Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon. Born at Dinton, Wiltshire, Feb. 18, 1608 (O.S.): died at Rouen, France, Dec. 9, 1674. An English statesman and historian. He entered Parliament in 1640; became chancellor of the exchequer in 1643; was the chief adviser of Charles I. during the civil war, and of Prince Charles during his exile; and was lord chancellor of England 1660–67, when he was impeached and banished by Parliament. His chief works are a “True Historical Narrative of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England” (generally termed “History of the Rebellion,” 1702–04) and “The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon,… Written by Himself” (1759).

Personal

  He had without doubt great infirmities, which, by providential mercy, were reasonably restrained from growing into vices, at least into any that were habitual. He had ambition enough to keep him from being satisfied with his own condition, and to raise his spirit to great designs of raising himself; but not to transport him to endeavour it, by any crooked and indirect means. He was never suspected to flatter the greatest men, or in the least degree to dissemble his own opinions or thoughts, how ingrateful soever it often proved; and even an affected defect in, and contempt of those two useful qualities cost him dear afterwards. He indulged his palate very much, and took even some delight in eating and drinking well, but without any approach to luxury; and, in truth, rather discoursed like an epicure, than was one…. He had a fancy, sharp and luxuriant, but so carefully cultivated and strictly guarded, that he never was heard to speak a loose or profane word, which he imputed to the chastity of the persons where his conversation usually was, where that rank sort of wit was religiously detested; and a little discountenance would quickly root those unsavoury weeds out all discourses where persons of honour are present. He was in his nature inclined to pride and passion, and to a humour between wrangling and disputing very troublesome, which good company in a short time so much reformed and mastered, that no man was more affable and courteous to all kind of persons, and they who knew the great infirmity of his whole family, which abounded in passion, used to say, he had much extinguished the unruliness of that fire. That which supported and rendered him generally acceptable was his generosity (for he had too much a contempt of money), and the opinion men had of the goodness and justice of his nature, which was transcendent in him, in a wonderful tenderness, and delight in obliging. His integrity was ever without blemish, and believed to be above temptation. He was firm and unshaken in his friendships, and, though he had great candour towards others in the differences of religion, he was zealously and deliberately fixed in the principles, both of the doctrine and discipline of the church.

  His chief failing seems to have been too entire devotion to a prince who did not deserve his generous attachment. Yet could he never subdue his mind to the pliant principles or supple manners of a court; and as he expressed his sentiments without regard to rank, he incurred the imputation of that haughty and uncomplying demeanour, which is so often united with the possession of power. The pride of office, however, seems little consistent with the soundness of his judgment; and, in that eventful age, he could not look around him without seeing examples of the instability of greatness, which would chastise the most flattering suggestions of human presumption.

  It is certain that he fell a victim to the hostility of party. The charges against him were not supported by any lawful proof, and most, if not all, were satisfactorily refuted in his answer. Yet he must not be considered an immaculate character. His dread of republicanism taught him to advocate every claim of the prerogative, however unreasonable, and his zeal for orthodoxy led him to persecute all who dissented from the establishment. He was haughty and overbearing; his writings betray in many instances his contempt for veracity: and his desire of amassing wealth provoked Evelyn to remark of him, that “the lord chancellor never did, nor would do, any thing but for money.” He bore with impatience the tedium of exile; but his frequent solicitations for permission to return were treated with neglect by Charles, who felt no inclination to engage in a new contest for the sake of a man, whom he had long before ceased to esteem.

  To the general baseness and profligacy of the times, Clarendon is principally indebted for his high reputation. He was, in every respect, a man unfit for his age, at once too good for it and too bad for it. He seemed to be one of the statesmen of Elizabeth, transplanted at once to a state of society widely different from that in which the abilities of such statesmen had been serviceable.

