Chapter XXV: The Triumph of Faction (2)

It grieved him, he said, that he should be the cause of difference between the two Houses, and of obstruction to the business of the King. It was his misfortune to stand accused of two charges, neither of which had any foundation: that he had enriched himself wrongfully, and that he had been sole and chief Minister, and was thus responsible for all miscarriages. As to the first, he could only avow that he had received nothing, except by the bounty of the King, beyond the lawful perquisites of his office, as regulated by the traditions of the best holders of that office. For no courtesies or favours, of which he had been the medium, had he ever received as much as five pounds. He was now more than £20,000 in debt, and, when his debts were paid, his estate was not worth two thousand a year. All that he possessed did not amount to what the King in his bounty had granted him--the gift of £20,000 when he first came over; £6000 from the Crown estates in Ireland, and a yearly allowance to supplement the scanty profits of his office. As Minister, he had only shared power and responsibility with others; and it was notorious that, after the dismissal of Secretary Nicholas, his influence had been greatly diminished. The new appointments to the Privy Council had been, none of them, given to his intimates, and many of them had gone to his most implacable enemies. As for the mischief of the war, it had been undertaken against his earnest advice, and his efforts to negotiate alliances, and to introduce order into the conduct of the war, had been thwarted by the very men who now charged him with the results of their own misdeeds. The conduct of foreign affairs rested, not with him, but with the secretaries: and so far from having been sole Minister, his advice had, of recent years especially, been often opposed, solely because it was his. The storm now raised against him was due only to his having discharged his duty without fear or favour. He closes with these dignified words--

"This being my present condition, I do most humbly beseech your lordships to retain a favourable opinion of me, and to believe me to be innocent from those foul aspersions, until the contrary shall be proved: which I am sure can never be by any man worthy to be believed. And since the distemper of the time, and the difference between the two Houses in the present debate, with the power and malice of my enemies, who give out that I shall prevail with his Majesty to prorogue or dissolve this Parliament in displeasure, and threaten to expose me to the rage and fury of the people, may make me looked upon as the cause which obstructs the King's service, and the unity and peace of the kingdom; I humbly beseech your lordships, that I may not forfeit your favour and protection, by withdrawing myself from so powerful a persecution, in hopes I may be able, by such withdrawing, hereafter to appear and make my defence, when his Majesty's justice, to which I shall always submit, may not be obstructed or controlled by the power and malice of those who have sworn my destruction."

Not now only, but in the later years of his lonely banishment, Clarendon's unbending courage saved him from despair, and he continued to hope for brighter days. [Footnote: In his preface to his commentary on the Psalms, addressed to his children, in 1670, he still hopes "that I shall yet outlive this storm."] But he underrated the rancour and the twistings of his enemies. The very men who had used every device to force him to retire, and who knew that he was at Calais, now hypocritically urged that the ports should be stopped, and pretended to be eager for his apprehension. The Commons urged that he should be committed, in absence, on the general charge of treason. The Lords declined to accede to their request, and, in impotent revenge, the Commons resolved that his apology should be publicly burned by the hangman. In this innocuous resolution the Lords were persuaded to concur.

From Calais Clarendon addressed the following memorable letter to the University of Oxford:--

"GOOD MR. VICE-CHANCELLOR,

"Having found it necessary to transport myself out of England, and not knowing when it will please God that I shall return again, it becomes me to take care that the University may not be without the service of a person better able to be of use to them, than I am like to be. And I do therefore hereby surrender the office of Chancellor into the hands of the said University, to the end that they may make choice of some other person better qualified to assist and protect them than I am. I am sure he can never be more affectionate towards it. I desire you as the last suit I am like to make to you, to believe that I do not fly my country for guilt, and how passionately soever I am pursued, that I have not done anything to make the University ashamed of me, or to repent the good opinion they once had of me. And though I must have no further mention in your public devotions, which I have always exceedingly valued, I hope I shall always be remembered in your private prayers, as, good Mr. Chancellor,

"Yours, etc., "CLARENDON. "Calais, Dec. 17, 1667."

Archbishop Sheldon, his life-long friend, was elected as his successor.

