EDWARD (afterwards Earl of Clarendon), was born at Dinton, in the county of Wilts, on the 18th of February 1609. He was the third son of Henry Hyde, the descendant of a family of that name, which had resided from a remote period at Norbury, in Cheshire. Edward, after receiving his first education under his father's roof, was sent, at the age of thirteen, to Magdalen Hall, at Oxford. He was originally intended for the church; but, in consequence of the death of his last surviving elder brother, his destination was changed, whilst he was at the university, from the profession of the church to that of law, and in 1625 he was entered at the Middle Temple. A severe ague with which he was attacked that year caused a suspension of his studies, and temporary removal from the Middle Temple, to which he returned in 1626. In 1628, when riding the Norfolk summer circuit with his uncle, Sir Nicholas Hyde, chief-justice of the King's Bench, who died in 1631, he caught the small-pox; and his legal studies were again for a long time interrupted. He married, in 1629, a daughter of Sir George Ayliffe, who died of the small-pox six months afterwards. He married a second time in 1632, in which year he lost his father. His se- cond wife was a daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, Bart., master of requests; and by her he had many children. Hyde now applied himself to the study of the law with a diligence which he had not shown before, and his success soon surpassed the expectations of his contemporaries. Meanwhile he lived little with lawyers; but he had many associates of political and literary celebrity, Lord Falkland, Selden, Chillingworth, Waller the poet, Ben Jonson, May the historian, Hales, Sheldon, Earles, and Morley. To these may be added a few men of high rank, as the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earls of Pembroke, Holland, and Manchester, and Lord Coventry. In 1635, through an accidental circumstance, he also obtained the notice of Archbishop Laud. In the course of an inquiry into the state of the customs instituted by the primate in his capacity of commissioner of the treasury, Hyde was mentioned to him as one who had been much consulted by some aggrieved merchants, and could afford the information desired. From this time Laud saw him frequently, employed him upon many occasions, and caused him to be noticed and employed by others. From 1635 till 1640 may be regarded as the most fortunate period of Hyde's life. He was successful in his profession, possessed a competent private fortune, and was happily married. In 1640 he was elected member of parliament for Wootton-Basset and for Shaftesbury, and took his seat for the former. The parliament met on the 13th of April, and was dissolved on the 5th of May. Hyde's first brief parliamentary career was characterized by activity and an honest zeal in the correction of abuses, from which not all the friendship of Laud and the favour of the court was able to divert him. In his first speech he denounced the earl marshal's court, which, in its protection of the privileges of the titled classes, had been intolerably vexatious and oppressive; and he showed himself a true and practical friend of rational freedom. During this very short session, he served in seven committees. He foresaw the evil consequences of the hasty dissolution, and endeavoured in vain to prevail on Laud to employ his influence with the king to prevent it. In the next parliament, which met in November 1640, Hyde sat for Saltash. He recommenced his proceedings against the earl marshal's court, of which he procured the suppression. He was also chairman of a committee of inquiry into the abuses of the council of York, and the court of the council of the marches; and he conducted the impeachment of three of the barons of the exchequer for illegal exactions at the bidding of the crown. But Hyde, though zealous for the redress of grievances, was opposed to the encroachments of parliamentary authority, which began to assume a formidable aspect. Strongly attached to episcopacy, he also disliked the attempts of the parliament to remodel the government of the church; and boasts that as chairman of the committee on that question, he interposed so many delays that the project was suspended. He vehemently protested against the Commons' remonstrance, his opposition to which was the occasion of his first introduction to Charles I. He had written an answer to it, which he showed in confidence to Lord Digby. Digby made it known to the king, who sent for Hyde, requested the paper, approved, and published it as the reply of the king with the advice of his council. Soon afterwards the king offered to Hyde the office of solicitor-general, which the latter declined, alleging that he could better serve his sovereign in an unofficial capacity. To this the king assented; and meanwhile committed to him, to Lord Falkland, and to Sir John Colepepper, the entire management of his affairs in the House of Commons, assuring them that he would take no step therein without their concurrence. Notwithstanding this assurance, Charles, without apprizing these chosen councillors, not long afterwards had recourse to the ill-timed measure of attempting to seize the five members in the House of Commons. Though the consequences of this rash act were irretrievable, and the royal cause was almost hopeless, Hyde continued courageously to support it. During many months he was secretly employed in writing answers for the king to the declarations of the parliament, and had frequent interviews with him by stealth; but he was at length suspected, and narrowly escaped committal to the Tower by flying to the king at York. Though Hyde had thus become openly an adherent of the king, he long refused office. He declined the proffered post of secretary of state; and it was not till March 1643 that, on the promotion of Sir John Colepepper to the mastership of the rolls, he accepted the chancellorship of the exchequer. He was one of the commissioners at the negotiations at Uxbridge, where, as on other occasions, he fruitlessly laboured to effect peace between king and parliament, as far as was compatible with a preservation of the royal prerogative and the rights of the established church.

