No More Learning

The author's fondness for
Latin forms (“militar,' 'indubiate,' and so forth) is very obvious ;
the Latin translation of his book seems to have been made either
by himself or under his own eye.
Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Life and Reign of King Henry
the Eighth, together with which is briefly represented A general
History of the Times, marks a very conscious advance in historical
composition. There is here, coupled with a dignified ease of
style characteristic of most of the author's writings, and of his
Autobiography in particular, an evident wish to make as full use
as possible of the original documents at the historian's disposal.
No doubt, the work was also written with a personal purpose, and
of this it is impossible to lose sight in estimating the literary effect
produced ; indeed, it is to be discovered in most of Herbert's
historical writings. They were composed at a later period of his
life than the Autobiography, which only reaches the year 1624, and
the merits of which are surprisingly exiguous for an author com-
manding a wide experience of the world and possessed of original
intellectual power! Yet the characteristic qualities of the book,
both for better and for worse, have been much exaggerated.
Horace Walpole (who first printed the MS at Strawberry Hill in
1764) must have been beyond the mark in describing it as 'the most
curious and entertaining' produced by his press? ; and, if, as he
states, he and lady Waldegrave could not get on' with it 'for
laughing and screaming3,' their sense of the ridiculous must have
been excessively acute, though, to be sure, on one occasion, at least,
the autobiographer all but falls into the Falstaffian vein“.
Beyond all doubt, Edward Herbert was inordinately vain of
his powers as a duellist-whether on foot or on horseback-which,
in his opinion, evidently entitled him to say to all comers (in-
cluding ministers, governors, and ambassadors) 'Je suis Herbert,'
as one of his French rivals declared 'Je suis Balagny'; and in his
relations with women he certainly had the advantage of sublime
self-confidence. But duelling was the most fashionable vice of the
time; added to which he took his vows as knight of the Bath
6
1 An estimate of lord Herbert of Cherbury's position among modern speculative
thinkers has been given in vol. iv, pp. 292—4.
2 Letters, ed. Cunningham, vol. iv, p. 156.
3 Ibid. p. 252.
* See Autobiography, ed. Lee, S. , p. 185, for Herbert's night escapade, when he was
about to start on his embassy in 1619.
5 See the appendix on Duelling in France and England in the early years of the
Seventeenth Century' in Lee's edition,


## p. 205 (#221) ############################################

Lord Herbert of Cherbury
205
hi?
most seriously. Though vainglorious and quarrelsome, he was
free from revengefulness and any sort of meanness; and, though
something of a lady-killer, he was not wanton. Notwithstanding
his remarks on education, and his contributions 'both to natural
science and household medicine, it cannot be said that, except as
a picture of manners, his Autobiography has much serious interest
before the period of his embassy to France (161924); and, even
then, though his narrative of the Spanish and French marriage
negotiations is worth reading, as well as his characterisation of
Louis XIII, de Luynes, and Gondomar, he seems to reserve the
substance of his political experiences for treatment in another
form.
The Autobiography, of which the style is measured but agree-
able, though the record of some of the writer's youthful exploits in
camp and court, at times, has an almost pedantic solemnity, breaks
off with Herbert's recall from Paris. The remainder of his life
was given up to a series of endeavours to re-enter the active service
of the crown by conciliating the royal goodwill, and to literary
labours which, in part, are to be reckoned among these efforts.
Among them was the defence of Buckingham, drawn up in reply
to violent attacks upon the memory of the favourite after his
assassination, and dedicated to Charles I. Sir Henry Wotton
expressed his admiration of it while it was in the making ; but it
brought no recompense to its author.
Among these efforts, also, was his Life of Henry the Eighth, on
which he seems to have been at work as early as 1632, and on
which he was still engaged seven years later. The use of original
documents by which it is distinguished has been already noted.
It was not completed till 1645, when he was also bringing to an
end his chief philosophic labours. The rest of Herbert's life was
occupied by a painful and unedifying struggle for his estates.
Many indications of the growing interest in historical writing
in the reign of James I and in the earlier years of that of Charles I
must be passed by. Edmund Bolton, who, under the pseudonym
of 'Philanactophil'dedicated to Buckingham a translation of
Florus's epitome of Roman history, in order to demonstrate the
superiority of histories to 'epitomes,' took occasion, from the publica-
tion of an epistle by Sir Henry Savile lamenting the existing state
of English historical literature, to advocate, in a tract called Hyper-
critica, the production of a complete Corpus Rerum Anglicarum
1 He believed himself to have endangered the peace of mind of no less august and
devout a personage than Anne of Denmark,


