HYDE, Henry (1638-1709)

Clarendon was the eldest son of Sir Edward Hyde, Charles II’s principal counsellor during the exile, who emerged after the Restoration as one of the dominant figures in the new regime. In 1661 he was promoted earl of Clarendon and during the brief six-year period before his fall built a substantial interest in his native Wiltshire, in Oxfordshire and Hampshire; the marriage of his daughter Anne to James, duke of York (later King James II), made the Hyde family appear to be one of the most powerful in the country. Though the family’s influence was severely jeopardised by the first earl’s fall in 1667, his son augmented the family estates, and by his second marriage to Flower Backhouse he acquired an interest in Berkshire; through his friendship with James Butler, duke of Ormond, he gained an interest at Oxford University, where he was later elected high steward. As brother-in-law to James II, uncle to Queen Mary II and Queen Anne and kinsman by marriage to Ormond, Henry Somerset, duke of Beaufort, Arthur Capell, earl of Essex, and Richard Boyle, earl of Burlington, Clarendon and his brother Rochester were among the best-connected peers in the country. In summarizing his character, his political opposite, Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, reckoned Clarendon ‘a friendly, good-natured man… naturally sincere, and punctual to tediousness in all that he related’. Clarendon Corresp., i. xi.

Viscount Cornbury, 1660-1674

In exile with his father prior to the Restoration, Hyde was returned for Lyme Regis at a by-election in 1660 and the following year was elected for his home county of Wiltshire. Styled Viscount Cornbury following his father’s elevation to the earldom of Clarendon, he acted as his father’s private secretary, as well as his eyes and ears in the Commons and was appointed to the household of Queen Catharine of Braganza. In March 1667 he attracted the king’s displeasure when he was suspected of assisting in the flight of Frances Stuart from court and her elopement with Charles Stuart, 3rd duke of Richmond and 6th duke of Lennox [S]. HP Commons 1660-90, ii. 627. Cornbury’s involvement in the Richmond marriage may have originated again with his father, as Clarendon was accused of promoting the match for his own aims; but Cornbury may have known Richmond at the court in exile and he was sufficiently well acquainted with the duke and his new duchess to be named as one of the trustees in the marriage settlement of April 1668. Eg. 3382, ff. 160-80.

Although he did so in a less prominent manner than his brother, Cornbury played an active part in his father’s defence in the autumn of 1667. HP Commons 1660-90, ii. 627. Following Clarendon’s exile Cornbury and George Morley, bishop of Winchester, were suspected of caballing during their frequent meetings with Cornbury’s sister and brother-in-law, the duke and duchess of York, as a result of which Bishop Morley was dismissed from the chapel royal and Cornbury was put out as chamberlain to the queen. CCSP, v. 635. He was restored to his place two years later through the intercession of the duchess of Orleans. CSP Dom. 1670, p. 263. The same year (1670) he married Flower (or Flora) Backhouse, daughter of the noted alchemist, William Backhouse, through whom he acquired Swallowfield and an interest in Reading. It was also probably as a result of this match that he came into contact with William Lloyd, later bishop of St Asaph, who had served as chaplain to the Backhouse family.

The growing evidence of the conversion to catholicism of Cornbury’s sister Anne, duchess of York, was a cause of serious concern to him. His letter to York of 26 Oct. 1670 outlined his worries, first raised much earlier in the year, and relayed the common talk that her conversion cannot have been without York’s knowledge: he pointed out with some prescience that ‘her conversion would have ill consequences’ for the duke. Bodl. Clarendon 87, f. 66. Cornbury’s refusal to swear the duchess of Portsmouth as a lady of the queen’s bedchamber in early 1673 echoed his father’s difficulty with the position of Barbara, countess of Castlemaine eleven years before, and suggested a revulsion either with the king’s public avowal of his mistresses, or of their catholicism, or both. Verney ms mic. M636/26, Dr Denton to Sir R. Verney, 26 Aug. 1673.

The collapse of the ministry at the beginning of 1674 offered Cornbury an opportunity to vent his spleen against those he saw as being responsible for his father’s fall – although it was possibly without his father’s approval. Bodl. Clarendon 87, ff. 185-6. In January he joined in the attacks in the Commons on George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, and on Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington, seconding the motion put forward by Sir Gilbert Gerard^‡, bt. on 13 Jan. that Arlington should be charged with high treason. By the end of the month, Cornbury and his associates were reported to be turning every stone to find evidence against Arlington; by the end of February, although most had given up on the attempt, ‘Cornbury and one or two other inveterate men’ were still said to be unwilling to give up and ‘though they can prove nothing will nevertheless continue their cry and show their teeth.’ Williamson letters, ii. 127, 135, 153.

Clarendon and the ‘Country’ opposition, 1674-8

Cornbury was granted permission to travel to France to visit his ailing father in May 1674, who that summer appealed to the king for permission ‘to return to England to die among his own children’. CSP Dom. 1673-5, pp. 239, 262; CCSP. v. 641. Permission not being forthcoming, Cornbury returned with his brother Laurence Hyde at the beginning of December, when the brothers were constituted joint-executors of the old earl’s will. CSP Dom. 1673-5, p. 447. On his father’s death on 9/19 Dec. Cornbury succeeded as 2nd earl of Clarendon at Rouen. CCSP. v. 642n. (It has sometimes been assumed that the first earl’s death occurred on 19 December o.s.) HP Commons 1660-90, ii. 626.

The new earl of Clarendon accompanied his father’s corpse to England for private burial in Westminster Abbey on the evening of 4 Jan. 1675, the arrangements for which he communicated only to members of the family and to ‘two or three of his friends who I am sure loved him’. Eg. 2540, f. 22. Although he inherited the estates in Oxfordshire and Wiltshire to add to his lands in Hampshire and Berkshire, at the time of his succession Clarendon was already at least £19,680 in debt. In an effort to rectify his disastrous financial situation he immediately set about seeking a buyer for Clarendon House, the mansion in Piccadilly created by the 1st earl at an estimated cost of £50,000, entering into negotiations with Christopher Monck, 2nd duke of Albemarle, and William Cavendish, 3rd earl of Devonshire. He also sought a purchaser for his office of chamberlain to the queen. Evelyn Diary, iv. 338-9; Verney ms mic. M636/28, J. to E. Verney, 7 Jan. 1675. Beinecke Lib. OSB mss fb 152, no. 2. Evelyn, who knew Clarendon well, could find no explanation for his indebtedness, concluding only that it was a ‘mystery’ he ‘being no way a prodigal’, and much of it was probably due to his father’s building projects. A case brought against Clarendon by Daniel Sheldon is indicative of his struggle to finance the debt. Sheldon complained that on his death, the 1st earl owed the London drapers, Sir Joseph Sheldon and Nicholas Charleton, £821. They were also owed a further £1,200 by his successor. Clarendon proceeded to borrow a further £4,000 from them, consolidating the debt into a round £6,000 and secured his loan against his manor of Witney in Oxfordshire. By 1682 when the case was brought, Sheldon asserted that not a penny had been repaid. Evelyn Diary, iv. 338-9; TNA, C5/553/96.

Clarendon took his seat in the House on 13 Apr. 1675, after which he attended on every day of the session bar one. He lost no time in registering his position as an associate of the opposition to the regime of Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), who had been a key participant in the moves to impeach his father in 1667. He subscribed the protest against the resolution to address a vote of thanks for the king’s speech on his first day in the House. Named to the standing committees on 14 Apr., the following day he was named to the committee for the bill for preventing frauds and perjuries. On 29 Apr. it was noted that he and a number of other peers had failed to take the oaths of allegiance, an omission remedied the following day. Although Clarendon was forecast at the beginning of April as a likely supporter of the non-resisting test, between 15 Apr. when it was introduced into the House by Robert Bertie, 3rd earl of Lindsey, until 2 June when it was finally dropped, he consistently opposed the measure. Add. 28091, f. 177. This was probably on account of his personal opposition to its architect and chief promoter, Danby. Browning, Danby, i. 153. On 21 Apr. Clarendon subscribed the protest against the resolution that the bill did not encroach upon the privileges of the Lords to the extent that it should be thrown out and on 26 Apr. he protested again at the resolution to commit the bill to the committee of the whole House. The following day, after this protest had been entered, a number of government supporters in the House attempted to have the protesting lords sent to the Tower. Timberland, i. 139. Two days later (29 Apr.) Clarendon subscribed the protest against the resolution that the contentious protest of 26 Apr. reflected upon the honour of the House and on 4 May he put his name to a final protest at the resolution to agree with an amendment to the bill that would impose an oath on all members of both Lords and Commons. Clarendon’s concerted opposition to the non-resisting test resulted in his being once more put out of office, though the ostensible reason was that he had offended the king by striking one of the yeomen of the guard. Verney ms mic. M636/28, J. to Sir R. Verney, 28 Apr. 1675; M636/28, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 29 Apr. 1675; Essex papers, 1. Clarendon’s dismissal came as no surprise to Sir Ralph Verney^‡, who commented that, ‘I am sorry for Lord Clarendon, but the taking away his key is not more than I have long expected, for he would never comply with the court.’ Out of favour once more, Clarendon at last succeeded in finding a buyer for Clarendon House later in the year but he was said to have been forced to accept just half the amount it had cost to build. Verney ms mic. M636/28, Sir R. to J. Verney, 3 May 1675, M636/28, J. to Sir R. Verney, 12 Aug. 1675.

Clarendon was present every day of the session that began in October 1675. Named to eight committees, on 20 Nov. he voted in favour of addressing the king to dissolve Parliament and subscribed the protest when the motion was rejected. LJ xiii. 7, 18, 20, 22, 25, 28, 31; Add. 35865, f. 224. He remained a prominent member of the ‘country’ opposition associated particularly with Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, over the following two years. Their alliance was apparently unaffected by a suit brought against Shaftesbury (and others) by Clarendon over common land in Wiltshire where they both held estates. TNA, C33/245, ff. 318, 537, 735; C33/247, ff. 87, 432, 582. In April 1676, during the prorogation, Clarendon was himself summoned to answer a bill in chancery brought against him by John Danvers, probably part of a protracted dispute in which he was involved with Thomas Wharton, later marquess of Wharton, and James Bertie 5th Baron Norreys, subsequently earl of Abingdon, brought on behalf of their wives. Both were daughters of Anne, Lady Lee, of whose will Clarendon was one of the trustees. Clarendon and the other trustees had previously brought their own action against Wharton and Norreys over complaints against the management of the estate. CCSP. v. 644; TNA, C33/245, f. 367; C9/97/90-91; C9/417/105. In November 1679 Clarendon would be cited as one of the defendants in a case in chancery relating to the estate of Edward Henry Lee, earl of Lichfield. Verney ms mic. M636/33, copy of chancery decree, 20 Nov. 1679. In June 1676 Clarendon was among the majority in finding Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis, not guilty of murder. Beinecke Lib. OSB mss fb 155, pp. 460-1; State Trials, vii. 157-8; HEHL, EL 8419.