In 1644, after the battle of Naseby, Hyde was appointed, together with Sir John Colepepper and Lords Capel and Hopton, to form a council to attend, watch over, and direct the Prince of Wales. After hopelessly witnessing for many months a course of disastrous and ill-conducted warfare in the west, they fled with him, first to Scilly, and thence to Jersey; from which, at the entreaty of the queen, but against the opinion of Hyde and others of the council, the prince, in 1646, repaired to his mother at Paris, attended only by Sir John Colepepper, and leaving Hyde at Jersey. In this retreat Hyde remained till the spring of 1648, engaged in the composition of his history of the rebellion. He also wrote, during this period, an answer to a declaration of the parliament, in which they charged the king with all the evils which had happened, and justified the discontinuance of all further addresses to him. In May 1648, he was summoned to attend the prince, who, at the head of a fleet which had espoused the royal cause, was blockading the Thames. Hyde, after encountering sundry difficulties, and amongst others seizure by privateers off Ostend, did not meet the prince till his return to the Hague, about the end of August, from his fruitless expedition. Hyde found dissensions in the prince's little court at the Hague, especially between Prince Rupert and Lord Colepepper. The news of the death of Charles I. for a while afflicted and appalled them; but their animosities soon broke out afresh, and disturbed the councils of the new sovereign. In 1649, at the suggestion of Lord Cottington, Hyde and that nobleman were sent as ambassadors to the court of Spain for the purpose of soliciting its assistance. They were coolly received, and had the mortification of perceiving that the Spanish court was more inclined to cultivate the friendship of the commonwealth of England; and to the memorial which they presented to the king of Spain in a private audience, they obtained only a cold and ambiguous reply. The treatment they experienced from the Spanish government was meanly time-serving, and varied with the fortune of Charles's affairs. On his determining to proceed to Scotland, upon the invitation of the Scotch council and parliament, the ambassadors were treated with more regard. Upon the news of Cromwell's victory over Argyll's army, they were desired to depart. Accordingly, Hyde quitted Spain, unaccompanied by his colleague Lord Cottington, who chose to remain as a private person, though not permitted to reside at Madrid. On Hyde's return from Spain in 1651, he met at Paris the king, returned from the ill-fated expedition which terminated in his defeat at Worcester; which rash interference, and the king's negotiation with the Scotch, and acceptance of the covenant, Hyde severely censured. He found himself expos- ed to the enmity of many, especially of the queen. Sundry calumnies were circulated against him, and two petitions were prepared, one from presbyterians, the other from papists, praying his removal from Charles's councils. But Charles's confidence in Hyde was not shaken by these intrigues; and he appears to have seen their groundlessness, and properly appreciated the valuable services of so honest, able, and zealous a minister. Extreme poverty was amongst the evils which, in a greater or less degree, since Hyde's departure from Jersey; he and his family had been compelled to bear. His family resided principally at Antwerp, and he and they were almost reduced to want the most common necessaries of life; yet his courage and integrity never faltered, and he would not even (as many had done) compound for his estates in England, lest thereby he should seem to acknowledge the existing government.

Year after year, too, the hope of relief to the royalist party from foreign aid was waning away; and neither foreign war nor domestic conspiracy seemed to avail against the power of Cromwell. In 1658 Cromwell died, but the protectorate passed, like an inheritance, into the hands of his son; and though the hopes of the royalists were naturally excited, the prospects of restoration were still found to be dark, vague, and distant. Hyde, who was now lord chancellor, corresponded much with those whom the weakness of Richard Cromwell and the distracted state of England had rendered favourable to the royal cause, and proved instrumental in forwarding that Restoration which was at length more ostensibly effected by the powerful agency of Monk.