## p. 206 (#222) ############################################

206
Historical and Political Writings
6
-'a felicity wanting to our Nation, now when even the name
thereof is as it were at an end. ' And we know how Milton contem-
plated on his own account a history of Britain from the origins, of
which he only executed a fragment". On the other hand, Thomas
May, secretary of the Long parliament, obeyed its authoritative
behest by publishing, in 1647, the history of the great assembly
which had begun its labours seven years earlier, together with
'a short and necessary view of some precedent years. ' May, who
was a writer of considerable versatility? , had produced, besides a
translation in rimed couplets of Lucan's stirring epic on the second
civil war of Rome, two moderately inspiring English poems on
the reigns of Edward III and Henry II, in which ‘Philip and all
her beauteous train' and Fair Rosamond do not fail to appear;
but his History of the Parliament of England, which began
3 November 1640, in conformity with the claim advanced, in
the title as well as in the motto of the book, that its distinctive
quality was veracity, exhibits both straightforwardness of manner
and dignity of tone. A succinct introduction dwells specially on
the relations with Rome, with whom James I is described as having
'temporised,' but holds the balance fairly between the personal
virtues of Charles I and his errors as a ruler. Strafford's trial and
death, we are told, did at last as much harm to the kingdom as
had resulted from his action while he was in power. The work,
in which some important speeches and documents are inserted
verbatim, ends with November 1643.
By way of contrast with the official historian of the Long
parliament may be mentioned a faithful, though by no means
uncomplaining, follower of Charles I and Charles II, to whom,
indeed, he successively acted as a kind of historiographer in the
campaigns of 1644, 1645 and 1650.
1644, 1645 and 1650. Sir Edward Walker, garter
king at arms, held the posts of secretary at war and secretary
extraordinary to the privy council both before and during the
siege of Oxford, and was allowed to assist Charles I in the illfated
negotiations at Newport; he afterwards accompanied Charles II
to Scotland in 1650 and formed part of his court in exile till the
1 See, as to Milton's History of England, and his History of Moscovia, ante, chap. v.
Milton's Reflections on the Civil War in England, etc. , which inveighs against
decay of religion during the civil wars and the period of uncertainty which ensued,
is rptd in Maseres's Select Tracts, etc. , part 11. For a review of Milton's historical
work, see Firth, C. H. , Milton as a Historian, Publications of the British Academy,
1909 (x).
2 See, as to his tragedies and comedies, of which the earliest is dated 1622, ante,
vol. vi, p. 235. He also wrote & Latin play, Julius Caesar, which remained in
manuscript.


## p. 207 (#223) ############################################

Peter Heylyn
207
restoration. Thereafter, he held sway at the Heralds' college for
the rest of his days. He had many grievances to urge, and many
controversies to conduct; so that there was much to include in
the Historical Discourses upon several Occasions, published
posthumously in 1705.
A word should, perhaps, be added as to Secret Observations on
the Life and Death of Charles King of England, by William Lilly,
'student of Astrology,' which forms part II of a larger tract entitled
Monarchy, or no Monarchy in England (1651). In part I, various
prophecies are in good faith treated as fulfilled—especially Ambrose
Merlin's famous prophecy of the white king, dating nine hundred
years back. Part II is a historical account of the life and death
of Charles I from his childhood to his death, which is fair to
certain sides of his character, though the animus of the whole is
anti-episcopalian and anti-royalist. As a matter of course, no
important occasion is allowed to go by without a horoscope.
One historian of note remains to be mentioned, before we pass
from England to Scotland and Ireland. Peter Heylyn loved learn-
ing from his youth ; but his belief in the value of discipline can
hardly have exceeded his craving for publicity. He began his
career as a historical writer in 1621 with the publication of his
Geography, a subject on which, as connected with history, he had
lectured at Oxford in his eighteenth year, and which, with the aid
of some experience of travel, he afterwards developed into that
of his Cosmography. He had been king's chaplain for many
years, as well as a prebendary of Westminster, when his personal
troubles began with the downfall of Laud, whose ecclesiastical
policy he had supported; and he was brought up before the
Commons as having helped to get up the case against the author
of Histriomastix. After the civil war broke out, he was com-
missioned to keep a record of public occurrences in Mercurius
Aulicus; but he speedily lost his benefice (Alresford) with his
house and library; nor was it till 1656 that he could again venture
to come to the front. In 1659, he published his Examen Criticum,
the first part of which adversely criticised Fuller's Church History,
but the pair managed to make friends. His next controversy was
with Baxter.
When the restoration came, Heylyn returned into residence
at Westminster, and the brief remainder of his life was spent in
tranquillity. His pen continued active to the end. In 1661 he
brought out his chief work, Ecclesia Restaurata, or The History
of the Reformation, which passed through several editions. This