Although Clarendon found himself unable to comply with a request from Sir Robert Clayton^‡ that he use his interest on behalf of one of Clayton’s clients for a collector’s post (being already engaged for someone else) he attempted to show his continuing friendship by offering Clayton ‘a parcel of very fine fruit trees’, presumably for Clayton’s seat Marden Park, which he believed to be new varieties in the country. Cent. for Bucks. Studs. D135/A1/3/27; Beinecke Lib. OSB mss fb 152, no. 5. Later in 1676 he was given a pass to travel to France with his son, Edward Hyde, styled Viscount Cornbury, later 3rd earl of Clarendon, who was entered in Foubert’s academy in Paris. Clarendon passed just over a fortnight in the city in company with his travelling companion, Henry Savile, with whom he planned ‘debauching’ Savile’s brother, George Savile, Viscount (later marquess of) Halifax, ‘hither in the spring’. CSP Dom. 1676-7, p. 296; Savile corresp., 41-42. Clarendon had returned to England by November, when he was congratulated on his safe arrival by Bishop Morley. The bishop seems to have been eager to lure Clarendon, whom he had known well at least since he was close to the first earl in exile in the 1650s, away from opposition and assured Clarendon that ‘the queen does still continue her kindness to you’. He also said that the lord chancellor’s (Heneage Finch, earl of Nottingham) ‘respects to you have exceeded your expectations from him, which I hope will make you have a better opinion than formerly you have had of him’. He avoided a lengthy discourse on the forthcoming session, understanding that ‘your lordship and I are not of the same opinion in this particular.’ Glasgow Univ. Lib. ms Hunter 73, ix.

Clarendon took his seat at the opening of the following session on 15 Feb. 1677, after which he was present on 97 per cent of all sitting days. The following day he was nominated to the committee enquiring into the authorship of the book questioning whether Parliament was dissolved. Although he did not add his voice to that of Shaftesbury and the other peers advancing that view, in March he was one of only three to support the motion put forward by George Booth, Baron Delamer, that the lords in the Tower should be released having been imprisoned ‘upon a punctilio only’. Verney ms mic. M636/30, W. Fall to Sir R. Verney, 23 Mar. 1677. He was given permission by the House on 14 Mar. to visit Shaftesbury in the Tower. Clarendon was named to a further 56 committees in the course of the session. LJ xiii. 43, 45, 46, 50, 52-4, 57-9, 62, 68, 74, 78, 83, 84, 91-2, 96-7, 102-3, 106, 135, 137, 139, 142-3, 148-9, 151, 157, 162, 165, 169, 171, 173, 177, 182, 191, 197, 202, 218. On 1 May Shaftesbury noted his cautious support by assessing him as ‘worthy’.

In January 1678 Laurence Hyde made a concerted effort to bring his brother back into the court fold. Referring to his influence over ‘a great many of the House of Commons’, Hyde suggested that if Clarendon would direct them to vote with the court, his own rehabilitation would soon follow. He assured him that ‘your great friend my lord chancellor (Nottingham) and I agree in that, that there will be an opportunity now to make yourself well again with the king.’ Clarendon Corresp., i. 3-4. The appeal was unsuccessful, at least in the short term. On 14 Feb. 1678 Clarendon supported Shaftesbury’s petition to be released. On 4 Mar. he reported from the committee considering the bill of Brien Cokayne, 2nd Viscount Cullen [I], reporting it as fit to pass with amendments. The same month he joined with Shaftesbury in speaking in favour of an immediate declaration of war against France in opposition to the line taken by Danby and York. Browning, Danby, i. 268. On 4 Apr. he voted to find Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke, not guilty in his trial for murder.

In May Clarendon’s attendance of the House prevented him from accompanying his sister-in-law when she travelled to join Laurence Hyde at The Hague (where he was serving as envoy), but Clarendon took the opportunity of warning Hyde of opposition accusations being levelled against him. Add. 15892, f. 65. Clarendon’s worsening financial situation made reconciliation with the court increasingly desirable. He discussed with his brother the possibility of selling his estate at Blunsden in Hampshire, though Hyde opposed this, both because of his own recent purchase of a neighbouring estate and because he believed it had been their father’s intention to ‘plant’ his family in that county. Advising that Clarendon seek expert assistance to address his financial situation, he urged him, ‘for God’s sake trust somebody, and take advice, and do not be ashamed to lay the whole state of your affairs before that body, whosoever he be.’ Clarendon Corresp., i. 18-19.

Clarendon took his seat at the opening of the new session on 23 May 1678 after which he was present on 93 per cent of all sitting days and was named to 27 committees. LJ xiii. 227-8, 230, 232, 234-5, 238, 240, 242, 245, 248, 251, 257, 260, 264-5, 267-8, 271-3, 278-9, 282. On 7 June he reported from the committee for the butter and cheese bill and on 1 July from that concerning the bill for preventing abuses in returning jurors. On 5 July he subscribed the protest against the resolution to grant relief to the petitioner in the case Darrell v. Whitchcot. The same month he supported William Barker^‡ in the by-election at Berkshire but the result was a double return with Henry Alexander, 4th earl of Stirling [S], and no resolution was arrived at before the dissolution of Parliament. HP Commons 1660-90, i. 128, 594. On the death of his first wife’s sister, the countess of Carnarvon, at the end of July, Clarendon sought the assistance of his friend, Sir John Nicholas^‡, in discovering the result of a case involving the countess of Lincoln, as his lack of mourning clothes made it indecent ‘to appear in so public a place’. Eg. 2540, f. 28.

Absent on the opening day of the ensuing session, Clarendon took his seat the following day on 22 Oct. 1678 and was present on 93 per cent of all sitting days. Added to the sub-committee for the Journal on 23 Oct. Clarendon was thereafter named to a further 12 committees during the session including the committee nominated to examine Edward Coleman in Newgate. LJ xiii. 299, 300, 303-4, 334, 348, 360, 379, 385, 392, 407, 413. Burlington’s proxy was registered with Clarendon on 21 Oct., although it was vacated when the test act came into force on 30 November. Bodl. Carte 81, f. 364. Clarendon was closely involved in the examination of the evidence concerning the Popish Plot. On 1 Nov. he was nominated one of the reporters of a conference with the Commons concerning the preservation of the king’s person. The following day he was appointed to the committee to examine the lords in the Tower and on 8 Nov, presumably on account of his previous position within the queen’s household, he was deputed to examine the queen’s closet at Somerset House. He later pronounced on the impossibility of Godfrey’s murder having been carried out in the room Oates suggested. Verney ms mic. M636/32, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 18 Nov. 1678. Having voted on 15 Nov. against the motion that the declaration against transubstantiation should be under the same penalty as the oaths in the bill for disabling papists from sitting in Parliament, on 23 Nov. he was again nominated a reporter for the conference with the Commons concerning amendments to the bill for the more effectual preservation of the king’s person. Bodl. Carte 81, f. 380.

Exclusion and reaction, 1678-85

By the end of November, with Clarendon said to have been ‘very zealous’ in support of the duke of York, he was becoming more acceptable at court and less so among members of the opposition. It was rumoured that Clarendon was to be sent as ambassador to Spain. Verney ms mic. M636/32, C. Gardiner to Sir R. Verney, 21 Nov. 1678; Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection Group 1/F, newsletter, 3 Dec. 1678. On 28 Nov. 1678 he was added to the committee of examinations, perhaps to strengthen the position on the committee of the sceptics, and on the same day, while speaking in a heated debate in the House on a report from the committee concerning Oates’s testimony, Clarendon was interrupted by his Hampshire rival and close ally of Shaftesbury, Charles Powlett, 6th marquess of Winchester, later duke of Bolton, who was heard to mutter ‘he lies, he lies’. In response to Winchester’s intervention Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, declared that, ‘if he had had the lie given him he would stab him as gave it.’ Although when challenged Winchester denied that he had been referring to Clarendon and begged the House’s pardon, both men were bound over to remain in the chamber until the close of the day to prevent them from coming to blows outside. Verney ms mic. M636/32, C. Gardiner to Sir R. Verney, 29 Nov. 1678; Timberland, i. 223.

Clarendon reported from the committee for examinations the testimony of one of the servants of Henry Arundell, 3rd Baron Arundell of Wardour, on 3 December. Following his report, on 6 Dec. it was resolved to summon the recusant, Sir Henry Tichborne, to London from his imprisonment at Winchester. Clarendon was nominated one of the managers of a conference concerning the disbanding of the army on 9 Dec. On 17 Dec. he again reported from the committee examining papers concerning the plot relating to further evidence involving Arundell of Wardour. On 26 Dec. Clarendon voted in favour of insisting on the Lords’ amendment to the supply bill. Although he voted against committing Danby the following day, he was also said to have warned York off from ‘espousing a man so universally hated’. Bodl. Carte 81, f. 405; Add. 28049, ff. 34-5. Clarendon reported from the committee for examinations again on 28 Dec, when he informed the House of the seizure of the papers of one John Hall, a catholic priest. By the close of the year, Clarendon was said to be ‘extreme well’ at court and was once more a servant to the queen. Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection Group 1/F, newsletter, 3 Dec. 1678. The following year he was appointed to the privy council and it was rumoured (though inaccurately) that he was to succeed Henry Coventry^‡ as secretary of state in February 1679. The same month it was also reported that he had been employed to ‘stifle’ Oates’ and Bedloe’s testimony concerning the popish plot. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 5; Verney ms mic. M636/32, Sir R. to E. Verney, 9 Jan. 1679, M636/32, newsletter, 18 Feb. 1679; CSP Dom. 1679-80, p. 68.

During the elections for the new Parliament in February, Clarendon ensured the election of Sir Thomas Clarges^‡, with the other seat going to Henry Tulse^‡. HP Commons 1660-90, i. 247. In advance of the new session, Clarendon’s well-known antipathy to Danby but close personal friendship with a number of Danby’s allies was reflected in a series of contradictory assessments of his likely position on the question of Danby’s bail. Thus on 1 Mar. he was reckoned as a likely supporter who should be spoken to by the king, but the following day (perhaps as a result of an interview with the king) as against or unreliable, and on 3 Mar. he was listed as opposed to Danby. Add. 28091, ff. 136, 138, 142. Taking his seat at the opening of Parliament on 6 Mar. 1679 Clarendon attended on six days of the abortive first session. He returned to the House at the opening of the second session on 15 March. He was present on 98 per cent of all sitting days, and was named to 12 committees. LJ xiii. 467, 493, 505, 511, 536, 550, 567, 572, 574, 575. Towards the close of a heated exchange in the House over the commitment of Danby, Clarendon offered to the House an affidavit drawn up by Oates in which the informer claimed to have overheard Danby mutter on seeing him, ‘there goes one of the saviours of the nation but I hope to see him hanged.’ Add. 28046, f. 52. Again prominent in the committees examining the plot, on 22 Mar. Clarendon was named one of the managers of a conference concerning Danby’s attainder and the same day he reported evidence from the committees for examinations and information. On 24 Mar. he was one of the three peers ordered by the House to examine the lords imprisoned in the Tower. The following day he reported from the committee for examinations vindicating Sir Robert Southwell^‡ over the supposed suppression of Dugdale’s evidence and reported that the Jesuit, Edward Turner, had been taken into custody. Bodl. Carte 72, f. 458; HP Commons 1660-90, iii. 460. Clarendon reported again from the committee for examinations on 27 Mar. (including an undertaking from the keeper of Newgate that the prison harboured no infectious diseases); on 29 Mar. (that chests found in Humphrey Weld’s garden were to be examined) and on 31 Mar. (concerning Oates’s complaints that his allowance was insufficient and that he desired a further grant of £100). On 1 Apr. he was added to the committee for the bill for clearing London and Westminster of papists. Bodl. Carte 72, f. 480. The same day he was named one of the managers of a conference concerning Danby’s attainder, after which he voted in favour of the early stages of the bill. On 2 Apr. he spoke in favour of considering the attainder in a committee of the whole. HMC Lords, i. 111; Add. 28091, f. 134; Add. 28046, ff. 53-6. Named one of the managers of the conference concerning the attainder, on 4 Apr. he again voted in favour of passing the bill and on 14 Apr. voted to concur with the Commons in the measure. Bodl. Carte 81, f. 588; Add. 29572, f. 112.

