CHAP. LXXVII. Charles re- at Cologne Crown. those rogues in England hath so little of sense or excuse in it, that there needs no reply to it. You and I must die in the streets first of hunger." Yet at the same time he thus discloses his secret thoughts in a letter to his intimate friend, Sir Toby Matthew, "And now, sir, let me tell you in your ear (as one whom I dare trust with my want of judgment), that after all my travel through the Low Countries, and I think the length of France, and little less than 400 miles in the King's dominions, England is a very convenient place; and the people were once as good company as any of their neighbours; and if they can be yet reduced to half the honesty they had, if you please I will meet you there; and if we ever come again willingly out of it, let us be banished London. But I will take no peremptory resolution till I know how far I may depend upon your conscience." † If he did sometimes vacillate in the trying circumstances in which he was placed, we must not condemn him with too much severity. There is no reason to suppose he ever would have compromised the personal safety of the expatriated King, or betrayed any confidence reposed in him; and like Prince Talleyrand, in other revolutionary times, he might have honourably served opposite parties and dynasties as they successively gained the ascendency. In April, 1656, Charles proceeded suddenly from Cologne to Bruges, in consequence of a negotiation opened with him when Cromwell engaged in hostilities against Spain. Hyde was, for a time, left behind to settle the financial affairs of debts of the his Majesty, - which he found no easy task. This was his first despatch. "Your family here is in an ill condition and your debts great; much owing by you and by those to whom you are indebted; and yet, that the state may not appear more dismal and irreparable to you than in truth it is, give me leave to tell you that 4000 pistoles will discharge the whole seven months board wages which are due, pay all you owe here, supply those acts of bounty you will for the present think necessary, to those who receive not in wages, and honestly remove and bring your family to you."‡ *Clar. Pap. iii. 24, 25. Ibid. iii. 293. Clar. Pap. March 18. 1650. LXXVII. Small as the required supply was, the Chancellor of the CHAP. Exchequer could not find ways and means to raise it, and four months after, still remaining himself in pawn, he thus addresses the King, "I do confess I do think that the payment of what is due at Cologne is of the most importance to you, and is to be such an ingredient in the establishing your future credit, of which you have so much use, that it ought to be compassed, even with some hazard to your Majesty of future inconvenience." * By receipt of the arrears of small pensions allowed him by A.D. 1657. the Elector of Cologne and other German Princes, Hyde was at last able to clear off these demands and to 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."‡ ation with Sexby. But the negotiation least creditable to Hyde, was that Negoti 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 occur- a. D. 1658. * Clar. Pap. iii. 302. †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 4o. 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' standing."— Freeholder, No. 36. Clar. Pap. iii. 291. CHAP. LXXVII. Plan for rence took place which materially altered his nominal rank and precedence. It was suggested in Council, that as Charles was now formally recognised as King of England by Spain, the apand was entering into a regular treaty, offensive and depointment of a Lord fensive, with that country, it would be proper that his own Chancellor. 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 off e w it was offered to him, "giving many reasons ides L. 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, "he 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 letters 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, LXXVII. he conjured the Chancellor to receive that trust, with many CHAP 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 Duplicity absence of all other lawyers, the King, or any human being of Hyde. about the Court of Bruges, would have ever thought of the office of Chancellor, or recollected it there was in existence such a bauble as the Great Sidl, whe 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 : "Att the Court att Bruges, the thirteenth day of Jan'. Jan. is. 1658, st. n. "Present, His Majestie. "Duke of York. 1658. His appointment as Lord "Lord Lieut. of Ireland (Ormond). Chancellor. "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 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." 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 the 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. CHAPTER LXXVIII. CONTINUATION OF THE LIFE OF CLARENDON TILL THE RESTOR- A. D. 1658. Occupations of the CHAP. THE new Lord Chancellor, instead of proceeding in state to LXXVIII. Westminster Hall, attended by nobles and Judges, and making an inaugural speech before an admiring crowd in the Court of Chancery, or explaining, in the presence of the new Lord Sovereign, and the Lords, and the Commons, the reasons for Chancellor calling a parliament, or presiding in a Council where great at Bruges. 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, 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 • Afterwards Sir Stephen, and the ancestor of the Holland and Ilchester families. |