland to await his trial at the hands of those who were determined on his final ruin. There was no Act of Indemnity to protect him, and he knew well that no party in the State was prepared to sacrifice its own interests for his preservation. Standing at bay against his foes at home; deserted by those amongst whom he had once exercised supreme sway; betrayed by the treachery of Monk, who did not scruple to send to Scotland some compromising letters which involved Argyle in plots against the King, Argyle was at length reduced to one last resource. He knew the dominating influence of Clarendon, and he knew also that, although his enemy, Clarendon was not likely to press a mean advantage or to act under the influence of personal revenge. To him he turned when all other hope was gone; and in a letter, [Footnote: Printed by Lister, vol. iii., p. 129, from the Bodleian MSS.] which must have been written after Hyde was created Earl of Clarendon, in April, 1661, he appeals to the Chancellor's well-known wisdom and justice against those who—

"From a pretence of zeal to his Majesty's service have been so prodigal of their informations against me," and who desired "to lay the blame at one man's door (though more innocent than many others) rather than put it where it ought justly to lie." "Although," he proceeds, "I lay no claim of merit upon any of my endeavours for his Majesty's service, being no more nor my duty, yet, I may say, I was ever faithful and sometimes useful, and never disloyal to his Majesty or his interest, though I might be carried away in a spate by human imbecillity. What assistance your Lordship shall be pleased to contribute in bringing me within the compass of his Majesty's mercy, shall be acknowledged as a perpetual obligation upon the family of your Lordship's most humble servant, ARGYLE."

He had already offered a price for mercy by promising to communicate "somewhat that would highly concern his Majesty's service."

Even those to whom his actions and his character have no attraction, must acknowledge that in these words Argyle advances no undignified appeal. Whether Clarendon would have aided that appeal it is impossible to say. Argyle's power, he might not unreasonably have judged, would have been incompatible with any settlement leaving adequate authority to the Crown. But however that might have been, Clarendon's intervention was never called for. Within forty-eight hours of the sentence of a court in which the influence of his enemies was dominant, and before there was time to appeal to London, Argyle was executed. Montrose was avenged; and just as his greatest rival fell, his own scattered quarters were gathered from the ports where they had been exposed, and buried in an honoured grave. The two great protagonists were gone, and Clarendon had to manage Scottish affairs through lesser men.

In that task he was handicapped by one serious disadvantage—his own absolute ignorance of the country and its conditions, and as its natural consequence an impenetrable lack of sympathy. To him Scotland was simply the home of deep-rooted and obstinate rebellion. Her Church represented to Clarendon the sternest and most repulsive form of Presbyterianism, the very antithesis of all Clarendon's ecclesiastical ideals. The national character was to him a mere amalgam of obstinacy and unblushing treachery. Her territorial nobility were to him a selfish caste, who had bargained away all their real influence over their countrymen in their greedy race after plunder. Their religious zeal was to him—and that on no mistaken grounds—merely a hypocritical cloak for coarse and besotted profligacy, not less vicious and much more degraded than the more flaunting and luxurious licentiousness of the English Court. Of the fundamental aims of the nation, of the deep-seated traits of their character, he was profoundly ignorant. At once turbulent and mean-spirited, pharisaical and profligate; poverty-stricken and yet proud; bigoted in its beliefs, and yet careless of all the decencies of religion—such is the aspect which Scottish national character bore to Clarendon. To a superficial and distant observer there was not a little which justified such a judgment; and in the case of Clarendon it was buttressed by a solid mass of honest, however perverse, prejudice.

The agents in the Government of Scotland were the Earl of Middleton, Lord Commissioner; the Earl of Glencairn, Lord Chancellor; the Earl of Rothes, President of the Council; the Earl of Crawford, Lord Treasurer; the Earl of Lauderdale, Secretary of State; and Sir Archibald Primrose, Lord Register. They were split into two bitterly opposed factions, that of the older Royalists, and that of more recent adherents, who were tainted with suspicions of intractability at once in Church and State. The first was led by Middleton; and he was no match in dexterity for Lauderdale, who led the opposite party. Clarendon had to manage an ill-harnessed team. By sympathy and former friendship he was inclined to the older Royalists; but he often found them untrustworthy agents. And we must remember that in English politics he was by no means of opinion that the King should look with suspicion on recent converts.

The first question to be settled was that of Indemnity. No previous stipulation prescribed it; but Clarendon was too shrewd not to perceive the certain ill-consequences of a terrorism of vengeance. The influence that chiefly worked against any complete Indemnity was the ignoble desire of those in power to profit by the slower process of forfeitures. Lauderdale did all he could to push forward a settlement of the terms of Indemnity; Middleton and his adherents delayed it, and endeavoured to compound with delinquents in a spirit of barefaced huckstering. A second question related to the maintenance of the English garrisons in Scotland. As a curb upon the national spirit of rebellion, Clarendon thought that, although they were monuments of Cromwellian rule, the garrisons were essential. He did all he could to maintain them; but Lauderdale was able to carry the King with him in their abolition on the plea of their injury to national pride, and their certain result in national discontent, and Clarendon's advice was set aside. The popularity which thereby resulted was a strong asset in Lauderdale's favour.

A question of even more importance was that of the method of administration. Although the Scottish Parliament was restored, Clarendon was no favourer of unrestricted Home Rule, and rightly discerned its dangers at once to the Crown and to responsible Government. He insisted that the Committee of Privy Council, which dealt with Scotland, should meet in London, and that six English Privy Councillors should be members of it. Here, again, it was an easy matter for Lauderdale to urge the offence that would thus be given to Scottish feelings. His real motive for resistance was the curb that would thus be placed on that power which he was plotting to engross in his own hands. Had it been preserved, that council would have formed a defence of Scottish liberties; its tincture of impartial statesmanship would have checked the growth of the petty local tyrants, and limited their influence. For two or three years Clarendon was able to maintain this independent council; it was only when his vigilance failed, and when his attention was otherwise engaged, that Lauderdale's pertinacity was rewarded, and a pernicious system of local tyranny admitted. [Footnote: It is not unimportant to note that even Burnet's Scottish sympathies and confirmed Whiggism did not prevent his outspoken preference for Clarendon's plan over that of Lauderdale.]

But the central point of combat was that regarding the restoration of the Episcopal form. It was only natural that Clarendon, from his own tastes and traditions, as well as from the memory of his first master's desires, should have placed this object first. Even at Breda, Sharp—afterwards Archbishop of St. Andrews—had obtained audience of Clarendon, and as the accredited agent of Middleton and Glencairn, had shown a readiness to transfer his own allegiance from Presbyterianism to Episcopacy. Clarendon's sympathy led him to give to Sharp a trust that was little merited, and he became, through Sharp's means, involved in an intricate maze of double-dealing which sought to lull the suspicions of the Presbyterians to sleep, while secretly paving the way for a complete Episcopal restoration. Sharp's dominating motive was unabashed personal ambition. He was ready to make compromising concessions in points of principle, in order to obtain the outward recognition of Episcopacy, and the re-establishment of the Episcopal sees. Clarendon knew well, from old experience, the danger of exciting national susceptibilities, and was wise enough to urge caution to his subordinates; but cautious and wary statesmanship was the last thing to be expected from the double dealing of Sharp, or in the drunken counsels of Middleton and his adherents.

Meanwhile Lauderdale, while he did not hesitate to decry the Covenant, and to make eager profession of his own recantation of its bigotry, urged that no premature steps should be taken for restoring Episcopacy. That it would come in time he had no doubt; but it would be the height of folly to arouse susceptibilities that might easily be soothed by cautious dealing into a peaceable acceptance of the ecclesiastical forms that were approved at Court.

[Illustration: JOHN MAITLAND, DUKE OF LAUDERDALE. (From the original by
Sir Peter Lely, in the National Portrait Gallery.)]

But Middleton and his adherents were now determined to carry matters with a high hand. Clarendon must have chafed to see a policy, with which in general he agreed, pressed with a recklessness that was certain to defeat itself. An Act was passed rescinding at one stroke all Acts passed since 1633. Burnet's phrase about it is, for once, scarcely too strong. "It was a most extravagant Act, and only fit to be concluded after a drunken bout." In that it agreed only too closely with other projects devised by Middleton and his convivial band. Lauderdale protested; and this time, if we are to believe Burnet, Clarendon found himself obliged to side with the Scottish Minister whom he most profoundly suspected.

In this course matters proceeded. In 1662, by an Act drafted by the suspicious hand of Sharp, Episcopacy was restored, but restored under auspices that reflected little credit on the statecraft that guided its restoration. The details of Scottish political intrigue—culminating in a deadly struggle of irresponsible tyranny with all the forces of enthusiastic religious frenzy—do not belong to Clarendon's life. But he could view their progress, so far as he himself was concerned in it, with nothing but disappointment. He was powerless to break down what he believed to be the narrow-minded obstinacy of national prejudice. He saw that the apparent triumph of Episcopacy was achieved by agents who made themselves contemptible in the eyes of their countrymen, and that it was bought at the price of arousing indomitable and stubborn resistance. He saw his own more immediate adherent, Middleton, playing into the shrewder hands of the far abler Lauderdale, by every error of tactics, by perverse neglect of the simplest rules of statecraft, by blundering deceptions and undisguised self-seeking. Again and again he found that the King, who, after all, cared but little for the distinctions between the sects of Protestantism, was alienated from the work by the folly of his own agents. By a strange freak of miscalculation Middleton and his friends thought to end Lauderdale's influence by excluding him from the Indemnity, and pronouncing him incapable of holding office. It was an easy matter for Lauderdale to turn the tables upon them. They incurred the censure both of Charles and of Clarendon. Before Clarendon's fall came, the triumph of Lauderdale over his rivals was assured; but before Clarendon's life ended he might have learned to what a height of self-aggrandizement, and of unscrupulous oppression, the popular wiles of that astute tactician had helped him to attain. Had Clarendon been blessed with agents wiser than Middleton and more honest than Archbishop Sharp, the Government of Scotland might have been consolidated; the bitterness, to which her religious fanaticism was goaded, might have been assuaged; and one of the darkest pages in her annals, which was to follow within the next few years, might have been left unwritten. The Union might have been brought about thirty years earlier than it was, and it might not have bequeathed so many seeds of jealousy, and so much offence to national pride.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PROBLEMS OF IRELAND

If the conditions of the new settlement in Scotland were a problem hard of solution to Hyde, the entanglement was even greater in the case of Ireland. He was ignorant of the real characteristics of Scotland, and alienated from the country by his antipathy to Presbyterianism. But Ireland was a hot-bed of faction, the intricacies of which baffled his discernment. There was no party there which was not honeycombed with treachery, and none to which there was not imputed, on fair grounds, actions of flagrant cruelty and injustice to one another, and of disloyalty to the Crown for whose favour they were now keen competitors. No wonder that the Chancellor, in his own words, "made it his humble suit to the King, that no part of it might ever be referred to him;" and that even the Duke of Ormonde, whose own interests were most deeply concerned of all in the future settlement there, "could not see any light in so much darkness that might lead him to any beginning." In the whole of Ireland it was difficult to find any one upon whose wholehearted loyalty the Crown could rely. The best were those who could allege some fancied injury from the late authority, which might atone for their own repeated acts of opposition to the Royalist interests. The Presidents of the two provinces of Munster and Connaught were Lord Broghill—who was created Earl of Orrery in 1660—and Sir Charles Coote. Both had been in close confederacy with Henry Cromwell, the son of the Protector, and both had "depended upon him and courted his protection by their not loving one another, and being of several complexions and constitutions, and both of a long aversion to the King by multiplications of guilt." Under the short administration of Ludlow, [Footnote: Ludlow, full of hope that true Republicanism was now in sight, after Cromwell's death, had been sent over to Ireland as Commander- in-Chief, in July, 1659, and remained there till October, during which time he had established a regime that satisfied him, but that quickly fell to pieces after his departure.

Edmund Ludlow's long life, from 1617 to 1692, saw many changes, in which he was himself no inconspicuous actor, and for some part of which his Memoirs add considerably to our knowledge. He belonged to a family of some importance, although its political sympathies alienated it from its own class. His father, Sir Henry Ludlow, was a member of the Long Parliament, and was referred to in one of the King's Declarations drawn by Hyde (May 26, 1642) as having said in Parliament that the King was not fit to reign; and he was one of those whose impeachment the King desired (Rebellion, Bk. v. 280, 441). By that father's persuasion, Edmund Ludlow joined the Parliamentary army when war broke out, and he proved himself a zealous and doughty fighter. But he was stubborn and quarrelsome, and fanatically attached to an abstract scheme of Republicanism which was the abiding object of all his life. To him the question involved was, "whether the King should govern as a god by his will, and the nation be governed by force like beasts; or whether the people should be governed by laws made by themselves, and under a government derived from their own consent." It could hardly be possible to express the dispute in terms more distant from the truth. But with all the fanaticism of a narrow and pedantic nature he pursued this will-o'-the- wisp to the end. He afterwards, in 1646, entered Parliament as member for the village of Hindon, from which Hyde took his first title, of Baron Hyde of Hindon (then returning two members), and attached himself to the party led by Henry Marten. He was bitterly opposed to all compromise, and was one of the most conspicuous of the regicides. He could not see how any view but one was possible to any man who did not desire to be a slave; and yet, in his fanciful scheme of liberty, he did not hesitate to apply coercive measures to Parliament. The nation was to be governed by its own consent; but its consent was to be interpreted by the will of his own little clique. When Cromwell assumed more than monarchical power, he fiercely opposed him, and hailed his death as offering new hopes for Republicanism. He had long been employed in Ireland, and on this account assumed its administration in 1659. When the Restoration took place, he fled to Switzerland: and so active had he been, that his machinations were dreaded for many years. In 1689 he returned for a time; but the memory of his misdeeds as a regicide made even the Parliament under William III. unwilling to receive him, and he was obliged again to withdraw.