In the midst of the progress of the Danby attainder, Clarendon continued to report back from the committees concerning the plot: on 5 Apr. he reported Oates’s complaint over publication of a book that claimed to reproduce his examination before Godfrey, in which ‘he considered himself much injured’; on 9 Apr. he relayed Oates’s desire to publish his own account, which was duly authorized; on 12 Apr. he told of the ongoing searching of Weld’s seat at Lulworth Castle and information concerning a fire started in Fetter Lane, believed to have been started at the behest of a catholic named Stubbs, butler to the countess of Shrewsbury. The petition of one Christopher Hurt to be paid a reward of £20 for apprehending a papist priest, conveyed to the House by Clarendon on 14 Apr, was rejected as it transpired that the priest was a foreigner. On 21 Apr. Clarendon reported information concerning a plot to imprison Oates and Bedloe and on 2 May he reported the examination of Oates’ servants. Clarendon was omitted from the remodelled Privy Council in April 1679 and it was not until May 1680 that he regained his place. HMC Var. Coll. ii. 394; TNA, PC 2/68, p. 3.

Despite his removal, Clarendon continued to be prominent in key business in the Lords. He chaired the committee of the whole House considering the supply bill on 3 and 5 May. On the 3rd and the 8th he was nominated to report from conferences concerning the habeas corpus bill, and on the 10th he was nominated a reporter of the conference concerning the trials of the impeached lords. The same day he voted in favour of appointing a committee of both Houses to consider the method of proceeding against them and, along with many members of the council, subscribed the protest when it was resolved not to do so. Bodl. Carte 103, f. 270. Again a manager of the conference concerning the impeached lords on 11 May, four days later he communicated further findings from the committee for examinations. On 22 May he intervened in the debate concerning the reprieving of certain Catholic priests. When the lord president (Shaftesbury) warned of the ‘ill consequences’ of reprieving them and how it had ‘revived the spirits of the papists’, Clarendon interjected that it had been on Shaftesbury’s motion that the priests had been reprieved in the first place, causing Shaftesbury to respond evasively that ‘if he had any fault it was tender-heartedness.’ HMC Ormond, v. 110. Shortly before the close of the session, on 26 May, Clarendon was nominated one of the reporters of a conference concerning the importance of preserving a good correspondence between the two Houses, concerning the arguments surrounding the impeachments of Danby and the catholic peers. On 27 May, he probably voted for the right of the bishops to stay in the House during capital cases.

Clarendon’s loyalty to York identified him as an opponent of York’s exclusion. In the second election of 1679 at Christchurch, Henry Tulse, who had voted for the exclusion bill, was replaced by George Fulford^‡, presumably at his insistence. HP Commons 1660-90, i. 247. With the recovery of York’s influence in late 1679 and 1680 Clarendon became an increasingly prominent figure. He was appointed keeper of Somerset House in December 1679 and in May 1680 he was readmitted to the Privy Council. His appointment elicited a letter of congratulation from his old companion, Henry Savile, and was viewed as a further sign of his resurgent interest ‘if he can sit fast now’. Bodl. Clarendon 87, f. 329; Add. 17017, ff. 111-12; Verney ms mic. M636/34, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 27 May 1680. In August it was rumoured that he was to be made lord chamberlain to the queen and he was accounted one of a powerful triumvirate (the others being his former brother-in-law, Essex, and John Robartes, earl of Radnor) who were arguing for the postponement of a Parliament in Ireland. Bodl. Carte 39, f. 175, Carte 243, f. 506. Clarendon attended the meeting on 13 Oct. at which the question of the duke of York being sent out of the country in preparation for a meeting of Parliament was debated. He was one of the majority to vote against the duke being forced out, although within a few days the king was persuaded to ignore their advice and agree to order York’s return to Scotland. HMC Ormond, v. 459; Kenyon, Sunderland, 58; Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection Group 1/G.

Clarendon took his seat in the House at the opening of the new Parliament on 21 Oct. 1680. He was again regular in his attendance, being present on 88 per cent of all sitting days. He was also again one of the principal chairmen of the committee examining the plot, though his handling of this role was called into question on 26 Oct. by the testimony of one Berry, formerly secretary to the Portuguese ambassador, who claimed that he had offered testimony to Clarendon concerning the planned assassination of Shaftesbury, Oates and Bedloe, which Clarendon had neglected to pass on. Clarendon denied that Berry had given such detailed information. Towards the end of the month rumours were spread that he was one of those concerned in the ‘sham plot’. HMC Ormond, v. 461-2; Verney ms mic. M636/34, J. to Sir R. Verney, 28 Oct. 1680. Clarendon reported several sets of information from the committee for examinations on 6 November. On 9 Nov. York wrote to him from his Scottish exile concerning the forthcoming vote on the exclusion bill, with the assumption that, ‘before this, or at least before you receive it, you will have spoken against the bill in the house of lords as well as your brother [Laurence Hyde] did in the house of Commons.’ Add. 17017, ff. 169-70. Clarendon’s efforts to deflect attention from York and his by now frosty relations with Shaftesbury were revealed on 10 Nov. when he was overheard in the House whispering to the latter, ‘my Lord we can never be well as long as that ill woman the duchess of Portsmouth is with our king so I hope you will give your helping hand to remove her.’ To this Shaftesbury was said to have responded, ‘my Lord we are now hunting tigers and bears and birds of prey and now you would be a cony catching.’ Verney ms mic. M636/34, A. Nicholas to Sir R. Verney, 10 Nov. 1680. Clarendon was named to the committee considering the Irish cattle bill on 12 November. His fundamental disagreement with Shaftesbury and the exclusionists emerged on 15 Nov. when Clarendon voted in favour of putting the question that the exclusion bill should be rejected on first reading. Add. 36988, f. 159. He then voted to reject the bill. On 23 Nov. he voted against appointing a joint committee with the Commons to consider the state of the nation. Bodl. Carte 81, f. 669. The same day, from his exile in Scotland, York again wrote to Clarendon asking that he would pass on his thanks to all those who had combined to defeat the exclusion bill. Bodl. Clarendon 87, f. 331. Clarendon’s increasingly important role in York’s circle was doubtless one of the reasons for Clarendon’s inclusion in the Commons’ list of courtiers who should be dismissed from the king’s councils as promoters of popery. They perhaps felt that their point had been underlined when on 7 Dec. Clarendon voted against condemning William Howard, Viscount Stafford. Bodl. Rawl. A183, f. 62; Carte 80, f. 823; Beinecke Lib. OSB mss 1, series II, box 4, folder 173. Seven days later (14 Dec.) he was one of the members of the sub-committee for the journal to note at their inspection of the record covering the trial that a small error had been made in recording the tally of votes.

Following the dissolution in January 1681, Clarendon was busily concerned with the elections for the new Parliament. He declared of his home county of Wiltshire that ‘no county can be better affected’ and hoped that ‘two very worthy men will be knights of the shire… if Lord Pembroke does not spoil all.’ At Christchurch in Hampshire, where as lord of the manor he expected the return of at least one (and usually both) of his nominees, he found his interest under assault by a combination led by Shaftesbury, Theophilus Hastings, 7th earl of Huntingdon, and Charles Powlett, styled earl of Wiltshire (later 2nd duke of Bolton), who hoped to overturn his influence in the borough. Clarendon complained to Sir Leoline Jenkins^‡ of their attack, insisting that ‘the borough of Christchurch is my own borough, the manor is my own and one or both of the burgesses have been always elected on the recommendation of the lords of the place’. According to Clarendon the root of the ‘mischief’ was the lord chancellor’s delivery of the writ to Lord Wiltshire rather than Clarendon himself, enabling Wiltshire to dictate the timing of the poll. HP Commons 1660-90, i. 247, 437; CSP Dom. 1680-1, p. 164-6. The ensuing campaign proved bitter: Clarendon brought a writ of scandalum magnatum the following year against one of the candidates, Thomas Hooper, for calling him a papist. Bodl. ms Eng. hist. c. 478, ff. 275-6; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 188. When the case came to be heard in June 1682, Hooper was convicted, but the Hampshire jury revealed their sympathies by awarding Clarendon only 100 marks and 40 shillings costs rather than the £5,000 (one source believed £10,000) he had sought. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk.ii. 323; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 197-8; Add. 63776, f. 3. Hooper had claimed that Clarendon had been equally abusive during the election, that the earl had called him ‘a jesuited, equivocating papist and a rascal’ and offered to ‘fillip him on the nose’. HP Commons 1660-90, i. 247; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 197-8. Despite this hullabaloo, Shaftesbury and Wiltshire’s efforts to persuade the corporation to throw off Clarendon’s patronage and elect exclusionist members proved unsuccessful and Clarges and Fulford were returned once more. A. Coleby, Central government and the localities: Hampshire 1649-89, 210; HP Commons 1660-90, i. 248.

On the night of 17/18 Mar., Clarendon played host to the king at Cornbury. HMC Ormond, v. 618. He was present on each of the seven sitting days of the brief Oxford Parliament. He had been included in a forecast for Danby’s bail of 17 Mar. 1681 as ‘neutral’. Beinecke Lib. Osborne mss, Danby pprs. box 2. On 24 Mar., however, he joined with Norreys in speaking on behalf of the imprisoned former lord treasurer, perhaps on account of Norreys’ influence. Bodl. Carte 79, f. 164; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 273; Beinecke Lib. OSB mss 6, box 1, folder 5, Newcastle to Danby, 24 Mar. 1681. Clarendon had been earlier in the year involved in land transactions around Cornbury with his Oxfordshire neighbour Norreys and would remain on close terms with him for the rest of his life. Verney ms mic. M636/34, J. Cary to Sir R. Verney, 20 Mar. 1680, W. Moore to Verney, 12 May 1680, W. Grosvenor to W. Moore, 14 May 1680.

Reported to be sick and thought to be in ‘some danger’ following the dissolution of the Parliament at Oxford, Clarendon had recovered by the summer when he was one of the members of the Privy Council to sign the warrant for committing his erstwhile ally, Shaftesbury. Add. 75355, countess of Clarendon to countess of Burlington, 30 Apr. 1681; HMC Ormond, vi. 46; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 283. In October, he proposed Sir Philip Harcourt^‡ to Norreys as the most suitable partner for Sir William Walter of three proposed by Norreys to contest Oxfordshire for the anticipated new Parliament. This initiative followed the withdrawal of Sir Robert Jenkinson^‡, whose resolution not to stand Clarendon feared would ‘much cross your lordship’s measures, which were so excellently laid for his majesty’s service’. In the event, Norreys persuaded Anthony Carey^‡, 5th Viscount Falkland [S], to accept the nomination instead. Bodl. ms Clarendon 155, ff. 48-9, 51-2.

Over the next couple of years, Clarendon’s association with York made him a target for smears and potential political and legal action. He was again accused of being a papist by one informer in September and in December it was reported that designs were afoot to impeach, among others, Clarendon and his brother Laurence (since promoted Viscount Hyde). CSP Dom. 1680-1, pp. 461, 559, 615; HMC Ormond, n.s. vi. 263. During the summer of 1682 Clarendon found himself the unwelcome subject of public derision not only on account of his scandalum magnatum case against Thomas Hooper but also over his involvement in the tortuous dispute between his distant kinswoman, Bridget Hyde, her supposed husband, John Emerton, and Danby’s younger son, Peregrine Osborne, Viscount Dunblane [S] (later 2nd duke of Leeds), with whom Bridget Hyde had eloped. Clarendon was reported to have encouraged the issue coming to trial in the court of delegates, ‘in hopes it is said to get her for his son’; Dunblane’s clandestine marriage to Hyde on 25 Apr., which would eventually result in the overturning of the Emerton marriage in his favour, caused him embarrassment and considerable annoyance, as well as rendering his own efforts and expenditure in vain. Verney ms mic. M636/36, J. Stewkeley to Sir R. Verney, 17, 24 July 1682; Bodl. Carte 232, ff. 123-4; Browning, Danby, i. 351.

