Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon Part 10

DECAY OF CLARENDON'S INFLUENCE

We must still look backwards a little in tracing the acc.u.mulating effect of friction, of jealousy, and of slander, in sapping the power of Clarendon.

He had not long to wait to see how adroit his many enemies were in twisting to his disadvantage any irritation which Charles might feel. The state of public affairs was sufficiently overclouded to make his anxieties in any case very great. The war still dragged on its weary course (we are now dealing with a period anterior to the peace already described), with its heavy burden of expense and its ever-recurring disasters, relieved only by occasional success. The combined calamity of the Fire and the Plague increased the general depression, paralyzed trade, and made the burden of taxation more severe. Repressive measures, if they had checked rebellion, had left a troubled background of smouldering discontent, and were sowing the seeds of future opposition to the Crown and to the Church.

The temper of the House of Commons, however p.r.o.nounced its adhesion to the Cavalier party, was stubborn and perverse; and stubbornness and perversity are never so provoking in politics as when they are united with an exaggeration of one's own opinion. The House resented almost with the tone and in the spirit of the Long Parliament, the dictation--and Clarendon's best friends must admit that his methods were apt to be dictatorial--of a Minister who saw that its exaggerated Royalism might be itself a danger to the Crown, and who was faithful to a theory of the const.i.tution which imposed limits at once upon King and upon Parliament. Clarendon belonged to an older generation, and was unwilling to trim his sails to suit the newer fashions. His pedantic const.i.tutionalism--we are all apt to think that notions which will not adopt themselves to our own practice are pedantic--became unpalatable at once to King and Parliament. He was not compliant enough to suit the prejudices of the stalwart Cavaliers; he had no weapons wherewith to fight courtiers, such as Buckingham, who knew how to make friends for themselves amongst those who condemned the Court and all connected with it. It was the growing estrangement between him and the House of Commons that added force to the schemes of his enemies.

Clarendon saw two symptoms of danger--in the attempts to detach from him his most trusted friends and allies, and in the sure and gradual advancement of those who were his sworn foes. His oldest and most trusted comrade--from whom death was soon to part him--was the Treasurer, Lord Southampton. Their friendship was the growth of years. In the earliest days of the Civil war, Southampton, who had avoided, before its outbreak, all connection with the Court, had joined the King's party with some misgiving, but had brought to it the weight of unblemished character and great debating power. He had striven, even against the inclination of the King, to advance proposals for a treaty with Parliament; and his loyalty did not blind him to the hopelessness of the struggle, or to what seemed to him defects in the Royalist cause. Too proud to be a courtier, and too sensible of the responsibility of great lineage and high station to be a rebel, his aim was to steer a moderate course. In temper, as well as in political views, he and Clarendon were closely united; and their mutual confidence continued unbroken after the Restoration. Clarendon's enemies found a convenient opportunity for kindling in the mind of Southampton some petty offence, in the fact that Clarendon, at the instance of the Duke of York and his daughter, the d.u.c.h.ess, had done something to promote the claims to a Court appointment of a candidate other than that favoured by Southampton. [Footnote: The post was one about the Court of the Queen, and the two claimants were the son of Lord Montague, favoured by the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess; and Robert Spencer, a relative of the Earl of Southampton.

Personally, Clarendon preferred the latter; but he had put forward the name of the other at the solicitation of the Duke and his daughter without much consideration, and without knowing that any other claimant was in the field.] The matter was a trumpery one; but the irritation was fanned by those who were eager to break the alliance of the older statesmen.

Southampton was a man who asked for few favours, and was all the more incensed when he was made to understand that his old friend had stood in his way, when for once he had stooped to make an application. Clarendon soon discerned his old friend's ill-will, and took his usual course of bringing it speedily to a clear issue. His own temper was hot, and for a time "he grew out of humour too, and thought himself unworthily suspected." But he soon thought better of it, and bluntly told the Treasurer that "it should not be in his power to break friendship with him, to gratify the humour of other people, without letting him know what the matter was." The explanation was given; and mutual confidence was soon restored between the two old allies. But Clarendon saw in the incident new evidence of the sordid tricks that sought to entangle him in the petty jealousy of rival cliques. "They who had contrived this device entered into a new confederacy, how they might first remove the Treasurer, which would facilitate the pulling the Chancellor down." [Footnote: _Life_, ii. 454.] Clarendon found a sign of danger even more alarming in the gradual advancement of those who were pledged to his enemies, and who became their most useful tools. There was none whose influence, in this or in other respects, was more baneful to Clarendon than the Duke of York.