## p. 208 (#224) ############################################

208
Historical and Political Writings
6
book, which carries on the history of the church of England from
the accession of Edward VI to the Elizabethan settlement (1566),
is notable as an attempt to view the changes effected by the
reformation with as much of impartiality as was to be expected
from a prelatist opposed to reunion with Rome. Among Heylyn'
writings published posthumously are Cyprianus Anglicus, or The
History of the Life and Death of Archbishop Laud (1668),
defending him against Prynne's elaborate invective, and described
by Creighton as the chief authority for Laud's personal character
and private life’; and Aerius Redivivus, or The History of
Presbyterianism (1670), which traces back to Calvin the origin of
puritanism, here described as the source of England's internal
troubles. This remarkable man was no bigot, and was capable
of looking on things as a historian rather than as a professional
apologist ; but controversy was irresistible to him, and apt to ex-
pand and multiply in his hands like a river plant in its favourite
waters.
Of the two kingdoms whose destinies were interwoven with
those of England, the one was not brought into personal union
with her till near the beginning of the period treated in this
chapter ; whereas the other, for centuries, had been riveted to the
side of her dominant partner by conquest and reconquest, and was
perpetually striving to burst her bonds asunder. Though Scottish
history had to tell of a long series of conflicts with the neighbour-
ing kingdom, and of periods of subjection as well as of revolt and
war, yet it ran its own course in both church and state, and the
ecclesiastical history of Scotland in particular, the interest in
which outweighed that of all other kinds of history, north of the
Tweed, covers a field of its own. The earliest record of the Scottish
reformed church is The Booke of the Universal Kirk of Scotland,
of which a most important portion was consumed at the fire of the
two houses of parliament in 1834. But what remains is an in-
valuable document for much of the national history, and, so far as
the history of the church is concerned, testifies at once to the
conservative spirit of the Scottish reformers and to their firm
adherence to the presbyterian form of church government set up by
them from the first. One prelatical and one anti-prelatical history
of importance belonging to this period deal with the material
at the command of the writers. Of archbishop Spottiswoode's
History of the Church of Scotland, beginning A. D. 203, and con-
tinued to the reign of king James IV, the first edition was printed
in 1665; but the book had advanced gradually in its author's


## p. 209 (#225) ############################################

Calderwood.
209
Spenser's Veue
>
hands, and the earliest MS of it extends only to the year 1602.
The work was written in tranquil times by a calm-minded man,
who was singularly free from a spirit of ecclesiastical bitterness.
On the other hand, David Calderwood's Historie of the Kirk of
Scotland, beginning at Patrik Hamilton and ending at the death
of James the Sixt, is the work of an indefatigable adversary of
prelacy, whose opinions, on this head, caused his expulsion from
presbytery and assembly in 1608, and, nine years later, though ex-
pressed with moderation, led James to denounce him to his face as
'a very knave. ' After undergoing both imprisonment and exile,
he returned to Scotland in 16251, and, in 1641, was allowed to sit
in the general assembly, though without the rights of a member.
Two years before his death, he was granted a handsome pension in
order to complete his History, which is a methodised and corrected
revision in three volumes of the larger work—the latter being
regarded by him rather as a commonplace book of facts and docu-
ments than as a finished history. Yet, to students, the complete
work is the most valuable, as containing the actual language
of Knox and the other reformers, which, in the revised edition,
Calderwood more or less assimilated to his own.
In the works dealing with Irish history from the Elizabethan
age to the time of the Cromwellian settlement, it is, of course,
difficult to separate the historical and political elements from each
other; or, rather, the former are dominated by the latter. Of
these works, the most celebrated has been reserved for a notice
in this place. Spenser's Veue of the Present State of Ireland
possesses a great biographical interest; while it supplements, or
illustrates one of the books of The Faerie Queene—the Vth,
containing the legend of Artegall, or Justice—which seeks to
immortalise the poet's patron as the incarnation of the policy
advocated by the poet himself as the only cure for ‘Ierne's ills'2.
In 1598 broke out the rebellion which, by October in that year,
had placed all Munster in the hands of the insurgents, and which
put an end to Spenser's sojourn in Ireland. It had amounted
altogether to fourteen years, more or less, and had for ever
associated the land of his adoption with his epical masterpiece
as well as with one of the noblest of English lyrics (Epi-
i Calderwood's Recantation (1623) is a forgery.
See the striking argument that there is an extraordinarily close parallel between
the Veue and the two cantos of Mutabilitie, the chief burden of the former being the
need for consistency in the policy to be pursued by the crown in Ireland, in C. Litton
Falkiner's interesting essay, 'Spenser in Ireland,' in Essays relating to Ireland (1909),
pp. 26, 27.
E. L. VII.
14
>
CH. IX.


## p. 210 (#226) ############################################

210
Historical and Political Writings
6
thalamion). That the rebellion, which cruelly blighted Spenser's
personal prospects, left him, in dean Church's words, 'a ruined
and broken-hearted man,' is, in all probability, an exaggerated
statement’; but there can be no question that A Veue of the Present
State of Irelund was composed under the influence of profoundly
moved personal feeling. It was certainly composed in 1596, during
the visit of Spenser (Irenaeus) to England, which lasted from 1595
till (probably) 1597.
Spenser's historico-political essay opens with a lengthy review
of the evils existing in the state of Ireland, which are described
as being of three kinds the first in the Lawes, the second in
Customes and the third in Religion. ' Parts of this demonstration,
hackneyed though it may have seemed even to the public to which
it was addressed, were very forcibly put—especially the clear
illustrations as to the evil effect of laws bad in themselves, and
the bold assertion that the most of the Irish are soe farre from
understanding of the popish religion as they are of the protestants
profession. ' There are, too, some pregnant passages, such as the
opening sentences of Irenaeus, suggesting, as a possible explanation
of the apparent hopelessness of the condition of Ireland, that,
peradventure, God 'reserveth her in this unquiett state still for
some secrett scourdge, which shall by her come to England'; and
the proposal, which strikes at the root of the barbarism over-
shadowing ‘Ierne,' that a schoolmaster shall be maintained in
every parish of the land. Though some of the historical and philo-
logical information may be questionable, the essay furnishes con-
stant proof, not only of a careful study of the people itself, but,
also, of a genuine interest in the associations which have always
meant so much for its life-conveyed in ballads and legends and
folklore of all sorts. The description of the influence of the bards
or Irish chroniclers, as radically tainted by inveracity, is curious ;
and there is a double edge in the denunciation of the folly of the
Irish in deriving their origin from the Spaniards- of all nations
under heaven (I suppose) the most mingled, most uncertayne, and
most bastardly. The Anglo-Irish—ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores-
the dialogue declares to be ‘more malicious to the English than
the very Irish themselves. '
As to the moral of the whole treatise—the supposed necessity of
a firm and vigorous policy of repression, and of doing away with
native customs of all sorts and the establishment of a strong rule,
represented by numerous garrisons throughout the country-
1 Spenser, English Men of Letters (1879), p. 177.
6
6


