detracted no little from the gravity and importance of his place, which, though generally noted and disliked, I do not think was enongh to make him give it over in that merriment we shall find anon, or retire to a private life. Neither can I believe him so much addicted to his private opinions as to detest all other governments but his own Utopia, so that it is probable some vehement desire to follow his book, or secret offence taken against some person or matter-among which perchance the king's new intended marriage, or the like, might be accounted-occasioned this strange counsel; though, yet, I find no reason pretended for it but infirmity and want of health. Our king hereupon taking the seal, and giving it, together with the order of knighthood, to Thomas Audeley, Speaker of the Lower House, Sir Thomas More, without acquainting anybody with what he had done, repairs to his family at Chelsea, where, after a mass celebrated the next day in the church, he comes to his lady's pew, with his hat in his hand-an office formerly done by one of his gentlemen-and says:Madam, my lord is gone. But she thinking this at first to be but one of his jests, was little moved, till he told her sadly he had given up the great seal; where: pon she speaking some passionate words, he called his daughters then present to see if they could not spy some fault about their mother's dressing; but they after search saying they could find none, he replied: Do you not perceive that your mother's nose standeth somewhat awry?'-of which jeer the provoked lady was so sensible, that she went from him in a rage. Shortly after, he acquainted his servants with what he had done, dismissing them also to the attendance of some other great personages to whom he had recommended them. For his fool, he bestowed him on the lord-mayor during his office, and afterwards on his successors in that charge. And now coming to himself, he began to consider how much he had left, and finding that it was not above one hundred pounds yearly in lands, besides some money, he advised with his daughters how to live together. But the grieved gentlewomen-who knew not what to reply, or indeed how to take these jests-remaining astonished, he says: We will begin with the slender diet of the students of the law, and if that will not hold out, we will take such commons as they have at Oxford; which yet if our purse will not stretch to maintai, for our last refuge we will go a-begging. and at every man's door sing together a Salve Regina to get alms.' But these jests were thought to have in them more levity than to be taken everywhere for current; he might have quitted his dignity without using such sarcasms, and betaken himself to a more retired and quiet life without making them or himself contemptible. And certainly, whatsoever he intended thereby, his family so little understood his meaning, that they needed some more serious instructions.

LORD CLARENDON.

At the head of the historians of this period, combining disquisition with description, and the development of motives with the relation of events, generations of readers have agreed to place Lord Clarendon, the faithful though discarded minister of Charles II.

EDWARD HYDE, EARL OF CLARENDON (1608-1674), the son of a private gentleman of good fortune in Wiltshire, studied for several years at Oxford with a view to the church, but in consequence of the death of two older brothers, was removed at the age of sixteen to London, where he diligently pursued the study of the law. While thus employed be associated much with some of the most eminent of his contemporaries, among whom may be mentioned Lord Falkland, Selden, Ben Jonson, Carew, Waller, Morley, Hales of Eaton, and Chillingworth. From the conversation of these and other distinguished individuals--the characters of some of whom he has admirably sketched in his works--he considered himself to have derived a great portion of his knowledge; and he declares that he never was so proud, or thought himself so good a man, as when he

was the worst man in the company.' Having entered parliament in 1640, he soon afterwards quitted the bar, and devoted himself to public affairs. At first he abstained from connecting himself with any political party; but eventually he joined the royalists, to whose principles he was inclined by nature, though not a decided partizan. In the struggles between Charles I. and the people, he was much consulted by the king, who, however, sometimes gave him annoyance by disregarding his advice. Many of the papers issued in the royal cause during the Civil War were the productions of Hyde. Charles, while holding his court at Oxford, nominated him chancellor of the exchequer, and conferred upon him the honour of knighthood. Leaving the king in 1644, he accompanied Prince Charles to the west, and subsequently to Jersey, where he remained for two years after the prince's depar ture from that island, engaged in tranquil literary occupations, and especially in writing a history of the stormy events in which he had lately been an actor. His Contemplations and Reflections upon the Psalins of David, applying those Devotions to the troubles of the Times,' written in Jersey in 1647, and published in folio in 1727, are full of historical and personal interest, and have never been sufficient♦ ly valued. In 1618, he joined the prince in Holland, and next year went as one of his ambassadors to Madrid, having first established his own wife and children at Antwerp. In Spain, the ambassadors were coldly received: after suffering much from neglect and poverty, they were ultimately ordered to quit the kingdom, which they did in 1651; Hyde retiring to his family at Antwerp, but afterwards, in the autumn of the same year, joining the exiled Charles at Paris. Thence forth, Hyde continued to be of great service in managing the embar rassed pecuniary affairs of the court, in giving counsel to the king, and in preserving harmony among his adherents. At this time his own poverty was such, that he writes in 1652; 'I have neither clothes nor fire to preserve me from the sharpness of the season;' and in the following year: I have not had a livre of my own for three months.' He was greatly annoyed by the indolence and extravagance of Charles, who, however, valued him highly, and manifested his approbation by raising him to the dignity of lord chancellor. This appointment by a king without a kingdom, besides serving to testify the royal favour, enabled the easy and indolent monarch to rid himself of clamorous applicants for future lucrative offices in England, by referring them to one who had greater ability to resist solicitations with firmness. Of the four confidential counsellors by whose advice Charits was almost exclusively directed after the death of Cromwell, Hyde 'bore the greatest share of business, and was believed to possess the greatest influence. The measures he recommended were tempered with sagacity, prudence, and moderation.' 'The Chancellor was witness of the Restoration; he was with Charles at Canterbury

