Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon Part 2

With that genial self-complacency, which sits so well on him, Hyde records that he took his seat in the House of Lords as Lord Chancellor (but not a peer) "with a general acceptation and respect." He found on the benches round him those who had been his a.s.sociates in the days before his exile, or their sons. The old peers, or their successors, excluded from Parliament so long, now took their places without any formal resolution, and as a matter of routine; so easily had things slid back into their old position. In the other House, there was a preponderance of "sober and prudent men," after Hyde's own heart. Those who had but lately been declared to be "malignants and delinquents" now gloried in the name; and the ordinances which had, at the very summoning of the Convention, excluded them, were now treated with contemptuous neglect.

There was, indeed, a considerable leaven of the Presbyterian element, and against its adherents Hyde bore a prejudice which even his prudence could not suppress. Their disaffection to the Church was cloaked by an emphatic a.s.sertion of their zeal for the Crown. They claimed, with some justice, no mean share in the Restoration. The Covenant, they argued, a.s.sured their loyalty, and its admission to the Churches, from which Cromwell had banished it, had, they averred, contributed powerfully to the success of the Royalist cause. Hyde refused to acquiesce in the theory that a common hatred of the Independents ensured the continued alliance or the sure loyalty of the Presbyterians, or that the Covenant, under the cover of which they had levied war against the King in his own name, was a proper object of grateful recognition. But, for the moment at least, their self- interest was a sufficient safeguard against their proving troublesome to the royal cause.

In his first speech, Hyde, in the name of the King, urged upon both Houses the necessity of pa.s.sing the Bill of Indemnity and Oblivion, as necessary in order to calm alarms, which might at any moment have disturbed the public peace. That Bill of Indemnity and Oblivion had to be shaped in accordance with the Declaration issued by the King from Breda. Personally, Hyde had endeavoured to restrain the impulse which tempted the King to clinch a promising bargain by over-lavish concessions. He always held that the dignity of the King could not be satisfied without vengeance on the murderers of his father, and that the security of the Crown rendered a severe example necessary. But if his caution led him to look askance on extravagant promises, his sense of honour taught him that whatever promises were given, must be fulfilled. The question was, To what did Charles's Declaration at Breda pledge him?

Not once, but many times, from 1649 onwards, when his affairs were in the most hopeless plight, Charles had clearly announced that he could make no terms with those "who voted or acted in that b.l.o.o.d.y murder." Amongst the vast majority in all parties who accepted the Restoration, there were few who ever contemplated oblivion for that act. The Declaration had promised a free pardon to all who, within forty days, "shall lay hold upon this our grace and favour, and by any public act declare their doing so." It excepted "only such persons as shall hereafter be excepted by Parliament."

Technically, this did not close the door even upon the agents in the death of Charles I. Practically, it must be interpreted in the light of previous Declarations. Strictly interpreted, it did not reserve to the Crown the right to reject any proposed exemption, even for a regicide; and this, perhaps, involved that Court influence should not be used against such an exemption. [Footnote: In the letter from the King enclosing the Declaration, words were used which served as a sort of gloss upon it: "If there be a crying sin for which the nation may be involved in the infamy which attends it, we cannot doubt but that you will be as solicitous to redeem and vindicate the nation from that guilt and infamy as we can be."

These words were clear enough.] As a fact, there is no evidence that the mercy which Parliament was disposed to show was in any way restricted by such influence. Hyde, at least, made no effort to curtail the exemptions made by Parliament. His only anxiety was that the Act should pa.s.s speedily, so that the sense of insecurity should disappear, and the path of reconciliation should be open. In his own words, "It was then, and more afterwards, imputed to the Chancellor, that there were no more exceptions in the Act of Indemnity, and that he laboured for expedition of pa.s.sing it, and for excluding any extraordinary exceptions; which reproach he neither then, nor ever after, was solicitous to throw off." Not the least of Hyde's trials was the difficulty of curbing the zeal--often prompted by selfish motives--of the more hot-headed Royalists.

As to the actual number of exceptions, the opinion of Parliament varied and gradually increased in severity. Before the King's return it was resolved that seven of the King's judges should be excluded from pardon.

After his return, on June 6th, a Proclamation was issued (after the presentation of a joint address from both Houses), summoning all regicides to surrender within fourteen days on pain of exclusion from pardon. This was held to mean only that obedience to the proclamation would exempt them from punishment without trial, and from exclusion from hope of pardon; and, indeed, the Declaration had given up the King's power to do more without the a.s.sent of Parliament. But as time went on, the mood of Parliament became more severe. Three more--not the King's judges--were excepted; and subsequently twenty more were made liable to punishment short of death. The Peers proceeded still further in the direction of severity; and when the Act received the Royal a.s.sent in August, it excepted forty-nine persons who were instrumental in the death of Charles, with a proviso that nineteen, who had surrendered, should not suffer death, without the sanction of an Act of Parliament; and certain others were made amenable to punishment short of death. Finally, in October, the excepted persons were brought to trial. All were found guilty, but of these, ten only actually suffered death. Hyde's influence is plainly to be seen in this degree of leniency, which certainly went beyond the prevailing mood of Parliament.

