It may well be doubted whether Clarendon would not have served his own cause better, and that with no injury to public interests, had he complied with the request. His health was now broken; the phalanx of his enemies was overwhelmingly strong; and even had he been allowed to breast the storm for a few years more, and had he found that courageous support which it was not in Charles's nature to give, in maintaining the fight, he must have carried on his work in the face of increasing petulance on the part of his master, and increasing bitterness of venom from his enemies. The hopes that had inspired him, when he saw the Restoration accomplished, had long vanished; it could have been with only a shadow of his old courage that he would still have continued to guide the ship of the State. Charles was shrewd enough in judging the temper of the nation, and could form a good estimate of the force of the opposition; and there is no reason to think that he was wrong in supposing that a timely surrender would have saved his Minister from anything more than the loss of office—a loss to which Clarendon would not have attached much importance. The very fact that his enemies were obnoxious to the darts of scandal, and that the nation was watching them jealously; the very probability that many would have resented the fall of a Minister who had notoriously fought against the flagrant indecencies of the Court—these were additional reasons why Arlington and his faction would have been content with the removal of the object of their hatred, and would perhaps have foregone further persecution. Clarendon's voluntary retirement, upon the private suggestion conveyed from the King, might have saved him from the hardships that darkened his closing years, and might have prevented his feeling, in its full force, the poison of the King's ingratitude.

But we must remember other considerations that could not be absent from Clarendon's mind. History had not yet many instances to show of a Minister who had fallen from high place, and yet was suffered to lead a private life in peace. It was just a quarter of a century since Essex had used the menacing words in regard to Strafford, "Stone-dead hath no fellow." Arlington's ill-gotten influence might have felt itself threatened, if an ex-Chancellor with Clarendon's unrivalled prestige had been ready to permit his mansion in Piccadilly to be the resort of all who sought to form a powerful parliamentary opposition. The instinct of self- preservation may well have suggested to Clarendon that there might be few steps between his abdication and the Tower and scaffold. But still more, the central principles of his life forbade Clarendon to desert his post. He might not infrequently be prejudiced; he certainly was often sternly obstinate; he took too little account of the views of other men, and failed to adapt himself to the changed circumstances of the day. But never, in all his career, did he compromise with his duty, or give way to threats of personal danger. Adversity and he had long been familiar, and it may be doubted whether he would not have preferred to accept those few last years of banishment, rather than have yielded one jot of his own relentless resolution, or given occasion to his enemies to boast that they had made him shrink before them. We may doubt the wisdom of his decision; we cannot refuse our homage to his undaunted courage.

But the breach between the King and the Chancellor, and Clarendon's threatened fall, were already the theme of Court gossip. The Duchess learned that his resignation had been demanded, and she, with his old friend Archbishop Sheldon, and the Duke of Albemarle, joined in remonstrating with the King in no measured terms. Other lesser persons followed their example, and Charles soon found that the change was not to be carried out without seriously impinging on his own cherished ease. He protested that he sought nothing but Clarendon's safety, and that he had believed from what he had heard "of the extreme agony the Chancellor was in upon the death of his wife, that he had himself desired to be dismissed from his office." Albemarle was sent to require Clarendon's presence at Whitehall, and seems both to have believed, and to have desired, that what was but a passing misunderstanding might be easily arranged. The interview, at which the Duke of York was present, took place upon August 26th. Charles received him graciously and protested his sense of his high services, and his earnest desire to preserve him from the malice of his enemies. He did not scruple to add that he "had verily believed" that the demand for his resignation "had his own consent and desire." He had fancied that his brother concurred, however much he now protested. It is not impossible to believe that James may have found it convenient not to speak in exactly the same tone to his father-in-law and to his brother.

But apart from all mistakes as to personal feeling, the King was positive not only as to the intention of impeachment, but that the fate of Strafford would be the probable result for Clarendon, if he did not yield to the storm. If he did so yield, Charles was confident that he could preserve him, and that he could in this way best provide for his own business. He added a consideration which really gave the lie to what he had just said. "He was sorry that the business had taken so much air, and was so publicly spoken of, that he knew not how to change his purpose." He had surely a better reason for not changing his purpose, if he was persuaded that no change could be made without hazard to the Chancellor's life.

Clarendon's reply to Charles's shuffling was firm and dignified. He had no desire that the King should change his resolution. But he would not suffer it to be believed that his delivery of the seal was his own willing act. "He should not think himself a gentleman, if he were willing to depart, and withdraw himself from office, in a time when he thought his Majesty would have need of all honest men." Neither was he ready to acknowledge that the deprivation was "in order to do him good." It was "the greatest ruin he could undergo," and instead of saving him, it would deliver him, a discredited man, to the malice and vengeance of his enemies. His last declaration was the most scornful of all.

"He renounced his Majesty's protection or interposition towards his preservation. He feared no censure, if his Majesty should reveal all that he had counselled him in secret. If any one could charge him with a crime, he was ready to undergo the punishment."

Such words as these are strange, to be uttered by a falling Minister to his King, when that King is trying to cloak his own meanness by a pretence of a single-minded desire to save that Minister; they would be stranger still if they had been used by a man conscious of any guilt. But Clarendon did not stop there; he turned the tables fiercely upon the King.

"He doubted very much that the throwing off an old servant who had served the Crown in some trust near thirty years (who had the honour by the command of his blessed father, who had left good evidence of the esteem he had of his fidelity, to wait upon his Majesty when he went out of the kingdom, and, by the great blessing of God, had the honour to return with him again; which no other counsellor alive could say), on a sudden, without any suggestion of a crime, nay, with a declaration of innocence, would call his Majesty's justice and good nature into question."

Charles had pretended to be working for his servant's safety, and in accordance with what he thought that he desired. That servant brushes aside his subterfuges, renounces his protection, and plainly tells him that the course he proposes to follow will stamp him as an ungrateful master, and drive every honest man to abandon his service. No wonder that the King seemed "very much troubled." He pleaded the power of Parliament, and how he was "at their mercy." Clarendon could only advise him not to act the coward. He had a warning in the fate of Richard II. of what faint- heartedness in a King might bring. In his last thrust Clarendon forgot—as he himself admits—the bounds of prudence. "In the warmth of this relation, he found a seasonable opportunity to mention the Lady with some reflections and cautions, which he might more advisedly have declined." The close of his final interview was perhaps an ill-chosen moment for wounding the King's pride by another reference to the foul-mouthed termagant, who now swayed the Court, and trampled on her royal lover with the usual insolence of the pampered courtesan.

The visit of the King and the Duke to Clarendon's chamber at Whitehall, where the interview took place, lasted two hours, and at its end the King rose in silence and retired ill-pleased. Meantime the tongues of the Court gossips were busy. When the conference closed, the garden was filled with a crowd of courtiers, eager to watch the countenance of the King. As the Chancellor left the presence of his master, "the Lady, the Lord Arlington, and Mr. May, [Footnote: Bab May, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, and minister to Charles's pleasures. See ante, p. 244.] looked together out of her open window with great gaiety and triumph, which all people observed." The fallen Minister could spare a moment's attention, to mark the dramatic fitness of the scene. [Footnote: Clarendon, Life, iii. 291. Pepys gives us the scene with more detail (Diary, August 27). "Mr. Pierce, the surgeon, tells me how this business of my Lord Chancellor's was certainly designed in my Lady Castlemaine's chamber; and that, when he went from the King on Monday morning, she was in bed, though about twelve o'clock, and ran out in her smock into her aviary looking into Whitehall Garden; and thither her woman brought her her nightgown; and stood joying herself at the old man's going away; and several of the gallants of Whitehall, of which there were many staying to see the Chancellor's return, did talk to her in her bird cage; amongst others Blancfort (the Marquis de Blanquefort), telling her she was the bird of Paradise."]

Two or three days passed, during which the plot ripened amidst the gossip of the quidnuncs. To those of his more sober-minded counsellors, who spoke for the Chancellor, the King professed much kindness for him, but "he had made himself odious to the Parliament, and was no more capable to do him service." The Lady, Arlington, and Bab May still honoured him by their fervent denunciation, and by their sure prediction of his speedy fall. Evelyn visited him the day after his interview with the King, and "found him in his bedchamber, very sad." "He had enemies at Court," Evelyn goes on, "especially the buffoons and ladies of pleasure, because he had thwarted some of them and stood in their way; I could name some of them." The next day Evelyn dined with him, and found him "pretty well in heart, though now many of his friends and sycophants abandoned him." Clarendon knew the world too well to be surprised or grieved by such abandonment, or to allow it to affect his fortitude.

