Sir Henry Craik

“ No one loathed more utterly than he the disgusting licentiousness out of which the whole sordid story grew, and no one treated with more contemptuous austerity the objects of the King's passion, and the pandars to his vices. However high his own ideal of domestic virtue, Clarendon was a man of the world, not blind to its vices, and not eager to pry into scandals or pursue the secrets of private life. It was not only the vice of Charles's courtiers, it was the sickening parade of debauchery in all its nakedness, which seemed to him to make the Court unmanly and contemptible. ”

“ Hyde saw clearly enough the danger that lurked in the very suddenness with which the nation allowed itself to be swept away by the tide of loyalty. It did not blind him to the wide diversity of opinion which prevailed, and which made the royal authority so much smaller in fact than "the general noise and acclamation, the bells, and the bonfires, proclaimed it to be." A sedulous cultivation of his own dignity on the part of the King, a respect for public opinion, the most unwearied attention to public business, might indeed have allowed the seeds of loyalty to grow into a strong plant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Inaction was apt to breed apathy; but immature action would only lead to further persecution of the loyalists, and to disaster to the most gallant defenders of the rights of the King. With the true instinct of a statesman, Hyde saw that the waiting policy was best; but it was precisely the policy that gave most colour to insinuations of his want of zeal. In spite of his exile, he understood the temper of the nation better than any of the paltry intriguers round him; to study that temper was not a process that commended itself to their impatient ambitions. ”

“ Sound and sincere Churchman as he was, his religion was that of the man of the world, suspicious of fanaticism, more earnest in inculcating an upright life than in a show of enthusiastic fervour, regular in his religious duties, but preferring a religion which displayed itself in the cheerful activity of a regular life, rather than in any overstrained attention to devotional routine. It was only natural that his enemies should charge him with being worldly-minded, and should insinuate that with him religion was only an instrument of government, and an element in policy. ”

“ It 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. ”

“ Only a few months before, Dryden had poured out a poetical tribute, from that mint of flattery of which his expenditure was so lavish, and had told Clarendon that he and the King bounded the horizon of the universe to their country, and had compared his wise counsels to the rich perfumes of the East. Even Louis XIV. did not think it below his dignity to solicit the Chancellor's favour, and to be jealous of his power. But Clarendon was not blind to the influences that were undermining that power. ”

“ Hints and gossip as to such bribes and commissions were inevitable in an age when they were only too common, and in the mouths of men whose consciences were blunted by long practice. Such gossip readily spread, as it is, in all places and in all ages, too apt to do. We may safely discard the slanderous garrulity of Pepys, and just as safely the ridiculous libel of Anthony a Wood, who tells us how one David Jenkyns, a friend of Wood's and a good Royalist, would certainly have been made a judge at the Restoration, if he "had paid money to the Lord Chancellor." ”

“ 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. ”

“ I did never observe how much easier a man do speak when he knows all the company to be below him, than in him."
The gossipping diarist was no inapt observer of the ways of men, and had no small experience. Evelyn was a more attached and grateful admirer. To him, the great Chancellor was "of a jolly temper, of the old English fashion." Yet Evelyn had known Clarendon when his courage was most tried, when his hopes were baffled, and when the sordid crowd of courtiers and profligates had baited him almost to the death. It is little touches like these that fill in the picture of the man. ”

“ They formed an inner circle, with common sympathies at once in their memories and in their aims, and unassailed as yet by the coarse profligacy, the vulgar buffoonery, and the ignoble selfishness that were soon to become dominant in Charles's Court. Such were Ormonde, now Lord Steward, whose loyalty was as untarnished as his position was above the assaults of slander and envy, and whose unbroken friendship was a powerful buttress to Hyde, and warded off the slights to which his own more humble birth might have subjected him. ”

“ The caprice of fortune never laid upon a man so proud as Clarendon, a task so irksome and so little to his taste. Only the public interest involved forced him to breathe for a time the stifling atmosphere, and mix himself in the nauseating topics, of the royal matrimonial wranglings. Only the imperious need for suppressing a scandal which might smother the new settlement, and the royal power, in the mud of a sordid quarrel, bade him undertake a hateful duty. Honour could not be saved ”

“ With all his experience of Courts, Hyde never learned the arts of a courtier. He was naively unconscious how little the steadfast honesty of his purpose could render his blunt plainness of diction palatable to a master, the chief feature of whose character was callous selfishness, and whose self-love might for the moment allow him to overlook, but never permitted him to forget, the liberty that presumed to curb his caprices or to criticize his conduct. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hyde was no strait-laced moralist. He had been familiar in his earlier days with a society that was by no means puritanical, and he could discern fine points of character, and find attractive friendships, amongst men whose morality was avowedly lax. But it was the vulgar obscenity of Charles II.'s Court that moved his contempt; and he was suddenly brought face to face with the announcement that his own family was involved in it, and that, too, in circumstances which must inevitably give rise to the suspicion that laxity of morals was allied with the sordid promptings of selfish ambition. ”

