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He was first returned to the Parliament which met on the 13th April 1640, and was rashly dissolved on the 5th May following. During that short session, Hyde entered warmly upon public business, and even ventured into the field in opposition to Hampden. Upon the vital question of a supply, he endeavoured to steer a middle course between the temerity of the King's advisers and the craft of the popular leader; and, if he had been supported by the former, all might have gone well. Abandoned by them-through the treachery of Vane, as has been said— the question of supply was adjourned, and a dissolution followed in anger. Although opposed to Hampden in that particular instance, the Journals contain ample evidence that Hyde entered upon public life as a reformer. The next Parliament was that one which has been immortalised in our history as "the Long Parliament." It met on the 3rd of November 1640, and Hyde was returned for Saltash. In all the early measures, Hyde cordially co-operated he instituted an inquiry which put an end to the Earl Marshal's Court; he assisted Lord Falkland in the impeachment of Lord Keeper Finch; he preferred the charges against the Barons of the Exchequer; he conducted the proceedings for the suppression of the Council of the North; and, finally, he took an active share in the prosecution of Strafford. We say "finally," for there ended the career of Hyde as a reformer. The fall of Strafford, which animated the extreme party to bolder exertions, seems to have brought Hyde to his senses. They proceeded in their straight-onward course to despotism; he stood for awhile aloof, as if stunned by the recoil of the blow he had aided in striking, and, as soon as the Church became the object of attack, passed over to the ranks of those who made a vain attempt for the conservation of the monarchy. In his secession from the reform party, he preceded his friend Lord Falkland, but only by a few weeks. Falkland supported the bill for depriving the Bishops of their seats in the House of Lords, under the impression that "it was the only expedient to preserve the Church, and that, if this passed, nothing more to its prejudice would be attempted." (I. 110.) He was soon convinced of his error, and thenceforth the two friends, ranged side by side, continued a calm and steady although entirely unsuccessful opposition to the inroads of democracy. Hyde's defence of the Church attracted the attention of Charles, who made an opportunity to return him his thanks in person; and when the celebrated Remonstrance was published by the Commons-the first of that long series of papers by which each party sought to make the people the judges of their quarrel-Hyde, who had opposed its publication in Parliament with more than ordinary vehemence, prepared a reply to it, which was adopted by the King, and published as "the King's Answer with the Advice of his Council.' It is correctly described by Mr. Lister as "firm, temperate, and judicious, retorting without acrimony, condescending without meanness, and blending conciliation with reproof. It tended to expose the anti-pacific intentions of the Parliamentary leaders, and to place the King in the right." (I. 138.)

From this time Falkland, Colepeper, and Hyde, were the principal managers for the King in the House of Commons; and it would have been well if he had acted entirely by their advice; for, even yet, his cause was probably not quite desperate. Other counsels urged him, however, to that singular act of folly, the attempt to seize the five members, which was instantly followed by the assumption by the Parliament of authority over the royal fortresses-a bold usurpation to which they professed to be

driven, in self-defence, by the King's wanton and inexcusable invasion of their privileges. The die was now thrown; war had become inevitable; but before the sword was actually drawn, both parties appealed nominally to each other, but really to the people, in various addresses, replies, petitions, answers, messages, declarations, and many other descriptions of State Papers. In the royal portion of those papers, the King was assisted by Hyde-the most important of them were prepared by him-and certainly better service has seldom been rendered to a sovereign than he rendered to Charles in the composition of those celebrated documents. They were too liberal, too conciliatory, too straight-forward to satisfy such persons as those who induced their sovereign to enter the House of Commons; but they gained him many friends amongst the better classes of the people; and they did more-they continue to gain him friends down to the present hour, and will continue to do so through all time. They are the pleadings in the great cause which was ultimately decided in the High Court of Justice for trying the King, and every one admits that the case they make out is in the King's favour, and, consequently, that the decision in that court was unjust. "It is impossible," as Mr. Lister remarks, to compare these royal manifestoes with those of the Parliament without being sensible of the superiority of the former, both in the arguments employed and the ability with which they were enforced." (I. 177.) Before the King set up his standard, Hyde joined him at York, and a few months afterwards he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, and in that character followed the person of Charles, until the Prince of Wales was sent into the West, when he was appointed a member of his council, and on the 5th March 1645, just previous to his departure in the company of the Prince, had his last interview with Charles I. at Oxford. Twelve months afterwards, the whole of the west of England was in the power of the Parliament, and the Prince and his attendants, of whom Lord Capel, Lord Hopton, and Hyde, now Sir Edward, were the principal, took refuge, first in Scilly, and afterwards in Jersey, from whence the Prince passed into France in 1646. Hyde, Capel, and Hopton, disapproving of the Prince's removal into that country, remained behind at Jersey; and Hyde, released from other duties, set himself to the composition of his History of the Rebellion, which he had begun in Scilly. He and his two friends lived and kept house together in St. Hilary's, where, having a chaplain of their own, they had prayers every day in the church, at eleven o'clock in the morning; till which hour they employed themselves as they thought fit; Hyde in his literary pursuits; the others in walking, riding, or reading as they were disposed; but at the hour of prayers they always met, and then dined together at the Lord Hopton's lodgings. "Their table was maintained at their joint expense only for dinners, they never using to sup, but met always upon the sands in the evening to walk, after going to the castle to Sir George Carteret, who treated them with_extraordinary kindness and civility, and spent much time with them." During this period Hyde's industry was most exemplary.

