Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, the third son of Henry Hyde, of Dinton, Esquire, a younger branch of an ancient family long established in Cheshire, was born at Dinton, near Salisbury, February 18, 1609. The most valuable part of his early education he received from his father, who was an excellent scholar: from his residence at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he entered in 1622, and took his bachelor’s degree in 1625, according to his own account he obtained little benefit. In February 1627, he was entered at the Middle Temple. At the age of twenty-one, he married his first wife, who died within six months of their union. After the lapse of three years he was again married, to the daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, Master of Requests to the King, by whom he left a numerous family. He was called to the bar in Michaelmas term, 1633. To the study of law he entertained in the first instance a strong dislike, and applied himself chiefly to history and general literature. But from the time of his second marriage he devoted himself steadily to the pursuit of his profession, in which he early acquired considerable practice and reputation. His business was, however, more frequent in the Court of Requests, in the Star Chamber, than in the courts of common law, and his name rarely appears in the reports of that period.

Soon after he was called to the bar, Mr. Hyde was concerned in a transaction of considerable moment, which produced important consequences in his future life, by introducing him to the favourable notice of Archbishop Laud. It arose out of certain Custom-House regulations, by which the London merchants found themselves aggrieved. The leading men among them applied to Mr. Hyde, who, on finding all remonstrances with the Lord Treasurer unavailing, advised them to state their grievances in a petition to the King, which he drew for them. On the death of the Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Portland, the affairs of the Treasury were placed under the management of several commissioners, of whom Laud was one. The Archbishop soon found occasion to investigate the complaint of the merchants; and in consequence he sent for, and held several interviews with, Mr. Hyde: to whom he became a valuable and efficient patron, noticing him particularly when he appeared as counsel in the Star Chamber, and consulting and employing him on many public occasions.

Laud’s favour introduced Mr. Hyde to the Lord Keeper Coventry, the Earl of Manchester, then Lord Privy Seal, and other political and legal characters of high rank, of the court party. With the leaders of the popular, or country party also he was upon friendly terms, “having,” as he says, “that rare felicity, that even they who did not love many of those upon whom he most depended, were yet very well pleased with him and with his company.”

Upon the summoning of what was called the Short Parliament, which met April 3, 1640, Mr. Hyde was elected member for Wootton-Basset, and for Shaftesbury. He chose to take his seat for the former place. His first and only speech during the session was in the celebrated debate on the subject of grievances, introduced by a motion of Mr. Pym; on which occasion Mr. Hyde directed the attention of the house to the enormous abuses of the Earl Marshal’s Court. Whitelocke says that “he gained much credit by his conduct in this business.” In the warm debate which took place in the House of Commons upon the question of a supply, it was hinted by members of the house connected with the court, that Charles, upon hearing of their proceedings, would probably dissolve the parliament in displeasure. Mr. Hyde perceived the injurious tendency of such a measure, and immediately went from the house to Archbishop Laud, to entreat him to dissuade the King from so injudicious a course. The Archbishop heard him as usual with patience, but refused to interfere: and the Parliament was dissolved in less than three weeks after its first meeting.

The necessities of the King compelled him to call the Long Parliament in the following November, of which Mr. Hyde was also a member. The elections having in general favoured the popular party, the temper of this parliament was at its commencement decidedly more opposed to the court than the last. At first, Mr. Hyde, whose familiarity with Laud was well known, was an object of jealousy and dislike. His conduct as chairman of the committee appointed to consider the abuses of the Earl Marshal’s Court, which led to the total abolition of that unauthorized jurisdiction, and his avowed disapprobation of several obnoxious branches of the prerogative, restored him in some degree to the good opinion of the house, while his influence with the moderate party, both in the court and the parliament, daily increased. Having given up his professional practice since the beginning of the parliament, he was much employed in the ordinary business of the house. He was chairman of the committee appointed to inquire into the legality and expediency of the courts of the President and Council of the North, commonly called the Courts of York; and in April, 1641, he was commissioned to communicate to the House of Lords the resolutions of the Commons against those courts. The performance of this duty he accompanied by a speech, in which he explained to the Lords, with much clearness and precision, the origin and nature of this obnoxious jurisdiction, and which he says in his History, “met with good approbation in both houses.” In July following he was chairman of the committee for inquiring into the conduct of the judges in the case of ship-money; and the management of the impeachment of the Lord Chief Baron Davenport, Baron Weston, and Baron Trevor, before the Lords, was afterwards entrusted to him. Upon this occasion, he delivered an excellent speech, exhibiting, in eloquent language, the destructive effects of the corruption of the judges upon the liberty of the subject and the security of property. During the same year, he appears from the Commons’ journals to have been usually named on the most important committees both of a public and private nature.