  He had a competent estate, and was not obliged to regard his profession solely as a means of immediate profit. It is probable that he then entertained hopes of future political or literary distinction; for, amidst his application to law, he was careful not to neglect such means as might lead to advancement in a different career. Every day he devoted some hours to general literature; and he cultivated the society of many distinguished and valuable friends. With members of his own profession he lived little: but he had been careful to form such connections as were alike honourable and advantageous; and, ere he had attained the age of twenty-seven, could enumerate among his intimate associates many of the most eminent persons in the kingdom—persons distinguished not merely by rank and power, but by their characters, abilities, and acquirements. Among his early literary friends were Ben Jonson—Selden, whose society he felt to have been inestimably valuable to him, and for whose talents and learning he retained a veneration unimpaired by subsequent difference of political opinion; Charles Cotton, a man of taste and letters, now remembered chiefly as the literary associate of Isaac Walton; May, the able and candid historian of the parliament; Carew, whose graceful poetry still holds its place in public estimation; his more celebrated contemporary, Edmund Waller; the accomplished and versatile Sir Kenelm Digby; Hales, distinguished by his classical acquirements; Chillingworth, the profound theologian and acute controversialist; these were the literary men whose society was cultivated by Hyde; and to these may be added the names of Sheldon, Morley, and Earles, ecclesiastics, then enjoying a high and deserved reputation.

  Wherever Buckingham presented himself, wit, frolic, and buffoonery, were sure to have the ascendent. The more exalted the personage, the more serious the subject, and the more solemn the occasion, the more certain was it to provoke his merriment and ridicule. The King himself was as much exposed to his jests as was his humblest courtier; and the fortunes of his enemy, Clarendon, were apparently ruined by the systematic ribaldry, with which he persecuted the grave Lord Chancellor. Buckingham’s mimicry was irresistible, and when he imitated the stately walk of that solemn personage,—a pair of bellows hanging before him for the purse, and Colonel Titus preceding him with a fire-shovel on his shoulders, by way of mace—the King and his courtiers are described as convulsed with laughter. Buckingham’s example was of course followed by others, and when the Chancellor passed by, the ladies of the Court used to touch the King:—“There,” said they, “goes your schoolmaster.” Clarendon himself alludes with bitterness to this unlicensed buffoonery.

  Hyde is a firm-built, eupeptic Barrister, whose usual air is florid-hopeful still; a massive man; unknown depth of impetuosity kept down under mountain rock-strata of discretion, which yearly pile themselves higher and higher and are already very high for his years.

  And yet Clarendon was not beaten. Amid exile, obloquy, bodily pain, old age,—with the edifice of his ambition lying shattered round him,—denied a hole in his dear England wherein to die,—he held the fortress of his soul invincible, and showed that a man true to himself can smile at fate. In a fine form, without vanity or arrogance, he exhibited in those years that humour which is the habitual mood of reason, the very bloom and aroma of practical philosophy—a humour which has little or no connection with fun, or wit, or audible laughter; but consists in an unsubduable capacity to make the best of things; a clearness and azure serenity of the soul’s atmosphere which cannot be clouded over; a steadfast realisation, against optimists and pessimists alike, that life on earth is neither celestial nor diabolic, but, under all conditions possible for a wise man, is worth having. Ready to welcome any enlargement, any dawn of royal favour, he did not pine for the want of it, nor did he court the delusive but subtly seductive opiate of egotistic brooding over his virtues and his wrongs. He addressed himself to wholesome labour, wrote his autobiography, studied the languages and literatures of Italy and France, carried on his commentary on the Psalms, and, looking up his controversial harpoon, attempted to fix it in the nose of leviathan Hobbes. He felt and wrote of his dear Falkland with a poetic tenderness which almost makes one love him. In his loyalty to the laws of the universe which had not been for him a garden of roses, and his filial reverence for a Divine Father who had, he believed, afflicted him, he presents a notable illustration of the tendency of sincere religion to promote mental health.

  Of his habits and tastes during his early years, and of his pursuits during his exile, Clarendon gives full details in his autobiography, but says nothing of his private life during the time of his greatness. We learn from others that he was fond of state and magnificence, verging on ostentation. Nothing stirred the spleen of satirists more than the great house which he built for himself in St. James’s, and his own opinion was that it contributed more than any alleged misdemeanours to “that gust of envy” which overthrew him. Designed to cost £20,000, it finally cost £50,000, and involved him in endless difficulties. Evelyn describes it as “without hyperbole the best contrived, most useful, graceful, magnificent house in England.” In the end it was sold to the Duke of Albemarle for £25,000, and pulled down to make room for new buildings.