The Duke of York, none of the most adroit or persuasive of advocates, still stood his friend, and endeavoured to bend the purpose of the King. Sir William Coventry, always—although afterwards he disclaimed it to Pepys—one of the most pronounced of Clarendon's enemies, found it necessary to resign his post of secretary to the Duke, and the place was filled by one whom Clarendon suggested. It may be doubted whether the change was meant as more than an outward sign to Clarendon that he still retained his son-in-law's respect. The fight between his friends and enemies still proceeded apace. When the Duke of York attempted to stem the tide against him, Charles only replied, "that he had gone too far to retire; that he should be looked on as a child if he receded from his purpose." Selfishness and love of ease blunted Charles's judgment; they did not interfere with that obstinacy which was a dominant trait in the family character. Only two days later he took the decisive step, and sent Secretary Morrice with a warrant under the sign manual, to demand the seal.[Footnote: The seal was entrusted to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, as Lord Keeper.] The Chancellor delivered it "with all expressions of duty to the King." If Charles felt the stings of conscience for his sorry action, he could comfort himself with the congratulations of the Court pandar, Bab May. That worthy fell upon his knees, kissed the King's hand, and told him "that he was now King, which he had never been before." [Footnote: See Pepys, Diary, November 11, 1667.] It was an odd change, from the dignified loyalty of Clarendon to the fulsome flattery of Bab May. Even the scanty pride that had survived in one degraded by sottish debauchery might have been nauseated by the contrast.

Clarendon was mistaken if he thought that compliance with the King's request had either satisfied the rancour of his enemies, or secured for him the King's support. At first he hoped the storm was over, and after an interval sufficient to show that he was conscious of no guilt, and sought to hide himself from no inquiry, he intended to retire to the country, and live as a private gentleman. He had no fear either of Parliament or of his countrymen, and was ready to abide their question. He heard that the King dreaded his assumption of the part of leader of a Parliamentary opposition, and hastened to assure him that he had no such intention. His friends still resorted to his house, and those who respected themselves declined, at the bidding of an ignoble clique, to lessen the signs of their respect for him. The King had not courage enough to forbid such demonstrations; but at the instigation of his new confidants he sulked and uttered vague hints, to which Clarendon's enemies gave open and more definite utterance. They had secured the cordial alliance of Buckingham, by persuading him that Clarendon had been at the root of his recent prosecution. Thus reinforced they resolved to make their vengeance more complete.

The King had induced Clarendon to yield, as the only means by which the wrath of Parliament could be stayed, and that had undoubtedly been the pretext put forward to the King by Arlington, and those who acted with him. But now they went further. So long as Clarendon remained at liberty, they dreaded his influence, and persuaded the King that he would spread suspicion and disaffection, and would obstruct every design of the Government. Charles was weak enough to believe a slander, which no one who has studied Clarendon's life and character can for one moment accept, and which Clarendon himself had expressly repudiated. When the Duke of York expostulated, Charles shuffled and prevaricated after his wont. "All might have been quiet, if only the Chancellor had been more practicable; but he had delayed so long, that now the King was compelled 'in the vindication of his honour,' to give some reason for what he had done." Those who praised the Chancellor so loudly were reflecting upon himself. But if he were freed from these inconvenient demonstrations, the Chancellor would not suffer, and he would use his sons as kindly as ever, Charles was not rancorous, but his gleams of good nature only mark his cowardice more strongly.

In his Speech at the opening of Parliament on October loth, the King attempted to smooth matters over. "There had been miscarriages;" but he "had altered his counsels;" "what had been done amiss had been by the advice of the person whom he had removed from his counsels, and with whom he should not hereafter advise." No man ever betrayed a faithful servant with more consummate self-abasement.

The House was asked by some to thank the King "for removing the Chancellor," but it was thought premature to do so, and a committee was appointed to draft a reply. The King—so Clarendon's enemies represented— was offended by the omission, and the Court party pressed for a specific vote, which should endorse his action in the dismissal. That was carried after a keen debate, and by similar Court action it was pushed through the House of Lords. The Duke remonstrated, but was told by the King "that it should go the worse for the Chancellor if his friends opposed." We need not be surprised that Charles doubled the weakness of the coward by the allied blustering of the bully.

Again the King thought that he had satisfied the rancour of Clarendon's enemies, and had vindicated sufficiently the petty jealousy which he himself still felt at the memory of the Chancellor's sway. But he soon found that he had to satisfy more exigent taskmasters. Clarendon's power, they urged, was only scotched, not killed. His influence would soon be supreme, and "he would come to the House with more credit to do mischief." Grounds of accusation were greedily sought for, and readily supplied, [Footnote: Briefly stated, these were— 1. That the Chancellor had advised the King to dissolve the Parliament and said there could be no further need of Parliaments. That it would be best for the King to raise a standing army, and govern by that. 2. That he had reported that the King was a Papist in his heart. 3. That he had advised the grant of a Charter to the Canary Company for which he had received great sums of money. 4. That he had raised great sums of money by the sale of offices. 5. That he had introduced an arbitrary government into his Majesty's several plantations. 6. That he had issued quo warrantos against most corporations till they paid him good sums of money. 7. That he received large sums for the settlement of Ireland. 8. That he had deluded the King, and betrayed the nation in all foreign treaties. 9. That he had farmed the customs at under rates, in return for money. 10. That he had received bribes from the Vintners, to free them from penalties due. 11. That he had raised a great state, and got grants of Crown lands. 12. That he had advised the sale of Dunkirk. 13. That he had caused letters under the great seal to be altered. 14. That he had arbitrarily raised questions of titles to land. 15. That he had been the author of the fatal counsel of dividing the fleet in June, 1666. 16. That he had been in correspondence with Cromwell during the King's exile.] and these contrivances soon resulted in a violent harangue from Edward Seymour, who now made himself conspicuous in the attack upon the fallen Minister. It is not easy to trace the special source of Seymour's violence, but we can find sufficient to account for it in the character of the man himself. He was of illustrious descent, as the head of the great house of Seymour; [Footnote: Seymour was the direct representative of the great Duke of Somerset, the Lord Protector; but the Dukedom had, by special remainder, passed to a younger son, over the head of Edward Seymour's ancestor. "You are of the family of the Duke of Somerset," said William III. when he was first presented. "Pardon me, Sire," answered Seymour, "the Duke of Somerset is of my family." ] possessed of abundant wealth, and unbounded territorial interest in the west. But his birth and wealth were accompanied by overweening pride and ambition, and by a restlessness of rancorous temper that made him for more than a generation a thorn in the side of every successive Government. With high ability, he combined the character of a selfish voluptuary; and although possessed of great wealth, his support was always to be bought by the offer of a place, and he did not disdain the malpractices of a cozener in his eagerness to increase his store. After serving as Speaker, he remained in the Parliament, over which he had presided, as a captious and unruly partisan, forgetting alike dignity and honour in his factious virulence. Such was the spokesman chosen by Clarendon's enemies to frame the indictment. It was enough for Seymour that the task seemed likely to gratify his own ambition. His pride of birth and station no doubt gave a zest to the attack upon one who had raised himself from the smaller squirearchy to the place of foremost Minister. The Chancellor, he avowed vaguely, had designed to govern by a standing army. Seymour swore that he would produce ample proofs, and meantime he urged that a charge of treason should be laid against Clarendon in the House of Lords. The wiser spirits, and those who preserved some regard for the decencies of justice, refused to assent to a course so flagrantly illegal, upon the unsupported clamour of an arrogant youth.

After protracted debate a committee was appointed to examine precedents in cases of impeachment. On October 29th, it presented its report, and another keen debate ensued. Some argued that they should prefer a general impeachment, without adducing any special charge; others, like Maynard, argued that "common fame is no ground to accuse a man where matter of fact is not clear; to say an evil is done, and therefore this man hath done it, is strange in morality, more in logic." As a result, another committee was appointed to reduce the charge against the Chancellor into heads; and that committee then formulated their charges in seventeen heads. Again a debate ensued upon these charges. They were discussed seriatim, and the sixteenth head was reached without one being found to involve a charge of treason.