Clarendon stayed on at Calais, at a loss where he should turn. He knew the suspicions which he might arouse, if he resorted to Paris, and meanwhile wrote to the Earl of St. Albans, and desired to know whether he might proceed to Rouen. The Earl of St. Albans acted as the representative of the Queen Dowager, [Footnote: To whom he was generally believed to be married.] and from her Clarendon could scarcely expect a cordial welcome. St. Albans' reply was cold, but Clarendon learned both from him, and from the Minister Louvois, that he had full permission to proceed to Rouen. At first he received all courteous attention from the representatives of the French Court. His only desire was to reach some mild climate before the rigour of winter, which he was in no condition to sustain, should set in. With all proper respect and escort, he passed on to Boulogne; from thence to Montreuil, and next day to Abbeville. On Christmas Eve he reached Dieppe, within a day's journey of Rouen. The gates of Dieppe were opened at an unusually early hour next morning, at his request, to allow him to begin that journey betimes. But, before he reached Rouen, a change had come in his treatment by the French authorities. As he approached the halting-place about noon, he was stopped by a gentleman on horseback, who inquired whether "the Chancellor of England was in the coach," and, on learning that he was, presented to him a letter from the French King, desiring him to follow the directions which the bearer would give him. These were, that his presence in France might occasion a breach between the Crowns; that he was to make what speed he could to quit the dominions of the king; and the bearer was to escort him, for his accommodation, until he saw him out of France.

Clarendon was sorely perplexed by this unexpected message, which was explained by the negotiations now on foot between the French and English Crowns. It was with difficulty that he persuaded his appointed escort to accompany him to Rouen, rather than return to Dieppe, which the escort would have preferred as the shortest way out of France. The journey to Rouen was a hard one, and the Chancellor was bruised by repeated overturnings of the coach. He was in no state to make forced journeys, and begged time to write to Paris, and ask for less stringent orders. With difficulty this small concession was obtained. But the reply from the French Court only brought more peremptory orders to expedite his departure. His health was now grievously broken. The severity of the weather, the rapidity of his journeys under the most trying conditions, above all, the anxieties and perplexities of his position, had brought on an aggravated attack of the gout, and he was unable either to stand or walk. Again he pleaded for that delay and consideration which even the most meagre courtesy and the barest humanity regard as the prerogative of the sick. He had no wish to linger on the inhospitable soil of France, and desired only to reach Avignon, so that he might be beyond the King's boundary; but he begged at least to be allowed to rest at Orleans. The reply was barbarous in its peremptoriness. "His Majesty was much displeased that he had not made more haste; if he chose to pass to Avignon, he might rest one day in ten, which was all his Majesty would allow."

Meanwhile the virulence of his enemies at home was as relentless as the barbarity of the French Court. The party which still adhered to him in both houses was sufficiently large to be formidable to his opponents, who could only feel themselves secure by his perpetual banishment. On the pretext that he had fled from justice, a Bill of Banishment was passed through both Houses, by which he was pronounced incapable of returning to the country unless he surrendered before February 1st. It might have been thought that it transcended even the bounds of Charles's shifty cowardice, to give his assent to a Bill which imposed a punishment on his late Minister, solely because he had done what the King commanded him to do. But even to this depth the King descended. It was in vain that the Duke of York urged that it was the King's own order that betrayed Clarendon into making that escape from which his own judgment was so averse. Charles could only plead "that the condescension was necessary for his own good," and that he must compound with those who would else press for worse. 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. There he arrived on the last day of January, a broken, and, it might well appear, a dying man. He was carried helpless to bed, and there lay unable even to read the letters from England, and incapable of thought and of speech. Even the wretched emissary of the French Court, Le Fonde, was fain to leave him for a few days, on what seemed to be his death-bed; but fresh orders compelled him again to undertake the irksome task of harrying the sick-bed of a dying man. "He must leave town next day; a few hours would carry him into Spanish territory."

Clarendon's old heat of temper burst out once more. The conversation was in Latin, and the Chancellor's sick brain did not at once supply him with sufficient store of classical phrases to express his wrath. At last he told the Court emissary "that he must bring orders from God Almighty, as well as from the King, before he could obey." The struggle still went on: on the one side, the unlucky envoy of the Court was compelled to pursue his degrading persecution; on the other hand, Clarendon and his physicians urged the murderous cruelty of the King's orders. At length, in a last burst of passion, he told the King's messenger that, though the King was a great and powerful prince, he was not yet so omnipotent as to make a dying man strong enough to undertake a journey. The King might send him a prisoner to England, or carry his dead body into Spanish territory; but he would not be the author of his own death by undertaking a journey which was beyond his powers. Le Fonde was left to do his best to reconcile the ruthless orders of his master with Clarendon's resolute appeal to a power higher than that of kings.

