Earl of Clarendon

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ Clarendon's autobiographical works and letters form the basis of the Life of Clarendon published in 1837 by Thomas Lister Lord Campbell's memoir in his Lives of the Chancellors (iii. 110-271) has no independent value. An earlier life of little value is contained in Lives of all the Lord Chancellors, but more especially of those two great opposites, Edward, earl of Clarendon, and Bulstrode, lord Whitelocke, 2 vols. ”

“ He was a man of unquestionable ability, of dauntless audacity, and restless activity; but he moved the hatred and contempt alike of Royalist and rebel, for his arrogance, his brazen insolence, and his cynical lack of conscience. Clarendon had now to use him as agent in a series of complicated diplomatic transactions. To his perspicacity, promptness, and determination, the Chancellor might trust. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To his historic sense a place amongst the nobility of his country was attractive, and its stateliness was something which his imagination clothed with more than merely superficial allurement. It was from no selfish feeling and no vanity of personal display, that he conceived the idea of leaving to those who were to come after him an inheritance compatible with that position. It would be unjust to blame Clarendon because he gave the scanty leisure, which his absorbing business permitted him, to attaining that object. ”

“ It was only natural that the old man—whose memories of public service carried him back to the days when he had been amongst the followers of the Duke of Buckingham at the time of his assassination, nearly forty years before—should accept the proposal readily. How it seemed to Clarendon is best seen in his own words. "It cost the King, in present money and land on lease, very little less than twenty thousand pounds, to bring in a servant whom very few cared for, in place of an old servant whom everybody loved." ”

“ He treated the evidence as worthless, and forced Charles himself to admit that some of the correspondence had its origin in Court intrigue. The quarrel with Lady Castlemaine was composed, and from being bitter enemies, she and the Duke became sworn allies, who joined forces in denouncing Clarendon, and found abettors in those who had lately been the Duke's accusers. A man of much less than Clarendon's pride and dignity might well have despised such intrigues; but events soon proved how fickle was the support upon which he could rely in trusting to the gratitude of the King. ”

“ He had striven, even against the inclination of the King, to advance proposals for a treaty with Parliament; and his loyalty did not blind him to the hopelessness of the struggle, or to what seemed to him defects in the Royalist cause. Too proud to be a courtier, and too sensible of the responsibility of great lineage and high station to be a rebel, his aim was to steer a moderate course. In temper, as well as in political views, he and Clarendon were closely united; and their mutual confidence continued unbroken after the Restoration. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He held out hopes of a cordial agreement between them to be gained by conceding what the King desired, at the expense of what Clarendon admitted to be a natural repugnance. He explained to her the authority which the King possessed, and hinted—we may guess with what repugnance—at the usages of other Courts, where such scandals were condoned. He was met, once and again, by passionate outbursts, to which the Queen gave way, and which, he knew, would only provoke the resentment of the King—the resentment of a nature, slow to be aroused, but once aroused, relentless because of its very cynicism. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The King could only smilingly reply "that few men were so scrupulous." There is something almost comical in the effort on the part of Clarendon to press upon the King that self-respect, which he had long since cast aside, and the place of which was supplied by a mask of cynicism. ”

“ He strove, under the compulsion to which many a diplomat has had to yield, to cover his weakness by proud words, and he managed to provoke Louis XIV. to angry remonstrances, and even to threats of war. It was to Clarendon personally that the French King ascribed the supercilious tone of the English demands, and it was his compliance that Louis and his Ministers chiefly sought to gain. The Powers abroad knew what Clarendon's work for the exiled Court had been. They could estimate the value of his statesmanship, and dreaded him as England's most efficacious Minister. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Clarendon had recognized fully that such reparation was due, and had instructed Downing to offer it. The elusive tactics of De Witt, and the armed intervention of De Ruyter, frustrated Clarendon's efforts for a peaceful settlement.
Already Clarendon's pronounced inclination for peace had earned for him the ill-will which the Duke of York's habitual sulkiness of temper was so apt to indulge. The King had given their due weight to the arguments of the Chancellor, and felt the danger which war would involve at once to his own authority at home, and to the position of England in Europe. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such relationships had before been tacitly recognized but not explicitly avowed; now for the first time the patent of nobility declared the youth to be the natural son of the King. Vice laid aside that homage of hypocrisy which it had before paid to virtue. It was an innovation which Clarendon firmly opposed. "It would have," he told the King quite plainly, "an ill sound in England with all his people, who thought that these unlawful acts ought to be concealed, and not published and justified." ”

“ Alike from the ungrudging admiration which Clarendon expresses for his life-long friend, from the captious criticism of those to whom his long tarrying on the stage was irksome, and from the irresponsible gossip of Pepys, we have a vivid picture of the veteran statesman as he appeared to his contemporaries. In outward carriage grave and distant, girt with that ample ceremony of manner which repelled familiarity; easy and prompt in debate, with that sense of self-confidence which permits a man to think on his feet, and to dispense with any niceties of diction ”

“ 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. ”

“ Its very ruthlessness gave it an appearance of outward settlement and peace.
"It cannot be imagined," says Clarendon, "in how easy a method, and with what peaceable formality this whole great kingdom was taken from the just lords and proprietors, and divided and given amongst those who had no other right to it, but that they had power to keep it; no man having so great shares as they who had been instruments to murder the King, and were not likely willingly to part with it to his successor." ”