  The worst part of his whole character—and the fault is illustrated in endless ways—is his frequent insincerity. No doubt the events of his life afforded much excuse for it, but it shows itself continually, and almost always in the same form. He keeps continually saying, almost in so many words, but at all events indirectly, “I am a rough, honest, passionate, plainspoken man, proud of my sincerity, perhaps too secure in my good conscience. My frank harshness of manner was the cause of all my misfortunes.” The slyness which lurks under this sort of roughness is the slyest thing in the whole world.

History of the Rebellion, 1702–4

  I thinke I told you that this earl of Clarendon told me his father was writing the history of our late times. He beginns with king Charles 1st and brought it to the restauration of king Charles II, when, as he was writing, the penne fell out of his hand: he took it up again to write: it fell out again. So then he percieved he was attacqued by death, scilicet, the dead palsey.—They say ’tis very well donne: but his sonne will not print it.

  I cannot but let you know the incredible satisfaction I have taken in reading my late Lord Clarendon’s “History of the Rebellion,” so well and so unexpectedly well written—the preliminary so like that of the noble Polybius, leading us by the courts, avenues, and porches, into the fabric; the style masculine; the characters so just, and tempered without the least impediment of passion or tincture of revenge, yet with such natural and lively touches as show his lordship well knew not only the persons’ outsides, but their very interiors.

  I have met, with none that may compare with him in the Weight of Solemnity of his Style, in the Strength and Clearness of Diction, in the Beauty and Majesty of Expression, and that noble Negligence of Phrase, which maketh his Words wait everywhere upon his Subject, with a Readiness and Propriety, that Art and Study are almost Strangers to.

  Had Clarendon sought nothing but power, his power had never ceased. A corrupted court and a blinded populace were less the causes of the chancellor’s fall, than an ungrateful king, who could not pardon his lordship’s having refused to accept for him the slavery of his country…. Buckingham, Shaftsbury, Lauderdale, Arlington, and such abominable men, were the exchange which the nation made for my lord Clarendon!… As an historian he seems more exceptionable. His majesty and eloquence, his power of painting characters, his knowledge of his subject, rank him in the first class of writers—yet he has both great and little faults.

  This age affords great materials for history, but did not produce any accomplished historian. Clarendon, however, will always be esteemed an entertaining writer, even independent of our curiosity to know the facts which he relates. His style is prolix and redundant, and suffocates us by the length of its periods; but it discovers imagination and sentiment, and pleases us at the same time that we disapprove of it. He is more partial in appearance than in reality; for he seems perpetually anxious to apologize for the king; but his apologies are often well grounded. He is less partial in his relation of facts, than in his account of characters: he was too honest a man to falsify the former; his affections were easily capable, unknown to himself, of disguising the latter. An air of probity and goodness runs through the whole work, as these qualities did, in reality, embellish the whole life of the author.

  We see, in the instance of the celebrated person before us, as well as in many others, that the exertion of genius depends more upon chance or opportunity, than upon nature itself. The divisions and distractions of his country called forth the talents of this excellent man. He had a principle share as a speaker, a writer, and an actor, in the transactions of this reign; and was thereby qualified to enrich the world with one of the best histories it ever saw.

  Though he writes as the professed apologist of one side, yet there appears more impartiality in his relation of facts, than might at first be expected. A great spirit of virtue and probity runs through his work. He maintains all the dignity of an historian. His sentences, indeed, are often too long, and his general manner is prolix; but his style, on the whole, is manly; and his merit, as an historian, is much beyond mediocrity.

  Nothing can be more disgustful to a discerning observer of styles, than the prolixity and perplexity of Clarendon’s composition. Yet he will probably be found to have written well for his time. The absurdity is in those persons who would hold up such writing as a model to after time; as if one should show a schoolboy’s theme, and maintain that a man of the most approved talents, and the ripest years, could not surpass it. The English language, as well as the English annals, is indebted to the labours of Clarendon.

  A work, of which the impressions and profits have increased in an equal ratio—and of which the popularity is built upon an imperishable basis. A statesman, a lawyer, and a philosopher in its most practical, and perhaps rational, sense, there is hardly any name which has reached us, encircled by purer rays of renown, than that of Hyde, Earl of Clarendon; or any which is likely to go down to posterity in a more unsullied state of purity. When one considers the times in which this celebrated Lord Chancellor lived, the station which he filled, the characters with whom he came in competition—(as able as they were intrepid, daring, and corrupt) his family connections, his career of glory; brightest in its wane—and, above all, the legacy, which, in his “History,” he has bequeathed to posterity,… I hardly know how to call upon both “the Young,” and “the Old,” lover of good books, sufficiently to reverence those invaluable volumes known by the title of the “History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, begun in the year 1641,” by the great author in question.