The incidents of the Duke's first connection with his family were amongst his bitterest memories; and although he never failed to show to his son- in-law the respect due to the brother of the King, yet Clarendon found in him a perpetual obstacle to his plans, an intriguer whose selfish aims and jealous temper ever engendered fresh dissensions at Court, and a sullen bigot whose moroseness was redeemed by none of his brother's easy suavity of manner. The Duke's pride did not permit him openly to desert the interests of his father-in-law or to range himself with Clarendon's enemies. But his blundering tactlessness, his easily wounded vanity, and his insatiable appet.i.te for power, often led him to give encouragement to those whose influence Clarendon knew to be pernicious. One of these was Sir William Coventry, against whom Clarendon, as we have already seen, cherished an invincible dislike, all the more marked because he had known and reverenced his father, the former Chancellor. He knew Coventry's restless ambition and how capable he was by boldness, by ability in debate, and by adroitness in expedient, to supply the defects of the stolid and slow intrigue of his patron, Arlington. Coventry had managed to gain the confidence of the Duke and to be his trusted agent in the affairs of the navy, where the Duke, as Lord High Admiral, was supreme; and Clarendon knew that Coventry's influence boded no good to the moderate policy which it was his own chief aim to pursue. It was by the Duke's solicitation that Coventry now obtained the position of Privy Councillor, and was admitted to the inner Cabinet, where no modesty prevented him from opposing Clarendon at once in internal affairs and in foreign policy. An opportunity soon offered itself to Coventry for proving his influence and inflicting a deadly blow upon Sandwich, whose placid temper and essential loyalty had made him one of Clarendon's chosen friends. At first Coventry endeavoured vainly to insinuate doubts of Sandwich's capacity as a naval commander; and when he failed there he soon found another means of attack.

[Footnote: This incident has already been briefly alluded to in connection with the progress of the war. See above, p. 202.] Sandwich had, with much rashness and in too ready compliance with the laxity which prevailed in matters of public finance, yielded to the urgency of some of his flag officers, and permitted the sale of some East India prizes captured from the Dutch, in order to meet long-standing arrears of pay due to his officers. He had referred the matter to the King, through the Vice- Chamberlain, but, with singular carelessness, carried the transaction through before he had received the royal approval. This gave Coventry just the chance that he desired. Sandwich's action was a clear infringement of the prerogative of the Duke as Lord High Admiral, through whom alone any such favour could be conferred. Albemarle, incensed at what appeared a flagrant breach of military discipline, became a powerful adherent of Sandwich's enemies. Sandwich's own money difficulties were no secret, and he himself was to benefit by the bounty, which he shared with his flag officers, and against which the rest of the fleet was murmuring. He saw too late the error that he had committed, and made his humble apologies to the King and the Duke. But though he was able to appease their anger, the evil to his own reputation was done, and his enemies were in no mood to relieve him of it. Clarendon could not prevent his being deprived of his naval command. Already Sandwich had incurred the jealousy of the old Cavaliers, who grudged to one, once Cromwell's officer, the rewards which had not come to their earlier loyalty. All that Clarendon could do was to soften Sandwich's fall by procuring his appointment as amba.s.sador to Spain. The ablest of Charles's naval commanders was sacrificed because of what, in the lax financial morality of the day, seemed only an error of judgment; and the direction of naval affairs was thus placed almost entirely in the hands of Coventry, who, as representing the Duke, could issue commands and thwart the policy of the King's Ministers.

The same restless faction which had sought to sow dissension between the Chancellor and the Treasurer, were not deterred, by failure, from new efforts to break the influence of these two older Ministers. They were busy gathering new recruits to their faction and insinuating them into offices of trust; and now they thought they could undermine the fort by driving Southampton into the resignation of his office. His character and rank stood too high to make him an easy victim, or to encourage them to any open attack. But they could suggest that his powers were waning; that he was no longer equal to the task of guiding the finances of the nation; that he was ruled by subordinates; and that consideration for his age would make it only reasonable to relieve him of an irksome burden. They knew that little persuasion was required to bring about his resignation of a post which duty rather than inclination made him retain; and they guessed, with good reason, that it was Clarendon's advice that chiefly kept Southampton in office.

The procedure followed the usual course. First, Charles was persuaded that his aged Treasurer was no longer equal to the duties of his office. It was easy to suggest to him that his business would move more smoothly if the pedantic methods, the vigilant care, and the c.u.mbrous and dilatory processes of the Lord Treasurer's office were simplified and expedited.

When he was duly impressed, the King had then to be brought to discharge the ungracious task of conveying to the Chancellor the fact that the King would welcome the Treasurer's relinquishment of his office. To do him justice, Charles did not relish the part he was compelled to play. Even his selfishness could not cloak its ugly ingrat.i.tude, and it suited ill with his easy temper to be the medium of such an ungracious message. Nor was it quite compatible with that royal dignity, which he did not always cast aside, to be made the spokesman, to his more serious Minister, of a conspiracy not unlike that of unruly schoolboys. The King knew by experience that, master though he was, he could still be made uncomfortable by hearing stern and plain truths, even in the ceremonious diction in which his Chancellor knew how to clothe them.