The course adopted by Mr. Hyde with reference to the Earl of Strafford’s prosecution cannot be precisely ascertained. That he was employed in arranging the preliminary steps for the impeachment, appears from the journals; but in his History he does not explicitly declare what part he took upon the introduction of the bill of attainder. Some of his biographers state that he warmly opposed it; but no evidence is given in support of the assertion; and it is quite clear that neither his name, nor that of Lord Falkland, his political and personal friend, appear amongst those which were posted as “Straffordians, Betrayers of their Country,” for having voted against the measure. Though he cordially acquiesced in many of the measures at this time introduced by the popular leaders for the redress of grievances, his political opinions, as well as his ultimate views and intentions, differed widely from those of the predominant party. He strenuously opposed a bill for depriving the bishops of their seats in parliament, which passed the House of Commons, though it was rejected in the House of Lords by a great majority. In no degree discouraged by this discomfiture, the leaders of the Puritan party soon afterwards introduced a measure for the total abolition of episcopacy, known by the title of ‘The Root and Branch Bill,’ which was read a first time and committed. Mr. Hyde was appointed chairman of the committee, by common consent of both parties; the one wishing to get rid of his opposition in the committee, the other to secure a chairman of their own views. The result proved the latter party to be in the right; for Hyde contrived so to baffle the promoters of the measure, that they at last thought proper to withdraw it, Sir Arthur Haselrig declaring in the house, that “he would never hereafter put an enemy into the chair.” His conduct respecting this measure was warmly approved by the King; who before he went to Scotland in 1641, sent for Mr. Hyde, to express how much he was beholden to him for his services, “for which he thought fit to give him his own thanks, and to assure him that he would remember it to his advantage.”

Before the King left Whitehall, in consequence of the tumults occasioned by his indiscretion in demanding the Five Members, he charged Mr. Hyde, in conjunction with Lord Falkland and Sir John Colepeper, to consult constantly together upon the state of affairs in his absence, and to give him on every occasion their unreserved advice, without which he declared solemnly that he would take no step in the parliament. Though much discouraged by the previous conduct of the King respecting the Five Members, which he had adopted without consulting them, and entirely against their judgment, they undertook and faithfully executed the charge imposed upon them; and after the King had left London, they met every night at Mr. Hyde’s house in Westminster, to communicate to each other their several intelligences and observations, and to make such arrangements as they thought best adapted to stay the falling fortunes of the royal cause.

Mr. Hyde’s good understanding with the leaders of the popular party had rapidly declined, since his opposition to the proposed measure for ejecting the bishops from the House of Lords; and after his conduct in the committee for abolishing episcopacy he was regarded as a declared enemy, and his nightly consultations with Falkland and Colepeper were watched with the utmost jealousy. Though his situation at this time was one of considerable danger, he remained at his post after the King’s departure to York, and constantly took his seat in the House of Commons. About the latter end of April, 1642, Mr. Hyde received a letter from the King, requiring him immediately to repair to him at York; with which requisition he complied in the course of the next month, having first rendered a signal service to the royal cause by persuading the Lord Keeper Littleton to send the Great Seal and also to go himself to the King. In consequence of this step the House of Commons passed a resolution, in August, 1642, disabling him from sitting again in that parliament; and their indignation was raised to such a degree, that Mr. Hyde was one of the few persons who were excepted from the pardon which the Earl of Essex was afterwards instructed to offer to those who might be induced to leave the King and submit to the parliament. On joining the King at York, Mr. Hyde continued to be one of his most confidential advisers, and was soon afterwards knighted and made Chancellor of the Exchequer. In this capacity he negotiated with the parliamentary commissioners sent to Oxford in 1643; and in 1645 he acted as one of the King’s commissioners at the treaty of Uxbridge. After the breaking off of that treaty it was thought expedient to send the Prince of Wales into the west of England, both to secure his person from the dangers with which his father was environed, and to give encouragement to the Royalists in that part of the country. Sir Edward Hyde accompanied him as one of his council. The parliamentary successes in the west compelled the Prince to migrate, first to Scilly, thence to Jersey, from which place he departed into France in July, 1646. Hyde remained in Jersey for the space of two years, devoting himself wholly to his History of the Rebellion, which he had commenced in the Scilly Islands, and of which he completed the four first books at that time. While engaged in this manner, he received several letters from the King, expressive of his approbation of his undertaking, and supplying him with a particular relation of the occurrences which had taken place from the departure of the Prince until the period of his joining the Scotch army.

In May, 1648, Hyde received the King’s commands to join the Prince of Wales at Paris. On the way thither, he met Lord Cottington and others at Rouen, where he learned that the Prince was gone to Holland, and was ordered to follow him. After many difficulties and dangers, Cottington and Hyde met their young master at the Hague in the month of August, and were soon afterwards joined by several other members of the King’s council.