"Between his books and his papers," says Mr. Lister, "he rarely spent less than ten hours a day. It is uncertain how much of that time was devoted to his History. Three hours a day, he tells Nicholas, were assigned to the task of writing, but much more might have been given to the requisite examination of authorities. In addition to this employment, he applied himself to the improvement of his knowledge of French litera

ture, and still more to classical studies. I have,' he said to Dr. Sheldon in August 1647, read over Livy, and Tacitus, and almost all Tully's works; and have written since I came into this blessed isle near 300 large sheets of paper in this delicate hand; and he wrote daily little less than one sheet of large paper with his own hand' during the two years that he remained in Jersey." (I. 301.)

After some time Capel and Hopton quitted him; the one going into the United Provinces, and the other into France, and both meditating a return into England. Hyde then removed into Castle Elizabeth, where Sir George Carteret gave him an asylum, and there he remained until other duties called him to a more active life. Whilst at Jersey alone, the company of his wife and children would have been a solace to him, but poverty kept them asunder. Lady Hyde remained in England, "bearing her part with miraculous courage and constancy." "We may, I hope," he writes to Nicholas, "be able to live some time asunder, but I am sure we should quickly starve if we were together; yet when starving comes to be necessary, to be more feared than hanging, we will starve by the grace of God together." "My man is at last returned," he said, in a previous letter to Lady Dalkeith, "with great good news to me, which is with incredible stories of my wife's courage and magnanimity and that, though she be like to want every thing, she will be cast down with nothing." (Lister, I. 304.)

When Prince Charles removed from France into Holland, the King transmitted his commands to Hyde to give the Prince the benefit of his assistance. The summons was received in June 1648, and Hyde obeyed it instantly. After some very annoying disasters in the course of his journey, he rejoined the Prince at the Hague upon his return from his fruitless attempt to take advantage of the revolt of the English fleet. From that time until the restoration, Hyde continued in the service of the exiled Prince, and, with some few exceptions, as during an embassy into Spain, and during Charles's expedition into Scotland, was constantly about his person, and had the principal management of his affairs. The labour and the annoyances he underwent in that service are scarcely credible : harassed by the opposition of the Queen Dowager, and the perpetual dissensions in the mimic court of the exiled monarch; burthened by the duty of providing as far as was possible for the daily wants of Charles's household, which was often a task of extreme difficulty; and, above all, tormented by the frivolity of Charles's character, his indolence, and the impossibility of making him feel an interest in any thing of a higher character than an intrigue, are all very strongly pourtrayed in Mr. Lister's volumes. Hyde's wife and family passed over to the Continent, and took up their residence at Antwerp, where they suffered as great hardships as himself. "At this time," he writes in November 1652, "I have neither clothes nor fire to preserve me from the sharpness of the season." At another time, "I am so cold that I can scarce hold my pen, and have not three sous in the world to buy a faggot." Again, I have not been master of a crown these many months, am cold for want of clothes and fire, and owe for all the meat which I have eaten these three months, and to a poor woman who is no longer able to trust; and my poor family at Antwerp (which breaks my heart) is in as sad a state as I am." (Lister, I. 375.) Yet mark how he spurns the notion of compromise or submission. "I know no other counsel to give you than, by the grace of God, I mean to follow myself, which is to submit to God's pleasure and judgment upon

me, and to starve really and literally with the comfort of having endeavoured to avoid it by all honest means, and rather to bear it than do any thing contrary to my duty. Compounding is a thing I do not understand, or how a man can do it to save one's life. We must play out the game with that courage as becomes gamesters who were first engaged by conscience against all motives and interest, and be glad to let the world know that we were carried on only by conscience." (Lister, I. 363.)

