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.



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 gis 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 protge 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 "Mmoires 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 rgime, 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.



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.