The period immediately following the Restoration was that of Hyde's greatest power. He was the first minister, presiding over a cabinet in which the principal offices were filled by his friends (for such were Sir Edward Nicholas, the Earl of Southampton, and the Marquis of Ormonde), and the principal measures of the government were peculiarly his. The first great measure of his administration was the act of indemnity. This was in accordance with the king's declaration from Breda, in which he promised pardon to all his subjects, save such as should be excepted by parliament, by which was intended the exclusion of those who had been instrumental to his father's death. The lord chancellor was on the side of mercy, and urged the speedy adoption of this healing measure on a reluctant and vindictive parliament. In the settlement of property under the act of indemnity some apparent injustice was unavoidably committed, by the necessity of dealing differently, not according to the merits of persons, but the nature of the property to be dealt with, and the title by which it was held. Transactions between individuals could not be reached; but grants to or purchases by individuals from the usurping state became subject to revision from defect of title; and crown and church lands were recovered from their holders, whilst the impoverished royalist who had sold his property to support the cause of the king was doomed to see the sale confirmed, and himself debarred from compensation. The royalists consequently murmured loudly. They called the statute an act of "indemnity for the king's enemies, and of oblivion for his friends;" and they hated the chancellor for the part he took in framing this act, and his steady adherence to the principles of it. The next important measure was the settlement of the revenue. It is asserted by several authorities, that the chancellor might have obtained for the king from the parliament, in the first fervour of their revived loyalty, an annual revenue of £2,000,000. But it was not his wish to render the sovereign independent of the aid of his parliament, and he therefore sought for him only £1,200,000, a sum scarcely sufficient for the exigencies of the state, unless administered with due economy. This sum the parliament readily granted. Military tenures, and the oppressive privileges of wardship, purveyance, and pre-emption, were abolished, and the excise on liquors was granted in their stead. The restoration of the bishops to the House of Lords, the statute against tumultuous petitioning, the vesting of the supreme command of the militia solely in the crown, and the repeal of the triennial acts, were measures promoted by the chancellor for the purpose of strengthening the prerogative of the crown. In the regulation of the judicature he deserved high praise. He showed a rare impartiality and discernment in his appointments, and eminent integrity and diligence in the administration of his own office. His conduct in ecclesiastical matters was less liberal and judicious. He believed episcopacy to be the only form of church government suitable to monarchy, and was too little tolerant towards other sects. Under his administration several oppressive acts were passed; the act of uniformity, compelling clergymen, on pain of abandoning their livings, to subscribe to the forms of the church of England, and to the doctrine of passive obedience, by which two thousand were ejected; the act against conventicles, imposing fines on all present at any meeting for religious worship at which five assisted besides the family; and the five-mile act, by which dissenting teachers who had not taken the oath of passive obedience were forbidden to approach within five miles of a place where they had preached since the act of indemnity. But the sin of such oppressions lies chiefly with the parliament. In that which succeeded the convention parliament there were a great majority of high churchmen. Venner's insurrection had strengthened the prejudices against sectarians; and it is by no means certain that Clarendon could have stemmed the torrent of intolerance, even if he had wished or attempted to do so.

In 1660, on the 3d of September, his daughter Anne was secretly married to the Duke of York; an union which, after much opposition from the mother and sister of the duke, and the calumnies of profligate courtiers, was acknowledged about the end of the year. The discovery was received by the chancellor with violent demonstrations of indignation and grief. He seems to have been solicitous to repel the imputation of having secretly promoted an alliance so flattering to his ambition, and to have dreaded the effects of the jealousy it might excite. He had in the following year a share in negotiating a marriage for the king with Catherine of Portugal; a marriage which, when it proved unfruitful, was groundlessly supposed to have been promoted by Clarendon under that expectation, and with a view that his son-in-law or his descendants might inherit the throne. Such suppositions would have been far fetched, even if an incapacity in the princess to bear children had really existed; and it must fall to the ground when the contrary is known. Difference of religion was the only obvious objection to this alliance; but there was no Protestant princess to whom Charles would ally himself; and amongst Catholics the princess of Portugal was perhaps least objectionable, and conferred the advantages of a dowry of £500,000, Tangiers, Bombay, and free trade with Portugal and its colonies. The profligacy of Charles, and the malign influence of Lady Castlemaine, afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, which Clarendon vainly endeavoured to resist, were the main causes of the unhappiness of this marriage.

Hyde showed no avidity for emoluments or distinctions. After the Restoration, when Monk was created a duke, and Montague an earl, Hyde declined a proffered peerage, resting his refusal on unwillingness to excite disaffection amongst the new supporters of monarchy by an apparent eagerness on the part of the king to load with honours his old adherents. When the marriage of his daughter with the Duke of York became known, this objection ceased; a public mark of the king's unaltered regard be- came desirable; and Hyde accepted the barony of Hindon. A further elevation took place in 1661, at the coronation, on the request of the Duke of York; and the chancellor was created Earl of Clarendon, and took his seat as such on the 11th of May. At the time when he was made a baron he accepted a present of £20,000 from the king; but he had declined at an earlier period the more valuable grant of ten thousand acres of crown land, which Charles was willing to bestow.