Clarendon was at Newmarket in March 1683, one of the ‘very little company’ there with the king. Clarendon lost his carriage in the fire that destroyed much of the town and brought the visit to a premature close. The fire also accidentally foiled the Rye House plot to assassinate the king. Savile Corresp., 271, 274. The subsequent arrest and imprisonment in the Tower of his former brother-in-law and colleague, Essex, and even more Essex’s suicide, stunned the Hyde circle. Clarendon had been one of the last people to visit the imprisoned peer. Bodl. Carte 168, ff. 147-8. The details of Clarendon and Essex’s last interview are unknown but may have involved an agreement that Clarendon would look after Essex’s children as, soon after Essex’s demise, Clarendon was often to be seen accompanying his heir, Algernon Capell, 2nd earl of Essex, at court, and it was also into Clarendon’s custody that Essex’s body and papers were finally released in July. Bodl. Carte 216, f. 315; CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, pp. 123, 137. On the death that year of Clarendon’s Wiltshire rival, the irascible Pembroke, Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, speculated that either Clarendon or his brother (now promoted earl of Rochester) would expect to replace him in the county lieutenancy, but in the event the office was conferred on Pembroke’s heir, Thomas Herbert, 8th earl of Pembroke, who held the post until the Revolution. Add. 75353, Weymouth to Halifax, 4 Aug. 1683.

Clarendon stood bail for Lord Arundell of Wardour when he was released from the Tower in February 1684. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 452; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 301; HMC Portland, iii. 377. Prominent in Hampshire, Arundell’s family had previously held the lordship of Christchurch, which may explain Clarendon’s interest. The following month it was rumoured that Clarendon was to be granted the office of conservator of the river Thames and the same year he was elected high steward of Salisbury in succession to Shaftesbury. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 302-3; HP Commons 1660-90, i. 457. The family’s resurgence was further underlined when Lady Clarendon was appointed groom of the stole to Princess Anne as part of the re-organization of her household following her marriage to Prince George of Denmark, later duke of Cumberland. Despite these marks of favour in September Clarendon was put out as treasurer to the queen and replaced with Richard Lumley 2nd Viscount Lumley [I] (later earl of Scarbrough). Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 316. Despite his lack of legal training, Clarendon was said to be one of the pretenders for the newly vacant office of master of the rolls at the beginning of 1685, though the office was not conferred on him. Beinecke Lib. OSB mss 1, series I, box 2, folder 61, Yard to Poley, 2 Jan. 1685.

James II and the Revolution, 1685-1690

With the death of Charles II in February and the accession of James, Clarendon and his brother found themselves in positions of considerable influence in their brother-in-law’s new regime. Clarendon was appointed lord privy seal and it was ‘whispered’ that he would succeed Ormond in Ireland. Evelyn Diary, iv. 416-17; Bodl. Clarendon 88, f. 82; TNA, PRO 30/53/8/9. He was able to assure Abingdon (as Norreys had since become) of his continued employment in Oxfordshire, the king ‘being satisfied that none can do it better.’ Bodl. Clarendon 128, f. 11. The Hyde brothers’ hegemony was threatened, however, by Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, who made little secret of his ambition of being rid of them. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 331; HMC Ormond, n.s. vii. 324.

Clarendon employed his interest on behalf of the court in the elections of March. Writing to Abingdon, Clarendon expressed his pleasure that the elections in Oxfordshire ‘are (though with some difficulty) like to go your mind’. Corresp. of Henry earl of Clarendon and James earl of Abingdon, 255; Bodl. Clarendon 128, f. 14. His own interest at Christchurch, however, again came under assault from Thomas Hooper. In March he wrote to one Goldwyer warning of the danger. Noting the number of towns that had submitted loyal addresses undertaking not to elect those who had supported exclusion, Clarendon advised that:

if the town of Christchurch do not address in the like manner, yet if they show their duty in their practice, by electing men to this parliament of known loyalty to the crown, and such as have given testimony against it [exclusion] they will sufficiently testify their loyalty to his majesty and the government. Clarendon Corresp. i. 183.

In the event Hooper appears to have backed down and Clarendon’s candidates, Clarges and Anthony Ettrick^‡, were returned, probably unopposed. At Reading the borough experienced three elections in the course of the year in March, June and November. The first election, which had seen the return of the Tories Thomas Coates^‡ and John Breedon^‡ was declared void following a petition from Sir Henry Fane^‡ and Sir William Rich^‡, only for Coates and Breedon to be elected again at the second poll in June. Breedon’s death soon after necessitated a by-election in November at which William Aldworth was returned on Clarendon’s recommendation. HP Commons 1660-90, i. 133, 248.

Clarendon took his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 19 May, when he introduced his brother as earl of Rochester, and Halifax, who had been promoted to a marquessate. He also presented the petition from the Catholic peers seeking their release from bail. Bodl. ms Eng. hist. c. 46, f. 40. Present for almost all (98 per cent) the days on which the House sat, Clarendon was named to 13 committees during the session. LJ xiv. 13, 17, 22, 31, 40-1, 47-8, 53-4, 58, 60, 63. On 18 June he reported from the committee on the post office and excise bill. On 21 June he received the proxy of his Oxfordshire neighbour, Lichfield, which was vacated by the session’s close, and on 29 June he reported from the committee concerning the St James’s church bill.

On news of the rebellion led by James Scott, duke of Monmouth, found Clarendon, overwhelmed by the ‘glut of business’ generated by the crisis, closely involved in liaising with Abingdon and John Fell, bishop of Oxford, over the Oxfordshire militia, and the creation of a force in the university of Oxford. Morgan Lib. Misc. English, Fell to Clarendon, 20 June 1685; Clarendon Abingdon Corresp. 258-9, 261-2, 265, 267-8, 270, 272-3. After Monmouth’s defeat and capture, Clarendon visited him with his estranged duchess, although when Monmouth asked him to help secure his pardon he could offer the condemned man no hope of reprieve. HMC Rutland, ii. 93; Bramston Autobiog. 193.

Over the summer Clarendon was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland in succession to Ormond. Add. 29582, f. 292; Verney ms mic. M636/40, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 2 Sept. 1685. Although this was a post that Clarendon coveted, and it was warmly welcomed by the Irish Protestants, the appointment was the result of Sunderland’s careful manipulation. Bodl. Carte 217, f. 247. The king had not forgotten Sunderland’s desertion over exclusion and had intended the post for him as a way of limiting his influence at court. By nominating Clarendon for the place instead, Sunderland both gained Clarendon’s gratitude and ensured the weakening of the Hydes’ interest at court. Life of James II, ii. 62; Kenyon, Sunderland, 120. Clarendon’s removal to Ireland also undermined his influence with Princess Anne. Anne already shared the distaste of her principal confidante, Sarah, Lady Churchill, to Lady Clarendon, (describing the countess as ‘nauseous’) and was delighted to have an excuse to be rid of her. Anne was also engaged in an argument with Rochester that further undercut her relationship with the Hyde family. Gregg, Queen Anne (1984 ed.), 36, 38-40, 42-3.

Clarendon was again present in the House for the brief November session that followed the summer adjournment. On 17 Nov. he reported from the committee of privileges the dispute over the title of Grey of Ruthin, claimed both by Henry Yelverton, 15th Baron Grey of Ruthin (later Viscount Longueville), and by Anthony Grey, 11th earl of Kent; Clarendon informed the House that the committee had found in favour of Grey of Ruthin. The following day he was nominated to the committee for Sir George Crooke’s bill. Still a loyalist, on 19 Nov. he objected to the proposal to take the king’s speech into consideration, arguing that the House had already passed a vote of thanks for it, and he questioned the legality of the motion. Bramston Autobiog. 216.

Clarendon set out on his journey to Ireland towards the end of December. On 7 Dec. Robert Yard^‡, the clerk in the office of the secretary of state, had written to Sir William Trumbull^‡ that Clarendon had put off his departure so many times that ‘people will not believe it till they see him on his way.’ Add. 72521, ff. 149-50. The long delay was said to have been in order to avoid Richard Talbot, earl of Tyrconnell [I], currently in Ireland, ‘whose blustering temper would perhaps get the better of a peaceful governor’, though Tyrconnell did not come back to England until after Clarendon’s arrival. Add. 72481, f. 83. During Clarendon’s absence the privy seal was put into commission, contradicting reports that the office was to be awarded to Sunderland. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 356; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 75. Leaving town amid ‘as great pomp and state as any subject has done in our days’, Clarendon was fêted along the route of his progress from London to Holyhead. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 72; Add. 70013, f. 306, Add. 72481, ff. 86-7; JRL, Legh of Lyme mss, newsletter to R. Legh, 17 Dec. 1685. Along the way he worried about his finances and from his stopping place at Conway, Clarendon wrote to Rochester revealing the extent of his debts. Computing that £15,000 would ‘clear Blunsden and Christchurch, or thereabouts’ he estimated that securing that sum would leave £6,000 to go towards reducing his remaining debts of £30,000. Clarendon Corresp. i. 198-201. Two years prior to this he had acknowledged debts amounting to £17,400 owing to three of his creditors, not including his arrears of interest payments to them. Beinecke Lib. OSB mss fb 152, no. 7.

During his absence Clarendon maintained a close correspondence with his contacts in England, making a particular point of welcoming the professions of friendship from George Legge, Baron Dartmouth. Clarendon Corresp. i. 241. Clarendon’s replacement of Ormond in Ireland had no effect on their relationship: while Clarendon was established at Dublin, Ormond rented Clarendon’s vacant seat at Cornbury Park, and Clarendon was elected high steward of Oxford University in November 1686 through Ormond’s interest. Carte 220, f. 135; HMC Ormond n.s., viii. 488. According to his friends in London, Clarendon was ‘extremely beloved as any that ever was in that place before’. Add. 72523, ff. 92-3. Clarendon, however, felt much less cherished in London, where Tyrconnell, who had already done much to remodel and include Catholics in the Irish army, was engaged in undermining Clarendon’s authority by persuading James to appoint Catholics to the judiciary and Privy Council. Although there had been rumours in March 1686 that Clarendon, Rochester and some other peers were to be promoted to dukedoms, that same month Clarendon wrote to his brother complaining of a series of slights. HMC Portland, iii. 395. He assured Rochester that it was ‘not in any man’s power to say he has seen me in the least passion since my being here’, but in a series of plaintive letters to Sunderland, he complained about the latter’s failure to support him or keep him informed of alterations in policy. Add. 15893, ff. 177-8. Angry that he only heard of developments ‘by letters to other people or common newsletters’, he wrote on 23 Mar. to say ‘how little I shall be made in the opinion of people here without some support from your lordship, when so many and great alterations are made here, and I know nothing of them but from common fame’. CSP Dom. 1686-7, pp. 70, 83.

Sunderland slapped down his colleague in response, eliciting a wounded reply from Clarendon on 17 Apr.:

as to what your lordship is pleased to say of not advising with me beforehand about the alterations his Majesty has thought fit to make here, I hope I am rightly understood and that I shall not be thought to aim at anything upon my own account but in order to the king’s service; and as I shall be always pleased with whatever method the King will prescribe for the doing of his business, so I shall always depend upon your lordship’s friendship and kindness, and if my zeal to serve the king as well as anybody can do, does make me sometimes apprehend that I want countenance I hope your lordship will believe… that I make my moan to none but yourself. CSP Dom. 1686-7, p. 103.