On the announcement of the execution of his father, Charles despatched Sir Edward Hyde and Lord Cottington as his ambassadors to Spain. After a fruitless negotiation of fifteen months, they received a message from court shortly after the arrival of the news of Cromwell’s victory at Dunbar, desiring them to quit the Spanish dominions. Hyde then repaired to Antwerp, where he resided with his wife and family, until, at the end of 1651, he was summoned to Paris, to meet Charles II., after his memorable escape from the battle of Worcester. He resided at Paris with the exiled court for nearly three years, and during this period enjoyed the unlimited confidence of his master, who left the arduous and difficult task of corresponding and negotiating with the English royalists entirely to his management. At this period the exiled royalists were frequently reduced to great pecuniary distress. The miserable dissensions and petty jealousies which prevailed among them are fully described in the History of the Rebellion. At length Charles, wearied and disgusted by the intrigues and broils which perpetually disturbed his council, while subject to the interference of the Queen Mother, determined to leave Paris; and accordingly he quitted that city in June, 1654, and went to reside at Cologne, Sir Edward Hyde and the rest of his court still following his humble fortunes. Upon the execution of the treaty with Spain, Charles removed from Cologne to Bruges in 1657, and in the course of that year bestowed upon Sir Edward Hyde the then empty dignity of Lord High Chancellor of England. Soon after this event the prospects of the Royalists began to brighten. The government of Cromwell had been for some time growing infirm, in consequence of domestic dissensions, the exhausted state of the revenue, and the distrust entertained towards the Protector, who had successively deceived and disappointed all parties. These seeds of discord were sedulously cultivated by the English royalists; and at last the death of that extraordinary man led to a series of events which introduced the restoration of Charles II.

At the Restoration Sir Edward Hyde was continued as Lord Chancellor; and notwithstanding the constant hostility of the Queen Mother and her faction at court, he maintained for some time a paramount influence with the King, who treated him with the confidence and friendship which his great industry and talents for business, and his faithful attachment to himself and his father so well deserved. In November, 1660, he was raised to the peerage, by the title of Baron Hyde of Hindon in the county of Wilts, and in the spring of the following year he was created Viscount Cornbury and Earl of Clarendon. He was also about this time elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Among the tribes of expectant cavaliers who now flocked to the court of the restored monarch, all impatient to obtain something in recompense for their alleged services and sufferings in the royal cause, these honours and distinctions bestowed upon the Earl of Clarendon raised a storm of envy and malice which eventually caused his ruin. The King’s easiness of access, and, as Lord Clarendon calls it, that “imbecillitas frontis, which kept him from denying,” together with the moral cowardice which induced him to escape from the most troublesome importunities, by sending petitioners to the Chancellor for their answers, necessarily increased the dislike with which he was regarded. The discovery of the marriage of his daughter to the Duke of York, afterwards James II., though it probably took place without the knowledge of the Chancellor, gave ample opportunity to the malice of his enemies. The King, however, behaved on this occasion in a manner which did him credit. He not only required the Duke to acknowledge his wife, on being certified that the ceremony had been duly performed, but refused with passion the proffered resignation of the Chancellor, who offered to reside in future beyond seas, and conjured him “never more to think of those unreasonable things, but to attend and prosecute his business with his usual alacrity, since his kindness should never fail him.”

The first open act of hostility against Lord Clarendon was undertaken by the Earl of Bristol, who, in 1663, exhibited articles of high treason and other misdemeanors against him in the House of Lords. These articles, which contained a great variety of vague and inconsistent charges, were forwarded by the House of Lords to the King, who informed them, that “he found several matters of fact charged, which upon his own certain knowledge were untrue; and that the articles contained many scandalous reflections upon himself and his family, which he looked upon as libels against his person and government.” Upon a reference by the House of Lords to the judges, they reported that “the whole charge did not amount to treason though it were all true;” and upon this the proceedings were abandoned.

But it was at last the fate of Lord Clarendon to experience the proverbial ingratitude of princes. From the period of the Restoration a powerful union of discontented parties had gradually combined against him. All hated him—the old cavaliers, because they thought he neglected their just claims upon the bounty of the King; the papists and the dissenters, because they found him an uncompromising opponent of all concessions to those whom he regarded as enemies of the established church; the licentious adherents of an unprincipled court, because his honest endeavours to withdraw the King from his levity and profligacy to serious considerations, thwarted their intentions and interrupted their pleasures. Their united efforts erased from Charles’s mind the recollection of services of no common value, and caused him to abandon his best and most faithful counsellor, without having even the appearance of a reason for his conduct, beyond what he called “the Chancellor’s intolerable temper.”