One of the measures of his administration which has exposed him to most reproach, was the sale of Dunkirk in 1662. Yet it cannot be shown that the motive was corrupt, or the measure indefensible. Money was wanted; large arrears had been due to the army; and large sums had been necessarily expended in military and naval stores. The revenue settled by the parliament was insufficient in amount, and with difficulty collected; and subsidies were granted by the parliament in 1661 as an additional aid. The wants of the state were still urgent. Dunkirk was a source of expense to the yearly amount of £120,000. France was willing to purchase; and after much negotiation between Clarendon and D'Estrades, Dunkirk was sold to France for 5,000,000 livres. A more truly censurable act of Clarendon's administration was sanctioning the acceptance of money for Charles from Louis XIV, though he had the honesty to refuse it for himself, and laying the foundation of that secret correspondence which at length rendered the king of England almost the pensioned servant of France. The sale of Dunkirk tended to weaken the popularity of Clarendon with the nation. He soon began to lose the favour of the king, by his opposition, in July 1663, to a measure Charles had much at heart, namely, a bill to invest the king with a discretionary power of dispensing, for a fine, penal laws against all sects, by which Charles hoped to favour the Catholics, though this purpose was necessarily cloaked under a promise of toleration, including all Protestant dissenters. Clarendon, who knew and disapproved of the motive, vehemently opposed this bill, and caused it to be laid aside; and Charles from that time began to entertain a dislike of his minister, which the enemies of Clarendon sedulously fostered. The Duke of Buckingham and other chosen associates of the king tried to undermine the influence of Clarendon by mimicry and taunts, representing him as a curshish pedagogue, and inciting the king to emancipate himself from restraint. His influence as a minister was also lessened by the substitution of Bennet for his firm friend Sir Edward Nicholas, and by the reviving power of Coventry and Ashley. He also paid the penalty of power, in bearing the load of whatever calamities befell the nation. Even the plague, and the fire of London, and the disastrous issue of the Dutch war (a war to which the public was favourable, and he was adverse), concurred to weaken his popularity. The defenceless state of the Thames, which enabled the Dutch to invade it successfully, and the conclusion of a peace which the people disliked, were imputed to the chancellor. Anxious to pursue a middle course, and careless of the public favour, he had gained the friendship of no party alike able and willing to support him. The Protestant dissenters disliked him as the promoter of the measures against non-conformists; the Catholics as having frustrated the king's endeavour to grant them indulgence; the Royalists as the supporter of the act of indemnity and oblivion; the populace because he had built a large house, which, it was already rumoured, was the ostentatious result of secret bribes from France or Holland. The profligate and ambitious court disliked him as a repressor of their license, and an obstacle to their advancement; and Charles, who, aided by the high-church party, might have supported him against these assailants, had recently entertained a fresh ground of dislike. He knew that Clarendon opposed his infamous plan of obtaining a divorce; and he believed him to have promoted the marriage of Miss Stewart, whom, after obtaining such divorce, Charles had intended to espouse. The discontented nation clamoured for a victim; and the ungrateful king was glad to sacrifice to popular vengeance the minister whose stubborn honesty was opposed to the gratification of his will. He sent a message to Clarendon, then in affliction from the recent death of his wife, advising him to resign, with a view of saving himself from impeachment. Clarendon refused to take so humiliating a step; and Charles deprived him of the great seal on the 13th of August 1667. Clarendon, whom the impeachment preferred by Lord Bristol four years before had left unshaken, was now again exposed to this attack under circumstances which rendered it more powerful against him. Urged by the Dukes of Buckingham and Albemarle, the Commons drew up, on the 6th of November, an impeachment, consisting of seventeen articles, which, after several days' debate, was on the 12th carried up to the Lords. He was accused of designing to govern by a standing army, and advising the king to discontinue parliaments; of saying that the king was in his heart a Papist; of receiving money for illegal patents; of imprisoning in remote garrisons; of unjust sale of offices; of corruptly procuring the customs to be farmed at low rates, pretended debts to be paid by the king, and the company of vintners to obtain undue advantages; of procuring grants to be made to himself and his relations; of introducing arbitrary government in the colonies; of frustrating a proposal for the preservation of Nevis and St Christopher's; of advising and effecting the sale of Dunkirk; of unduly causing the king's letters-patent to Dr Croucher to be altered; of arbitrary conduct in the council; of having caused quo warrantos to be issued against corporations, with the intent of extorting money; of having corruptly procured the bill of settlement for Ireland; of having deceived the king in his administration of foreign affairs, and betrayed his councils to the enemy; and of having counselled the division of the fleet in June 1666. To these flimsy charges Lord Clarendon replied by the mouth of his son, that if any one was proved, he would submit to the rest. His accusers were ashamed to make any one of them the specific ground of an impeachment; and accordingly he was impeached of high treason in general terms, and his imprisonment demanded, until the Commons, "in convenient time," shall exhibit "articles against him." The Lords refused to imprison him on this general accusation. Much controversy ensued between the two houses, during which, in compliance with the entreaties of his friends, and the intimated wishes of the king, Clarendon closed the dispute by withdrawing himself from the kingdom on the 29th of November 1667, and retiring to France. He left on his departure a vindication of his conduct, addressed to the House of Lords, which address was communicated to the Commons, by whom it was voted that it was scandalous and seditious, and should be burned by the hangman. The Commons then attempted to obtain his attainder, but were opposed by the Lords; and the two houses finally concurred in an act of banishment and incapacity, unless he appeared and took his trial before the 1st of February, which act was passed on the 18th of December 1667. Fresh persecutions awaited Clarendon. The court of France, in order to gain the favour of England, wished to expel him from their dominions; and it was not till their hopes of alliance were dispelled by the triple league, that they showed kindness to the distinguished exile, and Clarendon received a special permission to reside in any part of France. He abode principally at Montpellier, where, resuming his literary labours, he completed his celebrated History, and the Memoir of his own Life. From thence he ro- paired to Rouen, where, in the year 1674, he addressed to Charles II. a fruitless prayer for permission to spend the short remainder of his life in England. A few months afterwards he died at Rouen, on the 9th of December 1674, in the sixty-fifth year of his age.