The King began the interview--somewhat hypocritically--by "enlarging in a great commendation of the Treasurer." But in spite of all his merits Southampton "did not understand the mystery of that place, nor could his nature go through with the necessary obligations of it." His ill-health caused delay and murmuring in regard to urgent business. His secretary [Footnote: Sir Philip Warwick was born in Westminster in 1609, and was employed before the Civil War, in the service of Lord Goring, and, afterwards, of Bishop Juxon. He acted as Secretary to the King during the Conference at Newport, in 1648. After the Restoration, he became Secretary to the Treasury under Lord Southampton, and had all the qualities of an excellent civil servant, virtually controlling the department under its ministerial head. His _Memoirs_ are not of first-rate importance, but contain some good accounts of engagements in the war, and of incidents in the life of the King. He survived till 1683, and won the fervent admiration of that other worthy official, Pepys.] virtually discharged the work of the office--an estimable and honest man, no doubt, but not equal to the position of Lord Treasurer. The Treasurer's "understanding was too fine for such gross matters as the office must be conversant about, and if his want of health did not hinder him, his genius did not carry him that way." Nothing could be further from the King's thoughts than to disoblige so faithful a servant; but perhaps he would not be unwilling to go, and perhaps the Chancellor would do the King the singular service of suggesting it to him.

The first answer of Clarendon in reply to this not very palatable speech was to ask whom the King proposed to make Treasurer in Southampton's place? He would, said the King, never have another Treasurer, but would exercise the office by Commissioners. Once more the same insuperable prejudice, which Clarendon had felt against the system involved in the Appropriation Clause, was stirred in him. He saw precisely the same motives at work, involving precisely the same dangers. Commissioners might be all very well in Cromwell's days. He needed no Treasurer, and could take care, with an army at his back, that Commissioners would not prove troublesome. But the plan suited ill with monarchical principles. The King should have his Lord Treasurer, of standing and of honour sufficient to ensure sound administration and compel respect. Commissioners, as Clarendon discerned clearly, would be bad servants and dangerous masters.

Clarendon might be fighting a forlorn hope against the growing forces of officialdom; but his dislike was honest, and his discernment of the future was correct.

But he had other reasons to urge against the slur which it was proposed to throw upon his old friend.

"Most humbly and with much earnestness he besought his Majesty seriously to reflect what an ill savour it would have over the whole kingdom, at this time of a war with at least two powerful enemies abroad together, in so great discontent and jealousy at home, and when the Court was in no great reputation with the people, to remove a person, the most loved and reverenced for his most exemplary fidelity and wisdom, who had deserved as much from his blessed father and himself as a subject can do from his prince, a n.o.bleman of the best quality, the best allied and the best beloved; to remove at such a time such a person, and with such circ.u.mstances, from his counsels and his trust."

The King was not of a mould to resist plain speaking like this, and when not supported by the presence of those who made him their tool and instrument, he seldom managed to make way against the vehemence of Clarendon's rebukes. It could hardly be pleasant for a monarch to be told that what he designs is base ingrat.i.tude; that his throne is in danger; the reputation of his Court in evil savour; that both require such support as they may be able to get from men of reverence and station, and that he would be mad to alienate any support from such men that may be vouchsafed to him; yet this was the plain meaning of Clarendon's words. But Charles hesitated to go back, repulsed, to those who had made him their mouthpiece. He remained "rather moved and troubled than convinced." But fortunately Clarendon found an unexpected ally in the Duke of York, who had joined the King and himself at the interview, with the intention, it appears, of supporting the King's purpose. To him Clarendon restated his arguments, and urged him to do the best service to the King his brother "by dissuading him from a course that would prove so mischievous to him."

For this once, the Duke was converted to Clarendon's view, and "prevailed with the King to lay aside the thought of it." [Footnote: Charles not rarely showed a respect for his brother's opinion which was not founded upon any high estimate of his abilities. Clarendon himself remarks this when commenting upon the failure of any attempt to arouse jealousy between the brothers. Charles, he says, "had a just affection for him, and a confidence in him, without thinking better of his natural parts than he thought there was just cause for; and yet, which made it the more wondered at, he did often depart, in matters of the highest moment, from his own judgment to comply with his brother" (_Life_, iii. 62).] Once more the Court conspirators were baulked of their purpose. They could press the King no further; but

"only made so much use of their want of success by presenting to his Majesty his irresoluteness, which made the Chancellor still impose upon him, that the King did not think the better of the Chancellor or the Treasurer for his receding at that time from prosecuting what he had so positively resolved to have done." He could only promise "to be firmer to his next determination."

Between the reproaches of the conspirators of the Court and the scoldings of the stern Chancellor, the King plays no very dignified figure. Even Charles's easy humour could not but owe a grudge to one who so often rated him like a schoolboy in the solemn phrases of State ceremony.