Tyrconnell returned to Ireland in June 1686, and now with full command of the army, was able to extend his campaign to bring Catholics in the army. Clarendon commented bitterly that it was perhaps ‘a new practice for some officers to meet and agree whom they will endeavour to have removed and the general of the army no way consulted with.’ CSP Dom. 1686-7, p. 254. Tyrconnell was also working with the Catholic lawyer, Sir Richard Nagle, to overturn the land settlement. By October the extent of Clarendon’s loss of influence was commonly known, and the following month it was widely reported that he was to be removed from his post. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 31; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 261, 273. For the time being he survived, following a vigorous campaign on his behalf by Ormond and members of the Irish nobility, but throughout the winter, well aware of the general expectation of his replacement, he felt beleaguered or ignored, writing desperate missives to London, questioning the orders to arm the Catholics and put out Protestants from their offices and complaining that in response to his own detailed reports he barely received a single line from Sunderland. NLS, ms 7010, f. 150; Verney ms mic. M636/41, C. Gardiner to Sir R. Verney, 17 Nov. 1686; Clarendon Corresp. ii. In England, Rochester, destabilized by Sunderland, resigned the lord treasurership at the end of 1686. The Hydes’ reversal of fortune made Clarendon, he told his brother, ‘shut myself up as much as I can, that I may play the hypocrite the better, and look cheerful when I come into company’. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 127. On 4 Jan. he received a copy of Nagle’s ‘Coventry letter’, setting out proposals for drastic changes to the Irish land settlement; In January 1687, Sunderland’s triumph was complete when, in spite of a forecast that month that he would support repeal of the Test, Clarendon was also put out of office and replaced with Tyrconnell, leaving him able only to ‘thank God, without practising the greatest villainy, I cannot be charged with any fault in my administration here; which though it will not preserve me, is a great comfort.’ Add. 34526, ff. 48-56; CSP Dom. 1686-7, pp. 332, 335; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 134. His friend, Sir John Arderne, was under the (mistaken) impression that Clarendon had not seen his replacement coming, and that none of his contacts had warned him ‘of that Boanerges coming over your successor since it was so long since resolved at court; and spread all over the kingdom’. Glasgow Univ. Lib. ms Hunter 73, xvi. In spite of his best efforts, Clarendon was unable to hide his dismay and bitterness at the manner of his dismissal: ‘whether I have been well used by my lord president in this affair: or whether, in truth, I have been well used by him in the whole time of being here, I leave to all men to judge’. State letters of Henry earl of Clarendon, 2 vols, (1765), ii. 157. Tyrconnell arrived on 6 February. On handing over his charge to Tyrconnell just under a week later Clarendon took the opportunity to underline the dangers of alienating the Anglican interest: ‘we of the Church of England can brag that when rebellion over spread the three kingdoms not one orthodox member of our churches was engaged against the crown and in our late disorders we can boast that we were opposers of the bills of exclusion.’ Clarendon Corresp. ii. 151; Glasgow Univ. Lib. ms Hunter 73, xv; Add. 28085, f. 217; Beinecke Lib. OSB mss 2, box 3, folder 54, no. 97. His chief secretary, Paul Rycaut, several years later remembered Clarendon’s remark to him on receiving the news of his replacement by Tryconnell: ‘thus hath the king lost his crown.’ Bodl. ms Eng. lett. c. 8, f. 28.

Clarendon also complained that he had not been able to take advantage of his office to rectify his crippling financial predicament and now faced ruin. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 77. The tour of duty had cost him several thousands of pounds and now he could only ‘pray God to give me constancy and resolution to demean myself so, as becomes a man and a Christian; that my friends may have no cause to be ashamed of me.’ State Letters of Henry, earl of Clarendon, 2 vols, (1765), ii. 159. He returned to England in March 1687. Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 42, ff. 129, 131. In spite of the manner of his recall, he was warmly received at court. Noted as being ‘much in private with the king’, both Clarendon and Rochester were provided with pensions as compensation for their loss of office (though Clarendon’s £2,000 annuity proved thoroughly inadequate for his needs). Ellis Corresp., i. 265; Dalymple Mems. 103. Nevertheless, Clarendon also lost his the office of lord privy seal, replaced by the Catholic, Lord Arundell of Wardour. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 396; HMC Ormond, n.s. viii. 488. Clarendon retreated into the country: in a forecast of May 1687 he was noted as ‘doubtful’ with regard to the king’s policies. Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 42, ff. 137-8. The same month he took the opportunity of Dijkvelt’s return to Holland to convey to his nephew, William of Orange, the assurance of his ‘most obedient duty’ and that he would ‘take it for a great honour to have any commands from your highness’. CSP Dom. 1686-7, p. 436. In November he was reckoned to be opposed to repeal of the Test. In December he wrote to the Prince of Orange again advising that the tenor of the responses to the Three Questions did not bode well for a compliant Parliament. Carswell, Descent on England, 112.

At the beginning of January 1688 Clarendon was in London, noting in his diary regular encounters with relations, particularly his brother, and friends such as Bishop Lloyd, Sir Richard Bellings and Sir Thomas Clarges, and occasionally attending the king’s court. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 153. His position with regard to the Test was reckoned to have changed and he was noted (implausibly) as being in favour of repeal. That month, his attention was taken up by the beginnings of a legal dispute with the queen dowager concerning payments owed to him from his term as chamberlain of her household. The case rumbled on for the following four years. Bodl. ms Eng. lett. c. 8, f. 11. Although in a rather frosty interview Halifax offered his assistance, Clarges warned that he doubted he would do much to help: on 21 Jan. Clarendon noted that Halifax and Louis de Duras, 2nd earl of Feversham, had made some efforts to appeal to Queen Catharine, but without success. Clarendon recorded glumly, ‘This is but what I expected; and, I suppose, Lord Halifax will think he has acquitted himself of his promise to do me what service he can.’ Clarendon Corresp. ii. 154-5, 157. Clarendon was apprehensive of ruin when he discovered that the king had forbidden his attorney general (Sir William Williams^‡) to appear on his behalf, and that the queen’s lawyer Roger North^‡ had, in a ‘superabundant act of officiousness’, raised the question of the king’s prerogative being involved. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 160-1.

In April the king’s agents, examining the prospects for a new Parliament to repeal the Tests, reported that Clarendon had ‘so absolute an interest’ in Christchurch, that it would be ‘impossible to have anybody chosen but such as he shall appoint, or at least approve.’ HP Commons 1660-90, i. 248. On 12 May Clarendon was present at a dinner at Lambeth attended by William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, Henry Compton, bishop of London, Francis Turner, bishop of Ely, Thomas White, bishop of Peterborough, Thomas Cartwright, bishop of Chester, and Thomas Watson * [2060], bishop of St Davids. Once the last two had departed, neither being trusted, the diners discussed drafting a petition to the king against his demand that the Declaration of Indulgence be read in churches. Over the next few days Clarendon had a number of other meetings with Turner and Lloyd, and Thomas Tenison, later archbishop of Canterbury, and Simon Patrick, later bishop of Chichester and bishop of Ely, and noted in his diary on 18 May (relayed to him by Lloyd) the reaction of the king on presentation of the bishops’ petition. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 171-2. On the 21st he wrote at length to his niece, Princess Mary, explaining what had happened, and summarising the attitudes of the remaining clergy. He expressed doubts about the position of Thomas Wood, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield and Thomas Barlow, bishop of Lincoln – ‘they are old, and very odd men’, and expressed scorn for ‘the two scabby sheep Chester and St Davids’, ‘who are indeed very bad men; as they have no reputation or interest, so they are despised by those whom they court’. HMC Buccleuch, ii. pt.1, 32. The king had heard by 23 May of Clarendon’s presence at the Lambeth meeting; in the interim before the bishops’ hearing at the council on 8 June he met and discussed the hearing with Turner, Tenison, Lloyd, Thomas White, bishop of Peterborough, and Thomas Ken, bishop of Bath and Wells, advising them to find the best lawyers and lending them some of the Journals which they thought might be useful for their defence. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 173-5.

The Seven Bishops’ subsequent imprisonment forced Clarendon, an upholder of the Anglican interest, into more outright opposition. On 10 June he congratulated the king on the birth of the prince of Wales and then went straight to call upon the bishops in the Tower. Ibid. 176. He was at the Tower again on 12 June, when he found that Halifax had been there before him, and was irked by his advice that the bishops should arrange for three peers to be ready to stand bail for them. The bishops were inclined not to take it, although Bishop Compton initially proposed Clarendon as a possible surety for his friend, St Asaph, though he later replaced his name with that of James Butler, 2nd Baron Butler of Moore Park, styled earl of Ossory [I], who succeeded shortly after as 2nd duke of Ormond). Bodl. Tanner 28, f. 76. Clarendon professed not to ‘understand his lordships notions’ and instead recommended to Sancroft that they should simply ensure that there were sufficient friends present at the hearing at king’s bench to whom they might appeal should bail be required. After their appearance at king’s bench on 15 June, when the court accepted their own recognisances, Clarendon took Lloyd home with him in his coach. Clarendon Corresp., ii. 176-7. In the days before the trial he had several more meetings with the bishops and their supporters, as well as discussing the case with a very apprehensive lord chancellor, George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys. Clarendon was in Westminster Hall for the bishops’ trial on 29 and 30 June, recording in his diary that their acquittal was accompanied by a ‘most wonderful shout, that one would have thought the Hall had cracked’. Ibid. 179. On 5 July Clarendon had another encounter with Jeffreys, who told him that the king was persuadable to moderate his policies; Clarendon agreed to meet him from time to time in order to provide a channel of communication with Archbishop Sancroft. Clarendon’s meeting with the queen a couple of days later, who asked him why he did not come to court more often, suggested an attempt to put out feelers towards him. Ibid. 180.

In the month after the trial, Clarendon’s attention was diverted to a family crisis, the elopement of his heir, Viscount Cornbury, with Lady Katherine O’Brien, the daughter of the deceased heir to the Thomond title, Henry O’Brien, Lord O’Brien (or Lord Ibrackan) [I]. Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 43, f. 148. Although he had discussed the marriage earlier in the year, he had ceased the negotiations on discovering that Lady O’Brien had no portion until the settlement of the debts of her deceased uncle, Charles Stewart, duke of Richmond, and considered it ‘the most inconvenient match that could have been for me; a young woman oddly bred, no manner of advantage, and an unavoidable charge.’ Despite this inauspicious beginning and the continued opposition of Lady Katherine’s mother and stepfather, Sir Joseph Williamson^‡, Clarendon was persuaded by his brother and his wife to reconcile himself to the marriage, ‘reflecting with myself, that this young man, who I doubted had made himself unhappy, was my son and only child; that I ought to make the best of a bad market, and not to add misery to misery’. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 181. Clarendon’s acceptance of the match may have been aided by the assurances of Sir John Skeffington, 2nd Viscount Massareene [I], that he was well acquainted with the new Lady Cornbury’s family and of the ‘probability… that an extraordinary fortune must accompany the other benefits in this conjunction.’ Glasgow University Library, ms Hunter 73, xxiii. John Fell, bishop of Oxford, also regarded the match as ‘very desirable’ though he conceded that ‘it comes often to pass that rich widows prove poor wives.’ Hatton Corresp. ii. 61. Following Ormond’s death in July, Clarendon (who had been closely involved in discussions with the lord chancellor about protecting the copyright of Oxford university press over the previous year) helped to ensure that the chancellorship of the university went to Ormond’s heir, over the king’s initial opposition. Clarendon Corresp. 182-3; Ellis Corresp. ii. 146.