But of a sudden the scene changed. The negotiations between England and France had failed, and the French Court no longer found themselves compelled to sacrifice courtesy, and even humanity, in order to conciliate a hopeful alliance. They had harassed Clarendon to please the English Court; they were now to pay him every courtesy in order to show their carelessness of English interests. The French Government had, perhaps, found that a common hatred of Clarendon was not an enduring bond amongst his enemies, and that the new administration of England rested on no very secure foundation. A letter now reached him from the French Minister, announcing that nothing was further from his Christian Majesty's wish than in any way to endanger his health. All France was open to him, and the King's subjects would have orders to pay him all honour. Le Fonde rejoiced at this relief from a thankless task. He came now to say that he was to attend the Chancellor, only to receive his orders.

This happy alteration relieved Clarendon of his worst anxieties. He was no longer a hunted fugitive, but an honoured guest. The rancour of his enemies in England, however bitter, had now spent its force, and he could despise it. His sons still held their places at Court. His household now attended him, and the savage provisions of the Act of Banishment no longer prevented the easy passage of correspondence between Clarendon and his family and friends.

He was still grievously ill, and for six weeks more be was confined to bed. But as his health recovered he determined still to pass to Avignon, by way of Rouen, and to take a course of the waters of Bourbon on the way. He was not prepared to place undue trust in the new-found courtesy of the French Court.

It was on April 3rd, 1668, that he was strong enough to begin his journey. We are again reminded of the hardships of travel in the France of the Grand Monarch, when we read of repeated overturnings of his coach, and of perils both by land and water that pursued the poor Chancellor, even under the careful escort of attentive Court messengers. It was not till April 23rd that he left Rouen, and the stay for the next day was at Evreux, where he had a most untoward experience. It chanced that a company of English sailors, who appear to have been serving as a mercenary troop of artillery in the French army, heard of the Chancellor's arrival. The drunken crowd got out of hand, and vague memories of the naval pay of which they had been bilked prompted them to take vengeance for old arrears upon the luckless Chancellor, whom they deemed responsible for all the misdeeds of the Admiralty. Old echoes of "Dunkirk House," and the ill- gotten gains of Ministers who fattened on the plunder of poor men, were doubtless ringing in their muddled heads.

It would be absurd to attribute any political meaning to the incident, or to suppose that it had any connivance from the French Government. The inn where Clarendon alighted was attacked by the riotous mob. The local magistrates were incapable of dealing with the riot, and were perplexed as to the limits of their jurisdiction. Clarendon's attendants made what defence they could, and Le Fonde, his former persecutor, and now his courteous escort, received a dangerous wound in his defence. It was like to go hard with the Chancellor himself. At the beginning of the fray, he was struck a violent blow on the head with the flat of a broadsword. The rioters used him with great violence, rifled his pockets and his baggage, and dragged him into the courtyard to dispatch him with their swords. Not a moment too soon, the commanding officer of the English sailors, with some magistrates and a guard, broke into the inn, and rescued Clarendon, when he seemed at the point of death. It looked as if his troubles were not over; the magistrates were ready to fight upon the question of their own jurisdiction, and would allow no one else to show that vigour of resistance to the rioters of which they were themselves incapable. It was only on Le Fonde's vigorous remonstrance, and his threats of the royal vengeance on their remissness, that proper steps were taken for the safety of the company. The Chancellor and his attendants obtained lodgings in the neighbouring castle of the Duc de Bouillon. Having escaped from the perils of the mob, Clarendon had to resist the equally dangerous designs of the French physicians, who wished to perform the operation of trepanning. With what haste he might, he pressed on to Bourbon, and, after some stay there, he reached Avignon in June, Such satisfaction as he could find, in the exemplary punishment of the rioters and in the gracious apologies of the King, was readily accorded by his hosts of France.