The year 1666 opened on a prospect far from cheering either to the country or to those charged with its administration. There were symptoms enough of actual and impending ills to make it no hazardous prophecy for the astrologers to predict that it was to be "a year of dismal changes and alterations throughout the world." [Footnote: _Life_, iii 39.] The war dragged on its weary course, with what seemed to be but delusive hopes of settlement. Financial troubles were becoming urgent, and the mood of Parliament, without being actually refractory, was stubborn and suspicious. The Plague was still pressing with grievous heaviness, even though there were symptoms that it was somewhat alleviated. Throughout the nation there was murmuring and discontent, at times breaking out into active resistance to the law; and the Court was in increasingly worse odour with the people. It aroused at once the anger of those whom its extravagance seemed to insult; the disgust of those who had some respect for decency; and the contempt and bitter grief of those who prized the honour of the Crown, and desired to maintain the loyalty of the nation.

Charles's disappointment of any hope of legitimate offspring seemed to dissipate any frail purpose he had entertained of ordering his life and Court with more regard to the elementary dictates of decency and decorum.

The influence of Lady Castlemaine was supreme; and the grossness of the palace atmosphere was made all the greater because his favourite mistress added the character of procuress to that of courtesan.

Clarendon would fain have found some excuse for the degradation of the family to whose service his life had been devoted. Apart from all political inclinations and all thoughts of personal ambition, it is absolutely certain that what largely aroused in Clarendon that enthusiastic loyalty which he felt for Charles I. was the consummate dignity of a pure life. Dignity as well as purity were alike banished from the Court of Charles II., with the examples before it of his own more open debauchery and of his brother's more morose viciousness, which was rendered all the uglier by his sullen bigotry. With a discerning eye Clarendon read the prevailing defects of the Stuart race--their p.r.o.neness to succ.u.mb to flattery and vicious influence, and then obstinately to sacrifice every good inclination to the acquired vice.

"They were too much inclined to like men at first sight, and did not love the conversation of men of many more years than themselves, and thought age not only troublesome, but impertinent. They did not love to deny, and less to strangers than to their friends; not out of bounty or generosity, which was a flower that did never grow naturally in the heart of either of the families, that of Stuart or of Bourbon, but out of an unskilfulness and defect in the countenance; and when they prevailed with themselves to make some pause rather than to deny, importunity removed all resolution."

[Footnote: _Life_, iii. 63.]

It is a heavy indictment in the mouth of one who had felt its truth by bitter experience and to whom its avowal caused the deepest pain.

The scandals of the Court touched Clarendon through his daughter, the d.u.c.h.ess of York. The Duke was no model of connubial fidelity, and his lapses from virtue, if not so flagrant as those of his brother, yet gave food enough for gossiping tongues. But ostensibly his married life was fairly decorous, and against the d.u.c.h.ess no charges could be made. Her life, however, did not escape the gibes of those who sought to attack her father through her, and the trust which the Duke showed in her judgment roused their malice. They did their best to bring the King to listen to their sarcasm on a married life which seemed to rebuke his own; and Clarendon at the same time saw with regret that both his daughter and her husband partook in large measure of the spirit of reckless expense which prevailed at Court. Dutiful as she was in other respects, here her father's admonitions were of no effect. The Duke and she had formed their ideas of the scale of expenditure necessary in the household of the heir apparent, from the usages of the French Court. To those who saw in her only the daughter of one who, a few years ago, had been but a Wiltshire squire, her a.s.sumption of almost royal state was a cause of petty malice, and suggested the false pride of a family of obscure birth. To Clarendon it seemed but a necessary insistence upon that respect which the prevailing tone of the Court rendered necessary. In his eyes the danger lay, not in their insistence upon the usages of royal etiquette, but in their extravagance; and he incurred some ill-will from her, as well as from her husband, by his refusal to give his aid in securing for them a more ample revenue. The connection with the royal family, which had been thrust upon Clarendon to his indignation and sorely against his will, proved a new source of anxiety and dispeace.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANNE HYDE, d.u.c.h.eSS OF YORK (From the original by Sir Peter Lely)]

It was on the first of September "in this dismal year of 1666," that the Great Fire burst out that in a few days consumed two-thirds of London, comprising all the repositories of her wealth. It added, to the other disasters weighing on the country, a stupendous disturbance of her commerce at its very centre, and the plunging of the nation into one of those unthinking panics, which, once indulged, so easily become habitual.

