HYDE, Edward (1661-1723)

A man of ‘slender abilities, loose principles, and violent temper’, Clarendon succeeded to the peerage while languishing in gaol in New York. Macaulay, Hist. of England, iii. 1147. Long before this he had proved a severe worry to his family and in 1690 his father, the 2nd earl, had voiced his fears concerning his son’s demeanour, exhorting ‘God send he does not at one time or other run himself into some great inconvenience by his passion.’ Clarendon Corresp. ii. 301. Cornbury (as he was styled before his succession) had accepted office as a colonial governor to escape his financial woes in England. He had then proceeded to run up further debts and on his dismissal from the governorships of New York and New Jersey in the summer of 1708 he was imprisoned by his creditors, encouraged (as he claimed) by his political enemies. Add. 15895, ff. 339–40.

Cornbury had distinguished himself during the Revolution when he was one of the first army officers to desert his kinsman King James II for William of Orange, a defection that caused his loyalist father enormous distress. Cheshire ALS, Cholmondeley mss, DCH/K/3/8; Bodl. Carte 130, f. 303; HMC Hastings, ii. 190, 191; MacPherson, Orig. Pprs. i. 160. Although his defection ought to have been welcomed by the invaders, Cornbury’s action appears to have been greeted with undisguised hostility by some of William’s inner grouping. HMC Leeds, 26. As a prominent member of the Cockpit circle and with a poor reputation as a military commander, Cornbury was subsequently stripped of his regiment by the new regime. J. Childs, The Army, James II, and the Glorious Revolution, 40. A recommendation by Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, that he might be appointed envoy to Spain had no effect and, having joined his father in supporting Princess Anne’s position in the succession over that of William III, he was soon after put out of his remaining office as master of the horse to Prince George of Denmark as well. Add. 32681, ff. 317–18.

Cornbury failed to secure a seat at Reading in the election to the Convention but, following a hard-fought contest, he was returned for Wiltshire, where his family and its allies exercised considerable interest. HMC Leeds, 202; HMC Portland, viii; 27–28; HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 133, 437. In February 1689 he narrowly avoided death in a duel fought with the lieutenant-colonel of his regiment, being spared by ‘the mere mercy of the latter’. Morrice, Entring Bk, iv. 525. He remained deeply unpopular on both sides of the political divide. In spite of his father’s decision not to acknowledge William and Mary as king and queen, Cornbury was one of those excepted from the exiled James II’s general pardon. He also continued to be treated with deep suspicion by the Williamite regime and in 1692 he was falsely implicated in Robert Young’s Jacobite plot. Excluded from office, by 1697 Cornbury’s financial problems were extreme, his situation exacerbated by an unprofitable marriage, which his father had opposed vigorously, and by his falling out with his uncle, Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester. Clarendon Corresp. 180-1. In November, Cornbury and his wife were reported to be ‘starving’. CSP Dom. 1697, p. 486. Earlier that same year he had been compelled to apply to Sir William Trumbull^‡ for a loan of just £7. HMC Downshire, i. 762. A report of early 1698 noted that Cornbury ‘for some time past’ had been driven to lock up his wife, though it was not clear whether this was owing to poverty or suspicion that he was being cuckolded. CSP Dom. 1698, p. 36. To help alleviate his state of abject penury, that year he was granted a royal bounty of £260 and a pension of £10 a week. HP Commons, 1690–1715, iv. 462; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 411.

Cornbury was provided with a further royal handout in March 1701 when he was granted Petersham Lodge in Surrey, worth an estimated £40 a year in rental income. In June he was appointed to the governorship of New York, vacant following the death of Richard Coote^‡, earl of Bellomont [I], which brought with it an annual pension of £600. Before he was able to take up his post he was arrested in August at the suit of a mercer (perhaps coincidentally) for arrears of £600 but was released shortly afterwards and urged by the lords justices to embark for New York as soon as possible. HP Commons, 1690–1715, iv. 463; CSP Dom. 1700–2, pp. 363, 430.

Cornbury finally took up his post in New York the following May (1702) and in September 1703 the governorship of New Jersey was added to his responsibilities. He quickly caused a stir in American society by his eccentric behaviour, the most notorious expression of which was his reputed insistence on conducting business in female attire. It was said that he argued that as the queen’s representative it was appropriate that he should appear as the queen. The identification of a portrait from the period as a depiction of him in a woman’s gown and headdress has caused considerable controversy. WMQ, 3rd ser. li. 106–18; P. Bonomi, The Lord Cornbury scandal: the pols. of reputation in British America, 13-18. Rather more seriously, he failed to curb the factionalism in the colony and added to it by establishing a clique of his own. HP Commons, 1690–1715, iv. 463.