The king’s agreement over the chancellorship of Oxford might have been an encouraging sign of a new moderation; Jeffreys told Clarendon on 13 Aug. that he had good hopes that it would be evident in a meeting of Parliament in the autumn. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 185. Jeffreys told him on 22 Sept. of the king’s wish to meet Clarendon, Rochester, Sancroft and others of his ‘old friends’, to discuss his affairs. Clarendon saw the queen and Princess Anne on the following day, both of whom berated him for not coming to court more often, though the latter mentioned her father’s concerns at the preparations in the Netherlands. Anne, he thought, seemed to want to say something, ‘yet is upon a reserve’. He saw the king himself on 24 Sept. who, clearly agitated about William of Orange’s plans, said to him ‘And now my lord, I shall see what the Church of England men will do’. He saw the princess again that day, on the 26th and on the 27th, but found her brief moment of openness over: on the second occasion ‘she answered she never spoke to the king on business. I said her father could not but take it well to see her royal highness so concerned for him… The more I pressed her, the more reserved she was.’ Ibid. 190-1. Over these few days, Clarendon met frequently with Sancroft, Turner, and Rochester, and it was said that he, Rochester and Halifax made a pointed effort to be seen at court ‘to avoid suspicion’. On 27 Sept., though, after seeing the princess, he met Jeffreys, who told him that ‘all was nought; some rogues had changed the king’s mind; that he would yield in nothing to the bishops’. Nevertheless, over the next few days, Clarendon heard back from the interview of the king with the archbishop on 30 Sept. and with the bishops on 3 Oct., from Jeffreys, and at the council on 5 Oct. of further concessions offered by the king. HMC Portland, iii. 417; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 185, 191-3. On 4 Oct. Samuel Foley (later bishop of Down and Connor) even assessed him to be ‘much again in the king’s favour’. Add. 63093, f. 4. Nevertheless, Clarendon continued to pressure Princess Anne to encourage the king for further changes. Before the council meeting of 22 Oct. at which depositions were taken on oath concerning the birth of the prince of Wales and to which all peers in London, as well as councillors, were summoned, Clarendon, along with Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, requested the king to allow him to attend as a peer rather than a councillor so that he should not be required to sit with Father Petre. In the midst of the gathering political crisis, another hearing in Clarendon’s litigation with the queen dowager, was on 31 Oct. once more put off resulting in further legal expenses that he could ill afford. On the same day he was disturbed to have a conversation with Princess Anne at which she talked about the doubts about whether a prince of Wales really had been born to the queen. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 195, 197-8.

On 3 Nov. the king in his closet showed Clarendon the prince of Orange’s declaration, and interrogated him about his knowledge of the invasion. Rochester and Clarendon afterwards went to dine at Lambeth with Sancroft, and over the next few days discussed with the bishops the king’s request that they make a declaration against the prince of Orange. On 8 Nov. Clarendon met with Rochester, Turner of Ely and White of Peterborough to discuss drawing up an address requesting the king call a Parliament ‘to prevent the shedding of blood’, which the two bishops undertook to recommend to Archbishop Sancroft. Three days later Clarendon had similar discussions with Halifax, who also suggested an address. Clarendon agreed to put his name to it ‘with all my heart’. But on the 12th Clarendon was taken aback to be presented with a petition approved by Halifax, and asked for his signature; at a subsequent meeting Halifax made difficulties about amendments, about how to consult on the document, and who should sign it, saying that he would refuse to do so himself if those who had been members of the ecclesiastical commission (such as Rochester) did. Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, who had been party to Halifax’s draft, dismissed Clarendon’s objections to the petition as ‘not very material, much less deserving the weight he laid upon them’, justified the exclusion of the ecclesiastical commissioners, and denied that it had been done as a result of the ‘pique’ between Halifax and Rochester. The plan for an address collapsed amidst general suspicion and Halifax withdrew his text. Hatton Corresp. ii. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxiii), 103-4. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 199-200, 201, 202-3. The same day the news reached London of his son’s defection to the invaders, though the king responded with remarkable sympathy. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 204; Macaulay, History, ii. 505. The following day Clarendon added his signature to a new petition for a free Parliament arranged by Rochester and others. It was boycotted by Halifax and Nottingham. James, when it was presented to him by Sancroft on 17 Nov., was ‘not pleased’, saying there could be no Parliament while the country was being invaded. Add. 75353; NLW, Coedymaen I, 61; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 205.

On 22 Nov. Clarendon spoke to the queen forthrightly about the need for a Parliament to approve changes of the law for liberty of conscience. He was as shocked at the flight from London of Princess Anne on 26 Nov. as he was by his son’s defection. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 207. One report said that he and her nurse ‘went up and down like mad persons, saying the papists had murdered her.’ Macpherson, Original Papers, i. 163. His panic at her action was probably quite as much the result of disappointment that he had not been trusted to be included in her plot with Bishop Compton and Charles Sackville, 6th earl of Dorset and earl of Middlesex. An account of the conduct of the dowager duchess of Marlborough, (1742), 10. On the following day (27 Nov.) he spoke at the great council hastily summoned by the king in response to the invasion ‘with great warmth and severity of invaders of laws and liberties’. His ‘indiscreet and seditious railing’ (according to the king’s memoirs) was much resented by the king, who interrupted him in the middle of his harangue to deny his accusation that a regiment had recently been raised from the French traders of London in which ‘none were to be admitted but papists’; Halifax and Nottingham were regarded as having spoken with a good deal more discretion, or, Clarendon wrote ‘very flatteringly’. A number of the peers present were also said to have disapproved of Clarendon’s performance (Ailesbury felt that he had behaved ‘like a pedagogue towards a pupil’). Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 353-4; Life of James II, ii. 239; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 209-10; Ailesbury Mems. i. 192-3; Dalrymple Mems. Ii. 205. The king’s decision to issue writs for a new Parliament and send commissioners to treat with William of Orange was, though, as Clarendon had recommended. Since a proclamation was under way for men to leave London to prepare for the elections, Clarendon seized hold of it to go to the prince’s camp. Clarendon Corresp., ii. 210-11.

He received a notably warm welcome when he met the Prince at Hindon on 3 Dec. having travelled down with his kinsman (the brother of his first wife Theodosia Capell), Sir Henry Capell^‡ and others. The warmth of his welcome may have encouraged expectation in Ireland that he would be restored to his lieutenancy there. Bodl. Clarendon 90, f. 2. At the beginning of December Clarendon was included in a catalogue of the nobility said to be in arms for the prince. Beinecke Lib. OSB mss 1, series II, box 4, folder 189. Though this was not accurately true, Clarendon remained in the prince’s entourage as it travelled on its way to London. He was pleased with conversations with the Prince and with the Dutch ambassador indicating that the Prince planned to do no more than he had promised in his declaration; but he met Abingdon at Salisbury, who pointed to the presence with the prince of Major Wildman and Robert Ferguson and other republicans or exclusionists; and Clarendon was disturbed by the brusque behaviour of Bentinck and by conversations with Gilbert Burnet, later bishop of Salisbury, about who might be appointed to serve in government, and who dismissed the idea of a treaty negotiation with the king. On the arrival of the king’s commissioners (among whom Clarendon was said to have been disappointed not to have been included), William appointed Clarendon, Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, and Charles Talbot, 12th earl (later duke) of Shrewsbury, as his representatives to convey messages to them. He was also put on another large commission to advise the prince on the treaty, whose vote on 8 Dec. to request the writs for summoning Parliament to be annulled Clarendon argued against, and with which the prince, to his relief, disagreed. Hatton Corresp. ii. 117; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 220-1.

News of the king’s flight and recapture reached Clarendon left Clarendon uncertain how to proceed. He was astonished by Henry Pollexfen’s suggestion that ‘the Prince of Orange had nothing to do, but in the head of his army to declare himself king’. Practically speechless, Clarendon could only note, ‘Good God bless me! what a man is this?’ Clarendon Corresp. ii. 225-6. He dined with the prince at Windsor on 16 Dec., where he found to his astonishment Bishop Lloyd talking about having ceded the government. On the following day the prince summoned a meeting of peers to decide what to do with the king; Clarendon was appalled to be amidst a discussion about placing the king effectively under restraint. It was, he wrote in his diary, ‘the most melancholy day I had ever seen in my whole life’. (It would later be rumoured, apparently maliciously, that at Windsor Clarendon had recommended the imprisonment of the king, something which Clarendon vehemently denied when it was put to him by Abingdon about a year later.) Clarendon Corresp. ii. 229-30, 286.

Over the next few days Clarendon attended Whitehall despite the crush of people trying to see the prince, and discussed sending a message to the king offering his support. His absence from London at the time of James’ first flight meant that he was not initially involved with the meetings of the provisional government but he attended the session held in the queen’s presence chamber in St James’ on 21 Dec. when he joined others in moving a vote of thanks for the prince’s declaration, but opposed adjourning to the House of Lords the following day but having failed in the House on 22 Dec., where in response to the motion to remove all papists from London he moved that an exception should be made for Catholics in the service of his old mistress, the queen dowager. Kingdom without a King, 150, 154. In his diary, he wrote that ‘nothing of moment passed.’ Following the session, he recorded dining with Rochester and Sancroft at Lambeth, with the two earls urging the archbishop to attend the House on the following Monday, ‘to which he was extremely averse: but at last we prevailed with him’. The following day (23 Dec.), Clarendon was informed by William of James’ second flight. While the prince was unable to contain his pleasure at James’ departure, Clarendon was thrown into despair. He could do little but rail, ‘Good God! what will become of this poor, distracted, and distempered nation?’; ‘it is like an earthquake’, he added. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 233, 234. At the meeting of the Lords on 24 Dec., after George Berkeley, earl of Berkeley, mentioned the king’s letter to Charles Middleton, 2nd earl of Middleton [S], Clarendon moved for it to be sent for, ‘since it will be of great consequence to know whether the king is absolutely gone, which perhaps the letter shows.’ The assurance of Godolphin that the letter would not answer the point, though, prevented it from being adopted. Clarendon also remembered having called for the prince’s declaration to be read, and for a discussion about the prince of Wales; the formal record makes no mention of this, but indicates that he contributed to the debate on calling a free Parliament. He referred to the prince’s proclamation calling for all members of the Parliaments of Charles II to attend apparently calling it a ‘legate as well as a free Parliament’. He suggested ‘as an expedient only’ that about 180 members of the Commons returned on the 16 writs that had gone out before the king’s flight might be summoned, who could then appoint further writs to be issued from the remaining constituencies. This proposal seems to be attributed just to ‘some’ in his own account. Kingdom without a King, 159, 161. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 235. Once again, Clarendon’s advice was overlooked.

By the close of the year Clarendon’s relations with Prince William had deteriorated significantly and (according to Halifax) the prince now dismissed both Clarendon and his brother Rochester as ‘knaves’. Halifax Letters, ii. 201-4; Add. 75367, ff. 25-7. His relations with some of his friends were splitting over the question of the position of the king: at dinner with Bishops Turner and Lloyd on 29 Dec., he and Turner were ‘moved’ by James’s published reasons for leaving the kingdom, but Lloyd referred to it as a ‘jesuitical masterpiece’, to Clarendon’s dismay. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 237. On New Year’s Day, though he saw the prince, he gained the distinct impression he was no longer welcome at court. Over the next few weeks, though he still gained access to the prince, particularly on Irish business (on which he was regarded as reliable by many Irish Protestants), it was on increasingly distant terms; Gilbert Burnet, visiting Clarendon on 11 Jan., told him that it was said that he was part of a cabal plotting the king’s return: Clarendon denied it, though he did not deny his sympathy with the aim. He received a similar message from Dijkvelt on 14 Jan.: in response to the envoy’s argument that James’s departure had completely altered circumstances since the prince had issued his November declaration, he told him that ‘our religion did not allow of the deposing of kings; and I believed he would find few of the Church of England would come up to it’. Ibid. 239, 243, 244, 245-6.