But the zealots had now gone too far to turn back. Another of the band, conspicuous for his profligacy even in a Court of libertines, Lord Vaughan, the son of the Earl of Carbery, [Footnote: With bitterness, which is perhaps pardonable, Clarendon gives him a line of unflattering portraiture: "A person of as ill a face as fame, his looks and his manners both extreme bad" (Clarendon, Life, iii. 317).] undertook to prove another charge. The Chancellor, he avowed, had discovered the King's secrets to the enemy. He was prepared to prove it, and, to stimulate the virulence of those who were bent on Clarendon's ruin, Vaughan passed the whisper along the benches, that this was in truth the source of the King's anger against him. Charles, it would seem, had dissembled the cause of his own jealousy to his Minister; he was content that it should be suggested as a new incentive to that Minister's foes. Opposition was trampled upon, and, with unseemly haste, on November 12th, Seymour was sent to the House of Lords to impeach the Earl of Clarendon at the bar, and to desire that his person be secured.

A new stage in the fight now began. The House of Lords, weak as, in Clarendon's opinion, it had often been in yielding to the encroachments of the Commons, yet contained many members who were not prepared to abandon the very semblance of justice, and of dignified procedure, either at the bidding of a Court clique, or before the unseemly rancour of a party in the House of Commons. They urged that the demand of the Commons should be peremptorily refused, and they maintained their ground so firmly before the blustering of those who were ready not only to commit, but to convict, the Chancellor, in obedience to the dominant faction, that the debate was perforce adjourned. The delay continued, and the dispute raged fiercely. To the persecution of the Chancellor there was now added the additional zest of a struggle between the two Houses, All business was suspended while the fight went on. The angry clique saw all their schemes threatened, the King found his cherished ease disturbed; by some means or other the wrangle must cease. To those who refused to bend to the storm, hints were conveyed that they were incurring the anger of the King. Desperate plans were discussed; and if other means failed, a guard of soldiers might be sent to arrest the Chancellor and convey him to the Tower. How far Charles was privy to these designs, it is impossible to say. Reverence for the law would be no potent motive either to him, or to the gang who had for the moment secured his confidence.

His friends urged Clarendon to make his escape. They saw the danger increasing, and they guessed that no ill-timed interruption would be placed in his way. Such an escape would relieve the King of a vexing situation, and would satisfy those enemies who might, by means of it, effectually destroy his reputation and his influence. An escape would doubtless have been construed as an evidence of guilt; but to give way to the malignity of his persecutors would at least have been better than life-long imprisonment, or death upon Tower Hill. To yield to such advice was not in keeping with Clarendon's character. He was eager to stand his trial. Rightly or wrongly, he did unquestionably feel absolute confidence in the support of his countrymen at large. Even were he proved to have been mistaken, and were the power of his enemies greater than he reckoned, he was yet ready to bear the consequences so long as his good name was secure. Were he to fly, he would abase his pride before his foes, and would give just ground for impugning his innocence. Nay, more, how could he trust that he would not be captured at the first attempt to escape? It might only be a trap laid by his enemies, who would bring him to trial with that frustrated attempt as their securest evidence of his guilt. Rumours were rife of the King's growing irritation, of the specific charges to be preferred, of the proposed constitution of the commission by which he was to be tried. The Duke of York, still faithful to the Chancellor's cause, resolved to seek an explanation from the King. He asked if his Majesty was determined either to have the Chancellor's life, or his condemnation to perpetual imprisonment. Charles repudiated with his usual facility, either idea, and swore that he wished the matter were ended. Had the Chancellor, asked the Duke, ever proposed to govern by an army? "Never," answered the King; "on the contrary, his fault was that he always insisted too much upon the law." The Duke asked again, if he might say as much to others. "With all my heart," said the King.

The statement of the King was creditable, and gave hopes to Clarendon's friends. But when the words were repeated, they were found to be disheartening to the conspirators, who thereupon carried their complaints to the King. "They had tried to serve him, and now knew not how to behave themselves." Their weapons would be gone, if the King indulged in such inconvenient candour. The messenger was repudiated by the King with just as much readiness as he had shown in giving his original assurances. The Duke remonstrated, and the King's only answer was "that he would be more careful hereafter what he said to him." The Duke might surely have learned that the King's candid truths were often uttered only to be repudiated when convenient.

Once more the petty scandals of licentious intrigue obtrude themselves at the most critical juncture of a grave historic drama. In no transaction where Charles was concerned could such sordid details be long absent. The King's fancy had shortly before been attracted by a new denizen of the "Lady's" drawing room, and he had become so infatuated with the charms of Miss Stuart, [Footnote: Frances Teresa Stuart, born in 1648, was the daughter of Dr. Walter Stuart, a cadet of the House of Blantyre. Her father, an ardent Royalist, fled from the vengeance of Parliament, and Frances was brought up at Paris, where her beauty and peculiar charm attracted even royal attention. When she joined the household of Queen Catherine in England, her loveliness captivated all hearts, and stirred the fire of passion even in such a jaded voluptuary as the King. Her subtle combination of virgin simplicity and adroit prudence only inflamed him the more. For once he was consumed by an ardent love, and tortured by a real jealousy. Hence his anger at the runaway match and all concerned in it.

Frances Stuart steered her course with safety through many quicksands, and died, not without honour, in 1702.] that he had seriously contemplated a divorce, which might enable him to offer her those terms of lawful marriage which could alone overcome her stubborn virtue, or her ambitious prudence. Whether any such designs were actually entertained or not, the amorous hopes of the King were speedily disappointed by the lady's marriage with the Duke of Richmond. The royal lover was ignominiously defeated in the only sort of rivalry which seriously touched him, and the pride of the jaded voluptuary was more easily wounded than the honour of the King. His vanity was ruffled, and nothing was easier for Clarendon's enemies than to inspire Charles with the belief that his Chancellor had arranged the marriage as the best means of stopping his licentious freak. The story was absolutely untrue; but the certainty that it had been conveyed to the King [Footnote: An accidental meeting of the King with Clarendon's eldest son, Lord Cornbury, at the door of Miss Stuart's lodging, contributed, it is said, to the King's belief of the Chancellor's agency in the matter. Ludlow can have had no personal knowledge of the circumstances. But he does not scruple to describe the marriage as a contrivance of Clarendon, "that old Volpone." Volpone was a character in one of Ben Jonson's plays.] induced Clarendon to write to Charles a letter which might well have stirred remorse even in a heart as hardened by selfishness as his—

"MAY IT PLEASE YOUR MAJESTY,

"I am so broken under the daily insupportable instances of your Majesty's terrible displeasure, that I know not what to do, hardly what to wish. The crimes which are objected against me, however passionately soever pursued, and with circumstances very unusual, do not in the least degree fright me. God knows I am innocent in every particular as I ought to be; and I hope your Majesty knows enough of me to believe that I had never a violent appetite for money that could corrupt me. But, alas! your Majesty's declared anger and indignation deprives me of the comfort and support even in my own innocence, and exposes me to the rage and fury of those who have some excuse for being my enemies; whom I have sometimes displeased, when (and only then) your Majesty believed them not to be your friends. I hope they may be changed, I am sure I am not, but have the same duty, passion, and affection for you that I had when you thought it most unquestionable, and which was and is as great as ever man had for any mortal creature. I should die in peace (and truly I do heartily wish that God Almighty would free you from further trouble, by taking me to Himself) if I could know or guess at the ground of your believing that I have said or done somewhat, I have neither said nor done. If it be for anything my Lord Berkeley hath reported, which I know he hath said to many, though being charged with it by me he did as positively disclaim it; I am as innocent in that whole affair, and gave no more advice or counsel or countenance in it, than the child that is not born; which your Majesty seemed once to believe, when I took notice to you of the report, and when you considered how totally I was a stranger to the persons mentioned, to either of whom I never spake a word, or received message from either in my life. And this I protest to your Majesty is true, as I have hope in Heaven; and that I have never wilfully offended your Majesty in my life, and do upon my knees beg your pardon for any overbold or saucy expressions I have ever used to you; which, being a natural disease in old servants who have received too much countenance, I am sure hath always proceeded from the zeal and warmth of the most sincere affection and duty.