  For an Englishman there is no single historical work with which it can be so necessary for him to be well and thoroughly acquainted as with Clarendon. I feel at this time perfectly assured, that if that book had been put into my hands in youth, it would have preserved me from all the political errors which I have outgrown. It may be taken for granted that —— knows this book well. The more he reads concerning the history of these times, the more highly he will appreciate the wisdom and the integrity of Clarendon.

  Is not only ably written and full of valuable information, but has also an air of dignity and sincerity which makes even the prejudices and errors with which it abounds respectable.

  The “History of the Rebellion” is a work in which the indications of talent disappear under the impress of virtue. Some portraits are vividly coloured; but the character of these portraits is easy of imitation; it is within the reach of the commonest minds; Clarendon himself is reflected in his pictures; his image is portrayed in every page.

  He is excellent in every thing that he has performed with care; his characters are beautifully delineated; his sentiments have often a noble gravity, which the length of his periods, far too great in itself, seems to befit; but, in the general course of his narration, he is negligent of grammar and perspicuity, with little choice of words, and therefore sometimes idiomatic without ease or elegance. The official papers on the royal side, which are generally attributed to him, are written in a masculine and majestic tone, far superior to those of the parliament.

  I cannot quit the present subject without a remark on these great party “Histories” of Clarendon and Burnet. Both have passed through the fiery ordeal of national opinion; and both, with some of their pages singed, remain unconsumed: the one criticised for its solemn eloquence, the other ridiculed for its homely simplicity; the one depreciated for its partiality, the other for its inaccuracy; both alike, as we have seen, by their opposite parties, once considered as works utterly rejected from the historical shelf. But Posterity reverences Genius; for Posterity only can decide on its true worth. Time, potent over criticism, has avenged our two great writers of the history of their own days. The awful genius of Clarendon is still paramount, and the vehement spirit of Burnet has often its secret revelations confirmed. Such shall ever be the fate of those precious writings, which, though they have to contend with the passions of their own age, yet, originating in the personal intercourse of the writers with the subject of their narratives, possess an endearing charm which no criticism can dissolve, a reality which outlasts fiction, and a truth which diffuses its vitality over pages which cannot die.

  It is easy to point out faults in his “History of the Rebellion,”—its redundances, its omissions, its inaccuracies, its misrepresentations, its careless style, and its immethodical arrangement. But of all history contemporary history is the most valuable; of contemporary histories that is to be preferred which is written by one who took a part in the events related; and of all such contemporary histories, in our own or any other language, this great work is the most to be admired, for graphic narration of facts, for just exposition of motives, and for true and striking delineation of character. We find in it a freshness, a spirit, a raciness, which induce us, in spite of all its imperfections, to lay it down with regret, and to resume it with new pleasure. With regard to its sincerity, which has been so much contested, perhaps the author may be acquitted of wilfully asserting what is false; but he seems to have considered himself fully justified in suppressing what is true, when he thought he could do so for the advantage of his party.

  His style cannot be commended for its correctness; the manner in which he constructs his sentences, indeed, often sets at defiance all the rules of syntax; but yet he is never unintelligible or obscure—with such admirable expository skill is the matter arranged and spread out, even where the mere verbal sentence-making is the most negligent and entangled. The style, in fact, is that proper to speaking rather than to writing, and had, no doubt, been acquired by Clarendon, not so much from books as from his practice in speaking at the bar and in parliament; for, with great natural abilities, he does not seem to have had much acquaintance with literature, or much acquired knowledge of any kind resulting from study. But his writing possesses the quality that interests above all the graces or artifices of rhetoric—the impress of a mind informed by its subject, and having a complete mastery over it; while the broad full stream in which it flows makes the reader feel as if it were borne along on its tide. The abundance, in particular, with which he pours out his stores of language and illustration in his characters of the eminent persons engaged on both sides of the great contest seems inexhaustible. The historical value of his history, however, is not very considerable: it has not preserved very many facts which are not to be found elsewhere; and, whatever may be thought of its general bias, the inaccuracy of its details is so great throughout, as demonstrated by the authentic evidences of the time, that there is scarcely any other contemporary history which is so little trustworthy as an authority with regard to minute particulars.