At Avignon he reached a haven of refuge, where he might rest from the troubled experiences of the year that was past. It had, indeed, been one of trial sufficient to test the staunchest courage. Within little more than twelve months, he had lost his oldest and most trusted colleague, Lord Southampton. His home had been made desolate by the death of his wife. He had seen the growing boldness of his enemies, had detected their ruthlessness in falsehood and in knavery, and had found that his loyalty to the Crown was to go for nothing, and that his trust in the honour of the King was based on no sound foundation. Against his own judgment, he had resigned the seal, in order that the King's business might prosper, and that the bitterness of his enemies might be assuaged. When he had been persuaded to resign, he had found that his resignation was to be a new ground of triumph for his enemies, and that it was a foothold for a new attack. By the threat of prosecution they strove to drive him to fly, and when he refused to yield to their threats, they contrived to make the King the agent in their knavish schemes, and procured from him the peremptory message which made Clarendon quit the field. No sooner was he gone, than the very flight which they had contrived was made the ground of new accusations, and he was sentenced to perpetual banishment for avoiding a trial for which no summons had been issued, no indictment laid, no commitment made. Stricken down by illness, he could not meet their challenge by the date enjoined, and the beginning of February found him a proscribed exile, a persecuted fugitive, hounded from post to post, a stricken invalid, longing for the release of death. A few weeks brought some relief at least to the stout spirit that had borne so much. His enemies at home had sped their last bolt, and were fast becoming absorbed in their own sordid quarrels. The French King had abandoned the barbarity of which his own servants were ashamed, and addressed the honoured exile in terms of gracious and almost fulsome courtesy. That exile reached the haven of Avignon, to be received there not only without any of the annoyance of suspicious espionage, but with all the courtesies that could be paid to an honoured guest. The Vice-Legate and the Archbishop vied with one another in the formal stateliness of their reception. The consuls and the magistrates attended him with all ceremony, and paid him their service in a Latin oration. The Court of St. James's might reject him, but the high functionaries of European diplomacy accorded to him all that tribute of respect which was due to the man who had shaped the policy of the restored English monarchy, and had raised the standard of English statesmanship. Clarendon was not too proud to feel his sense of self- complacency flattered by such homage, and we like him none the less because he allows his satisfaction to appear.

Thus closes the political career which we have endeavoured to trace from its first beginnings, through the period of long and arduous struggle, amidst the clouds of exile and poverty, and once more in the full sun of a triumphant restoration, largely contrived by his wisdom, and dominated by his guiding hand. We have seen the disappointments that marred that triumph, and the ignoble stain that smirched the ideal of a restored monarchy which he had formed. We have seen how, one by one, his cherished aims had been defeated, and how a King, the slave of selfish libertinism, and a Court, the scene of gross debauchery and undisguised corruption, had tempted him to despair of England. We have seen how high he bore himself amidst the degraded crew, and how boldly he attacked the scandals of the Court, and rebuked the craven self-indulgence of the King. We have marked how the various factions that felt uneasy under his sway, gradually coalesced into a rancorous opposition, that knew no bounds in the meanness of their intrigues, and in the barefaced falsehood of their accusations. We have seen how the King stooped to be their instrument, and allowed himself to be the tool of their deceptions. Clarendon became an exile, and, after a brief period of inhuman persecution from a false view of diplomatic expediency, he received the homage of European Powers, as an honoured guest. In honouring him, they showed what they thought of England under the Cabal. Of what England lost in Clarendon, we can allow the sordid history that followed his fall to afford a sufficiently sure and graphic indication.

It is no part of Clarendon's biography to linger over the revolting details of that disgraceful time. Even in Clarendon's day, the King had lamentably failed to maintain his dignity or to discharge his task. His life now outraged all decency, and his Court fell below the standard of the common bagnio. His prime favourite and his chief Minister was Buckingham, stained by every crime, at once coward and bully, haughty in his arrogant insolence, and yet stooping to intrigues that would have disgraced the veriest rogue from the hulks. In the course of what seems to have been rather a riotous brawl, than an honourable duel--a brawl in which seconds as well as principals took part, and in which more than one life was lost--the King's First Minister killed Lord Shrewsbury, the husband of his paramour. The town was filled with the scandal, but by the personal influence of the King, it was withdrawn from the courts of law. Buckhurst and Sedley, the chosen associates of the King in his notorious bouts of drunken debauchery, roused disgust by a freak of sickening lewdness; the only result was the committal to prison, by the order of the Lord Chief Justice, and at the behest of the King, of the constable who interfered with the indecent escapade. We have a proof of the change that had come since Clarendon's controlling hand had gone, when we remember that some three years before, the same Buckhurst, for a similar outbreak of indecency, was rated in terms of scornful rebuke by the King's Bench Judges, and was bound over to good behaviour by a bond of £5000. The King's harem was augmented by a flower-girl, who had attracted attention on the stage, and was the discarded mistress of two of the King's associates. Clarendon lamented what he had seen, as a sad lapse from dignity, a grievous fall from the ideals that he had hoped for. What followed was nothing but a carnival of mad obscenity. Samuel Pepys was no squeamish critic; but even he was moved to some earnestness of indignation at the foul orgies in which Charles and his new associates indulged, in shameless publicity. As was natural, such advisers were no careful guardians of Parliamentary or popular liberty. What attention could be spared from debauchery was given to degrading compacts by which the King was to be the submissive pensioner of Louis; to plans for thwarting the prerogative of Parliament; to secret intrigues for subverting the Protestant religion. If the cost to England of his fall was to be measured by the depth of dishonour, and the flagrantly treasonable plots, of those who followed him, Clarendon was triumphantly vindicated, and his wrongs were amply avenged.