## p. 211 (#227) ############################################

Pacata Hibernia.
2 II
Davies
nothing further need be said here. Lord Grey de Wilton, as
whose private secretary Spenser came to Ireland in 1580, tried
this system for two years, and was recalled ; and it has been tried
since, for longer periods, with no more success. It has been, rather
cynically, said that the readers of Spenser's Veue and other
writings of his expressing similar sentiments should 'forget that
he was a poet and remember that he was trying to improve
forfeited lands. ' But there is nothing more unsatisfactory to the
highest conception of a great writer than this sort of analytical
separation of functions. The style of the essay is businesslike,
and the dialogue form is used with ease; though there is far too
much talk about the method of conducting the discussion—always
a tedious ingredient in any kind of discourse?
The important historical narrative Pacata Hibernia, originally
published in 1633, was almost entirely composed by some one
who stood very near to the person of Sir George Carew (after-
wards lord Carew of Clopton and earl of Totnes), president of
Munster during the three years (1600—3) through which the book
traces the history of that province, ending with the suppression
of the insurrection there. Possibly, the author was lieutenant
Thomas Stafford, who served under Carew, but whose name is
mentioned only a single time in the entire narrative. The book,
which, in the words of its editor, Standish O'Grady, 'deals with
the stormy conclusion of a stormy century, the lurid sunset of
one of the wildest epochs in Irish history,' shows how complete,
in the days of Mountjoy's viceroyalty3, was the absence of anything
like patriotism or public spirit from all but a very few of the
Irish lords and that of all sense of honourable dealing from
English officials.
Carew, who seems to have taken a warm interest in Irish
history, translated, from the French, with illustrative notes,
Morice Regan's History of Ireland, as well as the story of
Richard Il's last visit to Ireland by a French gentleman in his
suite. These were included in part 1 of Hibernica (1770), which
contains various documents of interest, including the project for
the division and plantation of Ulster. The policy advocated by
Spenser was carried out by Sir John Davies, who, in succession,
was solicitor- and attorney-general for Ireland during the years
1 Bagwell, R. , Ireland under the Tudors, vol. 1 (1890), p. 458.
2 Spenser also wrote in dialogue form a Discourse of Civill Life, containing the
Ethike Part of Morall Philosophie (not published till 1606).
* For an account of Mountjoy's rule, by a friendly hand, see Fynes Moryson's
Itinerary, part 11, ptd 1735 as his History of Ireland from 1599 to 1603.
14-2


## p. 212 (#228) ############################################

2 12
Historical and Political Writings
1603—11, became speaker of the (Irish) House of Commons in 1613,
and was appointed chief-justice of Ireland just before his death. His
rare administrative ability was exercised in the great historical
operation of the plantation of Ulster, as well as in the organisation
of local government, especially in that province, and in the reform
of the parliamentary system, which he established on the lines
followed by it for nearly two centuries. His Discovrie of the
True Causes why Ireland was not entirely subdued. . . until the
beginning of his Majesty's happie Raigne (1612, rptd 1613) marks
out the lines on which the system of government consistently
pursued by him was conducted; the parliament over whose House
of Commons he presided was, consequently, the first in which a
majority entirely controlled by the English council was confronted
by a nationalist opposition? . The historical interest of his book is,
therefore, exceptionally great.
The last works on Irish history which call for mention here
deal with a later period. Richard Bellings's contemporary History
of the Irish Confederation (to which he was secretary) and the War
in Ireland, 1641–3 (edited by J. T. Gilbert) is accompanied by many
documents, and necessarily takes a view of Irish affairs directly
opposed to that of a better known work, intended as a vindication of
the government of the duke of Ormonde and his royal master before
the outbreak of the Irish troubles under Charles I. The authorship
of the History of the Irish Rebellion and Civil Wars in Ireland,
with the true State and Condition of that Kingdom before the Year
1640, has been disputed; but there seems to be no doubt that it
was the work of Clarendon, with whose name it was brought out
in 1721, and in whose History, as afterwards published, it was
incorporated, as a seventh volume, under the title A Short
View of the State and Condition of the Kingdom of Ireland,
from 1640 to this time. Clarendon's authorship of the work was
attested by his successor in the earldom, and the internal evidence
would almost have sufficed to settle the question. For the narrative
is composed in his most forensic style, and throughout displays his
indiscreet pertinacity as well as his lucidity in argument. He is
said to have written it at Cologne, and to have had the assistance
of Ormonde in defending his conduct. The special object of the
work is to refute the Roman Catholic point of view, while an
appendix 2 shows how the 'Rebels of England’ retaliated upon ‘the
Papists that rebelled in Ireland. '
a
2
i See Falkiner, C. Litton, u. s. pp. 54, 55.
? A Collection of some of the Massacres and Murthers committed on the Irish in
Ireland, since the 23rd of August, 1641.