He was a zealous, narrow, pedantic, but honest partisan, whose enthusiastic belief in his own abstract ideas seemed to him to justify the most ruthless cruelty in Ireland.] which followed the fall of Richard Cromwell and his brother Henry, who had been Lieutenant of Ireland, they had managed to hold their places and authority, and when Ludlow's power crumbled it was a race between them who might first proffer their obedience to the King, and enhance the value of that obedience by most effective promises. They watched assiduously the action of Monk. Each was anxious that his offers might be concealed from his rival. Each managed to secure some informal recognition of his offers of loyalty, and presumed himself authorized to make proposals to others on the King's behalf. They both professed a single-hearted endeavour to settle the King's authority, and each managed by underhand influence, and by lavish promises, to secure some powerful support. Lord Broghill was the abler of the two, and by his profuse devotion "quickly got himself believed." The Chancellor's scorn of such a man is best expressed in his own words. Lord Broghill, he says—

"Having free access to the King, by mingling apologies for what he had done with promises of what he would do, and utterly renouncing all those principles as to the Church or State (as he might with a good conscience do) which made men unfit for trust, made himself so acceptable to his Majesty that he heard him willingly, because he made all things easy to be done and compassed; and gave such assurances to the bedchamber men, to help them to good fortunes in Ireland, which they had reason to despair of in England, that he wanted not their testimony upon all occasions, nor their defence and vindication when anything was reflected upon to his disadvantage or reproach."

It was the familiar picture of which the Chancellor was already tired, of a King whose experience had taught him that Government was a thing of subterfuge, and of balancing between professed adherents whose loyalty was to be valued according to the estimate which trickery could place upon it. These new adherents vied with one another in promoting measures for restoring the bishops, and the laws of the Episcopalian Church, of which they had lately been bitter opponents. No wonder that the Chancellor has more respect for such a man as Sir John Clotworthy, who did not dissemble his dislike of bishops and their rule, even while he laboured honestly to restore the prerogatives of the Crown.

The central difficulty in this seething mass of jealousy, corruption, and self-seeking was the question of land settlement. A reckless system of forfeitures and new grants, carried out under the successive supremacies of different interests, had left an inheritance of hopeless confusion, destined to be the lasting curse of Ireland. Twenty years of the bitterness of civil war had ended in a rough and ready settlement under the rule of Cromwell, where the spoils had been ruthlessly handed over to the victors. The Irish had been evicted with a cruelty that had no thought of justice, and those who had not been sent abroad to seek death or a precarious livelihood in the ranks of foreign armies, had been driven into the barren tracts of Connaught, any of them found outside those limits being hunted down like wild beasts. To have shown any sympathy with the Royalist cause, or even to have resisted the fierce rule of the Cromwellian soldiery, was enough, when added to their adherence to a tabooed religion, to mark them as beyond the pale of humanity. It was counted even as a mercy that they were allowed to earn a scanty subsistence in the most barren corner of the island. Strongly as he disliked their deep-rooted attachment to the Roman Catholics' religion, the Chancellor never deemed it an excuse for ruthless cruelty, and, in spite of their religion, their occasional display of enthusiastic loyalty to the Crown won for them something of his sympathy. But he is compelled to admit the appearance of prosperity which was reared upon the military oppression—an oppression which was rendered the more heinous in his sight because it involved also the absolute forfeiture of their vast estates in the case of Ormonde and other loyalists, against whom no suspicion of Roman Catholic leanings could be alleged. Its very ruthlessness gave it an appearance of outward settlement and peace.

"It cannot be imagined," says Clarendon, "in how easy a method, and with what peaceable formality this whole great kingdom was taken from the just lords and proprietors, and divided and given amongst those who had no other right to it, but that they had power to keep it; no man having so great shares as they who had been instruments to murder the King, and were not likely willingly to part with it to his successor." "Ireland," he tells us, "was the great capital, out of which all debts were paid, all services rewarded, and all acts of bounty performed. And, what is more wonder, all this was done and settled within little more than two years, to that degree of perfection that there were many buildings raised for beauty, as well as use, orderly and regular plantations of trees and fences and enclosures throughout the kingdom, as in a kingdom at peace within itself, and where no doubt could be made of the validity of titles. And yet in all this quiet there were very few persons pleased or contented."

It was the sort of settlement for which history has exacted, as it always exacts in such cases, a rigid and long-drawn-out retribution.

But however specious might be the appearance of prosperity under the recent settlement, it was beyond all question that it must be disturbed. A Royalist Restoration could not leave in possession those whose property was held as a reward for fighting against the Royalist cause. Certain claims were of necessity revived, and no prescription could prevail against them. The Church lands must be resumed, and the Episcopal domains must be wrested from those who had gained them as the avowed enemies of the Church. About these there could be no question. Crown lands also must revert to the Crown, and had this source of revenue been duly husbanded, it might have supplied a means of dealing with many claims that proved a source of endless and insoluble difficulty. There were certain outstanding Royalists, like Ormonde, whose loyalty was so indisputable, and whose claims were so easy of proof, that restitution in their case was simple, and any resistance to it would have amounted to a confession of rebellion. Lord Inchiquin [Footnote: Murrough O'Brien, Earl of Inchiquin, had been much concerned in the curbing of the Irish Rebellion, in which he acted as the ruthless enemy of the Roman Catholics, whose religion he detested, and upon whom he inflicted the most merciless vengeance. His ardent Protestantism brought him to an understanding with the Parliament, and he acted sometimes as their agent rather than that of the King. But, in 1654, he had become as ardent a Roman Catholic, and managed to recover favour at Court, and was restored to his property after the Restoration. He died in some obscurity in 1674.] was able to bring himself within the same category on somewhat more doubtful grounds. Fortunately large tracts of domain had been retained by Cromwell, nominally as the property of the State, and in reality to secure his own power; and out of these many of the most indubitable claims could be met. But the harder questions were those involving claims which were more doubtful, between claimants whose rivalry rested upon more assailable grounds. Were all genuine Royalists to have a right to claim what was once their property? If forfeitures were to be redressed, were those who were forced to sell at nominal prices, or under the pressure of innumerable fines, to have no redress? Which Royalist support was the more valuable, that which had been steadfast from the first, and had been crushed by Cromwell's soldiers, or that which had atoned for rebellion in the past by opportune and efficacious support during the last few months? Much of the land had been granted to the "Adventurers," as those were called who had advanced money on the faith of Parliamentary pledges to meet the expenses of crushing the Irish Rebellion. The Adventurers could allege the security of an Act of Parliament, to which the assent of the King had, however unwillingly, been given. But it was well known that the most of the money so raised had been employed, not to fight Irish rebels, but to crush English Royalists; and those Adventurers alone had been able to retain their claims who had been found ready to supplement their original contributions by payments avowedly made to the war chest of the Parliament, when civil war in England engaged all their attention. How were such grants to be dealt with, and how was a due balance to be kept between condoning rebellion and undermining the faith built upon an Act of Parliament? Others held their lands in lieu of military pay long in arrear; and the fact that they had not turned their arms against those who were contriving the Restoration, might seem to give them a claim to generous treatment. The Irish Catholics could adduce many instances of their own conspicuous loyalty in the past, and it was difficult to furnish convincing proof of what might fairly be suspected, that such loyalty was prompted more by bitter hatred of the Presbyterians and Roundheads than by fervent devotion to their King.

The Chancellor might well be repelled from participation in this embroiled struggle, where it was hard to find any satisfactory clue which might lead to settlement. To satisfy all was impossible; and it was almost as difficult to suggest any principle or set of principles which could be uniformly applied. Every case varied; every claim was supported or opposed by evidence, equally abundant, and equally suspect.

At first the Adventurers and the representatives of Cromwell's troopers were most successful in establishing their claims before the commissioners who were sent to inquire. One settlement after another was attempted. The Roman Catholic Irish were able, a little later, to win some sympathy from Charles, which the Chancellor seems to have partly shared. Another set of commissioners reopened the inquiry, and suggested another settlement, in which each faction was obliged to abate something of their claims. The Irish claim to loyalty was refuted by proof of their readiness, in their direst straits, to invite foreign aid, and to offer to repay it by the betrayal of the Royalist cause, and by breaking their allegiance to the King. One influence, and one influence alone, contributed to a solution, and that was the earnest desire of all, even at the cost of some diminution of their own claims, to escape from the palsying influence of uncertainty and doubt. The Chancellor accepted the different reports of the commissioners, and the successive projects of settlement, with a certain despair of any scheme of abstract justice, with little hope of even a peaceable solution, and with a not unnatural desire to rid himself of the whole unsavoury embroglio, and to detach himself from the angry and envenomed faction fight in Ireland. The Irish settlement was no part of Clarendon's work, and enters only indirectly into his life. Even more strongly than in the case of Scotland he abandoned any thought of an incorporating Union, and was glad to see the revival of an Irish Parliament. The task he had in hand was too hard to allow him willingly to add to it the baffling problem of restoring peace to Ireland.

But he could find little satisfaction in contemplating the work of those to whom the task was entrusted. The appointment of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland had been only one of many gratifications which had been bestowed upon Monk, when he was created Duke of Albemarle, in recognition of the substantial benefits to the King which had resulted, when the long-drawn disguises of his tortuous and self-interested policy had gradually unmasked themselves. As general over the Irish army under the Cromwellian administration, he had contrived to secure an estate in Ireland worth some four thousand a year, and it was of the first importance to him to retain a hold over any land-settlement in Ireland.

But Albemarle looked upon his post as Lord-Lieutenant only as an enhancement of his own importance in the State, and as a means of assuring that his own material interests in Ireland should be safeguarded. He had no thought of taking upon himself the burden of Irish administration in person, or of absenting himself from the English Court. It was necessary, therefore, to find some one also who, as deputy, would undertake the arduous task. "There were some few," says Hyde, "fit for the employment who were not willing to undertake it; and many who were willing to undertake it who were not fit." The powers of a deputy were liable to be eclipsed, if Albemarle ever thought fit to go to Ireland; and such a post was one which those of the highest rank scarcely cared to fill. Under these circumstances the choice fell upon Lord Robartes, who had rendered some good service in Cornwall, and who had the reputation of more than respectable abilities, of careful and plodding industry, and of an integrity which was at least above the moderate average standard of Charles's Court. But he had defects of character which were apparent to a judge so acute as the Chancellor, and these soon made themselves plain. Clarendon gives expression to them with all the verve and dexterity of analysis of which he was a past master. "Robartes," he tells us, "was a sullen, morose man, intolerably proud, and had some humours as inconvenient as small vices, which made him hard to live with." That he was esteemed to have Presbyterian leanings did not make him the more acceptable to the King, or to the Chancellor himself; but such suspicions he was able to allay. But a long habit of associating with men inferior to himself had crippled his intelligence, and made him suspicious and jealous of his position. When he found himself deputy to Monk, he recalled, with a grudge, the fact that, coming from the same south-western corner of England, he was of superior birth, and he forgot the services which in Monk's case more than squared the balance. In his dealings with those who were to be associated with him in Irish administration, he showed the jealousy of a small-minded man, and ensconced himself behind the bulwark of reticence and inaccessibility. There could hardly have been a more unfit instrument for that dexterous manipulation which the tangled knot of Irish politics required than this narrow, pedantic, tactless peer. The Chancellor soon saw that endless petty bickering would be the result of continuing him in the post. His petty pride was offended by having to serve as deputy to Albemarle. He was ingenious in detecting legal difficulties, and wearied the patience of the Attorney-General by pointless criticisms even on the wording of his patent of appointment. He treated those Irishmen who were obliged to deal with him with a haughty superciliousness which exasperated them to fury. The King soon found that a morose gravity and a punctilious pride were the worst ingredients for an Irish governor. The only question was how to get rid of one who was too respectable to be contumeliously cast aside, but too much of a pedant to be entrusted with a delicate administrative operation. "They who conversed with him knew him to have many humours which were very intolerable; they who were but little acquainted with him took him to be a man of much knowledge, and called his morosity gravity." The Chancellor and Lord Southampton were commissioned by the King to confer about his transfer to another office, where his peculiarities might be less inconvenient. They were to arrange that he should be Privy Seal, and the precedence which that post would give him was to be a solace to his susceptible pride. The transaction had to be managed dexterously. They found him in a suspicious mood, but fortunately were able to persuade him that the new appointment would enhance his dignity. He accepted the new post, and although his touchiness and pedantry as to trifles were still a source of trouble, they could lead to no such difficulty in the comparative obscurity of Privy Seal, as they would have involved in Ireland. The transfer was carried out with satisfaction to all concerned; and the fact is no small testimonial to the tact of the Chancellor and Lord Southampton.