In spite of the cordiality of his reception, Clarendon did not find Avignon a desirable residence in the heat of summer. The streets had an ill savour "by the multitude of dyers and of silk manufactures, and the worse smell of the Jews," and he presently moved on to Montpelier, where he made a lengthened stay. His reception was as courteous as before, and this he ascribed to the good offices of Lord and Lady Mordaunt, old friends whom he recommends to the good offices of his children. "When any English came thither," he tells us, "none forbore to pay respect to the Chancellor"; and, with a certain pride, he records how Sir Richard Temple's refusal to visit Clarendon caused "a general aversion towards him," so that he was compelled to quit the town, where "he left behind him the reputation of a very vain, humorous, and sordid person." The good Chancellor was not above the human capacity of a very cordial hatred, or the inclination to feel piqued at a failure of kindly courtesy.

He was now at ease, and in peace of mind. His health, although undermined by long and painful illness, was sufficiently restored to enable him to indulge his old habits of intellectual activity. "It pleased God in a short time, after some recollections, and upon his entire confidence in Him, to restore him to that serenity of mind, and resignation of himself to the disposal and good pleasure of God, that they who conversed most with him could not discover the least murmur of impatience in him, or any unevenness in his conversations." Clarendon is none the less lovable, because a good conscience preserved for him his old self-complacency. His studies were again renewed. He made himself master of the French language so far as the reading of its literature was concerned. The power of speaking the language he, like many another, found "many inconveniences in." He made a competent progress also in Italian.

But his chief work was the preparation of his defences against the seventeen clauses of the charges formulated against him in the Commons. These were so extravagant that his accusers never sought to make them the foundation of an indictment, and he had little difficulty in showing their baselessness, and how much they contradicted the clearest features of his policy, and the most notorious evidence as to his acts. The Vindication carefully avoided anything that reflected on the King, and he left it to his children, to whom it was conveyed by Lord and Lady Mordaunt, to choose their own time for making it public. He was careful not to prejudice that position at Court which they still owed to Charles's sense of justice.

His serenity was disturbed only by two lingering apprehensions. The first was the insufficiency of his means to maintain the establishment which his crippled health rendered necessary. For that he could only trust the affection and piety of his children, who, he doubted not, would do their best to transmit to him, from their estates or his own, enough to secure the decencies of life in a foreign land. The other more serious apprehension was the fear that the machination of his enemies might still have power to prejudice the French Court against him. He saw enough to know that that Court still viewed his presence on French soil with some nervousness. He could only soothe his anxieties by his trust in Providence, and by the company of his books. "God blessed him very much in this composure and retreat."

He did not spare himself in his reflections on what had been amiss in his own conduct. "There was nothing of which he was so ashamed, as he was of the vast expense he had made in the building of his house." He could only excuse, but not justify it. This is an old topic of accusation, to which we have already alluded, but we may revert to it once again. Since the Restoration, Clarendon had commanded little leisure to find a suitable house, and had moved frequently from one to another. At first he had resided at Dorset House, in Fleet Street, once occupied by Bacon, and formerly the town house of the Bishop of Salisbury. From there he went to Worcester House, [Footnote: The residence of the Marquis of Worcester (previously Lord Glamorgan), and used by Cromwell during the Commonwealth] for which he paid the large rent of £500 a year. After the Fire, he moved to Berkshire House, in St. James (on the site of the present Bridgewater House), which became known as Cleveland House when adopted as the residence of Lady Castlemaine, then Duchess of Cleveland, in 1668. York House, Twickenham, was assigned to him after the marriage of his daughter to the Duke of York, and there the Princess, afterwards Queen Anne, was born. It was only after many changes that he ventured, in the full tide of his prosperity, and with the encouragement of the King, to provide a house of his own; but his ignorance of architecture--and probably also his absorption in weightier affairs--made him the victim of the architect, [Footnote: The architect was Pratt. The house was built during Clarendon's absence from London in the Plague year, when Parliament sat at Oxford.] who estimated the cost at less than one-third of what it came to, which was £50,000. He found himself not only involved in debt, but the mark of envious scandal for the pride and ostentation of his dwelling. Yet when its sale was proposed to him "he remained so infatuated with the delight he had enjoyed, that, though he was deprived of it, he hearkened very unwillingly to the advice." A lingering hope remained that he might still live there, in all the pride of a restored good name. A weakness so confessed may readily be forgiven. The harm it did was only to his own estate. [Footnote: Evelyn, as we have seen (_ante_, p. 254) had praised the house more guardedly than Pepys, but in a letter to Lord Cornbury (Jan. 20, 1665/6) he speaks of it with perhaps courteous excess of admiration. "Let me speak ingenuously," he says: "I went with prejudice, and a critical spirit, incident to those who fancy they know anything in art. I acknowledge to your Lordship that I have never seen a nobler pile.... It is, without hyperbolies, the best contrived, the most useful, graceful, and magnificent house in England." He enters into the details of the building, and concludes thus: "May that great and illustrious person, whose large and ample heart has honoured his country with so glorious a structure, and by an example worthy of himself, showed our nobility how they ought indeed to build, and value their qualities, live many long years to enjoy it; and when he shall be passed to that upper building, not made with hands, may his posterity (as you, my lord) inherit his goodness, this palace, and all other circumstances of his grandeur, to consummate their felicity."