The two chief offenders whose fate had to be settled were Sir Henry Vane and General Lambert. The Convention Parliament had pet.i.tioned that their lives should be spared, and Clarendon, at least, was not unwilling that this should be done. But the new Parliament, [Footnote: The Convention Parliament met again in November, 1660, after its short recess. It was dissolved on the 29th of December, 1660, and the new, and duly elected, Parliament met on the 8th of May, 1661.] when it met, was in a more angry mood, and repeatedly applied to the King that they should be brought to trial. These pet.i.tions were referred by the King to the Chancellor, whose answer indicates that he was inclined to find pretexts for delay.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR HENRY VANE, THE YOUNGER. (_From the original by William Dobson, in the National Portrait Gallery_.)]

To follow their fate, we may antic.i.p.ate a little the sequence of events.

The trial ultimately took place in June, 1662. Vane took what may have been the courageous, but was certainly not the prudent, course of defending his own action, and defying the Court. He was protected, so he argued, by the Statute of Henry VII., which gave exemption from a charge of treason to those who had served a King _de facto_, even against a King _de jure_. It was clear that no such plea was valid in the case of one who, by compa.s.sing the death of a King, had aided in establishing a Commonwealth. Vane was convicted, and met his fate with marvellous courage on June 14th, 1662.

Vane was a strange compound of incongruous qualities--at once enthusiast and philosopher, statesman and intriguer, a model of chivalrous courage, and a profound dissembler. We cannot compa.s.s his character by adopting the wayward estimate given of him by Anthony a Wood, who tells us that his common nickname was Sir Humorous Vanity, and who dismisses him as "a hotchpotch of religion," "an inventor of whimseys in religion, and crotchets in the State." Just as little can we trust to Milton's lavish praise:

"Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old Than whom a better senator ne'er held The helm of Rome."

Perhaps the soundest judgment, albeit an unsympathetic one, is that of Hyde: [Footnote: _Rebellion_, vii. 267.] "He was, indeed, a man of extraordinary parts; a pleasant wit, a great understanding, which pierced into and discerned the purpose of other men with wonderful sagacity, while he had himself _vultum clausum_.... If he were not superior to Mr.

Hampden, he was inferior to no other man in all mysterious artifices."

Lambert showed no such bold front to his judges. In his case imprisonment was subst.i.tuted for death, and he was kept in honourable and easy confinement in Guernsey. In a subsequent letter, he expressed his grat.i.tude to Clarendon for his good offices in procuring this degree of mercy. [Footnote: Bodleian MSS. Printed by Lister, vol. iii. p. 310.]

But the question of settling the measure of indemnity to be granted was only the first of many difficulties that craved wary walking on the part of Hyde. Other weighty problems faced him. The most urgent of these was the settlement of the Revenue, in regard to which Hyde had again to mediate between two extremes. There were, doubtless, some who wished that the complete supremacy of Parliament should be secured by making the Crown depend entirely upon casual and arbitrary Parliamentary grants. In Hyde's view this was inconsistent with the dignity of the Crown, was certain to lead to friction, and would inevitably make Parliament the sole sovereign power in the State. But just as little did he wish to fix a Revenue which would have made the Crown entirely independent of Parliament, and would have dispelled the scheme of a limited monarchy. However little it might be to the taste of Charles and the crowd of grasping courtiers, Hyde determined that, for all extraordinary expenses, the King should be obliged to have recourse to the generosity of Parliament, and that the ordinary expenditure should be kept within reasonable limits. If we are to believe the account given to Pepys by Sir William Coventry, [Footnote: See Pepys, _Diary_, March 20, 1669.] the Lord Treasurer, Lord Southampton, would gladly have postponed the Indemnity Bill until an ample revenue had been settled upon the King, so as to secure his independence.

According to Burnet, [Footnote: _Hist. of His own Time_, i. 286.] Hyde could readily have obtained the consent of Parliament to a revenue of 2,000,000, and deliberately refrained from doing so.

A much more moderate, and, as it turned out, an inadequately secured, revenue was fixed. Inquiries were inst.i.tuted, which showed that the revenue in the years immediately preceding the Civil War had been rather less than 900,000, and that the expenditure had been 1,100,000. The necessary expenses had, since then, materially increased, and could not now be placed at less than 1,200,000. Towards this, the existing sources of revenue, with the deduction of the Feudal dues and wardships, which it was proposed to abolish, would not contribute more than one-half, or 600,000. The remaining half was to be supplied from Excise--a new device, as we have seen, contrived by Parliament during the Civil War, and destined, as Hyde foresaw, to become a permanency. But, as a fact, the a.s.signed resources did not reach this amount of 1,200,000. Further, it had to be taken into account that, when existing debts were added to the necessary cost of disbanding the army, a burden of debt, amounting to about two millions and a half, would have to be met. It must be kept in mind also that there was no clear distinction between the Civil List, or the personal expenses of the King's household, and the General Revenue.