The people were in no condition to face such a calamity with the coolness that comes from native energy or the confidence inspired by trust in their rulers. It seemed as if a judgment from heaven had fallen upon the nation; but it was received with all the despair of craven superst.i.tion and with no thought of benefiting by the lessons of tribulation. Angry and groundless accusations against foreigners and papists only added to the general excitement, without stirring up any of the courage which makes brave men face disaster. Public credit was shaken; commercial operations were stunned; wage-earners were thrown out of employment; the forces of crime found themselves released even from those imperfect bonds which then kept them in check. The King and his brother did, indeed, prove their courage in danger and their readiness of expedient; and they were well helped in their efforts to cope with the calamity by many of the leading n.o.bility. But as a whole the visitation proved that the nerves of the nation were sadly relaxed. Clarendon summarizes the progress of the fire and the destruction wrought by it; but his most significant comments are those with which he closes his narrative, telling how hopeless he had grown, in this, the last stage of his laborious career:--"It was hoped and expected," he says, "that this prodigious and universal calamity, for the effects of it covered the whole kingdom, would have made impression, and produced some reformation in the licence of the Court; for as the pains the King had taken night and day during the fire and the dangers he had exposed himself to, even for the saving the citizens' goods, had been very notorious and in the mouths of all men, with good wishes and prayers for him; so his Majesty had been heard during that time to speak with great piety and devotion of the displeasure that G.o.d was provoked to. And no doubt the deep sense of it did raise many good thoughts and purposes in his royal breast. But he was narrowly watched and looked to that such melancholic thoughts might not long possess him, the consequence and effect whereof was like to be more grievous than that of the fire itself; of which that loose company that was too much cherished, even before it was extinguished, discoursed of as an argument for mirth and wit, to describe the wildness of the confusion all people were in; in which the Scripture itself was used with equal liberty when they could apply it to their profane purposes. And Mr. May [Footnote: Baptist May (born in 1629) managed to ingratiate himself with Charles II. in France, and became a favourite in the unsavoury position of "Court Pimp," as he is styled by Pepys. He secured for his base services some grants of land about St.

James's, and was one of the lowest of a degraded gang. He sat occasionally in Parliament to discharge commissions which no man of honour would have undertaken. He lived a despised life down to 1698.] presumed to a.s.sure the King that this was the greatest blessing that G.o.d had ever conferred upon him, his restoration only excepted; for the walls and gates being now burned and thrown down of that rebellious city, which was always an enemy to the Crown, his Majesty would never suffer them to repair and build them up again to be a bit in his mouth and a bridle upon his neck, but would keep all open that his troops might enter upon them whenever he thought it necessary for his service, there being no way to govern that rude mult.i.tude but by force." [Footnote: _Life_, iii. 100.]

Such ribaldry was distasteful to the King, and for the moment he frowned upon it. But it wrought a dire effect, as it spread beyond the purlieus of the palace. Liberty of criticism was as easy to the rude mult.i.tude as to the witlings of the Court, and its effects, when it spread to that mult.i.tude, were far more deadly. The King's judgment might condemn, but his facile love of jesting made him inclined to listen to, the empty and sordid chatter of frivolity that sounded through his Court. "Meanwhile,"

says Clarendon, "all men of virtue and sobriety, of which there were very many in the King's family, were grieved and heartbroken with hearing what they could not choose but hear, and seeing many things which they could not avoid seeing." It is hard to say which is most worthy of contempt--the appalling cynicism that prompted such scurrilities, or the amazing folly which mistook their vulgarity for wit.

But even although Charles, out of a seeming respect for his older and sounder counsellors, might frown upon such irresponsible outbursts of bad taste, his scanty respect for the forms of the const.i.tution continued to be a source of deep regret to Clarendon. In the view of the Chancellor, the Privy Council was the pivot of the const.i.tution.

"By the const.i.tution of the kingdom," he says, [Footnote: Life, iii. 103]

"and the very laws and customs of the nation, as the Privy Council and every member of it is of the King's sole choice and election of him to that trust, so the body of it is the most sacred, and hath the greatest authority in the government of the State, next the person of the King himself, to whom all other powers are equally subject; and no King of England can so well secure his own just prerogative or preserve it from violation as by a strict defending and supporting the dignity of his Privy Council."

This is one of the features in Clarendon's scheme of the const.i.tution, which essentially divide him from the modern view. But it was to be long before the Privy Councilship became, as in modern usage, little more than an honorary t.i.tle; and it may be doubted whether a strict reading of the const.i.tution is not infringed by the change which this has involved.

Clarendon did not, of course, suppose that the Privy Council could place itself above Parliament, or that it could pretend to guide the national policy. Such a thing would have been as impossible in Clarendon's day as it would be now. But he did conceive that the power of the executive should receive all its authority from, and be subject to the supreme guidance of, the most ancient and august body which was nominated solely by the Crown. The prerogative of the Crown must be exercised through that body; and this view was confirmed by the fact that after the Revolution each Privy Councillor was made responsible for the decrees pa.s.sed with his a.s.sent. This was, indeed, the very contrivance by which the ancient principle that the King could do no wrong was made compatible with a free const.i.tution. Clarendon's view, however antiquated, was thus, in truth, a safeguard for liberty. A great officer of State was entrusted with the duties and powers of his office. But he was not necessarily a member of the Privy Council, and his powers were, in Clarendon's view, limited by the supreme authority of that Council. That its portals should be jealously guarded; that only men of the first weight should be admitted to it; that its proceedings should be carefully regulated and should rest upon sound legal principles--all these things made for government by the personal agency of carefully chosen Ministers of the Crown, which it was Clarendon's aim to preserve, instead of bureaucratic rule by a host of minor officials. They also served as a powerful guarantee for const.i.tutional liberty and for immediate responsibility attaching to a well-recognized body for any infringement of it. It is hard to fix responsibility amongst the various grades of an official hierarchy. It is easy to fix it upon a small group of leading men who have the administration in their hands, who are bound to base their procedure on well-understood rules, and who cannot transgress these rules in ignorance or under the veil of obscurity.