The character of Lord Clarendon has been much exposed to undeserved extremes of praise and of censure. He has been made the idol of the high-church party, and bitterly assailed by their opponents. As a minister he appears to have been incorrupt, indefatigable, zealous for the public service, and anxious to hold an even balance between the liberties of the subject and the privileges of the crown, and to secure to the restored king only the constitutional powers of limited monarchy. His chief faults were harshness towards the non-conformists, and acquiescence in the king's clandestine acceptance of pecuniary aid from France. His merits cannot be fairly estimated, without considering the difficulties of his position, the profligacy and corruption of the times in which he lived, to which he boldly and honourably opposed himself; and comparing his administration with the disgraceful epoch by which it was succeeded. He was upright and uncompromising, and neglectful of the arts of popularity, both towards men of high and of humble station. His abilities were very great, but consisted perhaps rather in quickness than in depth and comprehensiveness of mind. He was ready and powerful as an orator, and prompt and able in the despatch of business, of which, in spite of frequent illness, he bore by far the greatest share during the period of his administration. In private life he was unimpeachable. As a writer he will ever occupy a high place. His history, as characterized by a distinguished modern historian, is "a monument of powerful ability and impressive eloquence." Its remarkable beauties are its masterly delineation of celebrated characters, the occasional eloquence of its descriptive passages, and the frequent interspersion of luminous reflections. Its chief faults are diffuseness of style, and the want of accuracy and arrangement. Its fidelity as a history cannot be upheld; a defect attributable partly to the circumstance of his having trusted much to recollection in the absence of requisite materials, partly to that desire to render it serviceable to the cause of the royalists, with which he professed to have commenced it.

His principal works are, his History of the Rebellion; A Short View of the State of Ireland; and The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, in which is included a Continuation of his History of the Grand Rebellion. Of these three works, a complete edition, containing the passages suppressed by former editors, was published for the first time at Oxford in 1826. Brief View and Survey of the Dangerous and Pernicious Errors to Church and State in Mr Hobbes' Book entitled the Leviathan, Oxford, 1676; A Collection of Tracts, fol. London, 1727, containing, A Vindication of Himself; Reflections on several Christian Duties, Divine and Moral, by way of Essays; Contemplations and Reflections upon the Psalms of David; A Dialogue of the Want of Respect due to Age; and A Dialogue concerning Education.

(See Life of Clarendon, by himself; and his History of the Rebellion; Clarendon's State Papers; Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses; Whitelocke's Memorials; Burnet's History of his Own Times; Memoirs of James II.; Pepys's Diary; Evelyn's Diary; Parliamentary History; and State Trials.)