All these circ.u.mstances, combined with the lavish extravagance of the Court, soon led to financial deficits, and to hopeless confusion of accounts. Such a condition of matters was certain to swell all other causes of discontent. To meet them, an economy of administration, which Hyde vainly hoped for and strove to bring about, was the only possible expedient, a.s.suming that the King were not to be made financially independent. Possibly it would not have been beyond Hyde's power to adopt the latter course; and that he had failed to provide the easy resource of a lavish revenue was one of the causes that contributed to his subsequent unpopularity at Court. He soon found that under such a master, and in such a Court, economy of administration was a hopeless ideal. He irritated the crowd of selfish and grasping sycophants, and yet he failed to lay a secure foundation of sound financial administration. The difficulties of the situation rendered that an impossible task. The financial settlement, such as it was, was not reached till December, after a short adjournment in September and October. Meanwhile, another, and equally threatening, problem had to be faced, and it was faced with prompt.i.tude and success.

The Restoration found a force of 60,000 trained and seasoned men under arms. Had the Chief Minister of Charles felt it consistent with his duty to conciliate that force and keep it embodied, the hopes of const.i.tutional monarchy would have been vain. The cost would have been heavy, but it would have been itself the best security against resistance. It would, doubtless, have rallied to its paymaster, and would have been an effectual check upon the growing power of Parliament. But such a course would have been absolutely contradictory to Hyde's deepest convictions of const.i.tutional rect.i.tude, and it would have been in deadly opposition to all the traditions of the nation--traditions which were tenaciously held even after the inst.i.tution of a standing army had become a necessity of the European position of this country, and after the necessary absorption of that army in the stirring tasks imposed upon it abroad had made its use as an instrument of tyrannical power impossible. Hyde saw that his ideal of Government demanded that the army should be disbanded, and that promptly. He did not conceal from himself the danger that the disbanding involved. It was soon apparent that the political leanings which had been submerged in the rest of the nation survived in threatening force amongst the ranks of the army. There were many in the ranks who disliked monarchy in any shape, and Monk, who had been their all-powerful leader so long as his designs were uncertain, was now the object of their sullen hatred, and his life was threatened by designs of a.s.sa.s.sination cherished amongst his old soldiery. The army, it was evident, must be master of the nation, or it must cease to exist. Hyde dealt skilfully with the problem in his speech to Parliament on the eve of the adjournment on September 13th. The King, he said, did not resent the common belief that he would not disband the army.

"It was a sober and a rational jealousy." "No other prince in Europe would be willing to disband such an army--an army to which victory is entailed, and which, humanly speaking, could hardly fail of victory, wheresoever he should lead it. And if G.o.d had not restored his Majesty to that felicity as to be without apprehension of danger at home or from abroad, and without any ambition of taking from his neighbours what they are possessed of, himself would never disband this army--an army whose order and discipline, whose sobriety and manners, whose courage and success, have made it famous and terrible all over the world."

The words were admirably framed to conciliate the army, to indicate the danger, and to show clearly the moderate policy of the Crown. No financial straits were allowed to prevent the prompt disbandment, which was carried out with singular success. Before November more than half of that army was peaceably paid off; and a few months more saw the end of almost the whole force. The disturbances which soon after arose led to the retention of Monk's Coldstream Guards, a regiment of Horse Guards, and another regiment from Dunkirk. These formed the King's guards, deemed essential for the security of the King's person; and they were the nucleus of the future standing army. During Hyde's later administration they never exceeded 5000 men. The magic of discipline and cohesion gone, Cromwell's Ironsides ceased to be an effective instrument of war. But, spread throughout the villages of England, they powerfully leavened the national character, and prevented the effacement of a type which the strain of Civil War and the white-heat of religious enthusiasm had served to create. The threatenings of a sullen temper on the part of the army, who found their occupation gone, were happily averted. But Hyde recognized that a deeper danger lay behind, in the still more sullen and dangerous temper of many amongst the Royalist party. They represented every type. There were the old Cavaliers, who had fought in the earlier years of the war, had seen their dearest and best fall in the King's service, and had permanently crippled, or entirely lost, their estates for the Royalist cause. Twenty years of poverty and hardship, if it had not slackened their loyalty, had taught them caution.