Under the new _regime_ the Chancellor found the Privy Council filled with Court favourites or ambitious intriguers of the type of Sir William Coventry, who scorned precedent and was never so happy as when inveighing against the trammels of the law. Clarendon was forced to submit to daily encroachments upon regularity of procedure, which found encouragement from the King. His personal dignity was injured, and his temper was daily chafed, by the insults of those who carried their insubordination and their flippancy to the Council Chamber, where he could ill brook their presence; and they did so under cover of the secret sympathy of the King.

Day by day he found his own influence more surely undermined; and it was none the less irksome because he saw the work of his life undone amidst the gibes of a heartless cynicism.

It involves, however, no reflection upon the dignity or the capacity of Clarendon if we are compelled to admit that the schoolboy baiting to which he was exposed found no little encouragement from his own bluntness and his stubborn resolution to stoop to none of the arts of courtiership.

There was a limit even to the patience with which Charles could listen to the oft-repeated catalogue of his own moral defects; and perhaps Clarendon's lessons might have been none the less effective had they been conveyed with something more of tact. The strange thing is that he himself saw, and faithfully recounts, the traps which were laid for him. But he seems to have thought that these could best be dealt with by roughly trampling on such devices and tearing his way headlong through such snares. The struggle was sometimes not a little comic in aspect, in spite of the background of tragedy. Upon some occasions the courtiers, with an hypocrisy which Clarendon did not fail to suspect, would lament to him the scandals of their master's life and the injury that these wrought to his reputation and authority. When he urged that they should "advertise the King what they thought and heard all others say," they professed that they dared not speak to the King "in such dialect." Clarendon gave them credit for some honesty in their refusal to condemn what they themselves encouraged; and perhaps too readily a.s.sumed himself the task which they refused. On one occasion, while he and Arlington--one would have thought no very sympathetic pair for mutual confidences--were discussing the license of the Court and the consequent injury to the Crown, their conversation was interrupted by the King. Their trouble did not escape his notice, and he asked the subject of their talk. The Chancellor candidly declared--prefacing the declaration by a confession that he was not sorry for the chance of making it--that

"they were speaking of his Majesty, and, as they did frequently, were bewailing the unhappy life he lived, both with respect to himself, who, by the excess of pleasures which he indulged to himself, was indeed without the true delight and relish of any; and in respect to his Government, which he totally neglected, and of which the kingdom was so sensible that it could not be long before he felt the ill effects of it."

So he proceeded, pressing home the moral with all energy of denunciation, and concluded by

"beseeching him to believe, that which he had often said to him, that no prince could be more miserable, nor could have more reason to fear his own ruin, than he who hath no servants who dare contradict him in his opinions and advise him against his inclinations, how natural soever." The picture was not a flattering one, and the prognostications were not soothing. To play the part of such a Mentor is doubtless at times a duty, but it can scarcely confirm the influence of him by whom it is discharged. The King heard it "with his usual temper (for he was a patient hearer) and spake sensibly, as if he thought that much that had been said was with too much reason." Perhaps Clarendon might have chosen a better audience than a proclaimed enemy like Arlington. The secretary had no mind for such jeremiads, and was dexterous enough to turn the subject by falling into "raillery, which was his best faculty, with which he diverted the King from any further serious reflections." The King and he soon pa.s.sed to merriment at Clarendon's expense, and made the old jests against the gravity of age, which made no allowance for the infirmities of youth.

Clarendon tells the close of the conversation with an almost nave candour. Their raillery, he confesses,

"increased the pa.s.sion he was in, and provoked him to say that it was observed abroad, that it was a faculty very much improved of late in the Court, to laugh at those arguments they could not answer, and which could always be requited with the same mirth amongst those who were enemies to it, and therefore it was a pity that it should be so much embraced by those who pretended to be friends;" and ended with "some other, too plain, expressions, which, it may be, were not warily enough used."

Candour is no doubt a virtue, and Clarendon deserves honour for his bold words. But to tell the King that he was at once a sluggard and a debauchee; that he had lost the respect, and would probably soon forfeit the obedience of his subjects; and to scold his jocular raillery by painting him as courting the society and imitating the manners of buffoons, was scarcely a tactful way of insinuating a lesson of caution and establishing the confidence which makes a servant congenial to his master. We must honour Clarendon for his manliness; but perhaps a little less of the pedagogue might not have diminished his influence or impaired the dignity of his character.