## p. 213 (#229) ############################################

Clarendon
213
Thus, through an apologia composed by the great statesman
and historical writer for a chapter of the royal government in which
he had no share', we are brought to consider, however briefly, his
contributions-half history, half memoir—to the records of a period
of the national history in which he played a part of high significance.
In any survey such as the present no other name can vie with that
of Edward Hyde, first earl of Clarendon-a great writer, whose
literary powers laid the foundation of his political greatness and,
without any disparagement of his lifelong services to crown and
country, remain his foremost title to enduring fame. He abhorred
the unconstitutional designation of prime minister, though, during
the septennate of his ascendency after the restoration, he came
almost as near to realising a complete conception of that office as
any English statesman before or since; but he would not have dis-
dained the palm of which no rival can deprive him, adjudged to
him by the unwavering consent of posterity as one of the great
masters of English prose.
Few readers of Clarendon's Life are likely to have forgotten
a passage, towards the close of what remains of the autobio-
graphical narrative proper, which may serve as a text for the few
comments it is possible to add on the present occasion. 'He was
wont to say,' he writes of himself, with that impersonality of form
which covers an exhorbitancy of self-consciousness :
that of the infinite blessings which God had vouchsafed to confer upon him
almost from his cradle . . . he esteemed himself so happy in none as in his
three acquiescences, which he called “his three vacations and retreats he had
in his life enjoyed from business of trouble and vexation, and in every one of
which God had given him grace and opportunity to make full reflections
apon his actions, and his observations on what he had done himself, and what
he had seen others do and suffer; to repair the breaches of his own mind,
and to justify himself with new resolutions against future encounters. . . . The
first of these recesses or acquiescences was, his remaining and residing at
Jersey, when the prince of Wales, his new majesty, first went into France. '
These years, from 1646 to 1648, between the so-called first and
second civil wars, were a dark period in the fortunes of the
royalist cause, with which Hyde had identified himself since, as
a young man without any special advantages of birth or wealth, he
had raised himself, by his own abilities and capacity for forming
friendships with his superiors, to a good position at the bar;
had, by his powers as a speaker, caught the ear of the House of
1 His long vindication of his relation to Irish affairs after the restoration, including
the results of Charles Il's gift to him from Irish sources, in vol. II of the Life,
belong, of course, to another period.


## p. 214 (#230) ############################################

214
Historical and Political Writings
6
Commons', and had placed his skilful pen at the service of the
king with great effect in the critical months preceding the
outbreak of the civil war. And the darkness was intensified by
dissensions between the royal councillors, headed by Hyde, and
his constant adversary the queen, who insisted on the prince
of Wales coming to France instead of holding out so long as
possible in England or near its coasts, while, at the same time,
eager that he should purchase the goodwill of the Scots by
throwing over the episcopal church of England. It was under
the pressure of all this trouble that Hyde sat down on 18 March
1646, in his exile in one of the Scilly isles, to write his History of
the Rebellion and carried on his task during a period of two years
in Jersey. By the spring of 1648,' says Firth, ‘he had brought
the story down to the opening of the campaign of 1644, and had
written seven books of the work, and a few sections of the eighth. '
Hyde's purpose was to recount, not for publication, but for the
use of future statesmen, and after a fashion which would be
appreciated by them, the origin of the great struggle whose present
issue seemed to have overwhelmed both crown and church ; to tell
of all the errors that had been committed from the point of view
of constitutional principle, as well as of the great sacrifices that
had been made, in order that they might be remembered, and not
remembered in vain, by later and more fortunate generations.
Though, in this first version of the earlier part of the great work, there
is very little personal mention of the writer, his whole heart and
mind were with the country from which he had been driven because
of his loyalty to her ancient institutions in church and state. In
this loyalty, he had been born and bred as the descendant of an
old Cheshire family, as a student of the university where his name
was afterwards to be gratefully cherished, as an inns of court man
and lawyer, and as a constitutionalist member of parliament, who
had separated from the popular party so soon as it had begun to
tamper with the interests of the episcopacy, and whose advice to
king Charles I, since he had been taken into the royal confidence,
had consistently been that in any steps the sovereign might take,
or in any concessions he might make, he should remain within the
limits of the law and the constitution.
1 Burnet and Pepys both attest Clarendon's gifts as a speaker. The speeches
which remain from his later days, though delivered on important occasions and under
the responsibility of high office, are easy and often almost chatty in tone, while
seasoned with quotations and anecdote. Occasional passages rise to eloquence; but, al-
together, the style of these speeches suggests what may have been an excellent . House
of Commons manner' and is altogether lighter than Clarendon's usual style of writing.
?