They knew by experience the hopelessness of plots, and had recognized that the Royalist cause must look, not to forlorn hopes, but to a slowly ripening change of national feeling. In the dark days they had distrusted the feverish energy of younger men, whose record of loyalty was short, and who had sought to retrieve the lateness of their adherence to the Royalist cause by its restless zeal. Amongst these last, there were, indeed, many whose services could not be disparaged, such as young Lord Mordaunt, who had repeatedly risked his life in pa.s.sing between England and the quarters of the exiled Court. But it was no selfish motive that prompted caution to men like Ormonde, Hertford, and Southampton. Ormonde himself, as we have seen, had ventured to visit London secretly under Cromwell's rule, in order to keep alive the zeal of the Royalist party. Hertford and Southampton had refused all overtures from the Protector, and their loyalty was beyond cavil. But much as they had suffered and were ready to suffer again, they dreaded, with good reason, the recklessness of the more militant section, and knew the risks that it involved. Repeatedly they had urged the King "to sit still, and expect a reasonable revolution, without making any unadvised attempt;" and their policy had been consistently maintained by Hyde. Hyde's own position and his influence with the King was, as we have seen, suspected by the more daring spirits. The Royalist party, amidst all its depression, had been injured by inherent defects and crippled by its own inappeasable dissensions. Many of the older Royalists were dead, and those who had taken their place had no experience in public affairs, were unknown to one another, and were suspicious of those whose views in any way differed from their own. The most trustworthy were cautious, and, before they declared their adherence to any scheme, had made it a condition that their designs should be imparted only to Ormonde and Hyde. But negotiations could not be confined to them, without discouraging those whose zeal was undoubted. The network of suspicion increased and left permanent marks.

All these various and mutually suspicious groups in the Royalist party had, now that the cause had triumphed, to be satisfied in some way or other, and their deserts had to receive such recognition as would leave only a minimum of rankling discontent. The first question that had to be settled was the rest.i.tution of property. How far was it possible, consistently with the claims of justice and the paramount supremacy of law?

Claims of rest.i.tution arose from three sources--the Crown, the Church, and the impoverished adherents of the cause. The Crown lands had been seized by Parliament in 1648. No claim of prescription could be allowed to operate there; and the Crown was reinstated in possession of these lands, whether they had been granted or sold to their present possessors. The same summary method was applied to estates of which the original owners had been dispossessed, and which had pa.s.sed as rewards for services to Parliament, or had been sold by that authority. But a much more troublesome question arose with regard to lands which had been sold by Royalist owners, in order to meet their own necessities, to satisfy the exactions levied by Parliament on "malignants," or to permit the loyal owner to contribute to the necessities of the Crown. Such cases involved fully as much hardship, and it made little difference to the impoverished landlord whether his estate had been impounded by the triumphant rebels, or had been sold by himself in order to meet the fines imposed by the usurping power. But it was felt that, except by a dangerous unsettlement of all legal process, and by destroying all public confidence, no universal cancelling of voluntary and legal transactions could take place.

The Declaration of Breda had left all such matters to the decision of Parliament; and Hyde refused to depart from it, or to face the certain destruction of all public confidence which more drastic action in the way of rest.i.tution would have produced. But the murmurings of those whose sufferings were in no wise lessened by the technicalities of the law, were deep and enduring. The King was deemed to be ungrateful for the sacrifices, and careless of the sufferings of his adherents; and the heaviest part of the blame fell upon Hyde. Burnet tells us, repeating the talk of the day, that the Act of Indemnity was currently spoken of "as an Act of Indemnity for the King's enemies and of Oblivion for his friends"; and he avers that "the whole work, from beginning to end, was Hyde's."

[Footnote: Burnet's _History of His own Time_, i. 298.] There is no reason to accept anything on Burnet's sole authority; but at least there is nothing in this inconsistent with Hyde's general att.i.tude, nor is it, indeed, easy to see how any other course could have been followed without leading to widespread confusion and an undermining of public credit.