Charles knew how to hide any irritation under a smiling demeanour. But the friction was there and it soon took plainer shape. Careless as he was, the King had his share of Stuart punctiliousness, and the habits of the French Court had taught him that royal favour ought to command respect, even for those whose conduct had forfeited it according to the usual ethics of social decorum. That respect his pride taught him to insist upon; and he resented the boldness of the lampoons upon his Court which were now circulated broadcast, not because they reflected on his morals, but because they were a breach of good manners. One whose chosen a.s.sociates were men of habitual profanity and unabashed licentiousness; one who believed religion to be nothing but disguised hypocrisy, and the chast.i.ty of women nothing but a delusion artfully contrived--could not long condone plain speaking for its manliness and sincerity, and could not conceive that the profligacy of the royal courtesan deprived her of the observances of formal courtliness. It was this last point which brought upon Clarendon the King's first direct remonstrances. He told the Chancellor that "he was more severe against common infirmities than he should be, and that his wife was not courteous in returning visits and civilities to those who paid her respect." Such neglect the King chose to interpret as an insult to himself. It was clear to whom and to what it referred; Clarendon had consistently declined to allow his wife to have any intercourse with Lady Castlemaine. To the King's remonstrance

"he answered very roundly, that he might seem not to understand his meaning, and so make no reply to the discourse he had made; but that he understood it all and the meaning of every word of it; and therefore that it would not become him to suffer his Majesty to depart with an opinion that what he had said would produce any alteration in his behaviour towards him, or reformation of his manners towards any other person. He did beseech his Majesty," the Chancellor went on, "not to believe that he hath a prerogative to declare vice virtue, or to qualify any person who lives in a sin and avows it, against which G.o.d Himself hath p.r.o.nounced d.a.m.nation, for the company and conversation of innocent and worthy persons. Whatever low obedience, which was in truth gross flattery, some people might pay to what they believed would be grateful to his Majesty, they had in their hearts a perfect detestation of the persons they made address to; for his part, he was resolved that his wife should not be one of these courtiers."

The King could only reply "that he was wrong, and had an understanding different from all men who had experience in the world."

Clarendon's are brave words, and we may well doubt whether the like were ever addressed by a Minister of the Crown to the occupant of a throne which still retained so much of the kingly prerogative as did that of Charles. But do they leave us to seek for new grounds for Clarendon's approaching fall? Do they not, indeed, prove that, but for his thorough grasp of the essentials of sound administration, his predominant forcefulness, and the urgent need of his wise and experienced guidance, the King would have yielded to his own growing irritation, and that Clarendon's fall would have come, and the eager longings of his enemies have been gratified, far earlier than was the case?

Before we enter upon the last stage of Clarendon's ministry, so fateful for the future history of England, it may be well to turn to another aspect of his life, which is not without its use in helping us to estimate his character. We have already seen how the high office which he held, and for which his unswerving loyalty, his long service, and his ample experience had so fully designated him, had been accompanied by exalted rank in the n.o.bility of England, which required him, according to the fashion of the time, to maintain great state, and involved heavy expenditure. He had inherited a fair estate; had married the daughter of an ancient family, with no small dowry; and, in his early days, his fortune had been increased, not only by further inheritances, but by the lucrative practice of his profession. When he first entered Parliament, he had before him the prospect of a prosperous career; and when he was induced to enter the service of Charles I. it was possible for him to do so without emolument and in full security that his own means would be ample for his requirements. During the troubled years that followed these means rapidly decreased. He could draw no revenue from his estates, and during the long years of his banishment from the country he had been reduced to the direst straits of poverty, and had been forced to subsist on the scanty grants that could be made to him, and to others, from the funds supplied to the King by those loyal supporters who could spare something from their own impaired revenues. After the Restoration, Clarendon found himself in possession of an office of which the emoluments, without any of those malpractices or extortions which were then too common, and which his enemies did not scruple to charge against him, [Footnote: Hints and gossip as to such bribes and commissions were inevitable in an age when they were only too common, and in the mouths of men whose consciences were blunted by long practice. Such gossip readily spread, as it is, in all places and in all ages, too apt to do. We may safely discard the slanderous garrulity of Pepys, and just as safely the ridiculous libel of Anthony a Wood, who tells us how one David Jenkyns, a friend of Wood's and a good Royalist, would certainly have been made a judge at the Restoration, if he "had paid money to the Lord Chancellor."