Evelyn may best be allowed to tell of the passing of Clarendon's architectural glory. It is in the _Diary_ for September 18, 1683.

"After dinner I walked to survey the sad demolition of Clarendon House, that costly and only sumptuous palace of the late Lord Chancellor Hyde, where I have often been so cheerful with him, and sometimes so sad; happening to make him a visit but the day before he fled from the angry Parliament, accusing him of maladministration, and being envious at his grandeur, who, from a private lawyer, came to be father-in-law to the Duke of York, and, as some would suggest, designing his Majesty's marriage with the Infanta of Portugal, not apt to breed; to this they imputed much of our unhappiness, and that he being sole Minister and favourite at his Majesty's restoration, neglected to gratify the King's suffering party, preferring those who were the cause of our troubles. But perhaps as many of those things were injuriously laid to his charge, so he kept the Government far steadier than it has since proved. I could name some who, I think, contributed greatly to his ruin, the buffoons and the _misses_, to whom he was an eye-sore. 'Tis true he was of a jolly temper after the old English fashion; but France had now the ascendant, and we were become quite another nation. The Chancellor gone, and dying in exile, the Earl his successor sold that which cost £50,000 building to the young Duke of Albemarle for £25,000, to pay debts which how contracted remains yet a mystery, his son being no way a prodigal.... However it were, this stately palace is decreed to ruin, to support the prodigious waste the Duke of Albemarle had made of his estate since the old man died. He sold it to the highest bidder, and it fell to certain rich bankers and mechanics, who gave for it and the ground about it £35,000; they design a new town as it were, and a most magnificent piazza.... See the vicissitudes of earthly things!"

In June of the following year Evelyn found streets and buildings--Bond Street and Albemarle Street--encroaching on the beauty of the site. The fall of Clarendon House had tempted Lady Berkeley to turn her gardens into squares, and she actually realized the then amazing amount of £1000 a year "in mere ground rents"! "To such a mad intemperance has this age come of building about a city by far too disproportionate already to the nation." If Evelyn's ghost still haunts the scene, what are its reflections now?]

At the date of his banishment, Clarendon was not an old man, as age is generally reckoned. He had not yet reached the age of sixty years, which finds many men in possession of their full powers. But ill health, anxiety, long years of hardship and incessant labour, had combined to make him prematurely old. For a time, indeed, it seemed as if he could only survive his fall by a few weeks or months, and as if his work were to finish when he left his country for the last time. But his indomitable energy, and the brave spirit that sustained him, brought back first a tolerable measure of good health; then serenity of mind; and, lastly, that industry which opened to him, in the reading and in the making of books, a new world from which all the sordid pettiness, and the infinite annoyances, of the political arena were banished. There is but little more to tell of that strenuous life, which had seen so much of storm and tempest, varied by gleams of sunshine, and, above all, illuminated by an imagination so rich, and by an historic sense so gorgeous and so inspiring to a man whose life was spent in making history. From what his pen has left us, from that incomparable history where the scenes in which he had played so great a part, and the actors amongst whom he had moved, are portrayed with such dramatic force, we can easily picture to ourselves how vivid were Clarendon's memories, and how richly the days of his retirement were peopled with the thoughts of what had been. The respect paid to him, the homage accorded to his great achievements and his great name, were not merely soothing to his personal vanity--they served to bring him closer to those historic scenes in which he had moved. He had still the invaluable treasures of industry and hope. He could still add to that which he would leave to his world; he could still hope that he might see his country, and be honoured as of old by his countrymen. We must accept Clarendon as nature made him. For him life was a large stage, on which he must act his part with dignity. Like Ulysses, he "was a part of all that he had known"; he could not rest from effort; if he could not act great deeds, he could still wield his pen in stately eloquence.