By 1707 Cornbury had caused sufficient irritation that the council of New Jersey drew up a list of grievances against him and in September of the following year New York followed suit. S. Smith, History of the Colony of Nova-Caearia, or New Jersey (1765), 352. The accusations against him ranged from embezzlement to the taking of bribes, charges that enabled the new Whig administration in England to put him out and replace him as governor with John Lovelace, 4th Baron Lovelace. Add. 15895, ff. 345, 347, 363. Cornbury’s difficulties were compounded when he was thrown into gaol at the suit of Stephen de Lancey, a French merchant, and several other creditors. Although Cornbury claimed that de Lancey ‘would never have done it’ without the encouragement of certain members of the colonial administration, one of his agents found the aggrieved creditor ‘in such a passion on the ill usage he says he has received, that more I spoke [the] more I found him ulcerated’. Bodl. Clarendon 102, f. 195. Cornbury complained bitterly at the ‘lies’ that were being circulated about him by several of the colonial officers. Chief among them was Roger Mompesson^‡, who had been promoted chief justice of New York and New Jersey through Cornbury’s interest but whom Cornbury now considered to be ‘the most ungrateful rascal to me that ever was’. Add. 15895, f. 339. Cornbury also contested that the true level of his debts had been greatly exaggerated and that rather than the £10,333 for which he had been arrested, the actual sum was £3,814 14s. 11d. In addition, he stressed that he was owed in excess of £4,500. Add. 15895, f. 349. Writing to his father in March 1709, he appealed for his aid (and that of his uncle, Rochester) in securing his return to England so that he could face his accusers. He lamented that, ‘if what I proposed to your lordship last fall, which was that I might be made a baron of England, had been done, all the trouble I have already undergone would have been saved’. Add. 15895, ff. 339–40.

Cornbury’s desire to be made a baron may have been connected with the death of his wife in August 1706 and the succession of their son, Edward Hyde, to the barony of Clifton. He was evidently also eager to acquire the protection from arrest for debt associated with privilege of peerage. The death of his father in October 1709 transformed the new earl’s situation, enabling him to claim his privilege as a peer and secure his release from gaol. Even so, it was a further year before he was able to return to England. Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 46, f. 155; Bodl. Clarendon 102, f. 205; Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 647.

Clarendon at last took his seat in the House at the opening of the new Parliament on 25 Nov. 1710, after which he attended for more than 90 per cent of all sitting days. The following month, he was again the subject of royal generosity when the queen granted him lodgings in Somerset House. For the remainder of Queen Anne’s life he received annual handouts of between £200 and £2,000. Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 668; Jones, Party and management, 164; Pols in Age of Anne, 439. On 5 Feb. 1711 he registered his dissent at the resolution to reject the general naturalization act. Most importantly, Clarendon rapidly emerged as one of the foremost committee chairmen in the House, overseeing a vast amount of business. Nicolson, London Diaries, 37; see also J.C. Sainty, The Origin of the Office of Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords (HLRO, memo. lii). Between March 1711 and the close of the session in June he reported from at least six select committees as well as chairing at least five committees of the whole House. He was also active on the committee for the Journal. In addition to establishing himself as committee stalwart, Clarendon appears to have been eager to consolidate his political position by attempting to align himself with Robert Harley, earl of Oxford and Mortimer. He was one of a clutch of prominent Tories to be spoken of as likely recipients of office in Oxford’s administration and in May it was rumoured that Clarendon’s daughter, Lady Theodosia Hyde, was to marry Oxford’s son, Edward Harley* , Lord Harley (later 2nd earl of Oxford). In both cases Clarendon was disappointed. Holmes, ‘Great Ministry’, 131; Add. 70149, Lady A. Pye to A. Harley, 16 May 1711.

Clarendon attended five of the prorogation days between July and November 1711, on one of which (9. Oct.) he introduced William Legge, as earl of Dartmouth. Clarendon took his seat at the opening of the second session on 7 December. Present for approximately 95 per cent of all sitting days, on 8 Dec. he subscribed the protest at the resolution to present the address to the queen containing the ‘no peace without Spain’ motion and two days later he again supported the ministry over the peace. He was forecast as being in favour of permitting James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], to sit by virtue of his British dukedom of Brandon on 19 December. The following day he voted against barring Scots peers from sitting by virtue of post-Union British peerages, subscribing the protest when the motion to bar them was carried.