"I hope your Majesty believes, that the sharp chastisement I have received from the best natured and most bountiful master in the world, and whose kindness alone made my condition these many years supportable, hath enough mortified me as to this world; and that I have not the presumption or the madness to imagine or desire ever to be admitted to any employment or trust again. But I do most humbly beseech your Majesty, by the memory of your father, who recommended me to you with some testimony, and by your own gracious reflection upon some one service I may have performed in my life, that hath been acceptable to you; that you will by your royal power and interposition put a stop to this severe prosecution against me, and that my concernment may give no longer interruption to the great affairs of the Kingdom; but that I may spend the small remainder of my life, which cannot hold long, in some parts beyond the seas, never to return, where I will pray for your Majesty, and never suffer the least diminution in the duty and obedience of,

"May it please your Majesty,

"Your Majesty's most humble and most obedient subject and servant,

"CLARENDON.

"From my house this 16th of November."

To our ears these words have something of exaggerated humility; as a fact they only clothe in the formal language of the day, that overflowing and sincere loyalty which Clarendon wore on a background of indomitable pride. That pride was so fundamental, that the high-sounding adulation is made almost more palpable by the evident restraint which he places upon his underlying indignation. His love for the King was honestly felt; but it was the fruit only of long past memories, of the tenderest associations of his life, of his profound reverence for his first master. He scarcely even recognized how utter was his contempt for the man himself, as he now was, with all his vulgar licentiousness, all his superficial good nature, all his essential selfishness and cynicism. Clarendon himself would have been surprised had he known how much of that contempt he had unconsciously revealed, by an occasional phrase, or a half-perceptible stroke of sarcasm. The effect of the letter was plain enough, and it conveyed a covert defiance from the fallen Minister, both to his faithless master and to his triumphant foes. "Withdraw your charges, and I shall free you of my presence, conscious of my own innocence; but do not expect that I shall slip away like a scared criminal to avoid the consequences of my guilt, or that your cowardly hints have power to move me."

Charles was free to accept the letter as a passionate appeal from a loyal servant to all that there was of self-respect and honour in his breast. If he so accepted it, he acted as only the boundless selfishness of cynicism could have suggested. He read the letter, held it over a candle until it was consumed, and then calmly said that he wondered that the Chancellor did not withdraw himself. But, indeed, we can scarcely doubt that the King was astute enough to see that the letter was, in truth, a note of defiance. If he was to play the craven, Charles was bid to play it in the light of day. To such a master of shuffling and evasion, the clear-sighted determination which made Clarendon insist upon a point of form in demanding an open order to depart, and which compelled his refusal to allow a triumph to his foes, might well seem incomprehensible. The result was only that Clarendon was besieged with new suggestions that he should escape, by a flight which it was more than hinted would be connived at. Charles's unkingly task was to bring about by hint and stratagem, what he was not man enough to prescribe by order. He satisfied Clarendon's enemies by openly proclaiming his anger at the Chancellor's delays; he kept up a pretence of compunction to Clarendon's friends, and begged them to persuade him how wise and prudent flight would be.

Herbert Croft, now Bishop of Hereford, was one of the emissaries of the King. [Footnote: Croft belonged to a Roman Catholic family of some importance. He had first been educated at St. Omer's, although afterwards he was admitted to the Anglican Church, and became an object of Laud's special patronage. This naturally secured to him the favour of Clarendon, and, as a fact, Clarendon informs us that he had placed Croft under heavy obligations. But the friendship had not continued. In later years Croft showed latitudinarian tendencies in his writings, which may have been apparent in his conversation at an earlier date, and may well have alienated Clarendon. The fact, however, that Croft belonged to a family of high rank and large possessions may still more probably have induced him to feel jealous of the quick rise of the more plebeian Edward Hyde, and may have bred ill-will between them.] He was no pleasing agent to Clarendon. He was not churchman only, but also an aristocrat, of great wealth, whose jealousy of Clarendon's newly acquired rank had made him, like Seymour, keen to reduce the pride of one whom he deemed an upstart, and led him to show ingratitude for Clarendon's early patronage. He sought an interview with the Chancellor, through Clarendon's early and trusted friend, George Morley, now Bishop of Winchester. He explained his mission with all the awkwardness of one who had a double part to play. "He had good authority for what he had to say." But he shunned any mention of the King's name, until his more candid brother, the Bishop of Winchester, blurted out, to Croft's annoyance, his previous confession to the Bishop that he came by the orders of the King. He could not contradict the other, but could only repeat that he could not be so mad as to interpose without authority. The Chancellor was meant to infer the truth, but he was to have no express assurance of it. All Croft could say was "that if Clarendon would withdraw himself beyond the seas, he would pledge 'his own salvation,' that no interruption to his journey would be given."

The Chancellor was inconveniently deaf to innuendoes. If he had the commands of the King, or clear evidence that the King desired it, he would face even the discredit of retreat. Without such orders or such assurance, he would consult his own honour, and abide the issue. Clarendon was determined to play only with the cards upon the table. Croft fell back upon his former subterfuge, and at length it was agreed that Clarendon should have a pass under the royal warrant which would ensure him against misconstruction. So the interview ended.

But he had not sounded the depths of Charles's cowardice. Word came that the King could not grant the pass; it would incense the Parliament; he could not face the risk that he asked his aged and discarded servant to run. Clarendon held to his former resolution. He would not obey even his sovereign in a trick. His decision may have been stubborn and ill-advised; it was at least courageous. His friends vainly sought to bend his will. Ruvigny, the new French ambassador, who had come to deal with Clarendon as first Minister, in his master's affairs, and had soon discerned his altered situation, sent word to him of the intrigues he found at Court, and advised his withdrawal to France, where he would find a ready welcome. Clarendon remained immovable; and all the bluster of enemies, like Seymour, who swore that the mob would wreak their vengeance on Clarendon's adherents, failed to crush hia will. With a pardonable triumph, Clarendon tells us how he scorned to take a mean advantage which offered itself against his adversaries. Arlington had made many enemies by his insolence, and Coventry was deeply involved in charges of malversation in dealing with the monies of the navy, and in selling offices in the Admiralty. Clarendon's friends urged him to divert the storm from himself by betraying the misdeeds of these his foes. The suggestion was made in vain. "No provocation," he declared, "should dispose him to do anything which would not become him." These men were Privy Councillors, and of what he saw amiss in them, he could inform the King. It was no business of his to protect his own innocence by counter charges. He would leave them to their fate. He would neither cower before the storm, nor divert it by spreading scandal against others.

It seemed as if the deadlock between the two Houses, and the tortuous twistings of the King and the angry faction that had acquired his confidence, had come to an insoluble entanglement.

The knot was at length loosed by the Duke of York's intervention. James had now recovered from an attack of small-pox, which had temporarily laid him aside, and he received the personal commands of the King to "advise the Chancellor to be gone." The Duke had no alternative but to convey this message, through the Bishop of Winchester, to Clarendon. The King had yielded to Clarendon's terms, so far as to send, through his brother, what was next to a personal order. Hyde, however reluctant, had no alternative but to obey. On the night of November 29th, he took coach, with two servants only. A boat was ready for him at Erith, and he there embarked. He had a stormy passage, which lasted three days and nights, and, sorely against his will, as he knew the evil construction that would arise from his resting on French soil, he was compelled to land at Calais.

When the Chancellor left, he deemed it right in the interests of his own honour, to leave a letter of explanation, which was read to the House of Lords by the Earl of Denbigh. [Footnote: An early friendship, long interrupted by estrangement during the Civil War, perhaps accounted for Clarendon's choice of an intermediary. Basil Feilding, in age a contemporary of Clarendon, was the son of William Feilding, whose marriage to the sister of the first Duke of Buckingham had procured him advancement at Court and high rank in the peerage as Earl of Denbigh. That Earl had joined the Royalist forces, and died of wounds received in battle in 1643. His son had, in 1628, been called to the House of Lords as Lord Feilding; but for some reason, in spite of his antecedents, and the strong remonstrances of his family, he joined the side of the Parliament, and became one of their leading commanders. When Commissioner at Uxbridge, in 1645, he renewed his old intercourse with Hyde, who formed a high estimate of his abilities, and Denbigh explained to Hyde his desire to get rid of his present allies, and do something for the royal cause. "If any conjunction fell out," he said, "in which by losing his life he might preserve the King, he would embrace the occasion, otherwise he would shift the best he could for himself" (Hist. of Rebellion, viii. 246). He was one of several peers whose pride was wounded, and whose resentment against Parliament was aroused, by the injury to their own order. He took no part in the King's trial, and gradually withdrew from the Parliamentary side. In 1660, he managed to prove himself of sufficient use to the Royalists, to secure indemnity, and a certain degree of favour. He retained enough of his former reputation as an ally of Parliament to be characterized by Ludlow as "a generous man, and a lover of his country."]