## p. 215 (#231) ############################################

Clarendon's Second and Third Recess 215
Hyde's second 'recess or acquiescence' was during the two
years which, with lord Cottington, he spent in Spain as the
ambassador of the titular king Charles II. Dark as had been
the days of his Jersey exile, at this later stage all hope for the
recovery of the royal cause had been extinguished, except such as
could be extracted from an alternative policy of abject submission
on the part of Charles (whom Hyde had joined in Paris six months
before the axe fell at Whitehall) or intrigue with Irish rebels or a
foreign power not to be trusted much further than they. Hyde, 1:1
who inclined to the latter line of policy, set his hand to assist in
weaving a web of diplomacy which he could not but know to be
futile. Of the fourteen years of exile during which he was the
chief adviser of the younger Charles, this period of waiting upon
Providence at Madrid was probably that in which public trouble,
private sorrow and the sickness of hope deferred weighed most
heavily upon his trained self-control and extraordinary elasticity
of mind; it was during his embassy in Spain that he took com-
fort from the Psalms of David, and produced the bulk of those
Contemplations and Reflections upon them which fill half the
folio volume of his Miscellaneous Works. But he could not, in
these years of a depression which hardly ever lifted, though it
failed to affect a fidelity which never swerved', resume the self-
imposed task undertaken by him long since; and, even when
they came to an end, it seemed as if, during the remainder of his
days, his hand would be on the helm of state, and he would be
able to enforce in practice the lessons which he had sought to
place on record in the first large instalment of his History. But
this was not to be.
And the third was his last recess, by the disgrace he under-
went, and by the act of banishment. In which three acquiescences,'
the passage cited concludes, ‘he had learned more, knew himself
and other men much better, and served God and his country with
more devotion, and he hoped more effectually, than in all his life. '
There was no conscious hypocrisy in Clarendon, but the forms
which his self-confidence assumed were Protean in their variety.
This third retreat upon himself, to which his comment upon all
three must, of course, be intended to apply with special force, was
by far the longest in duration, and one from which there was to be
no return to action or power. The abrupt and sultan-like taking
from Clarendon of the great seal, held by him for seven laborious
years since the king's return, to the accomplishment of which no
1 The active services of Clarendon to the royal court cannot be described here.
>


## p. 216 (#232) ############################################

216
Historical and Political Writings
other of his subjects can have contributed so much thought and
labour, and the subsequent flight from England of the disowned
minister, followed by his impeachment and banishment, put an end
to his public life. To the last, however—and this should not be
overlooked by readers of the works which were the chief occupa-
tion of the remaining seven years of his life—he was scheming
and hoping for his return, or, at least, when even hope began
to grow faint, anxious to spend his last days in the country of his
birth and state. It was all in vain : neither king nor country had
any wish to see him again.
As a matter of course, the topic of his downfall and its causes
dominated the thoughts of his later years; in his Life, he demon-
strated the injustice of his doom in a series of answers to the
articles of impeachment drawn up against him, extending over
some seventy or eighty pages; while, in the preface to the first
edition of his History, he discusses the subject on broader lines.
He here comes to the conclusion that the chief authors of his
catastrophe were papists and women; and, so far as the im-
mediate agencies of his overthrow were concerned, he was probably
not far mistaken. In truth, however, Clarendon, who, in his
youth, had justly gloried in his capacity for making friends, found
very few to uphold him in the days of his downfall. He was
confronted by antagonistic interests with which he scorned to hold
parley—the catholics, whose advance he strove to stem, and the
protestant nonconformists, of whom he openly avowed his detesta-
tion'. He was incapable either of the duplicity of gaining the
gratitude of the hungry rank and file of the royalists by seeking,
or seeming to seek, to advance their personal claims, or of the
meanness which is ready to cringe to mistresses and favourites,
and affects to be hail-fellow with the revel rout of frivolity and
pleasure. Thus, Clarendon paid the penalty of an isolation due, at
the same time, to his qualities and their defects. He says of
himself, on one occasion, that (like Laud) he was too proud of a
good conscience. ' Possibly so; but it is certain that, in his days of
power, Clarendon, even with the aid of the church which he upheld
with unselfish consistency, failed to create a party that would have
rallied round him in his season of adversity, and might have saved
his name from being added to the list of victims of a fickleness
not confined to democracies.
See for instance, his remark, Life, vol. 11, p. 121, on the unhappy policy of
making concessions to that classis of men. ' Charles II, it may be added, broke his
promise to the protestant dissenters chiefly because of Clarendon's advice.