One source of friction was gone in getting rid of Lord Robartes. But the tangled knot still remained, and after the restoration of the Crown and Church domains, and the reinstatement of such notable Royalists as Ormonde and Inchiquin, the greatest part of the problem still remained unsettled. The fiercest fight was that between claimants of different race and of different religion, all of whom inherited a tradition of bitter and irreconcilable hatred. On the one hand there were the native Irish, recommended to the King by that community, at least, in religious feeling, which his residence abroad had instilled into Charles, although there is no real evidence of the oft-repeated story of his having already become a Roman Catholic. Linked to the Royalist cause by a common detestation of Presbyterianism, the Roundheads, and the Cromwellian soldiery, and attracting not unnatural sympathy both from Charles and from Hyde by the oppressive cruelties which they had suffered, and by glaring instances of injustice perpetrated upon them, they could fairly assert their early loyalty, and could allege in excuse for subsequent defections the supreme law of self-preservation. On the other hand, there were the soldiers and Adventurers, fortified by the strong claim of possession; able to cover their former rebellion by the indubitable benefit which they conferred in abstaining from armed resistance to rebellion against Parliamentary rule, and behind whose new-found loyalty there always lurked a veiled threat of a fresh resort to arms which might prove dangerous. The commissioners sent to compose matters found themselves suspected by all whose titles were insecure, and actively opposed by those whom they dispossessed. They were swayed by opposite factions, now to accept doubtful claims, and now to confirm existing settlements upon insufficient evidence of right. The examination of all claims was transferred to England; and Charles for a time seems to have interested himself deeply, and with edifying industry, in attempting to find a solution, and to have shown praiseworthy care in hearing and investigating all complaints. During these hearings the Chancellor must certainly have been an active and interested member of the council, and could not divest himself, much as he may have desired to do so, of participation in the decisions. Necessity drove the King and the Chancellor himself into a course which was often repugnant to them. In grave and well-considered words Hyde lays before us the paramount considerations of supreme expediency which forced the hands both of his master and of himself, and compelled them to accept a settlement which did nothing to redress Irish wrongs, and left, as the baneful alternative to a renewal of civil war, a legacy of bitter racial antagonism.

"It cannot be denied," he writes, "that if the King could have thought it safe and seasonable to have reviewed all that had been done, and taken those advantages upon former miscarriages and misapplications, as according to the strictness of that very law, he might have done, the whole foundation, upon which all the hopes rested of preserving that kingdom within the obedience to the Crown of England must have been shaken and even dissolved, with no small influence and impression upon the peace and quiet of England, itself. For the memory of the beginning of the rebellion in Ireland (how many other rebellions soever had followed as bad, or worse, in respect of the consequences that attended them) was as fresh and as odious to the whole people of England, as it had been in the first year. And though no man durst avow so unchristian a wish as an extirpation of them (which they would have been very well contented with) yet no man dissembled his opinion that it was the only security the English could have in that kingdom, that the Irish should be kept so low, that they should have no power to hurt them." [Footnote: Life, ii. 44.]

These words expressing the deliberate opinion of Hyde, upon a fateful crisis in history, are pregnant with tragedy. The memory of a great wrong never can be obliterated; but dire necessity may leave no alternative but to shape political action on the basis of that legacy from civil strife. England and Scotland had redeemed their rebellion.

"But," thus writes Hyde, "the miserable Irish alone had no part in contributing to his Majesty's happiness; nor had God suffered them to be the least instruments in bringing his good pleasure to pass, or to give any testimony of their repentance for the wickedness they had wrought or of their resolution to be better subjects for the future; so that they seemed as a people left out by Providence, and exempted from any benefit from that blessed conjunction in his Majesty's restitution. And this disadvantage was improved towards them by their frequent manifestation of an inveterate animosity against the English nation and the English Government, which again was returned to them in an irreconcilable jealousy of all the English towards them." [Footnote: Life, ii. 47.]

Some settlement must be reached—that it should be good or bad was of less importance than that it should be fixed. Commissioners were set to work. But either they were too closely interested themselves in the decisions to be reached, or, having no personal interest, they were slack in their attendance. Those on the spot were too apt to be partial; others were sent from England, and their methods were rough and ready. The available land was squandered in lavish grants to courtiers, and amongst others Lady Castlemaine managed to secure an ample share. It was in vain that the Chancellor declined to pass such grants; the recipients found means to get them passed by the Courts in Ireland.

The best that could be made of a bad business was to hurry on some decision, before the means of even partially satisfying the most urgent claims were dissipated by the King's reckless prodigality.

Meanwhile the administration of Ireland, after the transference of Lord Robartes, was entrusted to three Lords Justices—Sir Maurice Eustace, the Irish Chancellor; Lord Broghill (created Lord Orrery); and Sir Charles Coote, created Earl of Montrath. The first was a worn-out old man. The second was a dexterous manager, who knew how to captivate friends and how to outwit enemies; the third was "proud, dull, and very avaricious." Both Orrery and Montrath had their own ends to serve, and were bitter enemies; and when Montrath died, as Hyde expresses it, "they who took the most dispassioned survey of all that had been done, and of what remained to be done, did conclude that nothing could reasonably produce a settlement, but the deputing one single person to exercise that government." The Duke of Albemarle had now reaped all the advantage that he could hope for from his post of titular Lord-Lieutenant. His own estate had been secured, and as an Irish landlord he desired a firm administration. He was not prepared to undertake the task himself, and made his suit to the King that the Duke of Ormonde should be sent in his place. To the mind of the King, this seemed to offer the best prospect of a settlement, and he and Albemarle together persuaded Ormonde to accept the charge before the Chancellor was consulted. To Hyde it seemed a plan fraught with dangers and difficulties on every side. In such a case, he was, as he was himself aware, too much inclined to express his views with somewhat uncourtly directness. When the King asked for his opinion of Ormonde's appointment, he could find no more diplomatic answer than that "the King would do very ill in sending him, and the Duke would do much worse if he desired to go." Charles took the easiest course for one who wishes to push aside unpalatable advice: "the matter was decided, and there was nothing for it but to prepare instructions." Hyde was not to be turned aside; Ormonde, he urged, was needful to the King in London, and would be useless in Ireland. Hyde did not even take the trouble to make his objections palatable to Ormonde. The Duke, he said, had since his return from exile led a life of ease and indulgence, and was now unfit for the laborious task of Irish administration. With still less of courtier-like complaisance, Hyde urged that, however good the appointment might have been "when the Duke was full of reputation, and the King was more feared and reverenced than presumed upon," it was otherwise now when the Duke had withdrawn from business and "let himself fall to familiarities with all degrees of men," and when the King had been exposed to all manner of importunities, had received all men's addresses and made promises without deliberation, had become so desirous to satisfy all men that he was irresolute in all things. He must first fix his own resolutions, and then only could the Lord Lieutenant do him service, or save him from scorn and affronts. [Footnote: Life, ii. 55.]

However sound the advice, Hyde's fashion of expressing it could scarcely be called conciliatory; and even the easy humour of the King must have found it hard to brook such plain speaking from his Minister. It was fortunate, however, that Charles's sense of humour was sufficient to save his vanity from suffering under contradiction, except when his own personal ease was at stake. He might resent reflections on his behaviour to a mistress, but his pride was not wounded by being told that his statecraft was folly; it took at least a long course of such plain- speaking from his trusted Minister before his patience was exhausted. Ormonde, too, received from Hyde advice that was quite as candid.

"He would repent his rash resolution; he would not influence Irish affairs in Dublin as much as he could have done in London; his absence would give his enemies the opportunity of slander that they desired; he and the King suffered from the same infirmity in equal degree—'an unwillingness to deny any man what they could not but see was impossible to grant, and a desire to please everybody, which whosoever affected should please nobody.'"

Hyde's friends, as well as his master, had need to practise an almost stoical imperturbability of temper.

It gives us a key to Hyde's attitude towards Irish affairs that he breaks the chronological order of his narrative to tell the story to the end. It was a subject that vexed and wearied him, and in regard to which he was conscious only of work incompletely done; of business from which he vainly strove to hold aloof, and of a huddled settlement from which his soul revolted. He hurries on to the end of the whole transaction, which at last deprived him of his most trusted ally and his most cherished friend. Ireland stole away from him Ormonde, whose support had done so much to uphold him in the dangerous currents of the Restoration. It was four years and a half after the Restoration that, in the autumn of 1664, Ormonde crossed to Ireland. The clouds were already gathering about the Chancellor's course, and the loss of his closest friend increased the gloom, and brought the threatening dangers nearer.

It was after Ormonde's entry upon the Lieutenancy that the third and final settlement of the Land Commissioners was arrived at. The latest Commissioners had allowed themselves to be swayed powerfully by the Irish interest, and had raised, in the same proportion, the antipathy of the English. Very weariness forced the combatants at length to a compromise. The soldiers and Adventurers consented to abate one-fourth of their claims; with this the most urgent of the Irish claims were appeased, and the baneful unrest was at last ended.

Clarendon closes the sorry story of the Irish settlement by a disclaimer of any share in Irish affairs, further than that which fell to him as a member of the inner Council. Perhaps his influence was greater than he is ready to admit; but Ireland certainly received no larger share of his attention than necessity forced upon him. He is careful to give us a succinct account of the one incident which involved him, almost against his will, in some sort of personal interest in Irish property.

In the early days of the Restoration, when the question as to the disputed settlements was only at its first stage, overtures had been made to Hyde, which it was fancied might earn from him some mercenary favour for those who might be the intermediaries, It was proposed that a special grant of land might be made to him, or that a sale might be effected in his favour on nominal terms, which would make it almost equal to a free gift. It was consistent with all his action in such matters that these overtures met with a peremptory refusal from Hyde. If he was to be of use in effecting a settlement, he must have no title of his own to bias his inclinations. Rather later, but when negotiations were still in their earlier stages, certain sums raised upon Irish land were assigned for the King's use, "to be disposed of to those who had served him faithfully, and suffered in so doing." The grants were passed as a matter of official routine, without the knowledge of the Chancellor. About two years later, Orrery, who was an adept in the art of posing as the chosen instrument of convenient favours, wrote to the Chancellor informing him that certain sums were standing at his credit, and inquiring to whom they should be paid. Hyde had no doubt that a mistake had been committed, and asked Ormonde, as Lord Lieutenant, to inform him what the announcement meant. Orrery wrote again more explicitly, stating that £12,600 had been paid in to his use, and that another sum of the same amount would be received in the course of six months. "To whom," he asked again, "was the money to be paid?"

It was only after this second letter that the Lord Lieutenant's explanation arrived. The notification had its source, so it appeared, from Lord Orrery himself, who had urged upon Ormonde that a portion of the royal grant should be assigned to Hyde. The suggestion commended itself both to Ormonde and the King, and by the special instruction of the King, who knew Hyde's scruples and was resolved to overcome them, the royal signature was given through Hyde's good friend, Secretary Nicholas, and all knowledge of the matter was carefully kept from the intended recipient. Nicholas had now to account for it to Hyde, and he could only plead the strong injunction of secrecy that had been laid upon him by the King. The plot was an instance, it may be, of mistaken and ill-judged kindness; but not the strictest political purist of the day could have arraigned the grant, and it would have been churlish for an old and impoverished servant to have refused so gracious a favour from the King, few of whose lavish grants had so much justification as this. It was granted with delicacy, and was accepted with gratitude, as cementing that bond of loyal affection which long years of faithful service had created.

At this juncture, as it happened, Bulstrode Whitelocke and Lord Lovelace [Footnote: John, Lord Lovelace (1616-1670) was an ardent Royalist, and one of those Peers who signed the Declaration at Oxford on behalf of the King in 1642. Clarendon (Hist. of Rebellion, vii. 174) speaks of him as one "of whose good affections to his service the King had always assurance.">[ were involved in a dispute about some land in Wiltshire which Whitelocke had bought when his own former party was in the ascendant, and when Lovelace was hard pressed for money. The balance had now shifted, and Lovelace, as the price of giving confirmation to Whitelocke's title, was pressing for a sum more adequate to the value than that paid in Whitelocke's day of triumph, when the dominant purchaser could coerce the unwilling seller. It was expedient to end a dispute between two men who were now both in the interest of the King, and Hyde thought that the most convenient way of doing so was that he should become the purchaser of the land, which adjoined his own property in Wiltshire. Relying on the Irish windfall, he consented to do so, and thus became bound for a sum largely in excess of anything he received. Instead of a double payment of £12,600, he never received more than £6000 of the first instalment. Orrery's promises were more lavish than his performances; and the only result of Charles's kindly thought was to involve Hyde in a heavy debt and to give food for baseless suspicions of his venality. Personally, therefore, he had good ground to fear the gifts that came from Ireland. That country remained an unhappy battle-ground of racial and religious feud; its settlement had galled him by its many features of injustice; he saw its resources crippled by lavish grants to a host of unworthy recipients which he was powerless to prevent, and it had robbed him of that support which he might have had from his most faithful friend, the Duke of Ormonde. It is no wonder that he turns in disgust from the review of Irish affairs which had in it so little that could satisfy his conscience or his sense of political wisdom.