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in his progress to London, followed his triumphal entry to the capital, and took his seat on the first of June (1660) as speaker of the House of Lords: he also sat on the same day in the Court of Chancery. In the same year his daughter became the wife of the Duke of York, by which marriage Hyde was rendered a progenitor of two queens of England, Mary and Anne. At the coronation in 1661, the earldom of Clarendon was conferred on him, along with a gift of £20,000 from the king. He enjoyed the office of chancellor till 1665, when, having incurred the popular odium by some of his measures, his haughty demeanour, and resistance to the growing power of the Commons, and also raised up many bitter enemies in the court by his opposition to the dissoluteness and extravagance which there prevailed, he resigned the great seal, by his majesty's command, and was Soon afterwards compelled to withdraw from the kingdom. He retired to France, and occupied himself in completing his History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England,' begun in 1641, but first published at Oxford in 1702-4. This great work is written somewha. in the style of political memoirs, easy, copious, redundant of details, and careless in execution, except where the author delineated the characters of his great contemporaries, or dwelt on events in which he was strongly interested. He fails most signally in his description of battles, which are confused and almost unintelligible.* Clarendon's sentences are often long and involved, and his expression loose and incorrect-defects perhaps springing from his previous habits of public speaking, without early opportunities or peculiar taste for mere literary study. In the department of character-painting, Clarendon is unrivalled; his description of events has not the same graphic vigour as his portraitures, and his authority as an historian is small indeed; but many incidents are related with a sober majesty and chastened beauty of expression that are rare in history. We see always a full and fertile mind-strong royalist preposesssions, but a high sense of national honour and a deep feeling of regard for the moral and material welfare of his country. His life of himself, and the continuation of the life, written subsequently to his history, are less interesting, and are more inaccurate in details. Among the other works of this great man are a reply to the Leviathan' of Hobbes and an admirableEssay on an Active and Contemplative Life, and why the One should be preferred before the Other.' last is peculiarly valuable, as the production of a man who, to a sound and vigorous understanding, added rare knowledge of the world, and much experience of life, both active and retired. He strongly maintains the superiority of an active course, as having the greater tendency to promote not only the happiness and usefulness, but also the virtue of the individual. Man, says he, 'is not sent into

The

It is curious to find it stated by Sir Walter Scott, that the best general in the world (evidently the Duke of Wellington) has been heard to say that King James II. in his Memoirs writes of military matters more forcibly and intelligibly than any author he has perused. See note to Military Memoirs, by John Gwynne, 1822.

the world only to have a being to breathe till nature extinguisheth that breath, and reduceth that miserable creature to the nothing he was before; he is sent upon an errand, and to do the business of life; he hath faculties given him to judge between good and evil, to cherish and foment the first motions he feels towards the one, and to subdue the first tempations to the other; he hath not acted his part in doing no harm; his duty is not only to do good and to be innocent himself, but to propagate virtue, and to make others better than they would otherwise be. Indeed, an absence of folly is the first hopeful prologue towards the obtaining wisdom; yet he shall never be wise who knows not what folly is; nor, it may be, commendably and judiciously honest, without having taken some view of the quarters of iniquity; since true virtue pre-supposeth an election, a declining somewhat that is ill, as well as the choice of what is good.' The choice of a mode of life he thinks ought to be regulated by a consideration of the abilities of each individual who is about to commence his career; but he omits to add, that dispositions as well as talents ought always to be considered; since, however great a man's abilities may be, the want of steady energy and decision of character must operate as an insurmountable bar to success in the struggles of active life. Lord Clarendon's other miscellaneous works consist of a Vindication of himself from the Charge of Treason; Dialogues on the Want of Respect due to Age, and on Education; and essays on various subjects.

