CHAPTER LXXIX. CONTINUATION OF THE LIFE OF LORD CLARENDON TILL THE LXXIX. On the 1st of June Hyde entered on the regular discharge CHAP. of his parliamentary and judicial duties. At the meeting of the House in the morning of that day, though still a Commoner, he took his place on the woolsack as Speaker by pre- Clarendon scription. A. D. 1660. enters on the of the official duties as Chancellor. Soon after the King came in state, and, the Commons discharge being summoned, made a short speech to both Houses, and then commanded the Lord Chancellor to deliver his mind farther to them. The Journals tell us that he did so, but there is no trace of his speech on this interesting occasion any where to be found. The royal assent was then given to a bill for turning the Convention, so irregularly called, into a lawful Parliament, and to some other necessary acts; when the Lord Chancellor told both Houses with how much readiness his Majesty had passed these important acts, and how willing they should, at all times hereafter, find him to pass any other that might tend to the advantage and benefit of the people;" in a particular manner desiring, in his Majesty's behalf, that "the Bill of Oblivion, in which they had made so good a progress, might be expedited; that the people might see and know his Majesty's gracious care to ease and free them from their doubts and fears, and that he had not forgotten his gracious declaration made at Breda, but that he would, in all points, make it good.” † The same day Hyde took his seat in the Court of Chancery, It must have been at all events much to the taste of his audience, for the following day "the House gave the Lord Chancellor thanks for his excellent speech yesterday.' - Lords' Jour. Jan. 2. 1660. † 4 Parl. Hist. 64. CHAP. LXXIX. Takes his scat in the Court of Chancery. His unfitness to act as an Equity Attempt him from the office. and the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, and the oath of office, were administered to him.* He certainly must have been very unfit for the judicial duties of the office. He never had been a well-grounded lawyer, and he had never practised much in Courts of Equity. It was now twenty years since he had entirely left the bar. In the interval he had not attempted to keep up any knowledge of his profession; and the important political occupations which constantly harassed him must have chased from his mind nearly all the judicial notions which had ever entered it, so that by this time he could hardly have recollected the distinction between legal and equitable estates, or known the difference between a bill of discovery and a bill for relief. He had cherished the prospect of holding the Great Seal in England, but he had no English law books with him at Bruges, at Brussels, or at Breda; and, while residing in those places, the whole of his time had been engrossed in projecting and watching over measures for the King's restoration. There were strong efforts made by different parties and to exclude individuals to exclude him from the office on political grounds. The Presbyterians, headed by Lords Manchester and Bedford, had said that "they could not be secure if they permitted so much as a kitchen-boy to be about the King of his old party," and though they regarded him as "a man to keep out popery," believing him to be "irreconcileable to their form, notwithstanding his fair professions in their favour," they were exceedingly desirous that he should not retain a situation of such power and influence. He was equally obnoxious to the Catholics, notwithstanding the hope he had held out to them that they should be safe from the dispensing power of the Crown * "Anno duodecimo Caroli Sedi R. June 1. 1660. "The Right Honoble Sr. Edward Hyde, Knt. Lord Chaunc. of England, coming into the Court of Chauncery att West'. accompanied by the Right Honoble the Lord Culpeper, Mr. of the Rolls, before his Lords entering upon anye busynes, took the oathe of the office of Chaunc'. of England, the booke being held to him by the said Mr. of the Rolls the first day of June, in the yere aforesaid, being alsoe the first day of his Lop.'s sitting, and the first day of Terme, the former part not being kept. The Lord Chauncellor took the oathes of supremacye and allegeance, and the oathe of Lord Chauncellor.”— Crown Off. Min. B. fol. 15. LXXIX. till the penal laws against them should be repealed by the legis- CHAP. lature. Monk was still his secret enemy, and Queen Henrietta, with her friend, Lord Jermyn, retaining her ancient grudge, intrigued against him, particularly with the Presbyterian leaders. It was much pressed upon the King that he should give the Great Seal to Sir Orlando Bridgman or Sir Jeffery Palmer, lawyers who had not attached themselves strongly to any party or sect, and from whom all might expect some advantage. But the judicial qualifications of the person to be preferred were little thought of. The notion seems still pretty generally to have prevailed, that though to preside properly in a court of common law required a long course of professional study and experience†, any man of plain sense and good intentions might "mitigate the rigour of general rules, and do what was just between the parties in each particular case,”—which was the vulgar notion of equity. Nay, it is asserted that Sir John Grenville, in his first negotiation with Monk, "propounded to the General 100,000l. per annum for ever, as his Majesty's donation to him and his officers, with the office of Lord High Chancellor and Constable of England for himself, and the nomination of any other great officers of the Crown." We may well doubt whether such an offer ever was made—at least with the authority or privity of Hyde; but the circulation of the story shows that men then contemplated the possibility of their having a military Chancellor in Westminster Hall, as there still is in some of our colonies. The opposition to Hyde's retaining the Great Seal was so formidable, that he seems to have offered to resign it rather than hazard the harmony of the Restoration; but he was warmly supported by Southampton, Ormond, Nicholas, and Colepepper. The King, long accustomed to be guided by him, was "yet wholly in his hands," though giving wise and good advice, "he did it too much with the air of a governor or of a lawyer." In truth, for some years Clar. Pap. iii. 655. 