Edward Hyde, 1st earl of Clarendon

Edward Hyde, 1st earl of Clarendon (born Feb. 18, 1609, Dinton, Wiltshire, Eng.—died Dec. 9, 1674, Rouen, Fr.) was an English statesman and historian, minister to Charles I and Charles II and author of the History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England.

Early life and career.

Edward Hyde was the eldest surviving son of Henry Hyde of Dinton, Wiltshire. He was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and was trained in the law in London’s Middle Temple. His first wife, Anne Ayliffe, died in 1632, within six months of their marriage. Two years later he married Frances, daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, who held a high legal office and through whom he was able to pursue a successful career at the bar and become keeper of the writs and rolls of common pleas. He also established himself in literary and philosophical circles and counted the dramatist Ben Jonson, the jurist and scholar John Selden, and the statesman Lord Falkland among his friends.

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In 1640 he was drawn into politics as a member in the Short Parliament (April–May 1640), called to finance Charles I’s war against Scotland, and in the Long Parliament, which opposed Charles during the Civil War. Emerging as a critic of Ship Money (a tax levied for defense) and other new policies of the crown, he joined the attack on the misuse of the royal prerogative and helped to abolish oppressive courts and commissions. But he resisted measures that might permanently damage the balanced relations among king, House of Lords, and the Commons and opposed efforts to dictate the king’s choice of ministers. From the first, he championed the Anglican establishment, for which he was commended by Charles I. It was as a Parliamentarian, however, that he opposed the execution of the earl of Strafford, one of the king’s chief advisers, and resisted the Root and Branch Bill, which would have abolished the episcopacy.

With the Commons’ adoption of the Grand Remonstrance of November 1641, which demanded a voice for Parliament in the appointment of the king’s ministers and in the reform of the church, accommodation between Charles I and Parliament became more difficult. Henceforth, Hyde chose to work behind the scenes as an adviser of the crown. He recommended moderate measures, which if consistently pursued might have undermined support for John Pym’s radical leadership in the Commons. But Charles’s attempt to seize five members of Parliament in January 1642 brought Hyde nearly to despair. After that, although civil war was not yet inevitable, few men were able to trust the king. For a while, Hyde’s constructive moderation prevailed.

Joining the king at York about the end of May 1642, Hyde was proscribed by Parliament as an “evil counselor.” Though he became a member of the Royalist council of war, Hyde was never a combatant in the ensuing conflict. From 1643, as a privy councillor and as chancellor of the Exchequer, he tried to moderate the influence of the military leaders. He advised Charles to summon a parliament at Oxford in December 1643. Its success was limited, however, and a year later Hyde agreed to recognize Westminster’s claim to be the true Parliament. In January 1645 he vainly tried to temper parliamentary demands for control of the militia and for a presbyterian type of church government. By then there was little room left for Hyde’s scrupulous constitutionalism, and his appointment as guardian to the prince of Wales was a convenient means of disposing of him.

Hyde left Charles I in March 1645 and accompanied the prince to the island of Jersey in April 1646. Later, the queen ordered the prince to move to Paris, a step that he had advised against. Unable to influence events, Hyde began a draft of his History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England in the hope that his interpretation of recent errors might instruct the king for the future.

Although he rejoined the queen and prince in Paris in 1648, Hyde remained a powerless spectator of Charles I’s last efforts to save his throne and his life. He was no less helpless in seeking to guide the new king. Disapproving strongly of Charles II’s policies, he was glad to escape from the quarrelsome court by accompanying a mission to Madrid, one, however, that proved unsuccessful in securing assistance from Spain.

Lord chancellor.

After Charles II’s escape to France from his unsuccessful invasion of England in the fall of 1651, Hyde rejoined him in Paris and followed him to Cologne in 1654 and Bruges in 1656. His object was to keep Charles from renouncing his Anglican faith, a step that would prejudice reconciliation with his subjects. Although he encouraged internal opposition to Oliver Cromwell, who as lord protector had by then become de facto ruler of England, Hyde held out against schemes for reconquest that would simply reunite the republican factions. Meanwhile, he closely followed events in England. After Cromwell’s death in 1658, the overtures of the Presbyterians for a restoration of the monarchy were received. Hyde, who was appointed lord chancellor that same year, answered them. The Declaration of Breda (1660) embodied Hyde’s belief that only a free parliament, matching the king’s intentions with its own good will, could bring about a reconciliation. The final settlement, however, diverged from his own plans in several respects.

As lord chancellor, Hyde pressed for a generous Act of Oblivion, which spared most republicans from royalist vengeance, and for speedy provision of royal revenue. He hastened the disbanding of the army and strove to create a spirit of accommodation among religious leaders. He was not successful, however; the Parliament elected in 1661 at the height of the reaction initiated statutory persecution of Nonconformists far exceeding anything desired by the easygoing Charles II or even by the impeccably Anglican lord chancellor.

Although he denied being a “premier minister,” Hyde, who was created earl of Clarendon in 1661, dominated most aspects of the administration. By the marriage of his daughter Anne to James, duke of York, in 1660 he became related to the royal family and, ultimately, grandfather to two English sovereigns, Queen Mary II and Queen Anne. But he took little pleasure in his distinctions, knowing himself to be hated by those impoverished royalists for whom the Restoration had brought little reward. Clarendon also was held responsible for unpopular decisions, such as the sale of Dunkirk to France. The Anglo-Dutch War of 1665, which he had opposed, proved his final downfall.

Fall from power.

There were personal factors in his disgrace. Never a man to suffer fools gladly, his temper was shortened by attacks of gout that also incapacitated him for business. When he became openly critical of the king’s immorality, the old friendship between them disappeared, and Clarendon became the butt of a young and frivolous court. The death of allies left him exposed, and Parliament was determined to find in him the scapegoat for the disasters of the war. Thus, in August 1667 Clarendon was dismissed from the chancellorship, and in October the House of Commons began his impeachment. The charges lacked foundation, and the House of Lords refused to accept them; but by November, under threat of trial by a special court, Clarendon was forced to flee.

For the rest of his life, Clarendon remained an exile in France, cut off by an act of banishment that made correspondence with him treasonable. Determined to vindicate himself, he began writing an autobiography that narrated his political life from the 1630s to the 1660s. It lacked documentation, but in 1671 his son Lawrence, later earl of Rochester, was allowed to visit him, bringing manuscripts that included the unfinished History of the 1640s. This Clarendon then completed, inserting into it sections of the recently written autobiography. Consequently, the accuracy of the finished History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England varies considerably according to the date of its composition. The deficiencies of the History and the Life, which was later published from the remaining fragments of autobiography, do not always derive from inadequate documentation. For all his judicious moderation and the magisterial dignity of his prose, Clarendon was not a particularly objective historian. His accounts of opponents are often unfair, and his analysis of events in which he participated diverges from the judgments guiding him at the time. They are the inevitable blemishes of a work of vindication written in the bitterness of exile. He was buried in Westminster Abbey a month after his death.