Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon Part 14

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. "G.o.d 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 d.u.c.h.ess of Cleveland, in 1668. York House, Twickenham, was a.s.signed 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 n.o.bler 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 ill.u.s.trious person, whose large and ample heart has honoured his country with so glorious a structure, and by an example worthy of himself, showed our n.o.bility how they ought indeed to build, and value their qualities, live many long years to enjoy it; and when he shall be pa.s.sed to that upper building, not made with hands, may his posterity (as you, my lord) inherit his goodness, this palace, and all other circ.u.mstances of his grandeur, to consummate their felicity."

Evelyn may best be allowed to tell of the pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sociation 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 pa.s.sions, 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 Emba.s.sy 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sionate 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 a.s.sociations that had been handed down to him. But the memory of his achievements, marred and blurred as these were by sordid surroundings, ign.o.ble 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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances 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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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.