An even more crucial question, and one bristling with difficulties, arose with regard to Church property. Upon none had the sufferings of the time fallen with more severity than on the Church and her clergy. She had shared the tribulations of the Royal Martyr, and the best tribute that could be paid to his memory was surely to secure that she should now feel the sunshine of a new dawn. If the history of these twenty years had proved anything, it had proved how faithfully the Church reflected the spirit of the English people, and how deeply their traditional love for that Church was implanted in their hearts. She, too, had produced her own martyr in Laud, and the aims with which he had inspired her were recovering their hold over the nation. The pages of Pepys's _Diary_ tell us how even his sprightly self-complacency could be moved to enthusiasm by the revival of her dignified ceremonial; and the harmony of her ritual had charms for those who had none of Pepys's musical taste and skill, but might well have a deeper love for its essential beauty, and a better appreciation of all that it meant for the heart of the nation. The survivors amongst her scattered bishops, and the long train of her ejected clergy, represented not only a tale of individual suffering, but an insult offered to the cherished traditions of a people singularly p.r.o.ne to be touched by an appeal to history. The yoke of the Presbyterians and Independents had been a hard one, and the Church Restored was the outward sign of release from bondage to those whom that yoke had galled. Her dignitaries had suffered the direst straits of poverty, and her clergy had sought a meagre livelihood in menial employment, or had lived in dependence upon the secret benevolence of impoverished loyalists, in whose households they were often well-loved inmates. They had full need of money, not only for their own subsistence, but to repair their desecrated shrines and to obliterate the marks which civil strife and an iconoclastic spirit had left upon those great cathedrals and those well-loved parish churches that symbolized the faith of the nation. They would have been more or less than human had they not been stirred by zeal to repair the ravages which sacrilegious hands had wrought upon the national Sion, and eager, with that end, to seize upon the booty which the plunderer was to be made to disgorge. To share that zeal was one of the const.i.tuent elements in Hyde's character, and he was not likely to abandon it in the face of a careless group of profligate courtiers, to whom the Church Restored was at best but a sign of the triumph of their party, and who were ready to toast the Church in their cups, but in their sober hours to allow it to starve as a new form of martyrdom.

Hyde's task in this matter was one of no small difficulty. The Presbyterians were able to point to their services to the Crown and their adherence to the principles of monarchy. In many cases they had proved acceptable to their parishioners, and where the Episcopal inc.u.mbent no longer survived, the removal of the existing pastor might seem to involve needless hardship, and would certainly irritate a large section of the nation. Even where the inc.u.mbent did survive, it would have been hopeless to demand the repayment of t.i.thes over a long series of past years. The surviving clergy must be restored, but restored without payment of arrears. The bishops entered on their sees, and policy demanded that in dealing with the revenues they should interfere as little as might be with the rights of existing tenants of Church property.

But the const.i.tution of the Church of England permitted the observance of no arbitrary rule, however expedient, in dealing with the revenues of individual bishops or inc.u.mbents. They possessed rights which the law must uphold, and they had abundant need of the resources placed at their command. Dilapidations had to be made good; debts necessarily incurred left little room for generosity. On the whole, their rights were not unduly strained, and Hyde declares that special instances, where bishops or inc.u.mbents pressed with rigour on their tenants, were comparatively rare, however much they were magnified by the rancour of their enemies. It was suggested that some of the revenues of the larger sees should be diverted for the benefit of the smaller inc.u.mbencies. To do this would have been to alter the const.i.tution of the Church, and the moment of rest.i.tution after long suffering was not the time for such a change. Nor was there any machinery of the law by which it could have been carried out. Some of the surviving bishops were old and inactive. Others were appointed from the ranks of Royalist adherents on grounds of ardent partisanship rather than of fitness for the position; and it would have been too much to expect that in reaching a haven of prosperity after the storm of persecution they should not have been, at times, unduly attentive to worldly advantage. Hyde had long been conscious that wary and wise policy could not always be looked for from the clerical profession. But he had no wish, even had he possessed the power, to deprive them of the advantages which were theirs by law.

Behind the question of material interests there was another of far more consequence. What was to be the texture of the restored Church, and how far could a compromise be reached between the Church and the Nonconformists?

There can be no doubt that the position was affected by the terms of the Declaration of Breda, which const.i.tuted a sort of treaty between the Crown and the Parliament. That Declaration gave a full promise of toleration.