CHAPTER XIX

MARRIAGE TREATY AND RELIGIOUS SETTLEMENT

The two preceding chapters have anticipated the strict order of time in regard to Scotland and Ireland, where Clarendon's action was only incidental to his position as English Minister. We have now to turn back to the months that intervened between December, 1660, when the Convention Parliament was dissolved, and May, 1661, when the more legally constituted Parliament met for the first time. In the interval some events had occurred which stimulated the flow of the Royalist tide in the nation, and helped to imbue the general loyalty with something of arrogant intolerance; but other incidents had weakened the position by giving new stimulus to Court intrigues, and by quickening the animosity of rival factions. Clarendon found the tide occasionally too strong to control, and his difficulties encouraged those who were jealous of his power.

In January, London had been startled by the outbreak of a fanatical insurrection, which gives sufficient proof of the strangely hysterical state into which the nation had been driven by a series of bewilderingly rapid transformations, political and religious. It was the natural result of the sudden suppression of the strange freaks of religious fancy which were symptomatic of the age, and alike in its origin and in its consequences, it showed how prone public opinion was to perturbation. Its leader, one Venner, a vintner of good credit in the City, evidently believed himself inspired by Divine revelation. His motto was "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon," and he called on all "to take arms to assist the Lord Jesus Christ." The outbreak was nothing but a frenzied burst of religious mania; but its effect showed how dangerous was the state of the nation of which this was a symptom. All London was thrown into wild alarm. Only those of strong nerves could make a stand against what was, with ludicrous exaggeration, represented to be a popular movement on a vast scale. The Lord Mayor won mighty renown for having the courage to summon a great body of adherents, and advance personally against the rioters, who were said to be murdering all whom they met. Wild rumours flew from the City to Whitehall; the guards were called out; Whitehall was put in a state of defence; and poor Pepys, whose combats were generally confined to the chastisement of page-boys and kitchen-wenches, found himself—"with no courage at all, but that I might not seem to be afraid"—obliged to carry with him sword and pistol, and make his way to the Exchange, to learn the extent of the rising, which was scarcely so terrible as had been reported. Pepys returned safely to his home, and that no worse result arose from his unwonted and warlike venturesomeness was no doubt due to the fact that he had been wise enough to put no powder in his pistols.

After all the alarm, the Lord Mayor found only thirty men to oppose the loyal bands whom he had summoned to his aid. But these thirty fought valiantly and desperately enough, and every man of them was either slain, or captured and reserved for speedy punishment. The little knot of fiery zealots did their best to make up in their fanatical enthusiasm what they lacked in numbers, and that the rising shook the confidence of the Government and quickened the pulse of timid loyalty throughout the country, only showed how sensitive were the nerves of the sorely galled nation. None knew better than Hyde that there was much amiss in the temper of the people, and that quiet and settlement were essential to soothe this epidemic hysteria. Meantime—so intense had been the alarm—the disbanding of the King's Guards was countermanded, and Monk's regiment of Coldstreams was retained. It is curious to reflect that the occasion for the formation of the nucleus of the British standing army was the brief outbreak of a handful of frenzied men, stirred to momentary madness by a religious fanatic, and ready to go to death for the avenging of the saints. Already the seeming unanimity of loyalty was gone; those who were Royalists at heart found that they had still enemies to meet; and it was proved that the new Government could in no wise relax the vigilance of their defence of order, or presume upon the support of an undivided nation.

Before the new Parliament met in May, the Coronation of the King took place, on April 23rd, with all the splendour that copious expense could achieve in an age saturated with a love of florid display, and with what was doubtless a careful and politic anxiety to revive in their most authentic form all the ancient observances and ceremonies which had in the past attended the rite. Already the most prominent adherents of the King had been advanced in the peerage, and on the day before the Coronation ceremonies six Earls—amongst whom Clarendon was one—were invested with their new dignity with the ancient and stately ceremonial so long in abeyance. But even amid the rejoicings of the Coronation new seeds of dissension were laid in a soil only too fertile for their propagation. The Duke of York was deemed, by those who held to older fashions, to have assumed too much of that precedence which was accorded to Monsieur the brother of the King in the Court of France, but which had no warrant in the usages of England; and the fact that he was allowed to appropriate a place in the procession for his own "Master of the Horse," and that the holder of the honoured place was a youthful member of the upstart family of the Jermyns, was enough to stir up much heartburning amongst the older Royalist nobility, and to engage the attention and compel the anxiety even of Clarendon himself. The Chancellor had to steer his course amidst a very hotbed of popular excitement, and of Court factions and intrigues, but thinly covered by a veneer of seemingly whole-hearted loyalty.

Before Parliament met, another project had been fully discussed and practically settled. This was the marriage of the King with the Portuguese Princess, Catherine of Braganza. It was an alliance which involved many dangers, and what were, at the best, but doubtful advantages. Clarendon had, at a later date, to bear the blame of an arrangement which brought no satisfaction either to the King or to the nation, and which eventually did much to check the tide of loyalty. But he is careful to tell us that the inception of the scheme did not come from him; that the first suggestion was not even made to him, and that he interfered in it no further than his relations to the King imperatively demanded. But he adds that had it been otherwise, he would have felt no reason to disavow, or be ashamed of, his action in promoting the marriage of the King to any suitable consort.

Such a project had, indeed, much to commend it, had Fate been kinder, and had not the position of European affairs been so tangled. Clarendon had long urged the propriety of the King's marriage. It was all the more his duty to do so now, when any delay in the matter might seem to promise the eventual succession to the Crown of the children of his own daughter, the Duchess of York. Clarendon had no ambition for such elevation, and he knew well how any suspicion of such a scheme would expose him to the accusations of his enemies. He would best have liked that the King should choose a Protestant consort, but the only one who could be suggested was the daughter of the Dowager Princess of Orange, and to that match Charles was invincibly opposed. The Portuguese alliance offered certain advantages. It promised a counterpoise to the power of Spain (and, as such, it would unquestionably secure the friendliness of France), and thus seemed to offer help in maintaining a safe position in foreign relations, and preventing the probability of foreign war. For the stable settlement of affairs at home, no condition was more absolutely essential than the maintenance of peace abroad; and for this, if for no other reason, Clarendon was passionately determined to avoid any foreign complications. If an alliance with a Catholic Princess were necessary, none could apparently involve less danger than one which brought about a Portuguese rather than a Spanish connection.

Clarendon had no mind to cultivate an alliance with Spain, which must be purchased by such concessions as would have inflicted grave injury on England. The Spanish Ambassador, Batteville, had, at his very first audience, pressed for the surrender of Jamaica, which had been taken from Spain by the King's rebellious subjects. He claimed also that Dunkirk and Mardyke, which had been handed over to Cromwell in virtue of his treaty with France, should be restored to their rightful sovereign. These demands he made, seemingly as matters of form. They were points which need not be pressed, if England were prepared to make a treaty which would be advantageous to Spain, and if Portugal received no encouragement from England. If Clarendon disliked the Spanish alliance he disliked quite as much the methods of Court intrigue by which it was pressed. Batteville was astute enough to take a correct measure of English courtiers. He conformed himself to the slipshod methods and the rollicking humour of Charles and his circle. He insinuated himself into the intimacy of the King's boon companions: availed himself of the easy access to the King, which Charles's nonchalance permitted, and knew how to suggest what might be useful to him as a diplomat, in the careless intercourse of the table, and amidst the jests of a carouse at Court. Bristol did his best to aid the Spanish diplomat. Charles's facile temper made him forget Bristol's double-dealing, and Bristol, having regained some of his favour, "had an excellent talent in spreading that gold-leaf very thin, that it might look much more than it was." [Footnote: Life, i. 505.] A whisper in the King's ear might do much to foster Spanish designs, and with them Bristol's influence. Clarendon knew well the dangers that success in that direction might involve.

Nor were solid attractions wanting in the Portuguese alliance. For national prosperity, there was no greater essential than an encouragement to commerce, in an age when commerce throughout Western Europe was making immense advances, in which England had already earned, and must secure, her share. If this country were to balance the growing naval power of the Dutch, and their increasing mercantile marine, she must strengthen her hold upon the ever extending trade in the Eastern and Western seas. Holland must always be more of a rival than an ally; and Spain was a power with which no permanent or favourable alliance was probable or desirable, except in so far as it might be a balance against the power of France. Portugal commanded a wider range of colonial trade, both in the East Indies and in Brazil, and it presently appeared, when definite proposals were laid before the King and his Ministers by the Portuguese Ambassador, that she was prepared to pay highly for the privilege of an English alliance. A dowry of £500,000 was promised with the Portuguese Princess— no ineffective bait for one whose coffers were so ill-supplied as those of Charles. The port of Tangier, which could easily be made into an effective harbour and seemed likely to offer a command of the Mediterranean trade, was to be placed in the hands of England. Bombay was to be granted to her in the East Indies; and perhaps most important of all—the privilege of free trade to the Portuguese colonies in Brazil and the East Indies was to be accorded to her. An abundant return was thus to be reaped both by the Crown and by the nation, at once in an enhancement of naval supremacy and in an extension of commercial opportunities. It was only necessary to guard against the danger lest a Portuguese alliance might involve England in a war with Spain,

Charles was attracted by the offers, and all the more so when he received from Montague—now Earl of Sandwich—a favourable account of the value of Tangier. Portugal had given more generous aid to the Royalist cause in its extremity than either Prance or Spain, and it had incurred the vengeance of Cromwell by giving shelter in the Tagus to Prince Rupert's fleet when it was hard pressed by Cromwell's ships. Such an alliance seemed not unlikely to be well received by the nation.

Clarendon encouraged, rather than checked, the proposal, and this is all that can be said of his attitude. But after the preliminary steps had been taken, and engagements had already proceeded far with Portugal, he found that the whole project was threatened by a secret intrigue. Again that restless and versatile contriver, Bristol, had set himself to overturn the scheme. It is hard to decide what were his motives. In spite of his adoption of Roman Catholicism, Bristol's religious convictions were hardly of a kind to dominate his policy; but he had linked his lot with that of the Catholics—he may perhaps have already suspected Charles's inclination to their faith—and he may well have thought that a Spanish alliance would confirm the influence which he hoped thus to acquire. It may be that he was angry only because he had not been taken into confidence at an earlier stage in the affair; such a motive is not to be set aside in the case of one in whose character personal vanity predominated so largely, and who could so little estimate the general tendency of national feeling. Be that as it may, Clarendon found that Bristol's influence was countermining the scheme, and that the King had been so far gained over as to contemplate the breach of an engagement to which his honour was already pledged, and which would have inflicted a galling wound on the pride of his expected allies. Already, it appeared, tempting offers had been conveyed to Charles of marriage with one or other of two Italian Princesses, whose dowry would be provided by the Spanish Court, and the choice of one of whom would have had its value enhanced by a close alliance with Spain. Even with one of more controlled temperament than Charles possessed, the element of personal qualifications might not unreasonably tell for a good deal in the selection of a wife. Bristol was commissioned to visit and report upon the ladies proposed for Charles's hand, and made no secret of the reason of his voyage to Italy. The Spanish ambassador spoke openly in disparagement of the person and the attractions of Catherine, and boasted that he had effectually stopped the presumption of the upstart Court of Braganza in attempting to bolster up its rebellion against the Spanish Crown by an English alliance.

Clarendon took his usual method in dealing with such a mixture of intrigue and arrogance. To the somewhat nauseous personal details which were furnished in disparagement of the Portuguese Princess, he perhaps, as politician, gave but scant attention. He permitted Bristol to depart on his extraordinary mission, and addressed himself to the King with his customary plainness of speech. He exposed to him the braggart boasts of Bristol, whose vanity had not permitted him to keep even a secret of his own contriving. He desired him to remember the extent of his own engagement to Portugal, and how far his honour was involved. If arguments were to be found for withdrawing from the project, it would be well to consult on these with his Council. The choice of a consort was perhaps a matter somewhat too delicate for discussion at a Council Board. But Clarendon might, at least, suggest that the King of England could hardly with dignity submit his marriage to the judgment of the Court of Spain.

The Chancellor knew his master well. It was by appeals to his vanity and to his love of ease that Charles could best be moved. The plain reproaches of his Minister were irksome, and in the long run became unbearable to him, but they impressed his pliable spirit. He minimized the extent of the charge given to Bristol, and then consented to his recall. He found, or fancied that he found, that the portrait of Catherine belied the unflattering accounts he had deceived. His temper was irritated by the impudent threats of the Spanish ambassador, who was imperiously commanded to quit the Kingdom, Above all, the Ministers of France took steps to prevent that triumph to Spain which would have accrued from a breach of the alliance. La Bastide was sent with full credentials to deal personally with the Chancellor. The French King, he told him, was friendly to Portugal, although for the present his alliance with Spain prevented any overt assistance to the Braganza family. But he was ready to help the King of England with financial aid, if Charles should himself, by private understanding, undertake such assistance. Meanwhile he thought that the King "could not bestow himself better in marriage than with the Infanta of Portugal." Further, hints were given that an understanding might be reached between the Crowns as to their relations to the States of Holland, and as to the steps to be taken against the dangers which the Dutch naval power threatened to both.