It grieved him, he said, that he should be the cause of difference between the two Houses, and of obstruction to the business of the King. It was his misfortune to stand accused of two charges, neither of which had any foundation: that he had enriched himself wrongfully, and that he had been sole and chief Minister, and was thus responsible for all miscarriages. As to the first, he could only avow that he had received nothing, except by the bounty of the King, beyond the lawful perquisites of his office, as regulated by the traditions of the best holders of that office. For no courtesies or favours, of which he had been the medium, had he ever received as much as five pounds. He was now more than 20,000 in debt, and, when his debts were paid, his estate was not worth two thousand a year. All that he possessed did not amount to what the King in his bounty had granted him—the gift of 20,000 when he first came over; 6000 from the Crown estates in Ireland, and a yearly allowance to supplement the scanty profits of his office. As Minister, he had only shared power and responsibility with others; and it was notorious that, after the dismissal of Secretary Nicholas, his influence had been greatly diminished. The new appointments to the Privy Council had been, none of them, given to his intimates, and many of them had gone to his most implacable enemies. As for the mischief of the war, it had been undertaken against his earnest advice, and his efforts to negotiate alliances, and to introduce order into the conduct of the war, had been thwarted by the very men who now charged him with the results of their own misdeeds. The conduct of foreign affairs rested, not with him, but with the secretaries: and so far from having been sole Minister, his advice had, of recent years especially, been often opposed, solely because it was his. The storm now raised against him was due only to his having discharged his duty without fear or favour. He closes with these dignified words—

"This being my present condition, I do most humbly beseech your lordships to retain a favourable opinion of me, and to believe me to be innocent from those foul aspersions, until the contrary shall be proved: which I am sure can never be by any man worthy to be believed. And since the distemper of the time, and the difference between the two Houses in the present debate, with the power and malice of my enemies, who give out that I shall prevail with his Majesty to prorogue or dissolve this Parliament in displeasure, and threaten to expose me to the rage and fury of the people, may make me looked upon as the cause which obstructs the King's service, and the unity and peace of the kingdom; I humbly beseech your lordships, that I may not forfeit your favour and protection, by withdrawing myself from so powerful a persecution, in hopes I may be able, by such withdrawing, hereafter to appear and make my defence, when his Majesty's justice, to which I shall always submit, may not be obstructed or controlled by the power and malice of those who have sworn my destruction."

Not now only, but in the later years of his lonely banishment, Clarendon's unbending courage saved him from despair, and he continued to hope for brighter days. [Footnote: In his preface to his commentary on the Psalms, addressed to his children, in 1670, he still hopes "that I shall yet outlive this storm."] But he underrated the rancour and the twistings of his enemies. The very men who had used every device to force him to retire, and who knew that he was at Calais, now hypocritically urged that the ports should be stopped, and pretended to be eager for his apprehension. The Commons urged that he should be committed, in absence, on the general charge of treason. The Lords declined to accede to their request, and, in impotent revenge, the Commons resolved that his apology should be publicly burned by the hangman. In this innocuous resolution the Lords were persuaded to concur.

From Calais Clarendon addressed the following memorable letter to the University of Oxford:—

"GOOD MR. VICE-CHANCELLOR,

"Having found it necessary to transport myself out of England, and not knowing when it will please God that I shall return again, it becomes me to take care that the University may not be without the service of a person better able to be of use to them, than I am like to be. And I do therefore hereby surrender the office of Chancellor into the hands of the said University, to the end that they may make choice of some other person better qualified to assist and protect them than I am. I am sure he can never be more affectionate towards it. I desire you as the last suit I am like to make to you, to believe that I do not fly my country for guilt, and how passionately soever I am pursued, that I have not done anything to make the University ashamed of me, or to repent the good opinion they once had of me. And though I must have no further mention in your public devotions, which I have always exceedingly valued, I hope I shall always be remembered in your private prayers, as, good Mr. Chancellor,

"Yours, etc., "CLARENDON. "Calais, Dec. 17, 1667."

Archbishop Sheldon, his life-long friend, was elected as his successor.

Clarendon stayed on at Calais, at a loss where he should turn. He knew the suspicions which he might arouse, if he resorted to Paris, and meanwhile wrote to the Earl of St. Albans, and desired to know whether he might proceed to Rouen. The Earl of St. Albans acted as the representative of the Queen Dowager, [Footnote: To whom he was generally believed to be married.] and from her Clarendon could scarcely expect a cordial welcome. St. Albans' reply was cold, but Clarendon learned both from him, and from the Minister Louvois, that he had full permission to proceed to Rouen. At first he received all courteous attention from the representatives of the French Court. His only desire was to reach some mild climate before the rigour of winter, which he was in no condition to sustain, should set in. With all proper respect and escort, he passed on to Boulogne; from thence to Montreuil, and next day to Abbeville. On Christmas Eve he reached Dieppe, within a day's journey of Rouen. The gates of Dieppe were opened at an unusually early hour next morning, at his request, to allow him to begin that journey betimes. But, before he reached Rouen, a change had come in his treatment by the French authorities. As he approached the halting-place about noon, he was stopped by a gentleman on horseback, who inquired whether "the Chancellor of England was in the coach," and, on learning that he was, presented to him a letter from the French King, desiring him to follow the directions which the bearer would give him. These were, that his presence in France might occasion a breach between the Crowns; that he was to make what speed he could to quit the dominions of the king; and the bearer was to escort him, for his accommodation, until he saw him out of France.

Clarendon was sorely perplexed by this unexpected message, which was explained by the negotiations now on foot between the French and English Crowns. It was with difficulty that he persuaded his appointed escort to accompany him to Rouen, rather than return to Dieppe, which the escort would have preferred as the shortest way out of France. The journey to Rouen was a hard one, and the Chancellor was bruised by repeated overturnings of the coach. He was in no state to make forced journeys, and begged time to write to Paris, and ask for less stringent orders. With difficulty this small concession was obtained. But the reply from the French Court only brought more peremptory orders to expedite his departure. His health was now grievously broken. The severity of the weather, the rapidity of his journeys under the most trying conditions, above all, the anxieties and perplexities of his position, had brought on an aggravated attack of the gout, and he was unable either to stand or walk. Again he pleaded for that delay and consideration which even the most meagre courtesy and the barest humanity regard as the prerogative of the sick. He had no wish to linger on the inhospitable soil of France, and desired only to reach Avignon, so that he might be beyond the King's boundary; but he begged at least to be allowed to rest at Orleans. The reply was barbarous in its peremptoriness. "His Majesty was much displeased that he had not made more haste; if he chose to pass to Avignon, he might rest one day in ten, which was all his Majesty would allow."

Meanwhile the virulence of his enemies at home was as relentless as the barbarity of the French Court. The party which still adhered to him in both houses was sufficiently large to be formidable to his opponents, who could only feel themselves secure by his perpetual banishment. On the pretext that he had fled from justice, a Bill of Banishment was passed through both Houses, by which he was pronounced incapable of returning to the country unless he surrendered before February 1st. It might have been thought that it transcended even the bounds of Charles's shifty cowardice, to give his assent to a Bill which imposed a punishment on his late Minister, solely because he had done what the King commanded him to do. But even to this depth the King descended. It was in vain that the Duke of York urged that it was the King's own order that betrayed Clarendon into making that escape from which his own judgment was so averse. Charles could only plead "that the condescension was necessary for his own good," and that he must compound with those who would else press for worse. Charles shared in that fantastic pride of his family that often betrayed them to their fall; in him it was united with a depth of abasement to which only the selfish libertine could descend. What is strangest of all is, that a man guilty of such meanness should yet have attracted to himself such wealth of generous loyalty.