But it is idle to maintain that toleration for tender consciences involved a reconst.i.tution of the Church to suit those consciences. [Footnote: It is the failure to distinguish between these two things that vitiates the arguments of those who, in our own day, have reflected most severely on the action of Hyde. He had not the power, even if he had had the desire, to alter the framework of the Church. With regard to toleration, he had to take account of the fears of the nation, that such toleration was a device of Charles in favour of the Roman Catholics, and of the conviction that, as an act of the Crown alone, it was illegal. After his day, it was aided by the compliance of the most corrupt and unscrupulous Ministry which England has ever known. This confusion is the flaw which runs throughout a careful and painstaking monograph on the subject, published in 1908, by Mr. Frank Bate, under the powerful _aegis_ of Professor Firth.] There was a large body of Presbyterian clergy whose inc.u.mbencies were not interfered with by any claims of ejected and surviving Episcopalians. If a compromise could be reached which would bring these inc.u.mbents within the pale of the Church, it might be well. But they could not found a claim to such a compromise on the terms of the Declaration. That secured to them only toleration for their scruples, not a revolution in the Church to suit their views. Charles II., while distinctly a.s.serting his intention of maintaining the ritual of the Church in his own chapel, was ready, with his usual complaisance, to indicate a willingness to accept a compromise and to modify some of the usages of the Church, which, under Laud's rule, had become a part of her const.i.tution. But in doing so he really went beyond, not only the terms of the Declaration, but the power of his own prerogative. The alteration desired could only be carried out by the action of Parliament; and it remained to be seen whether the temper of Parliament would permit it. As a fact, the ready compliance and easy temper of the King raised hopes in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the Presbyterians which were doomed to disappointment. At their first interview some of their appointed representatives shed tears of joy for the happy settlement which it seemed to portend. For a time a compromise seemed possible; but it could only have been achieved by offending the strongest party within the Church. Sincerely as he was attached to the ceremonies of the Church, Hyde was statesman first, and churchman only second. According to his view, the Church, as an inst.i.tution of the State, was subject to the Civil power. He would have resented the intrusion of the State into fundamental points of doctrine; but if, upon non-essential matters of ceremonial, a working compromise could be attained, he was anxious that such a compromise should receive confirmation at the hands of the State. It soon appeared that such a consummation was scarcely to be hoped for. Angry debates arose in Parliament when the question of religion was touched. The proposals made by the Presbyterians might well provoke the anger of those who saw in them the subordination of ecclesiastical tradition to the tenets of a party which had been overbearing in their hour of triumph, and were ready now, by a cunning appeal for peace, to make their austere and unattractive ritual trample over the cherished customs of the Church. The fact that ritual, rather than doctrine, was concerned, made the fight only the more real, and the pa.s.sions on either side the more eager. For one man who cared for doctrine there were a hundred to whom the familiar ritual of their Church embodied and represented its very essence. Apostolical succession and the Real Presence were matters for theologians. A stately liturgy, the dignity of worship--nay, even the wearing of the surplice-- these stirred the hearts of the average Englishman ten times more deeply.

Surrender on these matters would have meant that at every Sunday's service they would have been reminded that the usages that were enshrined in their memories had pa.s.sed away, and that the Church they had fought for was transformed at the will of her triumphant enemies. The Convention Parliament was adjourned on September 13th, before any settlement was reached, and leaving any placating of the Presbyterians as unpopular as ever.

Charles still desired compromise from very weariness of the fight. Hyde was ready to help that compromise so far as it could be gained without substantial injury to the Church. Meetings took place at Worcester House, [Footnote: The house built by the Marquis of Worcester. It was confiscated during the Commonwealth, and had for a time been occupied by Cromwell.]

where Hyde resided as Chancellor, at which the King himself was present, with certain of the bishops and the leading Presbyterian divines.

Difficulties soon arose. It was no part of Charles's scheme that the Presbyterians should have the triumph all to themselves. In terms of the Declaration of Breda toleration was to be granted to all, and Hyde distinctly announced that it was the intention of the King to carry out that obligation to all. That was no part of the Presbyterian view, and portended a laxity which their consciences would not permit them to accept, and which might even embrace the hated Roman Catholics. If it was Hyde's intention by this announcement to countercheck their demand for a compromise which, in the pliancy of the King's temper, might have conceded all their main tenets, and to expose the hollowness of their demand for release from an over-strict conformity, his design succeeded admirably.

The Presbyterians were forced into an illogical position. At the moment when they prayed for lenient treatment which was to help them to share in Church endowments, they were shown to be ready to enforce a yoke of intolerance upon those Dissenters who stood outside their own pale, and who sought only for liberty to carry on an unendowed worship after their own fashion.

But the hopes of compromise were even yet not at an end. Charles was still eager for it as an escape from hara.s.sing disputes. A Declaration was published which went strangely far in its concessions to the Presbyterians, if Hyde is to be considered as concurring in its proposals.

Episcopacy was recognized as worthy of support because it was established by law, was expedient for the circ.u.mstances of the nation, and had a long tradition--but not as being a matter of divine inst.i.tution. Its framework was to be modified so as to reduce materially the aristocratic government of the Church, and regulations were to be introduced which savoured strongly of Presbyterian republicanism of rule. The Liturgy was to be revised, and the outstanding accompaniments of ritual--genuflection, the sign of the Cross, the wearing of the surplice--were not to be enforced.

Subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles was not to be required.

If Hyde really a.s.sented to these proposals, it proves how urgent he considered the necessity of some settlement to be. The devout adherents of the Church might well suspect a betrayal of their cause. The Presbyterians were elated, not without due reason. All that they asked for seemed to be conceded; and perhaps, in the circ.u.mstances, they might have deigned to overlook the laxity which permitted toleration to those whose doctrines they held to be intolerable. Their triumph seemed so a.s.sured that they might look forward with confidence to the time when the Independent and the Anabaptist would be crushed out of existence. No wonder that one of their number, Reynolds, was persuaded to accept the Bishopric of Norwich, and that others found no reason to resent a similar offer to themselves, although their Presbyterianism did not, at the moment, fully warrant its acceptance.