Anthony a Wood had no kindly feeling to a family from whom he received such castigation as he did from the Hydes. Lies of that sort always propagate themselves, like noisome weeds; it is the part of the wise to neglect them until they are established by proof.] were still large. There is not a t.i.ttle of evidence to disprove Clarendon's a.s.sertion, that he confined himself to those revenues of his office which were strictly legal; and to suppose otherwise would be to suppose him false to all those ideals which were the foundation of his character, and to which his pride, if nothing else, compelled him. Naturally he recovered the full use of his private property, and some, at least, of the arrears due to him would undoubtedly be paid. Very soon after the King's return a grant--in no degree above his merits--of 20,000 was made to him by the King out of the present sent by the Parliament. Clarendon found himself in the position of a fairly wealthy man, and it was not unnatural that he should desire to maintain that position which was commensurate with his rank. He knew himself to be the founder of a family which must take its place in the ranks of the great n.o.bility of England, and must hold a conspicuous place in her annals. To him, as to many men for whom the pettiness of personal position weighs for little, the maintenance of that family in worthy dignity became a legitimate object of ambition. [Footnote: Clarendon did, indeed, as he was fully justified in doing, procure for some of his relations posts for which there is no reason to judge them unsuitable. One cousin, Alexander Hyde, became Bishop of Salisbury. Another, Robert Hyde, became Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1661. The brother of these two, Henry Hyde, had been executed for his loyalty in 1650, and thereby had established no mean claim to loyal grat.i.tude. Clarendon, in this, did no more than any one in his circ.u.mstances was not only ent.i.tled, but bound to do.] To his historic sense a place amongst the n.o.bility of his country was attractive, and its stateliness was something which his imagination clothed with more than merely superficial allurement. It was from no selfish feeling and no vanity of personal display, that he conceived the idea of leaving to those who were to come after him an inheritance compatible with that position. It would be unjust to blame Clarendon because he gave the scanty leisure, which his absorbing business permitted him, to attaining that object. For years after the Restoration he had no house of his own in London, and occupied one or other of the houses either lent or hired to him by members of the great n.o.bility who now looked upon him as their equal. After his private affairs were on a more secure basis, he began to build for himself. He chose a site near the top of St. James's Street, just where Piccadilly began to melt into the fields beyond, and there he constructed a mansion which he fondly hoped would carry on his name for many a generation. It was conceived on ample lines and with all that pride of architecture which his own cultured taste and the stately ceremonial of the day made congenial to him. As in temperament and style, so in his conception of the const.i.tution, in his taste, and in the ordering of his life, Clarendon was essentially an aristocrat; and it was in harmony with that idea that the mansion which faced St. James's Palace, [Footnote: It was flanked by Lord Berkeley's house to the west, and by Burlington House to the east.] and was to bear the name of Clarendon House, was now rising in all the bravery of ornament and amplitude of design which were in keeping with its owner's taste; and that it should earn the praise of Evelyn as likely to be the stateliest house in London.

[Footnote: "To my Lord Chancellor at Clarendon House," says Pepys, in his _Diary_ for May 9, 1667. "Mightily pleased with the n.o.bleness of this house, and the brave furniture and pictures, which indeed is very n.o.ble."

He had been impressed with it as strongly in its early stages, and writes in January, 1666: "It is the finest pile I ever did see in my life, and will be a glorious house." The building was begun early in 1665. Evelyn is not so complimentary. He thought it "a goodly pile to see, but had many defects as to the architecture, yet placed most gracefully" (_Diary_, Nov. 28, 1666). A longer pa.s.sage from Evelyn's _Diary_, of a later date, is quoted in the note on p. 324.

Pepys was greatly impressed with the view, to which he more than once returned, from the roof of the house. "It is the n.o.blest prospect that ever I saw in my life; Greenwich being nothing to it" (Feb. 1665/6).] But envious tongues and malicious gossip soon taught its builder that his pride was vain, and that he could not indulge his fancy with the ease of one who held obscurer rank. The crowd is fickle, and Clarendon took little care to secure its lenient judgment. Already his mansion was nicknamed Dunkirk House, and the quidnuncs told how it was built out of the bribes which had made him contrive the sale of that port to France. To decorate his mansion it was his ambition to collect a gallery of portraits, which should represent all those who had foremost places in the eventful history of his time. Such a design involved an expenditure very small compared with the notions of the present day. Clarendon procured all the notable portraits which were available. It is quite possible--and Evelyn admits it--that when the statesman's foible became known; pictures were sold to him at easy prices, or even presented as a compliment to the power and position of the collector. It is absurd to suppose that Clarendon either would or could have brought any pressure to bear upon the owners. But a falling statesman is an easy aim for slander, and it was whispered that the Clarendon collection was enriched by oppressive means. [Footnote: The chief authority for this accusation against Clarendon is an ill-natured insinuation by Lord Dartmouth, in his notes on _Burnet's History of His Own Times_,--notes which were in MS. only, and which were not intended for publication. It carries its own refutation, and Dartmouth could not possibly have had any knowledge of the circ.u.mstances. Clarendon no doubt received certain complimentary gifts. But we know that many private collections were broken up and sold by impoverished Cavaliers, and such pictures must at that time have been procurable at easy prices. Many of the pictures were interesting as portraits, rather than as works of art, although there were good specimens of Vand.y.k.e, Jansen, Kneller, and Lely amongst the collection; and Clarendon was probably able to pursue his hobby of collecting portraits of the outstanding men in English history at no great cost.

In a letter to Pepys of August 12, 1689, Evelyn gives a list of pictures in the collection of which he himself had advised the purchase, and some of which, he admits, had been presented by those who "strove to make their court" to the Chancellor, by such timely gifts, when his design was known.

They comprised portraits of all the leading men in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., and others were added from more remote history, and from his own later contemporaries. It is interesting to note that there were portraits of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Beaumont, and Fletcher--"which was," adds Evelyn, "most agreeable to his Lordship's general humour."