The matter proceeded no further than an interchange of friendly proposals; but there was one incident connected with it, of which Clarendon has given us a full account. Before the negotiations closed, La Bastide took the opportunity of a confidential interview with the Chancellor to broach to him a proposal which, to one of Hyde's character, was nothing but an insult. He was commissioned, La Bastide said, by Fouquet, the Finance Minister of France, to express his deep respect for Clarendon, and his sense of the trust and power he now enjoyed. But he understood how easily the Chancellor might, under present circumstances, be hard put to it to maintain his high position from scantiness of means, and he had therefore sent him a present, small indeed, but only as an earnest of as much, or more, to be paid him every year. He would have need of it to secure, by becoming generosity, the means of meeting the secret machinations of his enemies at Court. La Bastide concluded by showing him bills for £10,000, payable at sight.

However much such a proposal was in accordance with the political morality of the day, Clarendon did not hesitate to show his indignation, and his disgust that it should have been made to him. "If this correspondence must lead him to such a reproach," he said, "he would unwillingly enter upon it." La Bastide must let Monsieur Fouquet know "that the Chancellor of England could receive wages only from his own master. "Such an excess of scrupulosity could only appear, to one trained in the school to which La Bastide was accustomed, as merely assumed. He still pressed the absolute secrecy of the gift, until Clarendon broke off the interview in stern anger.

The sequel was what we might expect. The King and the Duke of York came to Clarendon before the angry fit was gone, and heard the story told with Hyde's usual plainness of indignant speech. "They both laughed at him, saying 'that the French did all their business that way;' and the King told him 'he was a fool,' implying 'that he should take his money.'" The Chancellor vainly sought to impress upon the King something of his own feeling of pride, and besought him "not to appear to his servants so unconcerned in things of that nature." Either the French King would believe that he took the money without his master's knowledge, and so look on him as a treacherous knave; or "that he received it with his Majesty's approbation, which must needs lessen his esteem of him, that he should permit his servants of the nearest trust to grow rich at the charge of another prince, who might the next day become his enemy." [Footnote: Life, i. 523.] The King could only smilingly reply "that few men were so scrupulous." There is something almost comical in the effort on the part of Clarendon to press upon the King that self-respect, which he had long since cast aside, and the place of which was supplied by a mask of cynicism. It was quite true that scruples such as those of Hyde were rare in his day, and formed no part of the usages of the Court of France. But Clarendon did not know that it would soon be unnecessary to go to France for an example of shameless venality. The time was not far distant when Charles, having got rid of his irksome Mentor, was himself to fill his own coffers by accepting a bribe more infamous than that which he vainly tried to persuade his prouder servant not to reject with scorn and contempt.

For good or ill, the project of the Portuguese alliance weathered the storm of intrigue directed against it at home and abroad. Without being its proposer, or the chief guide in the negotiations, Hyde did not refuse a joint responsibility for its arrangement. We shall afterwards see how little it realized his hopes; in what sordid wrangles it involved him; how unpopular it became; and how much it contributed to deepen the degradation of Charles's Court. But for the time the prospect seemed promising enough.

The fact of the Princess's religion was, no doubt, a stumbling-block which might well have caused greater anxiety to Clarendon, and which might have fretted the prejudices of the English people. But here, as on many other occasions, he seems to have forced himself, against what to a later day must seem fairly strong evidence, to discredit any idea that action on the part of Charles might be prompted by an inclination to the Church of Rome. To that Church Clarendon was as invincibly opposed as was his first master, Charles the First. He knew the earnestness of the injunctions laid on his son, by that master whose memory he so deeply revered. It is impossible to believe that doubts and anxieties were not repeatedly roused in Clarendon's mind with regard to the relations of the present King to that Church. But he seems sternly to have fought against and repressed any such suspicions. Apparently, the realization of these suspicions would have ruined his faith in the honesty and good feeling of his master, and with almost exaggerated energy he repudiates any such belief. If he suspected any danger of the kind from the Portuguese alliance, he put it firmly aside. And it is certain that whatever ill accrued from that marriage, it was not from that cause. Catherine of Braganza remained throughout a negligible quantity in English politics. Neither at Court, nor with any section of society, did she exercise any appreciable influence, either in promoting or retarding the acceptance in her adopted country of the tenets of her Church. Whatever the closeness of the King's relations to that Church, and whatever his determination to strain his prerogative in its favour, neither was influenced in the smallest degree by the religion of his wife. It is true that at a later day, the religion of the Queen, and the presence at Court of her Catholic attendants, enhanced the fury of an unthinking storm of anti-Catholic feeling. But it was only a small aggravation of an irrational outburst of religious prejudice.

The marriage treaty was arranged in time to be notified to Parliament when it met in May, 1661, and from that time the negotiations proceeded with all the customary diplomatic deliberation. The announcement was received with the same loyal acceptance as the other proposals of the Government, in an assembly much more markedly Royalist in feeling than even the Convention Parliament, which had carried out the first steps in the Restoration settlement. Its zeal might even have been deemed embarrassing, and Clarendon was chiefly urgent that a permanent settlement should be provided for, by confirming the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion, before the Royalists devised new means of reaping fresh spoils of conquest. Another Act which he pressed forward was that bringing back the bishops to the House of Lords. It was, to his mind, a guarantee for the restoration of the Church, which it had been the central aim of his late master, as it was his own, to accomplish. Whatever compromise might be made as to ceremonies and articles, Clarendon could not admit that his debt to the Church had been paid until she had been re-established in her rightful position in the State. The memory of those bitter days, when what he recognized as the good work of the Long Parliament had been rudely marred by the subsequent excesses of the zealots, and when the constitution had been overturned by violence which posed as legislation, was too vividly impressed upon his mind to suffer him to rest until the prelates of the Church were placed on their former level with the temporal peers.

Here, again, he met with fractious opposition from Bristol. It is difficult to find a consistent clue to all the windings of policy devised by that mercurial brain, and to guess at the objects which inspired him. The Bill was easily passed by the House of Commons, where some opposition might have been expected. In the House of Lords its passage was less easy. Those peers, who had in the old days assented to the exclusion, were only too ready to have their former vote forgotten, and raised no voice against the Bill. It was Bristol who, to secure the support of the Catholics, put himself forward as its opponent, and contrived to impress the King with the conviction that the restoration of the bishops to the House of Lords would render impossible any Bill for modifying the penal laws against the Roman Catholics. The progress of the Bill was slow, and it was only on inquiring into the cause of this, that Clarendon found that Bristol had succeeded in conveying the idea that the King did not wish it to pass. With his usual blunt directness Clarendon asked the King for an explanation, and then heard of Bristol's machinations. His reply was prompt. He regretted that the King had been prevailed upon to obstruct a Bill on which he knew his Majesty's heart was so much set. If the reason for such obstruction were known, it would be fatal to all Roman Catholic hopes, "to which his Majesty knew that Hyde was no enemy." These last words were an intimation, as plain as could be given, that Hyde might easily be converted into an enemy to their hopes, Charles took his lesson submissively, and orders were given that the Bill should pass. Bristol attempted to bluster, and threatened "that if the Bill were passed that day he would speak against it," "To which," adds Hyde, "the Chancellor gave him an answer that did not please him; and the Bill was passed that day." Clarendon's methods could compel the consent of the King, and could silence the arrogance or the persistency of fractious opponents. They were scarcely fitted to conciliate either.

[Illustration: GEORGE DIGBY, SECOND EARL OF BRISTOL. (From the original by Sir Anthony Vandyke, in the collection of Earl Spencer.)]

Parliament had been compliant, and had passed at least two Acts which Clarendon deemed imperatively urgent. It was prorogued, after a short session, on July 30th, to meet again on November 20th. There remained still to be dealt with what were perhaps the most difficult problems of all, the questions of compromise as to the ceremonies and the doctrines of the Church, of the relation between the Nonconformists and the orthodox Churchmen, and of the degree of toleration that might be allowed to divergent forms of belief. These were three absolutely distinct branches of the religious controversy, and to confuse them leads only to prejudice and error. Clarendon had seen enough of the temper of the Parliament to perceive that time was necessary to ripen these questions for a settlement, and that the process would go on more smoothly during a recess than in the heated atmosphere of Parliamentary discussion. The discussions at the Savoy, the negotiations between the leading Nonconformists and the bishops, and the formulating of proposals on either side, had represented one phase of the discussions, and had led to little result. The matter was now one in which the Crown and its advisers must initiate a policy, and do their best to smooth its passage during the next session of Parliament. It could not be indefinitely delayed. Laxity, if too long tolerated, from however good a motive, quickly passes into anarchy.

In this matter it was inevitable that the leading part in framing a policy should fall to Clarendon. Of the old friends who would have been his chief advisers and guides in this work, many had passed away. But amongst the bishops three especially remained who were associated with old memories, and linked to him by mutual sympathy and respect. These were Brian Duppa, the former tutor of Charles II., lately Bishop of Salisbury, and now of Winchester; George Morley, now Bishop of Worcester, and soon after, successor of Duppa at Winchester; and Gilbert Sheldon, at first Bishop of London, and subsequently Archbishop of Canterbury on the death of Juxon, in 1663. Juxon's claims to the Primacy were pre-eminent; he had appeared with the Martyr-King in that memorable scene on the scaffold at Whitehall, and none other than he could fill the Archiepiscopal chair, which had been vacant since Laud had preceded his master in his death upon Tower Hill. But Juxon's tenure of the office was little more than nominal, and, even during his lifetime, Sheldon was the foremost representative of the Church.

Duppa, the Bishop of Winchester, had been the man closest in the confidence of Laud, and had been the chief agent in carrying out his reforms in the University of Oxford. This must of itself have been sufficient to earn for him the warm sympathy of Clarendon, and his subsequent career had confirmed those early ties. To Clarendon, he was not only the trusted friend of his early patron, Laud, but the man to whom his royal master had committed, in solemn words, the religious education of his son; and that duty Duppa had carried out with an unswerving devotion, with however small success. His own personal character, the gentleness of his temper, and his saintly life, had strengthened the respect which was felt for him by all loyal Churchmen, and during the short time that he survived the Restoration, he had a deserved influence on the counsels that directed the policy of the Church.

George Morley was another of the old fraternity that had gathered at Great Tew, under the hospitable roof, and in the genial company, of Hyde's early and most cherished friend, Lord Falkland. Morley's scholarship, his social gifts, his ready wit, and his unfailing tact, had secured for him a prominent place amongst that goodly fellowship. He followed a line of his own in Church politics, and in early days was not pliable enough always to win the approval and the confidence of Laud. His reply, when bored by an inconvenient questioner as to what the Arminians "held,"—"that they held all the best preferments in England,"—was pointed enough to spread quickly, and the sarcasm it implied was not agreeable to Laud. But Morley was none the less a loyal son of the Church, and gave abundant evidence of his loyalty to the good cause. He had been one of the Chaplains of Charles I., remained with him throughout the days of trouble and danger to the end, and had been an exile from his master's death to the Restoration. In Morley, Clarendon could place the trust due to an old friend, a loyal Churchman, and a man of fearless character, and of ripe judgment. Against his uprightness of life no insinuation could be made.

Gilbert Sheldon was a man of a different type from either of these two. While a stout defender of the rights of the Church, he, like Morley, had not always seen eye to eye with Laud. But he and Hyde were in closest sympathy. They had lived together at All Souls when Hyde was present at Oxford during the Civil War, and when the burden of directing the affairs of the King had rested chiefly upon him. Sheldon, in later days, had manfully resisted the encroachments of the Parliamentary Commissioners on the University, and upon All Souls, of which he was Warden; and it was only by military violence that he was expelled from his charge, under the order of these Commissioners. He had then retired to the country, and continued during the Commonwealth to lead a quiet life, in which he spent his time and his own resources in assisting the loyal adherents of the King. Just before the Restoration, the Warden appointed by the Protector had died; and Sheldon was quietly restored to his former post, at the moment when the political world was occupied with the still doubtful struggle between the contending factions. A few months later he was called to play a leading part, as Bishop of London, in the critical negotiations for the settlement of the Church. Sheldon was a new type of the ecclesiastical statesman.

He had thrown off the habits of the student for those of the administrator, and one may add, of the politician. Sound and sincere Churchman as he was, his religion was that of the man of the world, suspicious of fanaticism, more earnest in inculcating an upright life than in a show of enthusiastic fervour, regular in his religious duties, but preferring a religion which displayed itself in the cheerful activity of a regular life, rather than in any overstrained attention to devotional routine. It was only natural that his enemies should charge him with being worldly-minded, and should insinuate that with him religion was only an instrument of government, and an element in policy. It need not lessen our respect for him that his religious faith showed itself more in lavish charity, and in a cheerful energy, than in the strict pursuit of the conventional routine of religious exercises. He could be a stern moralist when necessary, and he did not scruple to rebuke the King for his licentious life, and even, as Swift tells us, refused to him the Sacrament on that account. If such a man attracts to himself little of a halo of sanctity, he perhaps compensates for this by the manliness of an upright life and conduct. [Footnote: We need give no attention to the scandalous and baseless gossip as to Sheldon's licentiousness which Pepys gathered from the irresponsible tittle-tattle of the coffee-house, and entrusts to the confidential pages of a diary which was never intended for publication. If we enjoy and profit by the vivid pictures of the day which his memoirs give us, we ought at the same time to feel ourselves bound to discredit the occasional thoughtless gossip about characters which stand too unassailable to be smudged by the mischievous sallies of Pepys's pen.] In his balanced judgment, in his unswerving honesty, and in his absolute uprightness of purpose, Hyde found just that help which was most useful at this juncture; and that both he and Sheldon suffered from some testiness of temper was no hindrance to their friendship.