## p. 217 (#233) ############################################

The History of the Rebellion
217
No sooner had Clarendon, after chicaneries and discomforts,
settled down at Montpellier and indited his replies to the articles
exhibited against him? , than he began, as, with his essentially
literary temperament, he could not have failed to do, to write his
reminiscences. The portion of The History of the Rebellion which
he had composed twenty years earlier he had left behind him in
England with the rest of his manuscripts. Moreover, his present
design differed from that which had occupied him during his two
years of continuous labour in Jersey; what he had at heart now
was the vindication of his own career in the eyes of his children-
a memoir of his own life, introducing, of course, some of the great
events or transactions with which he was in contact, rather than a
history of the great struggle and its ultimate issue, in which he, too,
played his part. Thus, during two or three years, working, we may
rest assured, con amore, but without haste or even allowing the
whole of his literary energies to be absorbed by his task? , he
composed so much of his Life as preceded the date of the restora-
tion. (This amounted to more than half of the first of the three
printed volumes. ) In this part of the autobiography, the literary
powers of the author are displayed at their height, while the
freedom with which, in the absence of a great pressure of materials,
he could allow himself to write, gives a flow to his composition
which is not characteristic of the completed Rebellion. This
earlier part of the Life contains some of the most admirable
· The Vindication, which is also included in the Life, forms part of the Mis-
cellaneous Works, and is dated Montpellier, 24 July 1668.
? It is impossible to date most of Clarendon's miscellaneous writings, of which a
list will be found in the bibliography. The Contemplations and Reflections upon the
Psalms of David, already mentioned as, to a large extent, composed at an earlier date,
were concluded at Montpellier on 27 February 1670, and the dedication to my completiofi
children’ is dated in the following year; the concluding personal note, which has both
dignity and pathos, still breathes the hope that the writer may be restored to the
favour of the king. Among Essays Divine and Moral, that Of Human Nature is
dated Montpellier, 1668; that Of Liberty is an attack on Hobbes ; that Of Repentance
bas a very practical bearing on the question of the restoration of property taken away
in the rebellion. The others, for the most part, are moral rather than polemical, and
very readable. The essay on the old debating problem of the comparative advantages
of An Active and Contemplative Life, argues very strongly against monastic vows ;
and the essay Against multiplying Controversies, etc. , may be described as, in purport,
an elaborate defence of the laws for the maintenance of the church of England and
for keeping the Roman Catholics in order. Finally, there are two well sustained
dialogues On the Reverence due to Old Age and On Education, conducted by a group
of representatives of the previous generation, among whom, however, are to be found
advocates of conservative reform. The dialogue On Education has a few good points
and a few which are not quite out of date ; but it is not, on the whole, a very luminous
contribution to the discussion of a theme which some of Clarendon's contemporaries
had treated with far greater power and profundity.


## p. 218 (#234) ############################################

218
Historical and Political Writings
among the many admirable characters drawn by Clarendon-
a gallery which, in their different ways, neither Thucydides nor
Macaulay has surpassed—including the exquisite miniature of
Sydney Godolphin the elder, the delightful portraits of Hales,
Earle and Chillingworth, the discriminating sketch of Colepeper
and, above all, the famous character of Falkland. Here and there
occur some of those indications of an intuitive perception of the
weak sides of human nature which, in Clarendon, are at all times
compatible with a very imperfect openness to his own failings-
the recognition of the sharpness which marred the dignity of Laud,
and the insight into the true nature of the relations between
Charles I and his consort, and, again, of those between the king and
his servants. ' In Clarendon's account of his own early days, his
'
narrative, like the memoirs of so many successful lawyers, furnishes
us, unintentionally, with instruction as to the art of 'getting on’;
as he progresses, he falls into a way of attributing prejudice
against, or dislike of, himself to small and more or less accidental
causes (see his account of his early quarrel with Cromwell), and
begins his long list of nolo’s with a statement as to his resolution
not to be named secretary of state.
In 1671, Clarendon's son Lawrence (afterwards earl of Rochester)
visited him in his exile, bringing with him the unfinished MS of
the Rebellion, mainly written in Jersey. It was now that Clarendon
made up his mind to a process of contamination for which, con-
sidering the scale on which it was conducted and the rare im-
portance of the writings to which it was applied, a parallel cannot
easily be found in literary history? Taking the MS History, so
far as it went, as the framework of his book, he inserted into it a
great number of passages from the portion of the Life which he
had recently written; and then added, as books x—XVI of the
work, the whole of the latter part of the Life, from the restoration
to his days of exile. By way of a link between the earlier and
later parts of the work, he wrote book viII and part of book ix,
as more or less new matter, and then, after putting the whole into
a shape which, so far as possible, concealed the operations by which
it was joined together, he left the whole History of the Restoration
in the condition in which, after his death, it was given to the
world (in 1702).
Inasmuch as the original History and the first part of the Life,
as has been seen, were written with different ends in view, the
1 The process summarised by Firth in his lecture on Clarendon is detailed by him
in three articles contributed to The English Historical Review, 1904.