During these weeks, Clarendon prepared to defend his views in the Convention, clearly apprehensive of its outcome. He wrote to Abingdon on 10 Jan. 1689 urging his attendance: ‘as men of your lordship’s principles and temper are most necessary in these public assemblies, so I shall not care to be so much of any one man’s opinion as your lordship’s, knowing very well, that yours is always grounded upon the surest foundation.’ Newberry Lib. Chicago, Case ms. [E5. C 5434], Clarendon to Abingdon, 10 Jan. 1689. On 16 Jan. Nottingham, through Rochester, appealed to Clarendon to use his interest with Archbishop Sancroft to ensure his presence in the Convention also, but he was unable to persuade the primate to attend. Clarendon, with Tenison, had already on 3 Jan. tried to persuade Sancroft to see the king, and to begin making plans for religious toleration as had been outlined in the petition of the seven bishops in June; Sancroft, however, refused to do the former and referred the latter to a meeting of convocation. Nor would he, in a subsequent conversation on 15 Jan., agree to come to the Convention. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 240, 248. On 17 Jan. he harangued Princess Anne, encouraging her to take action to head off the talk of William and Mary becoming king and queen. As momentum passed from the Hyde-Nottingham grouping to that dominated by Halifax and the Whigs, Clarendon wrote to the Princess of Orange on 20 Jan. lamenting that if she had ‘been here sooner some difficulties might have been kept off.’ Outlining the various forms of government then being debated, Clarendon told her that

England is an hereditary monarchy and if the claim of succession be skipped over, all the rest will fall to pieces. The notion of the government being devolved to the people is a chimera… Miscarriages in the government may be rectified but to pluck up the foundations will bring all into confusion. CCSP, v. 686-7.

Clarendon was present at the opening of the Convention on 22 Jan. 1689. On the same day he was nominated to the committee appointed to draw up an address of thanks to the Prince of Orange. He thereafter attended on 18 days before seceding from the House. On the 23rd he was named to the standing committees and to that investigating the death of his kinsman, Essex, and on 24 Jan. he reported from the committee considering the petition of Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, requesting a stay of the sale of heirlooms by Colonel Maxwell. HMC Lords, ii. 11. During the debates in the House on 25 Jan. Clarendon and several other peers ‘opposed with great warmth’ the motion put forward by William Cavendish, 4th earl (later duke) of Devonshire, to defer considering the state of the nation to the following Tuesday. A. Simpson, ‘Notes of a Noble Lord’, EHR, lii, 92. Clarendon saw Princess Anne and Prince George on 27 Jan., and urged her again to deny the rumours that she had agreed that William and Mary be queen. He also continued to urge Sancroft’s attendance, on 28 Jan. telling him to ‘come over the bridge in case the river be unpassable’. The same day he was nominated to the committee considering what collects in the Book of Common Prayer ought to be omitted on the day of thanksgiving. Clarendon, Corresp. ii. 254-5; Bodl. Tanner 28, f. 365. The following day (29 Jan.), Clarendon and Rochester, both pressing for a regency, were among the first to speak in what proved to be a particularly ill-tempered debate on the settlement of the kingdom in the course of which Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, demanded that Clarendon should be called to the bar to answer for his assertion that the civil war had been a ‘rebellion’. Browning, Danby, i. 426-7. Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, commented on the manner in which Clarendon ‘spoke much and somewhat in peevish strain, and incensed the Prince of Orange, the more for his having gone into and so soon leaving him.’ Ailesbury, almost certainly unfairly, attributed Clarendon’s apparent change of heart to disappointment at his failure to be restored to the lieutenancy of Ireland, ‘which was the height of his ambition, and his low purse required it’. Ailesbury Mems., i. 232. At the end of the debate, Clarendon, who was appointed one of the tellers for the division, voted in favour of the motion for establishing a regency as the best method of preserving the nation. The motion was defeated by 48 to 51 (though he recorded in his diary that the margin was just two). HMC Lords, ii. 15; Clarendon corresp., ii. 256. Two days later Clarendon, again nominated a teller with Devonshire, voted against acknowledging the throne to be vacant in a committee of the whole and voted against declaring the prince and princess king and queen. WSHC, Ailesbury mss 1300/856; HMC Lords, ii. 17. According to Roger Morrice, both Hyde brothers urged the accession of Princess Mary alone instead, moving her succession ‘with great passion and impetuousness.’ Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 507-8.

On 2 Feb. Clarendon’s Oxfordshire neighbour, the firebrand John Lovelace, 3rd Baron Lovelace, attempted to present a popular petition to the House but he was instantly challenged by Clarendon and Robert Shirley, 7th Baron (later Earl) Ferrers, who argued that Lovelace had not brought the petition in correctly. Clarendon wrote in his diary that the petition was ‘from the rabble, of whom there were come great numbers this morning to Westminster, conducted or invited thither by Lord Lovelace or William Killigrew’. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 258. On 4 Feb. Clarendon was one of the managers of a conference with the Commons concerning the king’s abdication. Having reported its result, he voted against agreeing with the Commons’ use of the word ‘abdicated’. He was nominated to the committee to prepare heads for a further conference on the subject. WSHC, Ailesbury mss 1300/856. On 5 Feb. Clarendon had an angry meeting with Princess Anne and her husband at which he confronted them with the fact that she seemed to have been telling some that she accepted the offer of the throne to William and Mary, while telling him and others the opposite. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 260.

On 6 Feb. he was again appointed one of the managers of a conference with the Commons, during which he and Rochester countered the assertion of John Somers, later Baron Somers, that Richard II provided a precedent for a king abdicating his throne. The Hyde brothers argued instead that as Richard II’s abdication was the only such example and his successor, Henry IV, was later declared a usurper by Edward IV it could not justify the current situation. Life of James II, ii. 301. In the subsequent Lords’ debate, Clarendon wrote how Halifax had argued that the decision on abdication would mean that the crown had become elective for this time only; in response he queried how the crown should descend if it was not intended to make it ‘elective perpetually’. HMC Lords, ii. 18; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 261. At the close of the debate, Clarendon again voted against the use of the word ‘abdicated’ and the phrase ‘that the throne is thereby vacant’ and was dismayed by the actions of a number of his former associates who ‘under one pretence or other… were not in the House at putting the question’ thus enabling the vote to be carried by a broad margin. WSHC, Ailesbury mss 1300/856; EHR, lii, 94-5. Once again, Clarendon’s figures differ slightly from the official tally. He recorded that the vote was lost by 62 votes to 47, whereas the official count was 65 in favour and 45 against. HMC Lords, ii. 18. At the end of the day he went to dinner with Bishop Turner and wrote that it had been ‘the most dismal day I ever saw in my life’. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 262. The following day he entered his dissent at the resolution to concur with the lower House but he was unsuccessful in his efforts to marshal a second dissent at the resolution to proclaim the prince and princess king and queen. EHR, lii, 96. In spite of his clear opposition to the settlement, Clarendon was then nominated one of the peers to draw up two new oaths to replace the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, which he reported to the House on 7 February. Browning, Danby, i. 432.

Dejected, on 8 Feb. 1689 Clarendon noted in his diary that he ‘went to the House of Lords: but there was very little to do; and besides I had but little heart to take notice of any thing.’ Although his diary failed to record it, that day he reported from a further conference; but it is clear that he had by then all but resolved to retire from the House. Three days later he declared publicly his inability to take the oaths which he had had a hand in devising and ‘resolved to go no more to the House of Lords as things now stood’. The following day (12 Feb.) he left London for Swallowfield, so that he could be ‘quite alone’. Leaving his wife in London, sending him messages about the unfolding events, he undertook to return to town within a few days and on 16 Feb. he returned to London briefly ‘to gratify my friends’. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 262, 263; Bodl. Tanner 28, f. 348. Clarendon took the opportunity of his retreat from London to offer some justification for his position to his niece, the newly proclaimed Queen Mary. Insisting that ‘the opinions I have been of in our late transactions, were not hastily or rashly taken up, but upon the most mature deliberation’, Clarendon argued that ‘it was the prince’s declaration which gained him the hearts (generally speaking) of the whole kingdom, but there are very many of the best men, whose consciences would not give them leave to come into the measures which seem to have been since taken.’ Acknowledging himself to be one of those, he concluded by asking only for ‘your pity rather than your displeasure.’ Bodl. ms Clarendon 90, f. 9.

Clarendon resolved not to take the oaths after talking to Sancroft on 28 Feb., puzzling over Bishop Lloyd’s ability to swallow them the following day. Urged on by Bishop Turner, Clarendon resolved on voluntary exile and appears to have approached Nottingham to secure a pass to travel abroad. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 266-8. It was not forthcoming and in May he was one of a number of peers who had not yet taken the oaths summoned to attend the House on 6 June. Add. 17677 II, ff. 79-80; Royal Society, ms 70, pp. 76-7. Rochester advised his brother to leave town, as did Lord Wharton. Clarendon noted in his diary on 1 June how he had received word from John Cecil, 5th earl of Exeter, that ‘he would not take the oaths, and that he would do as I did.’ That evening Nottingham also cautioned Clarendon to stay out of town and convey his excuses to the House rather than present himself and refuse to take the oaths. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 277-8. Accordingly, Clarendon wrote to the Lords the following day, desiring to be excused so that he could attend to his affairs at Cornbury. HMC Lords, ii. 114. The letter was read out on 6 June and no further action taken for the time being. Later that year, Clarendon was put out as custos rotulorum of Oxfordshire. In May, Halifax was said to have talked in Privy Council about the revival of the queen dowager’s suit against him, though when Clarendon and he met in the autumn Halifax pressed him to return to Parliament and made professions of kindness to him. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 276, 291. Clarendon’s diary thereafter describe a largely humdrum existence mostly at Swallowfield, which he started to rebuild, and Cornbury, with occasional visits to London and Oxford. He was widely suspected, however, of continued dabbling in clerical and Jacobite politics.

Non-juror, 1690-1709

The Revolution caused severe strains within Clarendon’s circle. On 7 Jan. 1690 he dined with his old friends, Bishop Lloyd of St Asaph, Francis Turner and Thomas Tenison, later archbishop of Canterbury, but the evening descended into a furious argument between Clarendon, Lloyd and Tenison over the philosophy of non-resistance, which concluded with Clarendon angrily dismissing Lloyd’s argument in favour of accepting the new regime: ‘if he preached such doctrine, he should not preach to me.’ Although Clarendon found the bishop’s resolution unconscionable, he had no difficulty in advising his friend Abingdon to equivocate. At a dinner in February, Abingdon lamented the course the Revolution had taken and suggested resigning his lieutenancy of Oxfordshire: Clarendon advised him to keep his post rather than allow it to go to Lovelace. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 300, 303. Clarendon also appears to have found no contradiction in supporting his son’s continued involvement in Parliament: the same month he sought Abingdon’s assistance in securing Cornbury’s return for Wiltshire in the forthcoming elections. In return he promised his own support for Abingdon’s son, Montagu Venables Bertie styled Lord Norreys, later 2nd earl of Abingdon, at Berkshire. Newberry Lib. Chicago, Case ms. [E5. C 5434], Clarendon to Abingdon 15 Feb. 1690.