When Parliament resumed in November, 1661, its first business was to pass certain acts for restoring the power of the Crown. The Solemn League and Covenant was pronounced illegal, and the Acts erecting the High Court of Justice for the trial of the King, and for establishing the Commonwealth, were contumeliously annulled. The power of Militia was declared to rest solely in the King, and it was enacted that no legislative power resided in Parliament without the King. These and like Acts were passed without discussion, and amounted to little more than expressions of the dominant loyalist feeling. The first step in restoring the power of the Church was the Corporation Act, which enacted that every corporation official should take an oath against the Covenant, and against the traitorous doctrine that arms might, by the King's authority, be levied against his person, and imposing upon every such official to be elected in future the obligation to take the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. The supremacy of the Church was vindicated. Whether wise or not as a platform on which English politics should rest—and as to this doubts are no doubt permissible—this Test Act was the expression of the convinced resolution of the nation at the time. The more difficult question remained for decision: how should the basis of the Church be arranged, and to what extent was it to be made more comprehensive?

Since the end of the Savoy Conference, the strife between the adherents of the Church and the Nonconformists had been growing in intensity. Both sides were exasperated by the uncertainty, and both were furious against what they believed to be the exaggerated claims of their opponents. The King's pliant humour had permitted to the various Dissenters an easy access to his person, and he was only too prone to give rise to expectations which were bound to be disappointed, and to unwary boasts on the part of the Nonconformists, which stimulated the Churchmen to an unyielding temper. The Bishops had been engaged during the vacation in revising the Book of Common Prayer, and sharp division of opinion had arisen amongst them—a division in regard to which Clarendon held strong views. Ought an attempt to be made to meet the views of the Nonconformists by modification of the Liturgy—or was it best to put a peremptory stop to agitation and discussion by restoring the ritual and the usages of the Church unchanged, so that the historic weight of continuity should be added to the authority of the law?

"Some of the bishops," says Clarendon, "who had greatest experience, and were in truth wise men," adhered to the latter view." Others, equally grave, of great learning and unblemished reputation, "pressed for alterations and additions. [Footnote: Life, ii. 119.] He desired to hold the balance even between these opposite opinions. But his own judgment was decided.

"The truth is," he adds, "that what show of reason so ever and appearance of charity the latter opinion seemed to carry with it, the former advice was the more prudent, and would have prevented many inconveniences which ensued." "It is," he proceeds, "an unhappy policy, and always unhappily applied, to imagine that that classes of men can be recovered and reconciled by partial concessions, or granting less than they demand. And if all were granted they would have more to ask. Their faction is their religion; nor are those combinations ever entered into upon real and substantial motives of conscience, how erroneous so ever, but consist of many glutinous materials, of will, and humour, and folly, and knavery, and malice, and ambition, which make men cling inseparably together till they have satisfaction in all their pretences, or till they are absolutely broken and subdued, which may always be more easily done than the other." [Footnote: Ibid., p. 121.]

Clarendon recognized, as clearly as did Swift a generation later, that dissent was the essential motive of dissenters, and that all concessions would be with them but an incitement to new divergences. He remembered the case of the Scottish liturgy, in which changes were introduced in order to meet the desire for a distinctive liturgy, and were afterwards resented as departures from the established order, which might otherwise have been peaceably accepted. Changes were now sought only that they might be the starting-point for further change. Meanwhile the Nonconformists inveighed with new bitterness against the old liturgy, and their angry invective provoked the House of Commons to greater impatience at the delay in its restoration. Clarendon recognized the old and ever-present fact that it was easier to preserve an old form, with all its possible defects, than to devise a new one with the view of reconciling irreconcilable divergences. He had to remember also that besides the Presbyterians there was the strong phalanx of the Independents, who would rather see episcopacy flourish than that the Presbyterians should govern.

Clarendon was not unwilling that a calm and rational spirit of concession should prevail, and that non-essential usages should be modified to meet conscientious scruples. In the abstract this ought to have been possible; but as things stood it was a hopeless ideal. He had to take account of the angry exasperation of temper that prevailed; and for the general weal he felt that some settlement, however peremptory, was essential. However unwillingly, he was compelled to decide for the drastic exercise of authority which might, once for all, compose the strife and produce a settlement. Expedition was of the first importance in the business.

It was in this spirit that the speech of the King to Parliament was framed. He had hoped, said the King, that the composing of differences in regard to non-essentials might have already been obtained. He was grieved at the delay. The Book of Common Prayer was now to be presented to him by Convocation. It would thereafter be laid before the House of Lords; and upon that foundation he trusted that an Act of Uniformity might be based.

As approved by Convocation, with certain alterations which rather strengthened than diminished the force of the ecclesiastical authority, the Book of Common Prayer was presented to the House of Lords. The Earl of Northumberland, whose Presbyterian leanings were pronounced, suggested that no change whatever should be made, and that the Act of Uniformity of Elizabeth's reign should once more be the authority for its observance. But the time for that was too late. Convocation had already done its work, and that work could not be disregarded. The legal authority had given its pronouncement; it remained only to say how that pronouncement should be enforced. In this spirit the House of Lords entered upon the discussion of the Bill of Uniformity.

The first question of importance was the imposition of episcopal ordination as a necessary condition of the tenure of any ecclesiastical office. That was decided in the affirmative; and the requisition of assent as well as consent to all contained in the Book of Common Prayer was carried against the resistance of those who, on behalf of the Nonconformists, argued that "assent" implied a more complete approbation than mere "consent." When the Bill had passed the House of Lords and was sent to the Commons, it soon appeared that the Church party there was determined to increase its severity. "Every man," says Clarendon, "according to his passion, thought of adding something to it that might make it more grievous to somebody whom he did not love." However earnest was Clarendon's loyalty to the Church, these words give evidence enough of the vexation of the Statesman at the unmeasured bitterness of ecclesiastical partizanship.

A new and rigid subscription, abjuring the lawfulness of resistance and the Solemn League and Covenant, was imposed upon every holder of a benefice, or of an office in a University. This created bitter opposition when the Bill was sent back to the Lords, and the discussion mainly turned upon the express repudiation of the Covenant, to which many laymen had already sworn. These, while they consented to its being laid aside for the future, were by no means ready to repudiate all the principles which it embodied. The Covenant still represented the charter of Presbyterianism, and to inflict a needless insult upon tenets conscientiously held by many who had given powerful aid towards the King's restoration, seemed a needless perpetuation of bitter memories. But the Lords could not refuse their assent, and this new instrument of exclusion was added to the Bill substantially in the form desired by the ultra-Royalists of the House of Commons.

In this form the Bill received the royal assent on the day when Parliament was adjourned, May 19th. No long delay was to occur before the axe of authority fell, and the penalty of any divergence from the uniform discipline of the Church was to take effect forthwith. On August 24th, St. Bartholomew's Day—of evil omen—all incumbents who declined to accept and conform to the whole contents of the Book of Common Prayer were, ipso facto, with no further legal process, to be deprived of their benefices, and the patrons were to present others in their place.

Clarendon was too sober in his judgment, and had too much of the statesman in his composition, to welcome the rigid terms which the triumphant Churchmen were determined to exact. He was not one of those who thought a victory was confirmed by an arrogant disregard of the claims of the vanquished. Had he been able to shape the terms of the Act according to his own ideas of policy and prudence, he would undoubtedly have imposed checks upon the ambition of the fiery spirits of his party. But we must remember his position and his sympathies. The double object of all his long struggles had been to establish in all its dignity the constitutional monarchy, and to restore the Church to its rights and privileges. It was not for him to fight too hard against the full assertion of these rights. We must remember, too, that his own inclination towards moderation came from policy and prudence, and not from any sympathy with the vanquished, or any conviction that the measure meted out to them was in any whit more severe than that which they had exacted in their day of triumph, and would readily have reinforced were it again in their power to do so. Above all, Clarendon saw that in the hard task which lay before him in re- establishing a settled Government, the first essential was the ending of weary struggles, and the settling of doubtful contentions. Any settlement was better than perpetual controversy. It was a smaller matter to adjust the balance according to an ideal of just and politic moderation, than to comply with the imperious maxim, "that it is for the advantage of the State that there be an end of litigation."

That there should be an outburst of anger from those who believed themselves to be martyrs was only to be expected. The Declaration of Breda, it was said, had been flagrantly violated. The answer was perfectly easy. The King had referred the religious settlement to Parliament, and had promised that meanwhile there should be no interference with liberty of conscience. It is noteworthy that Clarendon rests the case upon this plea—that the Crown must act subject to a Parliamentary decision. So far as it goes it is an adequate defence. But there remains the far stronger argument that liberty of conscience was a very different thing from a pledge that those who refused to accept the principles of the Church should have a right to hold her benefices and dictate her policy. That would have meant, not toleration of, but surrender to, the divergent forces.

But the outburst of anger on the part of a defeated faction had serious effects on the action of Charles II. Now, as often before, his Chancellor had to lament that "he was too irresolute, and apt to be shaken in those counsels which, with the greatest deliberation, he had concluded." Concessions might be right or wrong; but once a policy was decided, concessions wrung from the weakness of a vacillating and indolent nature were fatal. Anything that love of ease did not accomplish, the flattery of the defeated Nonconformists achieved. The King was their only hope; in his mercy they looked for a recompense for that loyalty which was none the less sincere because they shrank from straining their consciences by compliance with minute points of order and of discipline. At least, let three months pass before the blow fell that was to strip them of their livelihood and separate them from their flocks. Such an act of mercy would vindicate the royal prerogative. Whether the King "thought it would do them no good," in other words, that he was giving a worthless concession, or that he thought the delay "no prejudice to the Church," or, as was more likely, that it would rid him of painful importunity, the desired promise was given. That it proceeded from any inclination to the Roman Catholic faith, and any hope that, by its means, easier terms might be obtained for that faith, was a supposition that Clarendon would have deemed derogatory to the King's honesty. Clarendon would gladly have seen terms more merciful granted by the Act of Uniformity. But once the Bill was passed he saw how fatal vacillation was, and would fain have persuaded his master against it. But the promise had been given; and once again he had to remind that master that it was for his honour that a promise given should be redeemed. Such a position was no unusual experience to any one who served Charles II. "It was no new thing to the Chancellor to be reproached for opposing the resolving to do such or such a thing, and then to be reproached again for pursuing the resolution."

A new conference was hastily summoned at Hampton Court. Archbishop Juxon, Sheldon and Duppa were to represent the Church, while the Chancellor, Monk, and Ormonde, with the Secretaries Nicholas and Morrice, were there as lay politicians, and the Chief Justice Bridgeman, with the Attorney General, were to advise as to the law. The Bishops did not conceal their vexation, and resolutely demanded "to be excused for not conniving at any breach of the law." Clarendon attempted to maintain the pledge given by the King, as but a small matter, which could not harm the Church. But the opinion of the lawyers was clear and decided. The King had no power to suspend the law, nor to interfere with the rights of patrons. Once more that vacillating temper yielded. The poor fragment of the royal honour which Clarendon would fain have saved had to be abandoned. The Church had to resent a threatened danger; the Nonconformists were embittered by the overclouding of those hopes on which they had been taught to rely. The only effect of Clarendon's enforced interference was to involve him in the hatred of the dissenters, and in the suspicions of the Bishops and the Churchmen.

The blow fell on St. Bartholomew's Day; and on August 24th the Church saw her full triumph, when the nonconforming ministers, to the number, it was said, of some two thousand, were ejected from their livings. [Footnote: The number was variously reckoned; a more moderate computation was 1200. Mr. Bates's careful calculations (Declaration of Indulgence, Appendix II.) give 450 as the number of ministers ejected between May, 1660, and August, 1662, and 1800 as ejected on the latter date.] The triumph was bought at the price of establishing a solid, permanent, and increasing body of irreconcilable foes. The Church was entrenched in a position rendered impregnable by law, which secured her even against the power of the Crown. But the forces of nonconformity were consolidated, and gradually gathered to themselves a mass of political adherents, and equipped themselves with a whole armoury of political weapons. The Act of Uniformity did much more than settle the terms between the Church and Nonconformity. It shaped the course of the two parties which, gradually diverging farther and farther, were to divide the nation into two camps.

Charles still sought to secure his own ease by efforts after conciliation —some of them more questionable in law, and more insidious in their motives, even than his ill-considered promises to the Nonconformist ministers. To what lengths his own Roman Catholic sympathies went it is difficult to say. But there were many influences at Court which were working for the abandonment of the penal laws against the Catholics. Bristol was restless in this matter, to which personal ambition and his growing jealousy of Clarendon stimulated him, much more than any religious zeal. Concessions granted by royal prerogative would mean new force for that prerogative; it would bring with it the increase of personal influence at the expense of the law; it seemed to promise the conciliation of new adherents; and it certainly involved the weakening of the orthodox Churchman as well as the Nonconformist. Before the end of this year, 1662, Charles issued a Declaration, purporting to dispense with the more severe laws against the Roman Catholics. It was contrived by a little clique of courtiers opposed to Clarendon, and of their gradual rise to influence we shall presently see more. It was intended as a means of consolidating their hold upon the King, and of increasing the number of their own adherents. It soon became clear that the Declaration assumed a dispensing power for the royal prerogative, which the nation would repudiate, and which even the House of Commons, with all its effusive loyalty, would not confirm. In that Declaration, published on December 6th, the King expressly confirmed the Act of Uniformity and stated his own intention of maintaining it. He defended himself against the charge that in that Act he had violated the Declaration of Breda. It was intended to provide for the discipline and government of the Church; but there still remained for consideration what concessions should be made for tender consciences in view of the severe penal laws; and he announced that he would ask the concurrence of Parliament to an Act which would allow him "to exercise with a more universal satisfaction that power of dispensing which he conceived to be inherent in him." But the Declaration was careful to add that no tightening of the most severe of the penal laws was to be construed as an intention of permitting equal toleration to all religions.