“ The Irish had been evicted with a cruelty that had no thought of justice, and those who had not been sent abroad to seek death or a precarious livelihood in the ranks of foreign armies, had been driven into the barren tracts of Connaught, any of them found outside those limits being hunted down like wild beasts. To have shown any sympathy with the Royalist cause, or even to have resisted the fierce rule of the Cromwellian soldiery, was enough, when added to their adherence to a tabooed religion, to mark them as beyond the pale of humanity. ”

“ Above all, Clarendon saw that in the hard task which lay before him in re- establishing a settled Government, the first essential was the ending of weary struggles, and the settling of doubtful contentions. Any settlement was better than perpetual controversy. It was a smaller matter to adjust the balance according to an ideal of just and politic moderation, than to comply with the imperious maxim, "that it is for the advantage of the State that there be an end of litigation."
That there should be an outburst of anger from those who believed themselves to be martyrs was only to be expected. ”

“ Candour is no doubt a virtue, and Clarendon deserves honour for his bold words. But to tell the King that he was at once a sluggard and a debauchee; that he had lost the respect, and would probably soon forfeit the obedience of his subjects; and to scold his jocular raillery by painting him as courting the society and imitating the manners of buffoons, was scarcely a tactful way of insinuating a lesson of caution and establishing the confidence which makes a servant congenial to his master. We must honour Clarendon for his manliness ”

“ For the memory of the beginning of the rebellion in Ireland (how many other rebellions soever had followed as bad, or worse, in respect of the consequences that attended them) was as fresh and as odious to the whole people of England, as it had been in the first year. And though no man durst avow so unchristian a wish as an extirpation of them (which they would have been very well contented with) yet no man dissembled his opinion that it was the only security the English could have in that kingdom, that the Irish should be kept so low, that they should have no power to hurt them. ”

“ He knew the rottenness of the Court, and the little trust that was to be placed in those who had gained Charles's ear; and that knowledge blinded him to the fact that inveteracy in opposition to prevailing views was no safe or prudent policy for him at this juncture. Himself a man risen from the middle class, he nevertheless held that the natural custodians of the executive power were men who by hereditary rank, and by outstanding position, could acquire, if not the confidence, at least the implicit obedience, of the people. ”

“ No Power had better reason to recognize the imperial force of Cromwell, and none was more keenly conscious of the contrast between his master will, and the vacillating and distracted counsels that now prevailed at the Court of England. Clarendon saw the position as well as they. He knew how poor was the bulwark supplied by the noisy loyalty of the Restoration, and how imperatively necessary it was to consolidate authority at home before launching upon a foreign war. ”

“ The Civil War had left an ample crop of bravos, who were to be hired for any outrage, and whose excesses added to the restless uneasiness that prevailed, and that made men nervously apprehensive of revolution. The religious enthusiast, and the blustering cut-throat of Alsatia, were equally open to the persuasions of any turbulent faction which sought to defy the law. The forces of order which Clarendon commanded were but scanty. ”

“ No one recognized more clearly than Clarendon, or detested more cordially, the scandals that tarnished the restored monarchy; to no one did they bring a fuller crop of crushed hopes, and baffled efforts. Fortune's cynical injustice was never more clearly shown.
To some of the clique of Clarendon's enemies it seemed as if the time had come to strike a decisive blow. Stories of his impending fall were rife. Pepys, repeating the gossip of the day, and the tittle-tattle of the back stairs, tells us how "they have cast my Lord Chancellor on his back past ever getting up again." ”

“ The Irish claim to loyalty was refuted by proof of their readiness, in their direst straits, to invite foreign aid, and to offer to repay it by the betrayal of the Royalist cause, and by breaking their allegiance to the King. One influence, and one influence alone, contributed to a solution, and that was the earnest desire of all, even at the cost of some diminution of their own claims, to escape from the palsying influence of uncertainty and doubt. ”

“ In the dark days they had distrusted the feverish energy of younger men, whose record of loyalty was short, and who had sought to retrieve the lateness of their adherence to the Royalist cause by its restless zeal. Amongst these last, there were, indeed, many whose services could not be disparaged, such as young Lord Mordaunt, who had repeatedly risked his life in passing between England and the quarters of the exiled Court. But it was no selfish motive that prompted caution to men like Ormonde, Hertford, and Southampton. ”

“ He saw that the recklessness of the courtiers was breeding irritation and contempt towards the Crown, and weakening the nerves and sinews of the nation. All he could now hope for in the King was, that he might to some extent hide the scandals of his Court, and not be entirely led away by the more dangerous spirits in it. Efficient aid from his master, Clarendon had ceased to expect; it would be well if the worst gang amongst the courtiers could at least be persuaded to interfere as little as might be with affairs of State. ”

“ Restless discontent, disappointed ambition, the jealousy of jarring factions at Court, all found ready instruments in the enthusiasts who revived many of the strange vagaries of doctrine that had been rife during the Civil War. Anabaptists and Millenarians, Fifth-monarchy men and Levellers—all were mingled together in the cauldron of religious and political frenzy. The reckless vanity of a courtier like Buckingham found it useful to cultivate the good-will of the more ardent sectaries. ”