Clarendon stood bail for Colonel Lundie, the commander of the Londonderry garrison suspected of having planned to surrender the city, on 12 February. The following few weeks was dominated by electoral business. On 14 Feb. Clarendon sent his agent Thomas Apreece to ‘look after my concerns’ at Christchurch, where Francis Gwyn and William Ettrick were standing on his recommendation in opposition to Winchester’s candidates Hooper and Thomas Dore^‡. Although Clarendon’s interest prevailed in the borough and Gwyn and Ettrick were returned, Dore and Hooper petitioned on 28 Mar. and at regular intervals until November 1691 when their petition was finally withdrawn. In March 1690, Cornbury sent word that he was facing greater opposition than he had expected in Wiltshire, requiring Clarendon to despatch another agent into the north of the county ‘to see what friends I could make there.’ The election for Oxfordshire also developed into a heated contest, though Clarendon’s friend, Sir Robert Jenkinson and Abingdon’s son, Norreys, were eventually returned in opposition to Sir John Cope^‡ and Thomas Wheate^‡. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 305-6; HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 233, 467-8.

Clarendon again refused to take the oaths in March. His retirement from London attracted the incredulity of his former secretary Sir Paul Rycaut, who wrote to him from his diplomatic posting in Hamburg, ‘I cannot but wonder at your lordship’s retirement to Cornbury at a time when you can have no company and conversation either in your own family or by your neighbours.’ Bodl. ms Eng. lett. c. 8, f. 3. More attuned to his brother’s predicament, Rochester wrote in April concerning the prospect of Clarendon braving London. He conceded that he had ‘no very good reason against it, for there never was or can be less notice taken of the absent lords, not so much as once any mention or motion made concerning them’ but he feared that in spite of appearances, ‘there is something more intended against them than appears.’ Glasgow Univ. Lib. ms Hunter 73, lviii. Rochester told him in May of an interview he had had with the king (whom Clarendon continued to refer to as the prince), who told him that he was aware that Clarendon

had been very busy in caballing against him; that he was satisfied I had been so, and could show it under my hand; that he had been moved to except me out of the Act of Grace, but that he would not do it, for the Queen’s sake; that I would do well to be careful, for it would be no jesting matter. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 314.

The following month (June) Clarendon was one of a number of peers arrested on suspicion of treason and conveyed to the Tower. Sir Henry Capell had attempted to speak up for him in council but had been overruled by the queen who insisted that ‘there was too much against him to leave him out of the list.’ Clarendon Corresp. ii. 319; Dalrymple Mems. iii. 74-6 (app. to bk. v.). On 26 June he appeared at King’s Bench to request to be bailed or tried but he remained incarcerated until August when he was released on bail in the absence of any positive evidence against him. In October he appeared at King’s Bench on the first day of term and was continued on recognizance. Verney ms mic. M636/44, J. to Sir R. Verney, 20 Aug. 1690; Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 65, 90; HMC Le Fleming, 300.

Clarendon may have travelled to the continent in October 1690 though it must have been a very brief visit. HMC Finch, ii. 467. In December he wrote to the duchess of Beaufort excusing his inability to assist her with a case before the House, though he insisted that he would not be ‘backward in soliciting my friends’ and was confident that Rochester would use his interest on her behalf. By the middle of the month he was able to celebrate being granted his full liberty once more. WSHC, Ailesbury mss 1300/783, 784. It proved to be a brief respite. The king’s warning and his relatively brief period of imprisonment failed to deter Clarendon from communicating with the exiled court and in January 1691 he was arrested again on a charge of treason for his involvement in the plot co-ordinated by Richard Grahme, Viscount Preston [S]. According to information later provided by Matthew Crone, Clarendon was involved in co-ordinating a landing in the west country. Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 153-4; HMC Portland, iii. 456; HMC Le Fleming, 309-10; Add. 70081, newsletter, 5 Jan. 1691; HMC Finch, iii. 321-3. Although Clarendon had initially benefited from his connection to the royal family there now appeared a serious desire to see him punished for his obstinacy. Macaulay noted that ‘a party among the Whigs’ were vocal in calling for Clarendon’s head and this time his imprisonment was far stricter. Macaulay, History, iv. 21. In February he was granted leave to exercise in the Tower’s grounds but he was kept in close confinement until July when he was granted permission to live at Cornbury under house arrest for the sake of his health on a bond of £10,000, for which Rochester and Lovelace provided sureties of £5,000 each. CSP Dom. 1690-1, pp. 255, 433; Bodl. Carte 79, f. 378; HMC Finch, iii. 136. He appears to have owed his eventual release largely to his brother’s earnest campaigning on his behalf. Via Nottingham, Rochester also pleaded that the king would not ‘suffer him to be tried, if there be no other witnesses against him but pardoned men, whose testimony… is indeed strictly legal but not very credible.’ HMC Finch, iii. 114, 134. In any case the eagerness to proceed against Clarendon had diminished by the summer of 1691. Lack of evidence may have been one reason. Carmarthen (as Danby had since become) had advised shortly after Clarendon’s arrest that the king should defer Preston’s execution, as he was ‘the only witness both against my Lord Clarendon, the bishop of Ely (Turner) and Penn’. The House’s concern for one of its own seems to have been another. Clarendon’s release from the Tower coincided with a resolution not to try him on Preston’s evidence while the House was in recess, which as Godolphin explained to the king, stemmed in part from ‘the vote in the House of Lords in the last session that a peer should not be tried but in Parliament.’ Nottingham also stressed that, while there were two witnesses against Clarendon, the consensus was that it would be ‘best to delay Lord Clarendon’s trial, as many peers would probably decline attendance, which would be prejudicial to his majesty’s service.’ Browning, Danby, ii. 192; CSP Dom. 1691-2, p. 354; HMC Finch, iii. 128. In November, Clarendon was finally bailed with Rochester, Francis Holles, 2nd Baron Holles, Sir William Turner and Sir John Parsons providing sureties of £500 each. Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 305-6; Add. 70081, newsletter, 14 Nov. 1691. At the end of January 1692 he was discharged and retreated to Swallowfield. Later that year, in May, he was also freed from his ongoing legal tussle with the queen dowager. Rycaut thought that Clarendon owed his change of fortune to Queen Catharine’s ‘great generosity’, though he was certain that the case had only been contrived because of ‘ill offices’ the work of ‘those who were neither friends to your lordship nor firm to their own words.’ Bodl. ms Eng. lett. c. 8, ff. 5, 11; Luttrell, Brief Relation, ii. 343.

In spite of two periods of incarceration and (on the second occasion) a very real danger of his being forced to stand trial for his life, for the remainder of King William’s reign Clarendon continued to correspond with Jacobite agents, providing detailed information to assist a possible invasion. A letter of December 1693 from Sir George Barclay purported to convey Clarendon’s advice to the exiled King James ‘that, at any time within three months, your majesty may make a descent with success’ and warning against further delay as the Channel would be ‘unguarded all winter’. Macpherson, Original Papers, i. 463, 465; Bodl. Carte 181, ff. 529-30. Such activities no doubt persuaded Princess Anne that it was not appropriate to allow her uncle to wait on her at the opening of 1695. In the wake of the Assassination Plot, Clarendon’s name was again mentioned in examinations concerning those in contact with the exiled court and he was one of a number of peers for whom warrants were made out for their arrest. Lexington Pprs. 44-5; CSP Dom. 1696, p. 110; HEHL. HM 30659 (58).

Despite his seclusion from the House, Clarendon continued to take a keen interest in parliamentary affairs. In the elections of 1695 he maintained his interest in Berkshire and in Oxford. He also wrote to Thomas Turner, president of Corpus Christi College, in October to convey his satisfaction that ‘the elections for the university are so well over’ and hoped that those ‘for the county will succeed as well for our friends.’ Add. 72533, ff. 104-5, 155, Add. 18675, ff. 42-3; Bodl. Rawl. Letters 91, f. 284. If his political interest endured in spite of his situation, proscription from office worsened dramatically Clarendon’s already dire financial predicament. In March 1697 his personal affairs were further complicated by the beginning of a legal dispute with Lady Cornbury’s family. Bodl. ms Eng. lett. c. 8, ff. 50-52. By November, he faced the prospect of being turned out of Swallowfield, while his son and daughter-in-law were said to be ‘starving’. CSP Dom. 1697, p. 486. This bleak situation led to his brother, Rochester, entering into negotiations with Shrewsbury for the sale of Cornbury, though Clarendon remained reluctant to make away with his paternal estate and by the autumn of 1698 negotiations with Shrewsbury had broken down. HMC Buccleuch, ii. 613-14. Clarendon still attempted to make use of his interest on behalf of his acquaintance and in May 1698 he provided a letter of recommendation on behalf of Sunderland’s son-in-law, Donogh Maccarty, 4th earl of Clancarty [I], a noted Jacobite, who had been imprisoned in the Tower but eventually granted permission to reside abroad with his countess following a highly publicized scandal. Bodl. ms Eng. lett. c. 8, f. 65. Clarendon was reported to be dangerously sick in April 1699. Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 503. His indisposition perhaps compelled him to accept his brother’s advice and in early 1700 Cornbury was conveyed secretly to Rochester. That summer Clarendon was further shaken by the death of his countess, a loss that left him ‘most miserable’. Bagot mss, Levens Hall, Weymouth to James Grahme, 21 July 1700; Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, D3549/2/1/10, pp. 31-2; Worcs. RO, Lloyd pprs., 970.5:523/31-2.

Clarendon’s hopes for his rehabilitation at court on the succession of Queen Anne were dashed as it was reported that his request for an audience had been turned down until such time as he qualified himself by taking the oaths. Add. 61416, ff. 9-12; HMC Rutland, ii. 169. There were rumours that Clarendon, along with a number of other nonjurors, had complied and that preferment would swiftly follow. Add. 70073-4, newsletter, 21 Feb. 1702; Verney ms mic. M636/51, Cary Gardiner to Sir John Verney, 26 Mar. 1702; HMC Rutland, ii. 170. These proved unfounded but the following year the queen agreed to provide her uncle with a pension of £1,500 per annum. Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 282. Clarendon was listed as a Jacobite in an assessment of the peerage of April 1705. Stowe 224, ff. 330-1. Two years later he sought the assistance of Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford and Mortimer, in procuring him the housekeeper’s lodgings at Somerset House, in which Clarendon claimed to have been granted a life interest while a member of the household of Queen Catharine. Add. 70293, Clarendon to R. Harley, 9 Sept. 1707. His continuing financial problems finally resulted in Clarendon Park and the manor of Christchurch being offered for sale early in 1707. Although Clarendon found a willing purchaser in Lady Bathurst, a search of the records of the courts of queen’s bench, common pleas and exchequer at her behest revealed an unresolved case dating back to 1675 involving a debt of £1,000 owing to Sir Thomas Morley; Lady Bathurst refused to part with the purchase money until the issue was resolved. Clarendon was compelled to seek an order from chancery to subpoena Lady Morley to settle the matter. The estate ultimately passed to Peter Mews, nephew of the former bishop of Winchester, the following year. TNA, C5/598/11; HP Commons 1690-1715, ii. 234.

Clarendon suffered ‘a fit of my old distemper the strangury’ in the summer of 1707. Add. 70293, Clarendon to R. Harley, 2 July 1707. An assessment of the peerage of the following year listed Clarendon as a Tory, but by then he was almost entirely marginalized. Even so as late as April 1709 he was appealed to by the mayor and corporation of Reading to employ his interest with the queen on behalf of one James West. Add. 61618, f. 195. He died in October of that year following an asthmatic attack brought on by a short illness. Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 46, f. 155; Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 506. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Administration of his estate was granted to Alexander Denton in May 1713, though a further grant of administration was made to Robert Ord in March 1748 as a result of a case brought by Henry Howard* [632], 4th earl of Carlisle, concerning an unresolved dispute of 1688. Clarendon’s dissolute son, Cornbury, at the time of his father’s death still incarcerated in a debtors’ prison in New York, succeeded to the peerage as 3rd earl of Clarendon.