In the year 1811, a work of Lord Clarendon's which had till then remained in manuscript, was published under the title of Religion and Policy, and the Countenance and Assistance they should give to each other; with a Survey of the Power and Jurisdiction of the Pope in the Dominions of other Princes.' The principal object of the work is to shew the injury which religion has sustained by the pope's assumption of temporal authority, and that it is incumbent on Catholics living under Protestant governments to pay no regard to the papal authority, in opposition to their own sovereign.

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Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion' was not intended for publication till the numerous public characters of whom it treats were no more. It was edited by Bishop Sprat and Dean Aldrich, who made numerous alterations on the text, which, however, has now been correctly given, with the suppressed passages restored, in an elition in eight volumes, printed at Oxford in 1826. The life and Continuation, also complete, were printed at Oxford in three volumes in 1827.

Reception of the Liturgy at Edinburgh in 1637.

On the Sunday morning appointed for the work, the Chancellor of Scotland, and others of the council, being present in the cathedral church, the dean began to read the Liturgy, which he had no sooner entered upon, but a noise and clamour was raised throughout the church, that no words could be heard distinctly; and then a shower of stones and sticks, and cudgels, were thrown at the dean's head. The

bishop went up into the pulpit, and from thence put them in mind of the sacredness of the place, of their duty to God and the king; but he found no more reverence, nor was the clamour and disorder less than before. The chancellor, from his seat, commanded the provost and magistrates of the city to descend from the gallery in which they sat, and by their authority to suppress the riot; which at last with great difficulty they did, by driving the rudest of those who made the disturbance out of the church, and shutting the doors, which gave the dean opportunity to proceed in the reading of the Liturgy, that was not at all attended or hearkened to by those who remained within the church; and if it had, they who were turned out continued their barbarous noise, broke the windows, and endeavoured to break down the doors, so that it was not possible for any to follow their devotions.

When all was done that at that time could be done there, and the council and magistrates went out of the church to their houses, the rabble followed the bishops with all the opprobrious language they could invent, of bringing in superstition and popery into the kingdom, and making the people slaves; and were not content to use their tongues, but employed their hands too in throwing dirt and stones at them; and treated the bishop of Edinburgh, whom they looked upon as most active that way, so rudely, that with difficulty he got into a house, after they had torn his habit, and was from thence removed to his own, with great hazard of his life. this was the reception which it had in the cathedral, so it fared not better in the other churches of the city, but was entertained with the same hollaing and outcries, and threatening the men, whose office it was to read it, with the same bitter execrations against bishops and popery.

As

Hitherto no person of condition or name appeared or seemed to countenance this seditious confusion; it was the rabble, of which nobody was named, and, which is more strange, not one apprehended: and it seems the bishops thought it not of moment enough to desire or require any help or protection from the council; but without conferring with them, or applying themselves to them, they despatched away an express to the king, with a full and particular information of all that had passed, and a desire that he would take that course he thought best for the carrying on his service.

Until this advertisement arrived from Scotland, there were very few in England who had heard of any disorders there, or of anything done there which might produce any.... And the truth is, there was so little curiosity either in the court or in the country to know anything of Scotland, or what was done there, that when the whole nation was solicitous to know what passed weekly in Germany and Poland, and all other parts of Europe, no man ever inquired what was doing in Scotland, nor had that kingdom a place or mention in one page of any gazette; and even after the advertisement of this preamble to rebellion, no mention was made of it at the coun-board, but such a dispatch made into Scotland upon it, as expressed the king's slike and displeasure, and obliged the lords of the council there to appear more vigorously in the vindication of his authority and suppression of those tun.ults. But all was too little. That people, after they had once begun, pursued the business vigorously, and with all imaginable contempt of the government; and though in the hubbub of the first day there appeared nobody of naine or reckoning, but the actors were really of the dregs of the people, yet they discovered by the countenance of that day, that few men of rank were forward to engage themselves in the quarrel on the behalf of the bishops; whereupon more considerable persons every day appeared against them, and-as heretofore in the case of St. Paul, Acts xiii. 50,The Jews stirred up the devout and honourable women'-the women and ladies of the best quality declared themselves of the party, and, with all the reproaches imaginable, made war upon the bishops, as introducers of popery and superstition, against which they avowed themselves to be irreconcilable enemies; and their husbands did not long defer the owning the same spirit; insomuch as within few days the bishops durst not appear in the streets, nor in any courts or houses, but were in danger of their lives; and such of the lords as durst be in their company, or seemed to desire. to rescue them from violence, had their coaches torn in pieces, and their persons assaulted, insomuch as they were glad to send for some of those great men, who did indeed govern the rabble, though they appeared not in it, who readily came and redeemed them out of their hands; so that, by the time new orders came from England, there was scarce a bishop left in Edinburgh, and not a minister who durst read the Liturgy in any church.