But brighter days approached. Cromwell's death was followed by a short season of confusion, and that by the Restoration, to which Hyde contributed by the preparation of the celebrated declaration from Breda, and the royal letters to Monk and the Army, to the two Houses, to the Navy, and to the City of London. Hyde entered London in the train of Charles, and on the third day afterwards took his seat in the House of Lords and the Court of Chancery as Lord Chancellor-an office to which he had been appointed at Bruges on the 13th January 1658. (Lister, I. 440.) Early in the year after the restoration, Hyde was created a Baron, and, at the coronation, an Earl. He was also offered the garter, but declined it, saying, that there were very many worthy men who well remembered him of their own condition when he first entered into his [the King's] father's service, and believed that he was advanced too much before them." (Lister, II. 81.) About the same time he received from Charles a gift of 20,000l. and was offered a grant of land, which he declined, upon the ground that it was the duty of his office to inspect such grants, "which discharge of his duty could not but raise him many enemies, who should not have that advantage to say, that he obstructed the King's bounty towards other men, when he made it very profuse towards himself." (II. 83.)

For six years subsequent to the Restoration the government of the country rested upon the shoulders of Hyde. The settlement of the church and state, the fixing the royal revenue,-the disbanding the Commonwealth army, the abolition of the feudal tenures,-the punishment of the regicides,-the marriage of the King, and the task of endeavouring to restrain his extravagances, curb his licentiousness, and animate his sloth, all fell upon Hyde. That he accomplished these various objects,that he put together again the broken fragments of the machinery of the monarchy, and, building upon the old foundation, constructed a fabric infinitely more liberal and more consonant with freedom than the one which had been destroyed, is a theme for no slight praise; we who look at the results may see, or fancy that we sce, defects in the new superstructure, and it is easy to give vent to very fine declamation in favour of our own more enlightened" notions; but that the remodelling was as liberal as the times would bear is strikingly proved by the circumstance that, in almost every instance, Clarendon's schemes were narrowed, and not extended, by the parliaments to which they were submitted. He was, at any event, too liberal for them.

And now we pass to the last act in the drama of the Life of Clarendon. "What exiled Hyde?" has been asked by many inquirers both before and since Dr. Johnson; but without entering into disputes upon the subject, we will set forth the matter as it appears in the pages of Mr. Lister. Clarendon himself knew but too well the slipperiness of his position. "The confidence the King had in him," he says, "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;" and that, however serviceable he might render himself, he must not depend upon a continuance of the King's favour. Others might always gain credit with him by finding fault with what was done, "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." (Lister, II. 84.) Under such a sovereign it is to be wondered that a man of piety and virtue maintained his post so long rather than that he fell at last.

The temper of the people was soured. The nation had been visited by the plague, the metropolis destroyed by fire, and the shore insulted by the fleet of a victorious enemy.

"The enthusiastic loyalty of 1660," remarks Mr. Lister, “had gradually subsided, and had been succeeded by apathy or disgust. The name

of courtier' became again unpalatable to the electors; and frequently was Cromwell commended for the brave things he did' and the respect he inspired in neighbouring princes, and was contrasted with Charles now so fallen from the love and good liking of his people,' that it is a miracle,' says Pepys, 'what way a man could devise to lose so much in so little time.' The sins of the court were denounced from the pulpit, and even a royalist, like Evelyn, could tell an official friend, like Pepys, that wise men do prepare to remove abroad what they have, for that we must be ruined, our case being past relief; the kingdom so much in debt, and the King minding nothing but lust.' '-(II. 385.)

In this state of things it was determined that some one must be fixed upon as a scapegoat, and both court and people turned towards Cla

rendon.

...

"On Clarendon . . . was poured the odium of every measure and event, which, whether justly imputable to him or not, the public at that moment regarded as a grievance. The war, which he had originally opposed, the division of the fleet, which he had not suggested,—and even the want of royal issue, which he could not have foreseen (the Queen having recently miscarried), were all laid to his charge. Old topics of complaint were revived by the pressure of a calamity with which those topics had no connexion; and in the midst of the panic and rage of the populace, at the alarming news that the Dutch were at Gravesend, they broke the windows of Clarendon's house and painted a gibbet on his gate, accompanied with this rude rhyme :

'Three sights to be seen,

Dunkirk, Tangiers, and a barren Queen.'"-(II. 386.)

Clarendon might have laughed all these ebullitions of popular feeling to scorn if he had been protected by the head of the state, but at court he was even more obnoxious than amongst the people.

Not only was his position greatly weakened by the retirement of Nicholas and the death of Southampton, the Lord Treasurer, both of whom had been succeeded by men whose opinions upon party questions were frequently opposed to those of Clarendon, but there were others, and, unfortunately, even in Charles's court, more influential persons, who were Clarendon's avowed enemies-the King's profligate associates of both

sexes.

"The commanding talents and acknowledged services of the Chancellor, aided by the magic of old associations, and Charles's habits of de