When the news arrived that the Bill of Banishment had received the King's assent, Clarendon resolved to make all haste back to England, before the appointed day. All thought of Avignon was abandoned, and, at the risk of his life, he pushed on to Calais. There he arrived on the last day of January, a broken, and, it might well appear, a dying man. He was carried helpless to bed, and there lay unable even to read the letters from England, and incapable of thought and of speech. Even the wretched emissary of the French Court, Le Fonde, was fain to leave him for a few days, on what seemed to be his death-bed; but fresh orders compelled him again to undertake the irksome task of harrying the sick-bed of a dying man. "He must leave town next day; a few hours would carry him into Spanish territory."

Clarendon's old heat of temper burst out once more. The conversation was in Latin, and the Chancellor's sick brain did not at once supply him with sufficient store of classical phrases to express his wrath. At last he told the Court emissary "that he must bring orders from God Almighty, as well as from the King, before he could obey." The struggle still went on: on the one side, the unlucky envoy of the Court was compelled to pursue his degrading persecution; on the other hand, Clarendon and his physicians urged the murderous cruelty of the King's orders. At length, in a last burst of passion, he told the King's messenger that, though the King was a great and powerful prince, he was not yet so omnipotent as to make a dying man strong enough to undertake a journey. The King might send him a prisoner to England, or carry his dead body into Spanish territory; but he would not be the author of his own death by undertaking a journey which was beyond his powers. Le Fonde was left to do his best to reconcile the ruthless orders of his master with Clarendon's resolute appeal to a power higher than that of kings.

But of a sudden the scene changed. The negotiations between England and France had failed, and the French Court no longer found themselves compelled to sacrifice courtesy, and even humanity, in order to conciliate a hopeful alliance. They had harassed Clarendon to please the English Court; they were now to pay him every courtesy in order to show their carelessness of English interests. The French Government had, perhaps, found that a common hatred of Clarendon was not an enduring bond amongst his enemies, and that the new administration of England rested on no very secure foundation. A letter now reached him from the French Minister, announcing that nothing was further from his Christian Majesty's wish than in any way to endanger his health. All France was open to him, and the King's subjects would have orders to pay him all honour. Le Fonde rejoiced at this relief from a thankless task. He came now to say that he was to attend the Chancellor, only to receive his orders.

This happy alteration relieved Clarendon of his worst anxieties. He was no longer a hunted fugitive, but an honoured guest. The rancour of his enemies in England, however bitter, had now spent its force, and he could despise it. His sons still held their places at Court. His household now attended him, and the savage provisions of the Act of Banishment no longer prevented the easy passage of correspondence between Clarendon and his family and friends.

He was still grievously ill, and for six weeks more be was confined to bed. But as his health recovered he determined still to pass to Avignon, by way of Rouen, and to take a course of the waters of Bourbon on the way. He was not prepared to place undue trust in the new-found courtesy of the French Court.

It was on April 3rd, 1668, that he was strong enough to begin his journey. We are again reminded of the hardships of travel in the France of the Grand Monarch, when we read of repeated overturnings of his coach, and of perils both by land and water that pursued the poor Chancellor, even under the careful escort of attentive Court messengers. It was not till April 23rd that he left Rouen, and the stay for the next day was at Evreux, where he had a most untoward experience. It chanced that a company of English sailors, who appear to have been serving as a mercenary troop of artillery in the French army, heard of the Chancellor's arrival. The drunken crowd got out of hand, and vague memories of the naval pay of which they had been bilked prompted them to take vengeance for old arrears upon the luckless Chancellor, whom they deemed responsible for all the misdeeds of the Admiralty. Old echoes of "Dunkirk House," and the ill- gotten gains of Ministers who fattened on the plunder of poor men, were doubtless ringing in their muddled heads.

It would be absurd to attribute any political meaning to the incident, or to suppose that it had any connivance from the French Government. The inn where Clarendon alighted was attacked by the riotous mob. The local magistrates were incapable of dealing with the riot, and were perplexed as to the limits of their jurisdiction. Clarendon's attendants made what defence they could, and Le Fonde, his former persecutor, and now his courteous escort, received a dangerous wound in his defence. It was like to go hard with the Chancellor himself. At the beginning of the fray, he was struck a violent blow on the head with the flat of a broadsword. The rioters used him with great violence, rifled his pockets and his baggage, and dragged him into the courtyard to dispatch him with their swords. Not a moment too soon, the commanding officer of the English sailors, with some magistrates and a guard, broke into the inn, and rescued Clarendon, when he seemed at the point of death. It looked as if his troubles were not over; the magistrates were ready to fight upon the question of their own jurisdiction, and would allow no one else to show that vigour of resistance to the rioters of which they were themselves incapable. It was only on Le Fonde's vigorous remonstrance, and his threats of the royal vengeance on their remissness, that proper steps were taken for the safety of the company. The Chancellor and his attendants obtained lodgings in the neighbouring castle of the Duc de Bouillon. Having escaped from the perils of the mob, Clarendon had to resist the equally dangerous designs of the French physicians, who wished to perform the operation of trepanning. With what haste he might, he pressed on to Bourbon, and, after some stay there, he reached Avignon in June, Such satisfaction as he could find, in the exemplary punishment of the rioters and in the gracious apologies of the King, was readily accorded by his hosts of France.

At Avignon he reached a haven of refuge, where he might rest from the troubled experiences of the year that was past. It had, indeed, been one of trial sufficient to test the staunchest courage. Within little more than twelve months, he had lost his oldest and most trusted colleague, Lord Southampton. His home had been made desolate by the death of his wife. He had seen the growing boldness of his enemies, had detected their ruthlessness in falsehood and in knavery, and had found that his loyalty to the Crown was to go for nothing, and that his trust in the honour of the King was based on no sound foundation. Against his own judgment, he had resigned the seal, in order that the King's business might prosper, and that the bitterness of his enemies might be assuaged. When he had been persuaded to resign, he had found that his resignation was to be a new ground of triumph for his enemies, and that it was a foothold for a new attack. By the threat of prosecution they strove to drive him to fly, and when he refused to yield to their threats, they contrived to make the King the agent in their knavish schemes, and procured from him the peremptory message which made Clarendon quit the field. No sooner was he gone, than the very flight which they had contrived was made the ground of new accusations, and he was sentenced to perpetual banishment for avoiding a trial for which no summons had been issued, no indictment laid, no commitment made. Stricken down by illness, he could not meet their challenge by the date enjoined, and the beginning of February found him a proscribed exile, a persecuted fugitive, hounded from post to post, a stricken invalid, longing for the release of death. A few weeks brought some relief at least to the stout spirit that had borne so much. His enemies at home had sped their last bolt, and were fast becoming absorbed in their own sordid quarrels. The French King had abandoned the barbarity of which his own servants were ashamed, and addressed the honoured exile in terms of gracious and almost fulsome courtesy. That exile reached the haven of Avignon, to be received there not only without any of the annoyance of suspicious espionage, but with all the courtesies that could be paid to an honoured guest. The Vice-Legate and the Archbishop vied with one another in the formal stateliness of their reception. The consuls and the magistrates attended him with all ceremony, and paid him their service in a Latin oration. The Court of St. James's might reject him, but the high functionaries of European diplomacy accorded to him all that tribute of respect which was due to the man who had shaped the policy of the restored English monarchy, and had raised the standard of English statesmanship. Clarendon was not too proud to feel his sense of self- complacency flattered by such homage, and we like him none the less because he allows his satisfaction to appear.

Thus closes the political career which we have endeavoured to trace from its first beginnings, through the period of long and arduous struggle, amidst the clouds of exile and poverty, and once more in the full sun of a triumphant restoration, largely contrived by his wisdom, and dominated by his guiding hand. We have seen the disappointments that marred that triumph, and the ignoble stain that smirched the ideal of a restored monarchy which he had formed. We have seen how, one by one, his cherished aims had been defeated, and how a King, the slave of selfish libertinism, and a Court, the scene of gross debauchery and undisguised corruption, had tempted him to despair of England. We have seen how high he bore himself amidst the degraded crew, and how boldly he attacked the scandals of the Court, and rebuked the craven self-indulgence of the King. We have marked how the various factions that felt uneasy under his sway, gradually coalesced into a rancorous opposition, that knew no bounds in the meanness of their intrigues, and in the barefaced falsehood of their accusations. We have seen how the King stooped to be their instrument, and allowed himself to be the tool of their deceptions. Clarendon became an exile, and, after a brief period of inhuman persecution from a false view of diplomatic expediency, he received the homage of European Powers, as an honoured guest. In honouring him, they showed what they thought of England under the Cabal. Of what England lost in Clarendon, we can allow the sordid history that followed his fall to afford a sufficiently sure and graphic indication.