Clarendon was laid aside by illness when this Declaration was concocted and published, and although those who planned it endeavoured to make out that he had been an assenting party, his own words give a direct denial to this.

When, in the spring of 1663, Charles attempted to give legislative effect to this Declaration by a Bill introduced by Lord Robartes and Lord Ashley into the House of Lords, he very quickly found out that the temper of the nation was in no compliant mood, and that there were marked limits to the submissive loyalty of the Commons. That House was not patient enough to wait for the Bill to be sent to it. A committee was at once appointed, and pronounced in no measured terms against any such scheme. It was inconsistent with the laws of England; it would endanger the peace of the kingdom; it would expose the King to the restless importunity of every sect; and it would "establish schism by law." The House of Lords acted in the same temper. Clarendon was joined in his opposition by Southampton and the Bishops, who thus fulfilled the part which Bristol had prophesied for them, of stalwart opponents of Catholic concessions. The Chancellor would not have been unwilling to see some sort of toleration. But his duty and his policy in this matter were clear. To have proceeded with the Bill would have strained to breaking point the loyalty of the Commons and of the nation. Toleration, to have any good effect, must be the voluntary work of Parliament, and not the contrivance of a Court clique. But Clarendon was under no mistake as to the odium he incurred with that clique, or as to the irritation which his conduct must arouse in the mind of the King, his master.

CHAPTER XX

DOMESTIC DISSENSION AND FOREIGN COMPLICATIONS

The difficulties with which Clarendon had to deal in settling the affairs of the Church were, in essence, inevitable. Each side was struggling for very life. They had, to inspire them, not only profoundly hostile convictions, but the memory of years of angry strife and alternate persecution. But these difficulties were aggravated by the intrigues at Court, by the shiftless vacillation of the King, and by the underlying suspicion, which perhaps haunted Clarendon more than he admitted to himself with respect to the King, that concession might pave the way for indulgence to the Roman Catholics, to which the nation at large was profoundly opposed. His position was complicated by the perpetual bickerings of selfish factions, and by ignoble broils within the palace, in which he was compelled to interfere.

It was in June, 1661, that the marriage treaty was signed. As might have been expected, long delays supervened. Lord Sandwich was despatched with a fleet to take over Tangier, and on his return voyage to escort the Princess to England. But that was a matter which did not proceed without interruption. There was a considerable body of opinion in Portugal which regarded with profound dislike the abandonment of a position so important. The Queen-Mother of Portugal was anxious to implement her agreement, but, in order to do so, she had to dispatch a Governor who was pledged to carry out the evacuation. Only a few days before Sandwich arrived, that Governor suffered defeat at the hands of the Moors, and was placed in a position of serious danger. The arrival of Sandwich was timely. He was able to secure the place against the attacks of the Moors, and to escort the Portuguese troops back to their own country, where they were the objects of popular indignation. All this took time; and it was not till March, 1662, that Sandwich arrived at Lisbon, to escort the Princess Catherine to England, along with the stipulated dowry of £500,000. The Queen-Mother of Portugal was anxious, in this respect also, to meet the terms of the treaty; but it was not easy for her to do so. The Portuguese Court could raise only a moiety of the dowry, and even that consisted in large part of merchandise and jewels of doubtful value. There were difficulties in handing over Bombay; and the further conditions—as to free rights of trading in the East Indies and Brazil—could only slowly be made effectual. Those who had intrigued against the marriage found in these delays just the opportunity they desired. The reports which reached England were not all favourable to the new Queen; and the alliance was by no means so popular as it had been a year before. All this told against Clarendon, to whom was imputed a far greater responsibility for the arrangement than was actually his, and who had been forced to support it, in its later stages, largely in order to counteract the intrigues of Bristol and the Spanish ambassador.

It was on May 20th, 1662, that the Princess arrived at Portsmouth, where the King met her, and where the marriage ceremony took place. His first impression seems to have been fairly good, if we are to believe that a bridegroom would write full confidences to his Chancellor.

"If I have any skill in physiognomy, which I think I have," he writes to Clarendon, "she must be as good a woman as ever was born." "I cannot easily tell you," he writes again; "how happy I think myself; I must be the worst man living (which I think I am not) if I be not a good husband." "Never two humours," he adds, "were better fitted together than ours are."

Unfortunately Charles's experiences had scarcely made him a judge of a good woman, and his superficial good humour was but a flimsy foundation for married happiness.

The royal couple came to Hampton Court; with happy omen, on May 29th; the King's birthday; and the anniversary of his Restoration. The Court of England; however, was scarcely a scene likely to be congenial to one who had lived a sequestered life, amidst strictly religious surroundings, and in the formal routine of elaborate ceremonial; nor was Charles, by character, or by the experiences through which he had passed, disposed to arrange his life according to the tastes of the devout bride whom policy had selected for him. But Clarendon was prepared to hope much from the King's natural good nature and kindliness; and, tempestuous as his life had hitherto been, the Chancellor strove to do his duty, with more of frankness, perhaps, than of tact, by reminding his master "of the infinite obligations he had to God, and that He expected another kind of return from him, in purity of mind and integrity of life." Charles listened to these admonitions with a patience that was not altogether assumed, and seems to have been not unwilling to find merits in his bride. But a bridegroom that has to be schooled to his duty is hardly a promising husband. Unfortunately the lesson of his Chancellor was soon forgotten. There were not wanting those who found it to their advantage to countermine Clarendon's efforts. At first things looked not unpromising for the newly married pair. The Queen had "beauty and wit enough to make herself very agreeable to him"—such are Clarendon's, perhaps too roseate, words. The King's resolutions were good, and he seems to have promised himself, if not a union of ardent affection, at least the satisfaction of an innocent and fairly happy married life.

But selfish designs and untoward circumstances soon dispelled such slender hopes as Clarendon persuaded himself to form. The licentiousness of the Court had already gone too far. The King's boon companions were men who founded their own hopes on breaking down any good resolutions that their prince might form, and in bending his facile character to their own mould. Religion was with them nothing else than an easy object of ribald jest and ridicule; and virtue nothing but a fantastic restraint upon the natural freedom of emancipated libertines. They could breathe only in the atmosphere of degraded and corrupt vice; and it was by deliberately flouting all the curbs of decency that they could best undermine the Chancellor's power. The spur of ambition and the greed for gain both urged them along the path towards which their craving for licentiousness also pointed. A licentious Court would be that in which money would be most freely squandered, and where sordid profits would be most plentiful. The more the moral lessons of Clarendon were set aside, the more surely would his authority be weakened, and his company become irksome to the King; the more open would be the way for the baser crew to achieve influence and wealth. Charles's mind was a soil on which such seeds could easily be sown, and were like to yield an ample crop.

All this found powerful help from the lack of tact and perspicacity amongst the numerous company whom the Queen had brought as her companions. They were "the most improper," says Clarendon, "to promote that conformity in the Queen that was necessary for her condition of future happiness." "Conformity," on the Queen's part, is a word which, in all the circumstances, has rather an ugly sound; and the art of tactful management of the ladies of Court was not perhaps one in which Clarendon possessed such mastery as qualified him for the office of critic. But at least he saw the flagrant faults in these Portuguese duennas. The women were "old and ugly and proud, incapable of any conversation with persons of quality and a liberal education." It was their avowed object to perpetuate their own influence with the Queen, and to prevent her from any conformity either with the fashions or the language of England. They fancied that by rigid adherence to the antique usages of their Court they would compel the English aristocracy to adopt their manners. By their advice the Queen would not even wear the English dresses which the King had provided for his bride; and she received the ladies whom he placed in attendance on her without grace or cordiality. This was precisely the conduct that made the work of the profligates easy, that irritated the temper of the King, and that undermined the work of Clarendon.

There was one figure at Court whose presence planted a deep seed of resentment between Charles and his Queen. Lady Castlemaine had hitherto been the prime favourite in the King's seraglio. She was none of the comic actresses or flower girls from Covent Garden, whose lavishly distributed favours had won the fancy of the King, or made him the complacent follower of their former lovers. Barbara Villiers could rank high amongst the ladies of the aristocracy, as the daughter of Lord Grandison, a Royalist of unblemished reputation and lofty lineage, who had met his death in arms for the King's father, and who had been one of Clarendon's most cherished friends. Even the callous conscience of the King could not set aside the wrong his passion had done to her and her husband, Mr. Palmer, who, to his honour, felt the title of Lord Castlemaine, conferred upon him as the price of infamy, to be an insult rather than a distinction, and, as long as he could, declined to bear that name. It was an Irish earldom that was granted as the price of his wife's degradation, that being chosen because it was passed under the Irish Privy Seal, and so avoided the necessity of consulting the English Chancellor. Charles felt—and perhaps rightly felt —that to a mistress of that rank, and to her family, he must make some amends; and he seems honestly to have intended—however we may guess that his resolution would soon have yielded to his passion—to have secured for her a dignified position at Court, while putting an end to his own guilty intimacy with her. It was in this spirit that he presented "the Lady," as she was generally called, to the Queen, whose lady-in-waiting he intended that she should become. The Queen had already learned the story of the intrigue, and had declared that she would never suffer the mistress's presence at her Court: and as soon as she discovered the name of the newly presented lady, she showed her sense of the indignity by bursting into tears, and by retiring from the room. The racy scandal of a royal disagreement was thus published to the Court, and Charles was speedily confirmed in feeling that his own authority was concerned in dealing firmly with an unseemly outburst of what he and his chosen companions deemed to be unreasonable obstinacy. The usages of the French Court, and the example of his own illustrious grandfather, Henry of Navarre, seemed to justify his decision; and there were not wanting plenty of tongues ready to suggest that he must be master in his own Court, and must establish the principle that the title of King's mistress ought to be one of honour and not of shame. Those who, like Clarendon, saw in that fashion a degrading innovation in English manners, must be taught their error.

Bad blood was soon engendered between the English Court and the Portuguese authorities. The Portuguese ambassador found himself involved in the quarrel. The failure of Portugal, in various particulars, to carry out the full stipulations of the treaty, however earnestly the Queen-Mother laboured to do so, was now made matter of reproach. The King blamed the unhappy envoy as responsible for the obstinacy of the consort whom his Court had supplied; the Queen reproached him with his false reports of the King's virtue and good nature, which she now discovered to be diplomatic fancies. Between the two the poor man "thought it best to satisfy both by dying": and a fever brought him to the brink of the grave, from which some dawning hope of a reconciliation between the royal pair alone rescued him. Diplomats and statesmen, whose plans were thwarted, and whose lives were worried, by these connubial jars, might have been pardoned for lamenting that the promiscuous amours of the King did not make him callous to matrimonial bickerings.

Charles, for once moved to persevering efforts to attain his end, did not abandon the hope of bringing the Queen to acquiesce in his decision by gentle means. He laid aside the anger which her conduct had at first aroused, and sought to cajole her into a better humour. He assured her that his intimacy with "the Lady" had already ceased, and that the place at Court which he proposed to assign to her would be the best guarantee against its renewal. But all these attempts were in vain. The Queen refused any compromise; and on his side the King, whose superficial good humour was not incompatible with profound and pertinacious selfishness, did not scruple to expose her to every insult at Court. He threw himself with his usual cynicism into all the degraded pleasures of the libertine crew of his choice companions; openly pursued his intimacy with Lady Castlemaine, and taught his friends, as an easy means of access to his favour, to flout the pretensions and the feelings of the Queen. "I wish," he wrote to Clarendon, "I may be unhappy in this world, and in the world to come, if I fail in the least degree of what I have resolved, which is of making my Lady Castlemaine of my wife's bed-chamber. I am resolved to go through with this matter, let what will come of it: which again I solemnly swear before Almighty God; therefore if you desire to have the continuance of my friendship, meddle no more in this business, except it be to bear down all false and scandalous reports, and to facilitate what, I am sure, my honour is so much concerned in; and whosoever I find to be my Lady Castlemaine's enemy in this matter, I do promise, upon my word, to be his enemy as long as I live. You may show this letter to my Lord- Lieutenant (Ormonde), and, if you have both a mind to oblige me, carry yourselves like friends to me in this matter." [Footnote: Letters amongst Lansdowne MSS. in British Museum. Printed by Lingard, and in Lister's Life of Clarendon, iii. 202.]