But there remained a danger to be faced by this specious scheme of compromise. Parliament met after the adjournment, on November 6th. No Declaration could prevail until it had received Parliamentary confirmation; and Charles was to find that a Royalist Parliament might refuse to endorse even a royal compromise which sacrificed principle for the sake of an apparent peace. The Church was able to prove herself stronger than the King, and, at her bidding, Parliament declined to surrender the distinctive character of her Government and her ritual. It required no great prescience to foresee that concessions to Nonconformity were apt to have, as their chief result, the speedy formulating of new demands for modification at once of government and of ritual. Whatever was the motive, Parliament declined to accept the Bill which embodied the terms of the King's Declaration. Its second reading was rejected by 183 votes to 157. This happened at the close of November, and a month later the Convention Parliament was dissolved. It had still to be seen what further negotiations might lead to, and whether a new Parliament would be less zealous in maintaining the prerogatives of the Church, or whether new events might not sharpen the vengeance of the now dominant faction. As for Hyde himself, he knew well how much easier his task would be made if any compromise or conciliation could be effected. But such ease would have been bought too dear if it involved undue concessions to that Presbyterianism which his soul detested, a weakening of the Church which, in its broad features, he held to be indissolubly bound up with the const.i.tution, or a betrayal of the cause for which Charles I and Laud had given their lives. Besides his own convictions, loyalty to these memories, that were sacred for him, kept Hyde true to the Church.

Before following further the events which were to shape his policy as Minister, it is well to turn to others which had a more immediate personal concern for him. The first of these struck home to his feelings as a father, and was to have far-reaching consequences in a wider field.

Separated though he was, during most of the long years of exile, from his family, Hyde had none the less kept the warmest domestic affections. These affections were now to be hardly tried; and the manner in which he bore the trial was strangely characteristic both of the man and of the age.

We have already seen how Anne Hyde, his eldest daughter, had, during the years of exile, attracted the favour of the Princess of Orange, the eldest sister of Charles II. When a vacancy occurred amongst her Maids of Honour, the Princess had offered the post to Anne Hyde. The offer, however flattering, did not attract her father, who dreaded, for his daughter, the slippery paths of Court life and appreciated the envy which such an appointment might excite. He knew that the Queen-Mother, with her usual desire for domination, would wish to choose her daughter's confidants, and he strove, as far as respect for the Princess would permit, to avoid the pitfalls that it might involve for his daughter. He pleaded the consideration that the appointment might not be acceptable to Queen Henrietta; but the Princess had insisted upon her exclusive right to select her own household. Driven from this refuge he had alleged the difficulty of separating mother and daughter, and agreed to refer the decision to his wife in full confidence that she would share his own fears. But if she had doubts they were overcome, and to Hyde's surprise, she cordially accepted the gracious offer of the Princess. [Footnote: Amongst the Bodleian papers there is a submissive letter from Anne Hyde to her father, dated October 19th, 1654, in which she states her readiness to accept any decision which he may make, and to accept the new life, much as she dreads the parting from her mother (_Calendar of Clarendon Papers_, vol. ii. p. 401.)] Anne Hyde possessed no special charm of person, and had no claim to rank amongst the beauties of the Court. But she was gifted with much sprightliness and humour, and although the scandals that a.s.sailed her virtue were triumphantly refuted she was frank enough not to hide such attraction of manner as she possessed, nor harshly to reject advances. She soon made a deep impression on the morose spirit of the Duke of York, and in the autumn of 1659, there was a secret but solemn contract of marriage between them, and they regarded themselves as man and wife. It was not till September 3rd, 1660, that they were secretly married at Worcester House, the residence of Hyde, although her father knew as little as any one of the contract; and on September 22nd their eldest son was born. Already the Duke had confided the secret to his brother, the King, and Charles received it with that complacent humour that redeemed many of his faults.

Before this, Hyde had welcomed his daughter to her English home with special joy. "He had always had a great affection for her; and she, being his eldest child, he had more acquaintance with her than with any of his children." [Footnote: _Life_, i. 377.]

He had a project of marriage for her, which he deemed advantageous, and according to the notions of the days of his own youth, such arrangements were best made by parents. Other views had become current since these days, and the Chancellor's matrimonial schemes were rudely shattered.

It was not surprising that rumours as to the marriage were rife, although they did not reach the Chancellor's ears. His absorption in his work perhaps prevented him from gaining that confidence in his own family which an idler man would have commanded. Such stories were soon spread abroad by the gossip of the Court, and shrewd observers guessed the truth. Ashley Cooper, on one occasion soon after the Restoration, quitting the dinner- table of the Chancellor, in the company of Lord Southampton, declared to him that he was convinced that Anne Hyde was married to one of the brothers. The half-suppressed respect with which her mother treated her, and carved to her of every dish, had revealed the state of affairs to him.

Pepys and Burnet repeat to us the t.i.ttle-tattle of the circles in which they moved, and the various estimates which were made as to the effect of the impending disclosure upon the Chancellor's power. The ambition which made her mother accept for Anne the post of Maid of Honour to the Princess of Orange, now made her an abettor in the scheme, which she evidently concealed from her husband.