It is no part of Clarendon's biography to linger over the revolting details of that disgraceful time. Even in Clarendon's day, the King had lamentably failed to maintain his dignity or to discharge his task. His life now outraged all decency, and his Court fell below the standard of the common bagnio. His prime favourite and his chief Minister was Buckingham, stained by every crime, at once coward and bully, haughty in his arrogant insolence, and yet stooping to intrigues that would have disgraced the veriest rogue from the hulks. In the course of what seems to have been rather a riotous brawl, than an honourable duel—a brawl in which seconds as well as principals took part, and in which more than one life was lost—the King's First Minister killed Lord Shrewsbury, the husband of his paramour. The town was filled with the scandal, but by the personal influence of the King, it was withdrawn from the courts of law. Buckhurst and Sedley, the chosen associates of the King in his notorious bouts of drunken debauchery, roused disgust by a freak of sickening lewdness; the only result was the committal to prison, by the order of the Lord Chief Justice, and at the behest of the King, of the constable who interfered with the indecent escapade. We have a proof of the change that had come since Clarendon's controlling hand had gone, when we remember that some three years before, the same Buckhurst, for a similar outbreak of indecency, was rated in terms of scornful rebuke by the King's Bench Judges, and was bound over to good behaviour by a bond of 5000. The King's harem was augmented by a flower-girl, who had attracted attention on the stage, and was the discarded mistress of two of the King's associates. Clarendon lamented what he had seen, as a sad lapse from dignity, a grievous fall from the ideals that he had hoped for. What followed was nothing but a carnival of mad obscenity. Samuel Pepys was no squeamish critic; but even he was moved to some earnestness of indignation at the foul orgies in which Charles and his new associates indulged, in shameless publicity. As was natural, such advisers were no careful guardians of Parliamentary or popular liberty. What attention could be spared from debauchery was given to degrading compacts by which the King was to be the submissive pensioner of Louis; to plans for thwarting the prerogative of Parliament; to secret intrigues for subverting the Protestant religion. If the cost to England of his fall was to be measured by the depth of dishonour, and the flagrantly treasonable plots, of those who followed him, Clarendon was triumphantly vindicated, and his wrongs were amply avenged.

In spite of the cordiality of his reception, Clarendon did not find Avignon a desirable residence in the heat of summer. The streets had an ill savour "by the multitude of dyers and of silk manufactures, and the worse smell of the Jews," and he presently moved on to Montpelier, where he made a lengthened stay. His reception was as courteous as before, and this he ascribed to the good offices of Lord and Lady Mordaunt, old friends whom he recommends to the good offices of his children. "When any English came thither," he tells us, "none forbore to pay respect to the Chancellor"; and, with a certain pride, he records how Sir Richard Temple's refusal to visit Clarendon caused "a general aversion towards him," so that he was compelled to quit the town, where "he left behind him the reputation of a very vain, humorous, and sordid person." The good Chancellor was not above the human capacity of a very cordial hatred, or the inclination to feel piqued at a failure of kindly courtesy.

He was now at ease, and in peace of mind. His health, although undermined by long and painful illness, was sufficiently restored to enable him to indulge his old habits of intellectual activity. "It pleased God in a short time, after some recollections, and upon his entire confidence in Him, to restore him to that serenity of mind, and resignation of himself to the disposal and good pleasure of God, that they who conversed most with him could not discover the least murmur of impatience in him, or any unevenness in his conversations." Clarendon is none the less lovable, because a good conscience preserved for him his old self-complacency. His studies were again renewed. He made himself master of the French language so far as the reading of its literature was concerned. The power of speaking the language he, like many another, found "many inconveniences in." He made a competent progress also in Italian.

But his chief work was the preparation of his defences against the seventeen clauses of the charges formulated against him in the Commons. These were so extravagant that his accusers never sought to make them the foundation of an indictment, and he had little difficulty in showing their baselessness, and how much they contradicted the clearest features of his policy, and the most notorious evidence as to his acts. The Vindication carefully avoided anything that reflected on the King, and he left it to his children, to whom it was conveyed by Lord and Lady Mordaunt, to choose their own time for making it public. He was careful not to prejudice that position at Court which they still owed to Charles's sense of justice.

His serenity was disturbed only by two lingering apprehensions. The first was the insufficiency of his means to maintain the establishment which his crippled health rendered necessary. For that he could only trust the affection and piety of his children, who, he doubted not, would do their best to transmit to him, from their estates or his own, enough to secure the decencies of life in a foreign land. The other more serious apprehension was the fear that the machination of his enemies might still have power to prejudice the French Court against him. He saw enough to know that that Court still viewed his presence on French soil with some nervousness. He could only soothe his anxieties by his trust in Providence, and by the company of his books. "God blessed him very much in this composure and retreat."

He did not spare himself in his reflections on what had been amiss in his own conduct. "There was nothing of which he was so ashamed, as he was of the vast expense he had made in the building of his house." He could only excuse, but not justify it. This is an old topic of accusation, to which we have already alluded, but we may revert to it once again. Since the Restoration, Clarendon had commanded little leisure to find a suitable house, and had moved frequently from one to another. At first he had resided at Dorset House, in Fleet Street, once occupied by Bacon, and formerly the town house of the Bishop of Salisbury. From there he went to Worcester House, [Footnote: The residence of the Marquis of Worcester (previously Lord Glamorgan), and used by Cromwell during the Commonwealth] for which he paid the large rent of 500 a year. After the Fire, he moved to Berkshire House, in St. James (on the site of the present Bridgewater House), which became known as Cleveland House when adopted as the residence of Lady Castlemaine, then Duchess of Cleveland, in 1668. York House, Twickenham, was assigned to him after the marriage of his daughter to the Duke of York, and there the Princess, afterwards Queen Anne, was born. It was only after many changes that he ventured, in the full tide of his prosperity, and with the encouragement of the King, to provide a house of his own; but his ignorance of architecture—and probably also his absorption in weightier affairs—made him the victim of the architect, [Footnote: The architect was Pratt. The house was built during Clarendon's absence from London in the Plague year, when Parliament sat at Oxford.] who estimated the cost at less than one-third of what it came to, which was 50,000. He found himself not only involved in debt, but the mark of envious scandal for the pride and ostentation of his dwelling. Yet when its sale was proposed to him "he remained so infatuated with the delight he had enjoyed, that, though he was deprived of it, he hearkened very unwillingly to the advice." A lingering hope remained that he might still live there, in all the pride of a restored good name. A weakness so confessed may readily be forgiven. The harm it did was only to his own estate. [Footnote: Evelyn, as we have seen (ante, p. 254) had praised the house more guardedly than Pepys, but in a letter to Lord Cornbury (Jan. 20, 1665/6) he speaks of it with perhaps courteous excess of admiration. "Let me speak ingenuously," he says: "I went with prejudice, and a critical spirit, incident to those who fancy they know anything in art. I acknowledge to your Lordship that I have never seen a nobler pile.... It is, without hyperbolies, the best contrived, the most useful, graceful, and magnificent house in England." He enters into the details of the building, and concludes thus: "May that great and illustrious person, whose large and ample heart has honoured his country with so glorious a structure, and by an example worthy of himself, showed our nobility how they ought indeed to build, and value their qualities, live many long years to enjoy it; and when he shall be passed to that upper building, not made with hands, may his posterity (as you, my lord) inherit his goodness, this palace, and all other circumstances of his grandeur, to consummate their felicity."

Evelyn may best be allowed to tell of the passing of Clarendon's architectural glory. It is in the Diary for September 18, 1683.

