Edward Hyde, 1st earl of
Clarendon
also called (1643–60) Sir Edward Hyde, or
(1660–61) Baron Hyde of Hindon
born Feb. 18, 1609, Dinton, Wiltshire, Eng.
died Dec. 9, 1674, Rouen, Fr.
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.
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.
