join his Master at Bruges.* There he entered into a negotiation with his Holiness the Pope for his aid, upon principles sufficiently liberal; for, discouraging the hope of the King's conversion, he intimated his desire to put the Roman Catholics in the same condition with his other subjects; and thus concluded, "You know well, that though the King hath in himself power to pardon and dispense with the execution of laws, yet that to the Repeal of them there must be the consent of others, and therefore the less discourse there is of it the more easily it will be done; and it is no small prejudice the passion and unskilfulness of some Catholics bring to their own hopes, which must be compassed with gravity and order.Ӡ

But the negotiation least creditable to Hyde, was that which he carried on with Sexby, the enthusiast who had published the famous pamphlet, entitled "Killing no Murder;" and who, though he required a dispensation from the ceremony of kneeling to Charles when he came over to Bruges, had made no secret of his intention to assassinate Cromwell, as an act for which he expected to be applauded by men and rewarded by Heaven.

After Hyde had been some months at Bruges, an occurrence took place which materially altered his nominal rank. and precedence. It was suggested in council, that [A. D. 1658.] as Charles was now formally recognised as King of England by Spain, and was entering into a regular treaty, offensive and defensive, with that country, it would be proper that his own Court should assume more the aspect of royalty, and that he should have a Lord High Chancellor. There was only one person that could be named for this distinction. Clarendon very affectedly and hypocritically pretends that he urgently declined the office when it was offered to him, "giving many reasons besides his own unfitness, when there was no need of such an officer, or, indeed, any use of the Great Seal till the King should come into England; and that his Majesty found some ease in being without such an officer; that he was not troubled with those suits which he would be if the Seal were in the hands of a proper officer to be used, since every body would be then importuning the King for the grant of offices, honours, and lands, which would give him great vexation to refuse, and do him as great mischief by granting." We are asked to believe that the King not only initiated, but vigorously carried through the measure, and now said, would deal truly and freely with him; that the principal reason which he had alleged against receiving the Seal, was the greatest reason that disposed him to confer it upon him. Thereupon he pulled let

he

These distresses probably furnished the hint for one of the chapters of Addison's "Annals of the Reign of the Pretender," the son of James II." Anno Regni 4 ° He ordered the Lord High Treasurer to pay off the debts of the Crown, which had been contracted since his accession to the throne; particularly a milk score of three years' stamling."-Freeholder, No. 36.

† Clar. Pap. iii. 291.

ters out of his pocket, which he received lately from Paris, for the grant of several reversions in England of offices and lands; one whereof was of the Queen's house and lands of Oatlands, to the same man who had purchased it from the State; who would willingly have paid a good sum of money to that person who was to procure such a confirmation of his title; the draught whereof was prepared at London, upon confidence that it would have the Seal presently put to it; which being in the King's hand, none need, as they thought, to be privy to the secret. His Majesty told him also of many other importunities with which he was every day disgusted, and that he saw no other remedy to give himself ease, than to put the Seal out of his own keeping into such hands as would not be importuned, and would help him to deny. And, therefore, he conjured the Chancellor to receive the trust, with many gracious promises of his favour and protection. Whereupon the Earl of Bristol and Secretary Nicholas using likewise their persuasion, he submitted to the King's pleasure; who delivered the Seal to him in the Christmas time in the year 1657.”

I must nevertheless be permitted to doubt whether, in the absence of all other lawyers, the King, or any human being about the Court of Bruges, would have ever thought of the office of Chancellor, or recollected that there was in existence such a bauble as the Great Seal, which had lain neglected in the bottom of an old trunk ever since it was taken from Lord Keeper Herbert at Paris,—if Hyde himself, now beginning to see a better prospect of the King's recall, and anxious that, when that event arrived, he should have no competitor for the office of Chancellor, had not deemed this a convenient opportunity for securing it and had not indirectly contrived that it should be offered to him.*

The exact day of the appointment is fixed by the following entry in the register in the Council office :

66

Att the Court att Bruges, the thirteenth day of Jany. 1658, Present, His Majestie. [JAN. 13.] "Duke of York.

st. n.

"Lord Licut. of Ireland (Ormond.) "Mr. Secretary Nicholas.

"Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer.

"His Majestie declared his resolution to leave his Greate Seale in custody of an officer, and therefore had made choice of Sir Edward Hyde, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to be Lord Chancellor of England, unto whom he forthwith delivered the Greate Seale, and commanded him to be sworn; who took the oath of

* He evidently assigns a reason that could have no real connection with the transaction.-" Sir Edward Herbert, who was the last Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, being lately dead at Paris." The Great Seal had been taken from Herbert on removal of the Court from Paris in 1654. But this statement has misled almost all writers who have noticed the subject, to state that Herbert continued Lord Keeper as long as he lived, and that it was on the vacancy occasioned by his death that Hyde was appointed.

supremacy and allegiance upon his knee at the board, and Mr. Secretary Nicholas gave him the oath of Lord Chancellor of England, and then he took his place by his Majesty's command."

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

CONTINUATION OF THE LIFE OF CLARENDON TILL THE RESTORATION OF CHARLES II.