Charles had imbibed too much of the vagrant humours of his own Court in exile to feel any tragic indignation over his brother's confidences. We can fancy what view would have been taken of such a daring breach of royal etiquette, either at the Court of James I., or of Charles I., where lesser matrimonial crimes had received the punishment of life-long imprisonment.

But alien as such bygone theories were to the temperament of Charles II., yet even he felt that the complication was awkward. The humour of the situation might appeal to him; but he knew his Chancellor well enough to be sure that such a revelation would come as a thunderbolt to him. Hyde's principles were those of the older generation. The intrigue would be hateful to him no less as treason to the Crown than as a trespa.s.s upon the good name and dignity of his own family. That ideal of simplicity and directness which he regarded as the very essence of domestic morality had been blurred and marred within his own home by the taint of that poison which he believed to threaten the perversion of English life. From its encroachments he would fain have kept his own household free; but it was in that household that he saw that poison first a.s.sert itself, and even encroach upon the royal dignity which, by tradition and by principle, was to Hyde a sacred thing. Charles correctly gauged the storm that was brewing. In his perplexity he sent for Ormonde and Southampton, the Chancellor's dearest friends, and bade them broach to him the revelations of the Duke.

The meeting accordingly took place. Ormonde told the Chancellor "that he had a matter to inform him of that he doubted would give him much trouble," and advised him to compose himself to hear it. He then gave him the news: "That the Duke of York had owned a great affection for his daughter to the King, and that he much doubted that she was with child by the Duke, and that the King required the advice of them and of him what he was to do."

The result was, as they had good reason to expect, and as they did expect.

"The manner of the Chancellor's receiving this advertis.e.m.e.nt made it evident enough that he was struck with it to the heart." Most fathers would have felt such indignation; but to appreciate Hyde's feelings, we must remember at once the ideas of the time with which Hyde's memories dwelt, and the distinctive features of his own character. The monarchy for which he had wrought and suffered, and which he would fain have seen restored in all its ample dignity, even if curbed by the supreme authority of the law, and by the balance of the const.i.tution, was one which, even in the days of his own manhood, had been draped in "the divinity that doth hedge a King." For him, behind the frivolous and wayward personality of Charles II., there loomed, clear and distinct, the imperishable stateliness and dignity, and the unapproachable pride, of his father.

That presence, made sacred by martyrdom, was enshrined in Hyde's heart of hearts, and shaped his ideals. His aim was to restore the monarchy to all its former dignity and stateliness, secured and not weakened by const.i.tutional limitations. But if this were to be accomplished, there must be no stain on the royal prestige by an alliance with a family which was little above bourgeois rank. What he would have deemed worthy of dire punishment in another, now presented itself to him as something in which his own family was primarily involved. It was in violent antagonism to all his traditions and convictions; and men like Hyde do not lightly suffer a shock to their convictions.

We must not forget that there was another and even more natural cause for his anger. Because Hyde's family held no high place among the n.o.bility of England, it did not follow that he had no legitimate ground for family pride. He belonged to the proudest stock in existence--the ancient yeomanry of the land. Men of his race had held high and responsible office, and their name was without a taint. The Chancellor could not but realize that his own work had even already made history, and that it had secured for his family name a high and permanent place in the annals of England. He had no mind to learn the lesson of a new and foreign fashion, and to find in left-handed alliances with royalty a flimsy pretext to consideration and a stepping-stone to power. It must be noted, also, that in the story, as presented to him, there was a mere tale of unguarded love, and that his daughter's honour was to be at the hazard of any arrangement that might be patched up on grounds of policy and convenience.

He might not unreasonably deem that honour which was to be so preserved was scarcely worth preserving. His soul abhorred the fetid turpitudes that stained the purlieus of the Court, and if he served in that Court, he was determined that his own character, and that of his family, should not be besmeared. Hyde was no strait-laced moralist. He had been familiar in his earlier days with a society that was by no means puritanical, and he could discern fine points of character, and find attractive friendships, amongst men whose morality was avowedly lax. But it was the vulgar obscenity of Charles II.'s Court that moved his contempt; and he was suddenly brought face to face with the announcement that his own family was involved in it, and that, too, in circ.u.mstances which must inevitably give rise to the suspicion that laxity of morals was allied with the sordid promptings of selfish ambition. For a man so proud as he, it was the chief tragedy of his life.

We need not, then, be surprised that his indignation knew no bounds. The love he had borne for his daughter only increased his anger. He broke out against "her wickedness," and swore "that he would turn her out of his house, as a strumpet, to shift for herself." Ormonde and Southampton strove to moderate his rage by telling him that they believed his daughter to be already married to the Duke.

His answer was astounding enough.