It was, he tells, the third of the retreats from a life of trouble and vexation, which Heaven had granted him, and which he reckoned amongst his choicest blessings. After the storms of the Civil War, he had one such retreat at Jersey, when the Prince had, much against his advice, left for France. In that first retreat he had gained much. He learned to know himself better, and other men more truly. His youth had been engaged in company and conversation, and in the full tide of early success at the bar, followed by absorption in the turmoil of politics, he had moved on the quick current, and had not had leisure for contemplation, or for studying the ways of men. His early life had been one "of ease and pleasure and too much idleness"; it was only the instinct of association with men whom he could respect, that preserved him from "any notable scandal," and made him live, as he naively tells us, at least "_caute_, if not _caste_." Too much idleness he had exchanged for too much business. The retreat at Jersey had come just when it was well "to compose those affections and allay those passions, which, in the warmth of perpetual actions, and chafed by continual contradictions, had need of rest, and cool and deliberate cogitations." He learned "how blind a surveyor he had been of the inclinations and affections of the heart of man," and how warily he must walk who would avoid the pitfalls of human intercourse.

The next retreat came during the two years of his Embassy in Spain. It gave him a respite from the petty, but none the less rancorous, bickerings of the exiled Court. It offered him a new period of intercourse with his books. It opened a new world to him in the intricacies of European diplomacy. Above all, it allowed him once again to renew that spirit of fervent religious devotion, which always served as the background of his busy life.

Now, in this the third of his retreats, spent and wearied, and, as it might seem, baffled, he could find consolation in the opportunity of once more adding to his intellectual stores, enriching his bequest to the world, and amplifying the proud record which should serve as his vindication to posterity. In his "Devotions on the Psalms," in his replies to Cressy and to Hobbes, in a crowd of miscellaneous essays on those general ethical topics which were suited to the taste of that day, and have proved singularly ill-adapted to the taste of our own; above all, in the completion of his great _History of the Rebellion_, with which he incorporated his autobiography, Clarendon found abundant employment for his crowded leisure.

He remained at Montpelier until June, 1671, and thereafter resided at Moulins, until the spring of 1674. He had the comfort of abundant friends, of frequent correspondence, and of occasional visits from his sons, Lord Cornbury, and Lawrence Hyde. [Footnote: Lawrence Hyde is always referred to as "Lory" in his father's correspondence. He became Earl of Rochester.] The management of his property, so far as he could carry it out in exile, was a source of some annoyance, but doubtless also helped to keep alive his hope of a return to his country and his home. We have no details of his life in exile. We only know enough to show that it was one of no listless indolence, no craven depression, and no vain repining. 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. It was not his to strike out daring enterprises or to initiate sweeping reforms. He built upon the associations that had been handed down to him. But the memory of his achievements, marred and blurred as these were by sordid surroundings, ignoble intrigues, and the disappointments that tried his loyalty, was none the less precious; nor was the inheritance of his literary accomplishment the less valuable. Can England point to one who at once filled a larger part in her history, and left a more enduring monument in the annals of her literature?

Vexations still came to him in these closing years of exile. He had the bitter mortification of learning, on evidence which he strove to think was not fully proved, that his daughter had betrayed the traditions of his house and of his teaching, and had been persuaded to accept those doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, which he held to be false to the truth, and dangerous to the welfare of his country. In dignified words, he strove to turn her from that error with all the weight of a father's authority, which her exalted position as the wife of the Heir Presumptive did not, in his view, weaken or control; but he heard of her death on March 3lst, 1671, in the thirty-fourth year of her age, as the avowed adherent of a Church of which he had all his life been a convinced opponent. In June, 1671, through his son Lawrence, then returning from a visit to Moulins, he addressed a letter to the King, beseeching him, in memory of all his tried service and his devoted loyalty, to allow that he should return to die in his own country. In August, 1674, he again addressed the King, the Queen, and the Duke of York, in words of still more earnest entreaty.

"Seven years," he wrote to the Queen, in asking her aid, "was a time prescribed and limited by God Himself for the expiration of some of his greatest judgments, and it is full that time since I have with all possible humility, sustained the insupportable weight of the King's displeasure, so that I cannot be blamed if I employ the short breath that is remaining in me, in all manner of supplication, which may contribute to the lessening this burthen that is so heavy upon me. I do not presume to hope ever to be admitted to your Majesty's presence. Though I have all imaginable duty, I have no ambition, and only pray for leave to die in my own country amongst my own children, which I hope his Majesty will at some time vouchsafe to grant."