Charles's easy humour cloaked an obstinacy as strong as that of any of his race. Be the object perverse enough, it asserted itself, in his facile character, with the pettishness to be found in a spoilt child. He knew Clarendon's opinion of "the Lady," whose acquaintance the Chancellor shunned, and to whom he had forbidden his wife to show any civilities. To Clarendon's bitter annoyance, the King imposed on him of all men the irksome duty of attempting an arrangement with the Queen. Clarendon had already met the request, when first made, by sturdy remonstrance, and by a powerful appeal to the King's sense of honour. It was only when no other plan could be devised for composing the ugly business, that he felt it his duty to remonstrate with the Queen. It was; he felt, "too delicate a province for so plain-dealing a man." The caprice of fortune never laid upon a man so proud as Clarendon, a task so irksome and so little to his taste. Only the public interest involved forced him to breathe for a time the stifling atmosphere, and mix himself in the nauseating topics, of the royal matrimonial wranglings. Only the imperious need for suppressing a scandal which might smother the new settlement, and the royal power, in the mud of a sordid quarrel, bade him undertake a hateful duty. Honour could not be saved; but disaster might perhaps be avoided.

Again and again he attempted to argue with the Queen. He assured her, with such confidence as he might, of the King's promise to break the hated connection. He held out hopes of a cordial agreement between them to be gained by conceding what the King desired, at the expense of what Clarendon admitted to be a natural repugnance. He explained to her the authority which the King possessed, and hinted—we may guess with what repugnance—at the usages of other Courts, where such scandals were condoned. He was met, once and again, by passionate outbursts, to which the Queen gave way, and which, he knew, would only provoke the resentment of the King—the resentment of a nature, slow to be aroused, but once aroused, relentless because of its very cynicism. At length the Chancellor thought that he had prevailed, and the Queen professed her duty to her husband. But with an ill-judged change of humour she chose this mistimed moment for appearing unduly conciliatory to her rival, and thereby diminished such respect as her resistance had gained, even from those whom it provoked. Charles not unnaturally believed that the violence of an indignation so quickly appeased had been due only to capricious obstinacy, and to no strength of virtuous self-respect. His tyranny grew the greater by her weakness. He dismissed all but one or two of her followers, and left her friendless amidst an unfriendly Court. Clarendon worked in vain; he had done what he could to save the situation, and now "made it his humble suit to the King that he might be no more consulted with nor employed in an affair in which he had been so unsuccessful." A semblance of reconciliation, whatever that was worth, was somehow patched up. The King no longer openly flouted his wife before the crowd of complaisant courtiers. On her part she submitted to his will, and stooped to the ignoble part assigned her in a profligate Court. She accepted, with gratitude, such an occasional show of kindness, as from time to time made the Court gossips surmise that a better understanding might come. For the rest she sank into insignificance amidst such childish amusements as were to fill up her life.

Praise and blame are alike out of place in regard to Clarendon's conduct in the affair, and we may spare ourselves the tedious moralizings of his critics. No one loathed more utterly than he the disgusting licentiousness out of which the whole sordid story grew, and no one treated with more contemptuous austerity the objects of the King's passion, and the pandars to his vices. However high his own ideal of domestic virtue, Clarendon was a man of the world, not blind to its vices, and not eager to pry into scandals or pursue the secrets of private life. It was not only the vice of Charles's courtiers, it was the sickening parade of debauchery in all its nakedness, which seemed to him to make the Court unmanly and contemptible. Feeling as he did, he had spoken words of bold remonstrance to the King himself, although he was fully conscious how irksome his moralizings were, and how easily they lent themselves to the gibes of Charles's baser companions. Busy tongues carried to him tales of these sneers—which were, indeed, scarcely concealed in his own presence, and which were only too openly betrayed by the behaviour of the sycophantish crew. He saw how fatal was the ruin caused by the flagitious obscenity of the Court—sunk as it was far below the level of the free play of licentious gallantry [Footnote: The more we become familiar with the intimate records of the age, the more we recognize how little its sickening degradation is described by any of the epithets usually applied to the reign of the "merry monarch." Its filth was even more disgusting than its vice, its obscenity than its licentiousness, and its unmanliness than its profligacy. ]—and he knew well that this unseemly matrimonial fracas proclaimed it to the world. He tried rebuke and remonstrance. When these failed, he only did his duty in attempting—vainly, as it proved—a compromise; and it was with disgust as well as weariness that he turned away from the degrading and hopeless task of patching up the strife that was undermining all his efforts at reconstruction. The Court which he dreamed of restoring, chastened by adversity, enhanced in dignity, resting upon a sound constitutional foundation, and fenced by a bulwark of stately reverence, was now to be a byword amongst the people, as the home of ignoble trifling, of bestial vice, of sordid intrigue, and of vulgarizing domestic jars.

The little clique of his enemies comprised Bristol, that strange mixture of contradictions—fantastic vanity and flightiness, tempered by subtle wariness and vigorous intellectual strength; treachery and double-dealing, redeemed by occasional gleams of romantic extravagance and enthusiastic zeal; Buckingham, to whom all virtue was a natural object of antipathy, and pre-eminence in profligacy his chief ambition; and Ashley, whose keen intellect and cunning assumption of specious aims, were the instruments of a boundless ambition, and were unchecked by any thought of principle, or any scruple of consistency. They had as humbler tools, in their sordid work, Sir Henry Bennet and Sir Charles Berkeley. All found in this sorry affair, precisely the most favourable means of promoting the one aim which held them together—the undermining of Clarendon's power. For this object they were all alike prepared to support the pretensions, and flatter the vanity, of the shameless and grasping courtesan, to ruin the happiness of the wife, to degrade the honour, and send to slumber the scruples, of the King, and to besmirch that Crown, which a flood of unselfish loyalty had restored, only two years before, to the love and reverence of the nation.

But other matters, of larger public concern, had to be faced by Clarendon; and in these, too, he was obstructed by the machinations of the same unscrupulous clique.

We are apt to forget, in the engrossing incidents of our civil war, and its sequel, the enormous changes that were in progress in the material condition of the country, and the larger economic struggle that was being waged between the Western European Powers in regard to the supremacy in commercial undertakings, as developed by the colonial enterprise of the time. Wars were to be carried on hereafter, not on the ground of dynastic disputes or of religious differences, but in order to gain a firm footing in the vastly increasing field of commercial operations. The sovereignty of the seas was necessary to achieve that end, and it was this underlying conviction that prompted the United Provinces to their struggle with the English fleet—a struggle, the ultimate fate of which remained long doubtful in view of the intense importance of the warring interests, and the indomitable courage of the combatants on either side. Cromwell had enormously developed the commercial supremacy of England by the Navigation Act, which required that foreign goods should arrive in England only in ships sailing under the English flag, or under the flag of the country in which the commodities had their origin. This Act was renewed by the Convention Parliament and confirmed by the Parliament of 1661, in its full stringency of operation. It threatened the very foundation of the Dutch naval and commercial supremacy, and planted a root of enmity between England and the United Provinces, rendered permanent by the irreconcilable opposition of material interests which grew up by the irresistible force of circumstances. Other differences might be composed, but that resting on the instinct of self-preservation could know no end. Statesmen had to shape their policy—sometimes blindly enough—but always under the pressure of this vigorous instinct of self-interest prevalent amongst the trading classes of the country.

The wealth of France rendered her less susceptible to these feelings, and her statesmen took less account of them; but to prove the unquestioned power of her Crown, it became necessary for her to assert herself, like her neighbours, at sea. Just before the Restoration, an insecure peace had been patched up between France and Spain. But while France consented to abandon her support of Portugal, she had no mind that Portugal should be left at the mercy of Spain. It was her first business to contrive a counterpoise to the power of Spain. But it was more difficult for France to decide what should be her relation to England. She had cultivated an alliance with Cromwell, and in order to consolidate that alliance, she had treated the Royalist cause with contemptuous neglect. Neither on the part of the people of England, nor on the part of its Court, was any close connection with France desired. The old jealousies, bred of close neighbourhood, could not be effaced. An alliance with Spain had seemed at first more desirable.

But overtures from Charles for a Spanish marriage had been treated somewhat cavalierly by the Spanish Court. This naturally prompted the obvious alternative of a Portuguese marriage, and such a marriage offered to France precisely the opportunity she desired. A marriage treaty between England and Portugal seemed certain to secure for Portugal the support of England in her struggle with Spain; and France welcomed the appearance of an ally who might render to Portugal that help against Spain, which she herself was precluded by treaty from openly offering. The King of England had been encouraged to prosecute the treaty of marriage with Portugal by assurance of French sympathy. Such sympathy would not, in itself, have been a sufficient inducement. Other more powerful motives operated. "The principal advantages we propose to ourself," wrote Charles to his envoy in Portugal, "by this conjunction with Portugal, is the advancement of the trade of this nation." These words were perfectly true, and the possession of Tangier and Bombay, with equal trading rights in the East Indies and Brazil, were real and substantial advantages to England. They were not lessened by the fact that the alliance brought England and France, for a time, to a better understanding.

But France had her own causes of jealousy, and it was necessary for Clarendon to take all care that these should not drive her into the hands of that chief enemy, with whom England must sooner or later come to deadly grips-the Dutch Republic. Clarendon fully appreciated the great work of Cromwell in making England feared in Europe, and he was anxious that she should not, under the monarchy, suffer any abatement of the power which Cromwell had so triumphantly established. But he knew also the inherent weakness of the country at the moment, and her inability to sustain the burden of a war. To Clarendon it was a matter of supreme and vital importance that war should not come until her resources were consolidated. Even at the cost of a crippling debt, her naval stores and arsenals were equipped with careful industry. But Clarendon knew well that though definite and detailed preparation of that kind might help her to meet a sudden emergency, England was in no financial condition to maintain the annual pressure of a long-continued war. France, alive to the embarrassments of English Ministers, soon put forward new topics of complaint, and pressed for redress as the price of her continued friendliness. Disputes arose as to the respective rights of the fishing fleets of each country, and acts of violence and privateering occurred on both sides. France refused to comply with the custom that had prevailed since it was conceded by Henry IV. to Elizabeth, which recognized England's naval supremacy by prescribing that all other fleets should salute the English flag. [Footnote: The following statement, which has kindly been supplied to me, has high authority:—

"From the 14th to the 18th century the salute (at first by lowering the topsail, and later by dipping the flag) was more or less jealously claimed by English ships of war from all other ships, whether foreign men-of-war or English or foreign merchantmen. While there was no nation strong enough to resist the English claim (and this was especially the case while England held possessions on both sides of the Channel) the salute was pretty generally accorded, and it was not until the 17th century that any serious resistance was made. During almost the whole of that century an acute controversy raged about the meaning and the scope of the Sovereignty of the Seas. The English case was bolstered up by doubtful documents, such as an alleged Ordinance of King John, said to have been issued at Hastings in 1200, but now acknowledged to be a forgery.

In 1635, Selden published his 'Mare Clausum' in support of the English claim. Apparently he was moved to this by the publication by Grotius in 1633 of 'Mare Liberum,' though the latter was more directly aimed at the monopoly claimed by the Portuguese in the East Indies. Probably Selden wrote with his tongue in his cheek to please Charles I., for he is said to have made ridicule of his own book in private conversation.

The English, however, were not content to enforce their claim by words, but often during the 16th and 17th centuries enforced it by cannon shot.

The arrogant claim that any vessel (a yacht for instance) bearing the
Union flag must be saluted by foreign ships, and even by a foreign fleet
of men-of-war, was much resented by the Dutch after they had crushed
Spain, and was one of the causes that led to the outbreak of the First
Dutch War (1652-4) though commercial jealousy was the prime cause.

The first battle (Dover, May, 1652) was occasioned by Tromp flaunting his flag in the face of Blake.

This war turned out, on the whole, sufficiently favourable to the English to enable them to secure a clause in the Treaty of peace in 1654—

'That the ships and vessels of the United Provinces, as well those fitted for war as others, meeting any Ship of War of the said Commonwealth in the British Seas, shall strike their Flag, and lower their Topsail in such manner as had been any time before practised under any Government.'

Similar clauses occur in the Treaty of Westminster, 1662, and that of
Breda (which ended the Second Dutch War), 1667. The Treaty closing the
Third Dutch War (Westminster, 1673) has a similar article, but the seas
are defined.

During the 18th century the claim does not seem to have been often enforced, and by the time of the Peace of Amiens, 1803, when the ancient claim to the Sovereignty of France was formally abandoned, the claim to the salute had become extinct.">[ The traditional, but none the less galling, assumption of the titular sovereignty and arms of France, by the English King, was another cause of emphatic complaint. The French Court knew enough of England's financial weakness, to judge the moment propitious for pressing these subjects of dispute. Clarendon thought it well, to begin, at least, by assuming an independent and combative tone. He strove, under the compulsion to which many a diplomat has had to yield, to cover his weakness by proud words, and he managed to provoke Louis XIV. to angry remonstrances, and even to threats of war. It was to Clarendon personally that the French King ascribed the supercilious tone of the English demands, and it was his compliance that Louis and his Ministers chiefly sought to gain. The Powers abroad knew what Clarendon's work for the exiled Court had been. They could estimate the value of his statesmanship, and dreaded him as England's most efficacious Minister. But they attributed to him a power which, hampered as he was, was never truly his. Clarendon was in truth attempting an impossible task, and he fought with fettered hands. He could expect no support from the King, who was already allured by the prospects of financial assistance, skilfully held out by Louis. It was hard to maintain a proud defiance amidst the perplexities of divided counsels, of selfish intrigues, and of a bankrupt exchequer. He had to temporize as to the King's title, and to accept the abrogation of the token of respect to England's supremacy upon the seas. The imperious tone was one which no Minister of Charles II. could longer safely assume.