"After dinner I walked to survey the sad demolition of Clarendon House, that costly and only sumptuous palace of the late Lord Chancellor Hyde, where I have often been so cheerful with him, and sometimes so sad; happening to make him a visit but the day before he fled from the angry Parliament, accusing him of maladministration, and being envious at his grandeur, who, from a private lawyer, came to be father-in-law to the Duke of York, and, as some would suggest, designing his Majesty's marriage with the Infanta of Portugal, not apt to breed; to this they imputed much of our unhappiness, and that he being sole Minister and favourite at his Majesty's restoration, neglected to gratify the King's suffering party, preferring those who were the cause of our troubles. But perhaps as many of those things were injuriously laid to his charge, so he kept the Government far steadier than it has since proved. I could name some who, I think, contributed greatly to his ruin, the buffoons and the misses, to whom he was an eye-sore. 'Tis true he was of a jolly temper after the old English fashion; but France had now the ascendant, and we were become quite another nation. The Chancellor gone, and dying in exile, the Earl his successor sold that which cost 50,000 building to the young Duke of Albemarle for 25,000, to pay debts which how contracted remains yet a mystery, his son being no way a prodigal.... However it were, this stately palace is decreed to ruin, to support the prodigious waste the Duke of Albemarle had made of his estate since the old man died. He sold it to the highest bidder, and it fell to certain rich bankers and mechanics, who gave for it and the ground about it 35,000; they design a new town as it were, and a most magnificent piazza.... See the vicissitudes of earthly things!"

In June of the following year Evelyn found streets and buildings—Bond Street and Albemarle Street—encroaching on the beauty of the site. The fall of Clarendon House had tempted Lady Berkeley to turn her gardens into squares, and she actually realized the then amazing amount of 1000 a year "in mere ground rents"! "To such a mad intemperance has this age come of building about a city by far too disproportionate already to the nation." If Evelyn's ghost still haunts the scene, what are its reflections now?]

At the date of his banishment, Clarendon was not an old man, as age is generally reckoned. He had not yet reached the age of sixty years, which finds many men in possession of their full powers. But ill health, anxiety, long years of hardship and incessant labour, had combined to make him prematurely old. For a time, indeed, it seemed as if he could only survive his fall by a few weeks or months, and as if his work were to finish when he left his country for the last time. But his indomitable energy, and the brave spirit that sustained him, brought back first a tolerable measure of good health; then serenity of mind; and, lastly, that industry which opened to him, in the reading and in the making of books, a new world from which all the sordid pettiness, and the infinite annoyances, of the political arena were banished. There is but little more to tell of that strenuous life, which had seen so much of storm and tempest, varied by gleams of sunshine, and, above all, illuminated by an imagination so rich, and by an historic sense so gorgeous and so inspiring to a man whose life was spent in making history. From what his pen has left us, from that incomparable history where the scenes in which he had played so great a part, and the actors amongst whom he had moved, are portrayed with such dramatic force, we can easily picture to ourselves how vivid were Clarendon's memories, and how richly the days of his retirement were peopled with the thoughts of what had been. The respect paid to him, the homage accorded to his great achievements and his great name, were not merely soothing to his personal vanity—they served to bring him closer to those historic scenes in which he had moved. He had still the invaluable treasures of industry and hope. He could still add to that which he would leave to his world; he could still hope that he might see his country, and be honoured as of old by his countrymen. We must accept Clarendon as nature made him. For him life was a large stage, on which he must act his part with dignity. Like Ulysses, he "was a part of all that he had known"; he could not rest from effort; if he could not act great deeds, he could still wield his pen in stately eloquence.

It was, he tells, the third of the retreats from a life of trouble and vexation, which Heaven had granted him, and which he reckoned amongst his choicest blessings. After the storms of the Civil War, he had one such retreat at Jersey, when the Prince had, much against his advice, left for France. In that first retreat he had gained much. He learned to know himself better, and other men more truly. His youth had been engaged in company and conversation, and in the full tide of early success at the bar, followed by absorption in the turmoil of politics, he had moved on the quick current, and had not had leisure for contemplation, or for studying the ways of men. His early life had been one "of ease and pleasure and too much idleness"; it was only the instinct of association with men whom he could respect, that preserved him from "any notable scandal," and made him live, as he naively tells us, at least "caute, if not caste." Too much idleness he had exchanged for too much business. The retreat at Jersey had come just when it was well "to compose those affections and allay those passions, which, in the warmth of perpetual actions, and chafed by continual contradictions, had need of rest, and cool and deliberate cogitations." He learned "how blind a surveyor he had been of the inclinations and affections of the heart of man," and how warily he must walk who would avoid the pitfalls of human intercourse.

The next retreat came during the two years of his Embassy in Spain. It gave him a respite from the petty, but none the less rancorous, bickerings of the exiled Court. It offered him a new period of intercourse with his books. It opened a new world to him in the intricacies of European diplomacy. Above all, it allowed him once again to renew that spirit of fervent religious devotion, which always served as the background of his busy life.

Now, in this the third of his retreats, spent and wearied, and, as it might seem, baffled, he could find consolation in the opportunity of once more adding to his intellectual stores, enriching his bequest to the world, and amplifying the proud record which should serve as his vindication to posterity. In his "Devotions on the Psalms," in his replies to Cressy and to Hobbes, in a crowd of miscellaneous essays on those general ethical topics which were suited to the taste of that day, and have proved singularly ill-adapted to the taste of our own; above all, in the completion of his great History of the Rebellion, with which he incorporated his autobiography, Clarendon found abundant employment for his crowded leisure.

He remained at Montpelier until June, 1671, and thereafter resided at Moulins, until the spring of 1674. He had the comfort of abundant friends, of frequent correspondence, and of occasional visits from his sons, Lord Cornbury, and Lawrence Hyde. [Footnote: Lawrence Hyde is always referred to as "Lory" in his father's correspondence. He became Earl of Rochester.] The management of his property, so far as he could carry it out in exile, was a source of some annoyance, but doubtless also helped to keep alive his hope of a return to his country and his home. We have no details of his life in exile. We only know enough to show that it was one of no listless indolence, no craven depression, and no vain repining. Clarendon died, as he had lived, with energy unconquered, with hope unabated, still clinging to all that made human life more noble in action, more stately in its ordering, more lofty in its ideals. Alike by temperament, by training, by all that had roused his enthusiastic devotion, and attracted his passionate loyalty, and by the moulding of a long experience of struggle and of suffering, he was apt to frame these ideals on the historic records of the past. It was not his to strike out daring enterprises or to initiate sweeping reforms. He built upon the associations that had been handed down to him. But the memory of his achievements, marred and blurred as these were by sordid surroundings, ignoble intrigues, and the disappointments that tried his loyalty, was none the less precious; nor was the inheritance of his literary accomplishment the less valuable. Can England point to one who at once filled a larger part in her history, and left a more enduring monument in the annals of her literature?

Vexations still came to him in these closing years of exile. He had the bitter mortification of learning, on evidence which he strove to think was not fully proved, that his daughter had betrayed the traditions of his house and of his teaching, and had been persuaded to accept those doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, which he held to be false to the truth, and dangerous to the welfare of his country. In dignified words, he strove to turn her from that error with all the weight of a father's authority, which her exalted position as the wife of the Heir Presumptive did not, in his view, weaken or control; but he heard of her death on March 3lst, 1671, in the thirty-fourth year of her age, as the avowed adherent of a Church of which he had all his life been a convinced opponent. In June, 1671, through his son Lawrence, then returning from a visit to Moulins, he addressed a letter to the King, beseeching him, in memory of all his tried service and his devoted loyalty, to allow that he should return to die in his own country. In August, 1674, he again addressed the King, the Queen, and the Duke of York, in words of still more earnest entreaty.

"Seven years," he wrote to the Queen, in asking her aid, "was a time prescribed and limited by God Himself for the expiration of some of his greatest judgments, and it is full that time since I have with all possible humility, sustained the insupportable weight of the King's displeasure, so that I cannot be blamed if I employ the short breath that is remaining in me, in all manner of supplication, which may contribute to the lessening this burthen that is so heavy upon me. I do not presume to hope ever to be admitted to your Majesty's presence. Though I have all imaginable duty, I have no ambition, and only pray for leave to die in my own country amongst my own children, which I hope his Majesty will at some time vouchsafe to grant."