  A work which everybody must read who desires to understand the personal feelings which were elicited, and the men who occupied prominent positions, in that stormy period; and the student, if possible, should endeavour to obtain an edition of it later than the year 1825, as all editions published previous to that date are more or less corrupt.

  The effect which an historical work can have is, perhaps, nowhere seen more strongly than in the “History of the Rebellion.” The view of the event in England itself and in the educated world generally, has been determined by the book. The best authors have repeated it, and even those who combat it do not get beyond the point of view given by him; they refute him in details, but leave his views in the main unshaken. Clarendon belongs to those who have essentially fixed the circle of ideas for the English nation.

  Clarendon’s authority, totally worthless as it is, has without question been accepted, as Herr von Ranke says, by a great multitude of persons. It is a question of some interest how this has occurred. Something must be attributed to his style—to that “eloquence of the heart and imagination” which Hallam acknowledges, to that stateliness and felicity of phrase over which Professor Masson walks as if “stepping on velvet;” but perhaps not very much. Hume, who owed Clarendon a good word—for his account of the Puritan Revolution is simply that of Clarendon told by a skilful and unscrupulous literary artist—says plainly that his style is “prolix and redundant, and suffocates by the length of its periods.” So it is, and so it does. More is accounted for by his anecdotic talent, his skill at an after-dinner story, his occasional chuckle of dry fun, his grave irony, his strenuous hatreds, his love of scandal.

  A history which remains, whatever its faults, the model of such writing, to this day.

  In some of the greatest characteristics of the historian, has been equalled by no Englishman, and surpassed by few foreigners…. No one has put together, or, to adopt a more expressive phrase, heaped together such enormous paragraphs; no one has linked clause on clause, parenthesis on parenthesis, epexegesis on exegesis, in such a bewildering concatenation of inextricable entanglement. Sometimes, of course, the difficulty is more apparent than real, and by simply substituting full stops and capitals for his colons and conjunctions, one may, to some extent, simplify the chaos. But it is seldom that this is really effective: it never produces really well balanced sentences and really well constructed paragraphs; and there are constant instances in which it is not applicable at all. It is not that the jostling and confused relatives are as a rule grammatically wrong, like the common blunder of putting an “and which” where there is no previous “which” expressed or implied. They, simply, put as they are, bewilder and muddle the reader because the writer has not taken the trouble to break up his sentence into two or three.

  To such an experience as Clarendon’s, the making of history was far more than the writing of it; and the habits bred of action in a great scene and in a great crisis, the varied tasks which had been thrust upon him, the tragic significance of the long struggle that constituted his life, have, in combination with those literary interests that from first to last sweetened his toil, given to his style its special and inimitable characteristics. It is often cumbrous and prolix; its construction is frequently irregular; the arrangement is sometimes confusing, and the sense of proportion seems to be lost. But its chief note is one of almost tragic dignity. His “History of the Rebellion”—be it noted, the first history which our literature possesses from the hand of a great actor in the struggle it portrays—has something of the burden of an epic. But it is enlivened by those inimitable characters which his careful study of human nature, his intense desire to know those who were worthy to be known, enabled him to draw; portraits in which every feature is given in its due proportion, and in which no trait, however homely, is omitted which can add to their dramatic force.

  Clarendon was by a few months Milton’s senior, yet in reading him we seem to have descended to a later age. That he owed not a little to the Theophrastian fashion of his youth is certain; but the real portraits which he draws with such picturesque precision are vastly superior to any fantastical abstractions of Overbury or Earle. Clarendon writes, in Wordsworth’s phrase, with his eye upon the object, and the graces of his style are the result of the necessity he finds of describing what he wishes to communicate in the simplest and most convincing manner…. It is his great distinction that, living in an age of pedants, he had the courage to write history—a species of literature which, until his salutary example, was specially overweighted with ornamental learning—in a spirit of complete simplicity. The diction of Clarendon is curiously modern; we may read pages of his great book without lighting upon a single word now no longer in use.