705. 728. 744. Price's Mystery and Method of the Restauration. "he CHAP. LXXIX. His dis creet conduct as a Judge. He refuses Great Seal to be os tensibly as well as really Prime carried the Crown in his pocket." Clarendon showed his generosity by appointing Bridgeman and Palmer, his rivals for the Great Seal-the one Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer, and the other Attorney General.* As a Judge he conducted himself with such prudence and discretion, and made such wise use of the knowledge and abilities of others, as to escape complaint, and even to be reckoned a good Chancellor. He had always two Masters in Chancery to keep him right in matters of practice, and he never made a decree without the assistance of two of the Judges. He acquired much credit by publishing some salutary regulations for the better administration of the offices of the Masters in Chancery and the Six Clerks, still known and cited under the name of "Lord Clarendon's Orders."‡ These were prepared under his directions by Sir Harbottle Grimston, the Master of the Rolls, assisted by the officers of the Court, and consist chiefly of Lord Keeper Whitelock's orders, and some of the least exceptionable articles in Cromwell's famous Ordinance for reforming the Court of Chancery, which could no longer be directly referred to. § When Clarendon was finally established, and in great to give up favour both with the King and the parliament, his intimate associate, the Duke of Ormond, privately urged him to resign his judicial office and to accept the staff of Lord High Treasurer, stating "that all his best friends wondered that he so much affected the post he was in as to continue in the office of Chancellor, which took up most of his time, especially all the mornings, in business that many other men could discharge as well as he." || He replied, "that he would sooner be preferred to the gallows." He probably felt that he would be Minister. * Burn. own Times, i. 150. † See note of Speaker Onslow to ed. of Burnet. Oxford, i. 161. Although it was not till some months after that he was raised to the peerage, it may be convenient that he should now be denominated by the title under which he is familiar to us from the Restoration. § See "Collections of such of the orders heretofore used in Chancery, with such alterations and additions thereunto as the Earl of Clarendon, Lord Chancellor, and Sir H. Grimston, Master of the Rolls, have thought fit to ordain and publish for reforming of several abuses in the said Court."-12mo. editions, 1661, 1669, 1676, 1688. Beames's General Orders, p. 165. No reflection being meant upon him as a Judge- and another proof that to preside in the Court of Chancery was not then considered what the Scotch call "a kittle job."— Life, Continuation, 14. more exposed to envy, and that his hold of power would be more precarious, in an office purely political. Soon after his return to England he had resigned the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, which he had nominally held so long under two reigns, and was succeeded in it by Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper. We must now attend to his proceedings as prime minister, for it was as a statesman that he was chiefly regarded in his own and succeeding times. He was much embarrassed by the numerous attendance of Privy Councillors, the distinction between the Privy Council and the Cabinet, so familiar to us, not being yet established. To obviate this difficulty, he procured the appointment of a committee, ostensibly for the consideration of foreign affairs, but in reality to discuss and settle all measures, whether of foreign or domestic policy, before they were formally submitted to a board in the presence of the King. Monk, and Morrice his nominee, were admitted to this secret consultation; but the Chancellor insured his control over them by the presence of Ormond, Southampton, and Nicholas. He had likewise frequent conferences" with such members of the parliament who were most able and willing to serve the King, to concert all the ways and means by which the transactions in the Houses might be carried with the more expedition and attended with the best success." The office of foreign secretary being still unknown, the Chancellor wrote the instructions for all the ambassadors abroad, and regularly corresponded with them, besides superintending the important parliamentary proceedings now necessary to consolidate the Restoration. The first great measure to be carried was "the Bill of Oblivion and Indemnity," and much praise ought to be bestowed on Clarendon for pushing it through without introducing more numerous exceptions, notwithstanding the vindictive spirit prevailing in the Commons, and still more in the I apprehend it is a mistake to suppose that, till the accession of George I., affairs of state were not discussed and arranged by ministers unless in the presence of the Sovereign, although the ignorance of the English language under which the Georges 1. and II. laboured was no doubt favourable to the separate consultations of the Cabinet. † Life, i. 362. CHAP. LXXIX. He ap points a cabinet. Bill of Oblivion. |