Again active as a committee chairman, between 22 Dec, when he chaired the committee of the whole considering the land tax bill, and the close of the session he reported from at least 16 committees of the whole House as well as 14 select committees and three sessions of the committee for privileges. On 17 Jan. 1712 he moved an address expressing the Lords’ concern at the queen’s indisposition, which, following some procedural quibbles that he had made the motion ‘out of order’ for which he apologized, being ‘not well acquainted with the order of the House’, was ‘agreed to readily’. Wentworth Pprs. 253. The following month, Clarendon chaired the committee for privileges considering the ongoing dispute between the duke of Hamilton and Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, over the inheritance of the Gerard estate, and on 8 Feb. he reported to the House the committee resolution to uphold Mohun’s claim to privilege. PA, HL/PO/DC/CP/3, p. 176. Absent from the House briefly from 19 to 26 Feb. on 21 Feb. Clarendon registered his proxy with his Wiltshire neighbour Montagu Venables Bertie, 2nd earl of Abingdon, which was vacated by his resumption of his seat. Following his return to the House he resumed his heavy committee workload, chairing a further case before the privileges committee in mid-April. Ibid. pp. 178–9.

Still eager to rescue his precarious financial situation, in April 1712 Clarendon appears to have approached Oxford about appointment to the admiralty commission, hoping to secure the rights to certain perquisites from which he anticipated being able to secure £1,000 a year. Add. 70293, Clarendon to Oxford, 21 Apr. 1712. Luttrell had reported Clarendon’s appointment as first commissioner of the admiralty in January 1712 but there is no record of his being admitted to the board at this time. Clarendon’s approach to Oxford seems to have provoked the ire of the lord chancellor, Simon Harcourt, Baron (later Viscount) Harcourt, who was presumably referring to this when he wrote to Oxford in November scoffing that ‘the proposal of £1,000 p.a. to Lord Clarendon’ was ‘ridiculous’. HMC Portland, v. 247.

Clarendon was struck with further misfortune in February 1713 with the death of his heir, Clifton (usually styled Viscount Cornbury), who died as a result ‘of a fever got by a surfeit of drinking’. Wentworth Pprs. 314. Clarendon accounted his loss a ‘very great misfortune, a load of grief too heavy for man to bear without the assistance of the mercy of God’. Add. 70293, Clarendon to Oxford, 13 Feb. 1713. Cornbury was buried at the queen’s expense in Westminster Abbey. Wentworth Pprs. 321. His death left Clarendon with one remaining child, Lady Theodosia Hyde, who now attracted attention as the heiress to her mother’s Kent estates centred on Cobham Hall. One rumour suggested that John Ashburnham, 3rd Baron (later earl of) Ashburnham, ‘likes her’, but the reporter was uncertain ‘whether enough to think of marrying’. Ibid. 322. She subsequently married John Bligh (later earl of Darnley [I]) with a £10,000 portion provided for her by the queen. Post Boy, 25–27 Aug. 1713.

Despite his loss, Clarendon returned to the House for the opening of the third session on 9 April. In advance of the session, Oxford had listed him as a peer to be canvassed, and in March, Jonathan Swift listed him as someone likely to support the ministry. Present on each day of the session, he continued to be active as a committee chairman, reporting from four committees of the whole and six select committees in the course of the session, among them that considering the bill enabling his late wife’s kinsman Henry O’ Brien* [1322], 7th earl of Thomond [I] (later Viscount Tadcaster), to convey freehold leases on his estates. LJ xix. 530, 535, 541, 548–9, 564, 579, 610, 612; HP Commons, 1690–1715, v. 2. On 1 June Clarendon acted as one of the tellers for the division arising from the Junto-backed attempt to dissolve the union with Scotland and on 5 June he was one of the tellers for the division whether to read the malt bill a second time. On 13 June Oxford estimated him as being in favour of the eighth and ninth articles of the treaty of commerce.

Clarendon took his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 16 Feb. 1714 and proceeded to attend on approximately 79 per cent of all sitting days. Again active as a committee chairman, in the course of the session he reported from six select committees and six committees of the whole. On 4 Apr. he was present at the meeting of the committee for the Journal chaired by William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, and on 14 Apr. he acted as one of the tellers for the division over whether to commit the House of Commons officers’ bill. Nicolson, London Diaries, 567. Two days later he proposed an address to the queen thanking her for the conclusion of peace with Spain:

since no objection can be raised against the Spanish Treaty, we should address her majesty, to return her our most humble thanks, for having, by a safe, honourable, and advantageous peace with Spain, delivered these nations from a long, consuming land war; and to desire her majesty, notwithstanding any obstructions that may be thrown in her way, to proceed to the settlement of Europe, according to the principles laid down in her majesty’s most gracious speech. Timberland, ii. 420.