"It is now full seven years," he wrote to the King, "since I have been deprived of your Majesty's favour, with some circumstances of mortification which have never been exercised towards any other man, and therefore I may hope from your good nature and justice, that a severity which you have never practised upon any other man for half the time, may be diminished in some degree towards me."

He prays "that you will at least signify your consent that I may return to beg my bread in England, and to die amongst my own children." In terms as strong and moving he besought the mediation of the Duke of York. But these appeals, which might have touched the heart of the sternest tyrant, fell dead upon the selfish cynicism of Charles, deaf at once to the calls of honour, and to the gratitude due to unswerving loyalty. They met with no response.

In the spring of 1674, Clarendon moved to Rouen, indulging the hope of a return to his country and his home, and eager to be nearer to answer any summons sent by a relenting sovereign. But no such summons came, and the weary exile was now at the end of his brave and strenuous labour. On December 9th, 1674, he breathed his last. His son, Lord Cornbury, was present at his deathbed, having been summoned when the end was near. The French Court had granted him the privilege of making testamentary provisions, which otherwise would not have been possible to him as a foreigner on French soil. His will was dated on December 11th (French style [Footnote: December 1st, according to the English calendar.]), but it related only to his writings and papers, with which his heirs were to deal subject to the advice of his old friends, Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Morley, Bishop of Winchester. He had probably disposed of his other property by earlier gifts. His body was brought to England, and was buried in the Henry VII. Chapel at Westminster. No monument marks the spot where the great Minister rests amongst the monarchs whose throne he served so well. [Footnote: The name was inscribed on the site of the family vault, under Dean Stanley, in 1867. Clarendon's mother had been buried there in 1661; and afterwards his third son, in 1664. It is at the foot of the steps to Henry VII.'s Chapel.] We have endeavoured, from the varied episodes of his life of strange vicissitude, and from the records of his strenuous action, of his undaunted courage, and of his well-tried loyalty, to draw the portrait of Lord Clarendon, to describe his character as we conceive it, and to vindicate his place in history. We have not sought to conceal his foibles, nor to palliate what may appear to some to be his prejudices. We are concerned mainly to claim for him, as the first of a long line of Conservative statesmen, a high ideal of statecraft, a lofty patriotism, and a clear-sighted honesty of purpose. We admit, without considering it necessary to apologize for, that impetuous temper, which does not make us love him less, and those traits of self-complacency which were a part of his fearless candour, and in no wise detract from the dignity of his nature. We have tried to portray the secret of his influence, his genius for friendship, and the wide range of his outlook upon the drama of history. We have abundant evidence of the impression of his personality upon life-long friends, and even upon doubtful critics.

"He spoke well," says Burnet: "his style had no flaw in it, but had a just mixture of wit and sense, only he spoke too copiously; he had a great pleasantness in his spirit, which carried him sometimes too far into raillery, in which he sometimes showed more wit than discretion."

That is the verdict of an acute, but at best a lukewarm, judge. Elsewhere Burnet writes:

"Upon the whole matter, he was a true Englishman, and a sincere Protestant, and what has passed at Court since his disgrace has sufficiently vindicated him from all ill designs."

"Sir Edward Hyde," writes Sir Philip Warwick, "was of a cheerful and agreeable conversation, of an extraordinary industry and activity, and of a great confidence, which made him soon at home at a Court... He had a felicity both of tongue and pen, which made him willingly hearkened unto and much approved." [Footnote: _Memoirs_, p. 196.] "I am mad in love with my Lord Chancellor," says Pepys, "for he do comprehend and speak out well, and with the greatest ease and authority that ever I saw man in my life. I did never observe how much easier a man do speak when he knows all the company to be below him, than in him."

The gossipping diarist was no inapt observer of the ways of men, and had no small experience. Evelyn was a more attached and grateful admirer. To him, the great Chancellor was "of a jolly temper, of the old English fashion." Yet Evelyn had known Clarendon when his courage was most tried, when his hopes were baffled, and when the sordid crowd of courtiers and profligates had baited him almost to the death. It is little touches like these that fill in the picture of the man.

Of his literary achievement this is not the place to speak. It has a secure and proud niche in the annals of our literature. We have tried to present him as the Statesman and the Man of Action, and as the tried, the faithful, and the ungrudging, friend.