THE new Lord Chancellor, instead of proceeding in state to Westmister Hall, attended by nobles and Judges,

and making an inaugural speech before an admiring [A. D. 1658.] crowd in the Court of Chancery, or explaining, in the presence of the Sovereign, and the Lords, and the Commons, the reasons for calling a parliament, or presiding in a Council where great national questions were to be determined, had long, for his sole occupation, to provide for the daily necessities of the little domestic establishment, called "the Court of England," at Bruges. The pension from France had entirely ceased, as Charles was now to consider himself at war with that country; and the magnificent promises of a liberal supply from Spain had utterly failed. The consequence was, that the King's finances were in a more dilapidated state than ever, and the debts of his Crown, consisting of his tradesmen's weekly bills, increased most alarmingly. Thus writes his prime minister, who now combined in his own person the duties of Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord High Chancellor :-" Every bit of meat, and every drop of drink, all the fire and all the candles that hath been spent since the King's coming hither, is entirely owed for; and how to get credit for a week more is no easy matter. Mr. Fox* was with me yesterday, to move the King that he would let his own diet fall, and content himself with one dish.' So hard was the Chancellor, pushed, that he was obliged to write the following letter, and to get Charles to copy it, to his sister, the Princess of Orange :-"I know you are without money, and cannot very easily borrow it,—at least upon so little warning; but if you will send me any jewel that I may pawn for 15007, I do promise you you shall have the jewel again in your hands before Christmas."

The darkest and coldest hour of the night is immediately before break of day. Sexby, meditating assassination,

had been detected and shut up in the Tower, but [SEPT. 1658.] while the royal party were in a state of the deepest despondency at Bruges, a report was spread that Oliver, on whose single life the present régime in England was supposed to depend, was dan

* Afterwards Sir Stephen, and the ancestor of the Holland and Ilchester families.

gerously ill of an ague, and in a few days a messenger arrived, announcing that he was no more. Great, at first, was the exultation of Charles and his courtiers, and they all expected in the course of not many days to be in possession of Whitehall. But they were thrown into consternation by the next news that Richard had been peaceably proclaimed; that his title had been acknowledged by the army as well as all the civil authorities; that addresses, pledging life and fortune in his support, were pouring in from all quarters; and that he had been congratulated on his accession to the Protectorate by all the foreign ambassadors in London. There was now what the lawyers call "a descent cast," whereby, on the death of an ejector, protection is given to the possession of his heir. The restoration of the House of Stuart seemed for ever barred by the acknowledged title of a rival dynasty. "We have not," said Hyde, softening the despondence which he felt that he might not discourage others, "yet found that advantage by Cromwell's death as we rationally hoped; nay, rather, we are the worse for it, and the less esteemed; people imagining by the great calm that hath followed, that the King hath very few friends."*

The hopes of the Court at Bruges, however, were soon revived by intelligence of the discontents of the army, and [NOVEMBER] the feuds of its rival chiefs,-which almost from the beginning shook the throne of Richard. When he summoned a parliament, and, departing from his father's reformed system of representation, sent writs to the rotten boroughs, Hyde wrote to the royalists in England, advising that as many of them as possible should quietly get themselves returned to the House of Commons. On the meeting of parliament it was found that they were more numerous than could have been expected, and for the ultimate good of the cause they did not scruple to take the oath of fidelity to the Commonwealth and abjuration of the Stuarts. Hyde suggested to them an obstructive line of policy-that they should denounce the arbitrary acts of the administration of the late Protector-that they should hold up to particular odium Thurloe and St. John, who were the most influential advisers of the new Protector-that they should oppose all raising of monies, and whatever might tend to a settlement of the Government-that they should widen the breach between the Cromwellites and the Republicans-and that they should throw their weight into the scale of either party in such manner as might most conduce to the interests of the King.

At this time it was thought that if Richard had been out of the hands of Thurloe and St. John, he would himself have declared for the restoration, "from the difficulties and dangers he met with in his government, and the safe and honourable advantages that he might receive by an accommodation with the exiled family,"

* Clar. Pap. iii. 428.

and Hyde seems to have believed that "he intended wholly for the King."*

The small royalist party in the House found it expedient to prevent Richard from being too soon precipitated from power, lest Fleetwood or Lambert, with a considerable share of the military reputation and energy of Oliver, might be elevated on the bucklers of the soldiers. They, therefore, voted for the recognition of his title as Protector, after they had succeeded in expunging the word "undoubted, undoubted,”—and it was carried by a majority of 191 to 168. They likewise joined in the majority for acknowledging with some qualifications the other House of Parliament, consisting of Oliver's Peers. But they joined most heartily with the republicans in exposing the tyrannical proceedings of Oliver's Major Generals and High Courts of Justice, which they said far exceeded in violence any sentences of the Star Chamber or High Commission Court abolished by the late King. They likewise pointed out the enormous increase in the public expenditure, and the arbitrary exactions by which it was supplied,—depicting, in glowing colours, the happy, tranquil, taxless times which the more aged might still remember. All this was supposed to be only out of odium to the Protectorate as against a pure republic, but was meant to bring back the affections of the people to royalty. A favourable impression being made, Hyde wrote to them to move the impeachment of Thurloe and St. John. This they were not strong enough prudently to attempt; but they followed up the blow with great effect on the presentation of Petitions from various persons who had been illegally imprisoned without warrant or cause assigned, or whose relations had been transported without a trial to Barbadoes, and there sold as slaves.

After a session of less than three months, the Protectorate had been so effectually damaged that Richard, as the MAY, 1659.] only step to save himself, resorted to a measure which proved his instant ruin, by dissolving the parliament,-and the army was for a time triumphant. Hyde, watching this movement at Brussels, felt much alarm, which was not quieted by the restoration of the "Rump," where he had no friends. A majority of the survivors of the Long Parliament, though Presbyterians, were for royalty; but the members turned out by "Pride's purge" were still excluded, and those in whom the supreme power was now nominally placed were the section who had voted for the death of Charles I., and were devoted republicans. However they had no hold of public opinion; and when they affected to assert their independence by cashiering Lambert and Desborough, the nation was rejoiced to see them again expelled, although for a time the government fell into the hands of a self-elected council of state. All these changes aggravated the general confusion, and were favourable to the King. There was now a growing desire for his return, to which Hyde * Clar. Pap. iii. 434. 454.

[OCTOBER.]