Clarendon was the subject of rumours of an imminent marriage with a wealthy Widow Parker towards the close of the month, probably Anne Parker, widow of Hugh Parker^‡, the former member for Evesham, who was said to have £1,000 in jointure and the prospect of a further £20,000 from her father, John Smith. HMC Portland, v. 427. In May he was assessed by Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, as being in favour of the Schism bill, and on 4 June he was one of the tellers for the division over the rejection of the Dissenters’ petition concerning the measure. On 11 June he acted as one of the tellers again for the division over whether to adjourn into a Committee of the Whole for further consideration of the schism bill.

Later the same month, Clarendon was appointed envoy to Hanover. The queen’s personal intervention was an important factor in his selection for the post and she saw to it that he was awarded £500 for equipage and £5 a day for expenses out of the privy purse (not the derisory £50 for equipage as reported in a contemporary newsletter). Gregg, Queen Anne, 385–6; CTB xxviii, pt. 2, p. 296; HMC Portland, v. 456. The choice of Clarendon was widely regarded as a triumph for Henry St. John* [355], Viscount Bolingbroke, whose nominee he was, over Oxford, who had proposed Henry Paget, Baron Burton (later earl of Uxbridge). MacPherson, Orig. Pprs. ii. 626; Wentworth Pprs. 387; Holmes, ‘Great Ministry’, 385. Certainly this was an impression to which Oxford was happy to give credence and he confided to Kreienberg that ‘he knew very well his lordship [Clarendon] would not speak well of him at Hanover: a certain sign that it is Bolingbroke who sent him’. MacPherson, Orig. Pprs. ii. 632.

Clarendon’s appointment met with a mixed reception. The Hanoverian envoy, Johann Kaspar von Bothmer, lamented the selection of ‘the earl of Clarendon and his Jacobitish secretary’ and (making reference to his inglorious behaviour in America) proceeded to criticize him as:

a selfish and presumptuous fool, and a fool to such a degree, that being appointed governor by the queen in the Indies [sic], he thought it was necessary for him, in order to represent her majesty, to dress himself as a woman, which he actually did. Ibid. ii. 626.

On 22 June 1714 Clarendon registered his proxy with William Paston, 2nd earl of Yarmouth, and the following month he set out on his embassy. Add. 70033, f. 25. His tenure of office proved short-lived and his future prospects were blasted by the queen’s death on 1 August. Clarendon professed that the news ‘struck me dumb’, bringing as it did ‘an account of the only misfortune I had to fear, it being not only the loss of the best queen, the best mistress, and the best friend, but the only friend I had in the world’. Add. 22211, f. 55. His fears for the future were not misplaced. Although George I assured him of his friendship and Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford, insisted that ‘honest men will be uppermost in this reign and then your lordship can’t fail of being distinguished’, as a creature of Bolingbroke he was ignored by the other British emissaries paying their respects to the new monarch and faced returning to England with little hope of employment under the new regime. HMC Portland, v. 489; Add. 22211, f. 57; Add. 70070, newsletter, 14 Aug. 1714. Poor health delayed him in his journey home. Once back, despite the confident rumours, his marriage with Widow Parker (‘a great fortune and a lady of a singular merit’) also failed to come to fruition. Add. 22211, f. 67; HMC Portland, v. 484.

In spite of the predictions of his imminent loss of employment, in January 1715 Clarendon was included in a list of those Tories still in office. Add. 47028, f. 7. Although he was appointed to no further significant office of state, he continued to play an important role as one of the most active chairmen of committees in Parliament during the remainder of his career. This will be considered more fully in the next phase of this work. Said to be very ill towards the close of January 1723, Clarendon attended for the final time two months later, on 26 March. Daily Post, 21 Jan. 1723. On 30 Mar. he composed his will and he died the following day (or early in the morning of 1 Apr.) at his lodgings in Chelsea. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, the cost of his funeral amounting to £170. TNA, PROB 5/2252. Clarendon had never been able to restore the family finances. Thus, all his children having predeceased him, in his will he bequeathed what little remained of his estate (‘so inconsiderable that I should not have mentioned it but that it should go in the following manner’) to his grandson Edward Bligh^†, Baron Clifton (later earl of Darnley [I]), and his cousin Henry Hyde* [170], 2nd earl of Rochester. The latter succeeded him in the peerage as 4th earl of Clarendon.