The Great Seal was taken from Lord Clarendon in August, 1667; and in the month of November following, after an angry debate, he was impeached by the Commons, in general terms, of high treason and other crimes and misdemeanors; but the Lords, upon the impeachment being carried up, refused to commit him, or to sequester him from parliament, on the ground of the generality of the charge. Before the formal articles of impeachment were prepared, Lord Clarendon left England, in consequence of repeated messages from the King advising him to take that course, having previously addressed to the Lords a vindication of his conduct. Immediately after his departure a bill was introduced into the House of Lords, and rapidly passed, by which he was condemned to perpetual banishment, and declared to be for ever incapable of bearing any public office or employment in England.

The charges made against Lord Clarendon at this time were scarcely less multifarious and inconsistent than those which were instituted by Lord Bristol a few years before. He was accused of designing to govern by a standing army,—of accusing the King of popery,—of receiving bribes for patents,—of selling offices,—of acquiring a greater estate than he could lawfully have gained in a short time,—of advising the sale of Dunkirk to the French,—of causing Quo Warrantos to be issued against corporations in order that he might receive fines on renewals of charters, and many other particulars of alleged corruption. From most of these accusations Lord Clarendon vindicated himself in an address delivered to the House of Lords upon his departure; but during his retirement at Montpellier, he prepared, and transmitted to his children in England a fuller apology, in which he answered each article of the charges objected to him by the Commons.

After some hesitation, Lord Clarendon determined to reside at Montpellier, where he arrived in July, 1668. He was treated with much courtesy and respect by the governor of the city, as well as the French and English inhabitants of all ranks. His first task was to write the vindication of his conduct above-mentioned. During his retirement he made himself master of French and Italian, and read the works of the most eminent writers in both those languages. He also completed his History of the Rebellion, and wrote an answer to Hobbes’s Leviathan, an Historical Discourse on Papal Jurisdiction, a volume of Essays, divine, moral, and political, and also those fragments of his Life, which were first published by the University of Oxford in 1759. Engaged in these pursuits he passed nearly three years at Montpellier in great tranquillity and cheerfulness. He left that city in 1672, and went first to Moulins, then to Rouen, where he died, December 9, 1673. His remains were brought to England and interred in Westminster Abbey.

The political conduct of Lord Clarendon, though variously described by writers of opposite parties, appears to have been generally as consistent and upright as can reasonably be expected from men of warm tempers, deeply interested in the most violent civil dissensions. His earliest impressions were decidedly in favour of the popular party; and even after he had become familiar with Archbishop Laud, and was favourably noticed by Charles I., he strenuously supported that party in the removal of actual grievances, and resisted with zeal and energy the encroachments of prerogative. That he afterwards refused to join in the wild and intemperate actions committed by the Parliament, and supported the royal cause against the continually increasing demands of those with whom he had previously acted, is not to be ascribed to inconsistency in his conduct, but to the development of designs and measures at all times repugnant to his principles. His advice to Charles I. and to Laud was always temperate and wise, and was given with boldness and candour. After the Restoration, in the height of his power and influence, he displayed the same moderation in his opinions and conduct, and acted upon the same principles of dislike to fundamental changes, which had influenced him as a member of the Long Parliament. It has been imputed to Lord Clarendon that he neglected to exert himself for the relief of those unfortunate cavaliers whose attachment to the King had involved them in penury and ruin. It is difficult to ascertain the exact truth of this charge; but, whether true or false, such an accusation was sure to be made in a case where the applicants for compensation were numerous, and the means of satisfying them inconsiderable.

In the discharge of the legal functions of his office of Lord Chancellor, as presiding in the Court of Chancery, he was by no means distinguished; he promoted some reforms in the practice of his court, and continued the judicious improvements effected during the Commonwealth; but Evelyn says “he was no considerable lawyer,” and the circumstance that he never decided a case without requiring the presence of two judges is, if true, a sufficient acknowledgment of his judicial incompetency.

For his judicial appointments Lord Clarendon is entitled to unqualified praise. Hale, Bridgeman, and other judges of the highest eminence for learning and independence, were appointed by him immediately after the Restoration, and contributed in a great degree to give stability and moral strength to the new government, by the confidence which their characters inspired in the due administration of the law.

As an historian Lord Clarendon was unquestionably careless and inexact to a surprising degree, which may in some measure be excused by the necessity of writing very much from recollection; and he was a perpetual advocate and partisan of the Royal cause, though by no means of most of its supporters. But though his narration constantly betrays the bias of party, and cannot therefore be safely relied upon for our historical conclusions, his misrepresentations arise from the avowed partiality and intense concern he feels for the cause he is advocating, and not from any design to suppress or distort facts. His style is luxuriant and undisciplined, and his expression in the narrative parts of his history is diffuse and inaccurate; but his fervent loyalty and the warmth of his attachment to his political friends have infused a richness of eloquence into his delineations of character, which has perhaps never been surpassed in any language.