## p. 219 (#235) ############################################

Clarendon's Characters
219
result of the dovetailing process could not but be what Firth,
perhaps rather sternly, calls patchwork. It is, however, equally
clear that, in the whole work, we shall find some of the qualities
which belong to a reasoned history, and some of those that
belong to a personal memoir, fresh from the hands of an actor
in the scenes and events narrated by him. Among the former is
the faculty of taking and conveying a comprehensive view of an
entire situation or conjuncture in the affairs of the nation, or of
the court, or of a party or influential section of the community.
The picture of happy England (before the outbreak of the great
civil war) is, indeed, more or less conventional, and will be found
in the Life as well as in the History. But how excellent, in the
History, is the connected and succinct narrative of the Spanish
journey of the prince of Wales and Buckingham, and of the triumph
of the latter over the better judgment of his master king James ;
how persuasive, without any attempt at a whole-hearted defence, is
the pleading for the action of king Charles I in the critical matter of
Strafford's catastrophe ; how ingenious is the sketch of the attitude
of the foreign powers after the death of Charles I himself; how
masterly, too, in the later portion of the Life, is the description of
the jealousies and other foibles of the royalist party in the period
preceding the restoration !
Of some of the characters in the early portion of the Life,
mention has already been made; others, in the History, are
Buckingham, Coventry, Weston, Arundel and Pembroke; Hampden
(very skilfully drawn), archbishop Williams (very bitter), the two
Vanes (a touch of high comedy in the midst of tragic action); and,
at a much later stage of the History, the cruelly antithetical
labelling of Lauderdale, and the vignettes in acid of Bradshaw and
Harrison. Excellent, too, in the Life, is the note that St Albans
(Jermyn) 'had that kindness for himself that he thought everybody
did believe him,' and the sly remark that the duke of Albemarle
(Monck) 'knew that his wife was no wiser than she was born
to be. There are many touches of this kind in Clarendon, which,
to the observant reader, are hardly less attractive than are the
elaborate portraits in which he delighted.
The final character of Charles I (in vol. vi of the History) is
very tender, and at the same time, probably, not far from being
just. On the other hand (in vol. 1 of the Life and elsewhere), the
weaknesses of Charles II are suggested with considerable tact and
(in a remarkable passage of vol. 111) the transmitted failings of the
Stewart family-their tendency to follow the advice of inferior


## p. 220 (#236) ############################################

220
Historical and Political Writings
men, and their inability to refuse favours to those who asked them
—are pointed out with admirable insight. Clarendon is least
tolerable when he appears as an apologist for himself—a task
which he seems incapable of performing without an excess of
protests and an inordinate flow of unction. His defence of his
conduct in the matter of his daughter Anne's marriage is detestable
in tone ; the history of his actual downfall he could not be expected
to relate without taxing the patience of his readers.
Clarendon's style, like every style that attracts or interests, is
the man; and it would not be what it is without the constant
desire to please which had animated him as a member of parlia-
ment and a courtier, or without the consciousness of his own
dignity and rectitude which made him stand erect through mis-
fortune and obloquy. He sometimes comes near true wit, and
occasionally has a picturesque turn; but he very rarely rises into
actual eloquence. For this, he lacked the power of imagination in
which he showed himself wanting in more ways than one-more
especially in his incapacity of recognising the virtue or the great-
ness of an adversary or of appreciating the standpoint of a
political party or a religious denomination other than his own.
Even in the characters of his dramatic dialogues (which, in detail,
are happy enough), he could not travel beyond the range of
those who had been born about his own time, and who, more or
less, thought as he thought. But the style proper to nearly every-
thing written by him, from his History to his occasional tracts, is
never out of keeping with itself, always deliberate without being
dull, and dignified without being (except on fit occasions) solemn,
and, more frequently than it is the custom to assume, breaking
into a ripple of pleasantry which prevents it from growing tedious.
Few memoir writers have succeeded in so steadily sustaining the
attention of their readers as has Clarendon ; few historians have
been less pretentious or mannered than he. His style is not a
literary style in the sense in which this, in different ways, can be
predicated of the style of Gibbon or of that of Macaulay ; if it has
a model, this has still to be sought as with all the prose of the
age, in Latin literature rather than our own. In his dialogue On
Education, he argues in favour of the conversational (not the
vulgar colloquial) practice of Latin in schools, whether by means
of discourse or the acting of plays and the like; and how such a
training can inform the style of a writer is shown by Clarendon's
own prose, which Latin influence helped to mould, without pro-
claiming its presence as in the case of the magnificent but exotic


## p. 221 (#237) ############################################

Carey. Naunton. Manningham 221
Latinisms of Milton. It has been pointed out that, in Clarendon's
later writing, the influence of his long residence in France and
familiarity with the French tongue is very distinctly perceptible ;
and this may help to account for the fact that the Life, as
well as some of the detached Essays, is particularly readable.
In any case, Clarendon was original enough, in essentials, to
form his own style; and the first great historical writer in
our literature is, at the same time, a great writer of English
prose.
The memoir literature proper of the earlier Stewart period is
far too extensive to admit of more than a cursory survey, though
one or two works may be singled out as having, by their literary
qualities, secured to themselves a wider remembrance. The list
may be headed by a well known short production, of which the
most interesting portion carries us back into Elizabethan days.
The Memoirs of Robert Carey, earl of Monmouth, written by him-
self, have always enjoyed a certain popularity, if only because of the
account they furnish of queen Elizabeth's last moments and of her
successor's reception of the great news of her death; the writer
having been an eye-witness in both cases. He survived into a
third reign ; but the entire record, though brightly written, would
not fill a hundred folio pages. Fragmata Regalia, or Observa-
tions on the late Queen Elizabeth, her Times and Favourites, by
Sir Robert Naunton, are still more compendious, and were,
accordingly, reprinted with Carey's Memoirs and other works in
succession. There is considerable force, and not a little malice, in
some of the short characters making up the collection of secretary
Naunton, of whom Bacon said that he forgot nothing. '
From the reign of Elizabeth, though from its very last year,
dates, also, the Diary of John Manningham, barrister-at-law of the
Inner Temple. Among the eminently miscellaneous entries in this
there chances to be one which has a special interest for students
of Shakespeare. Whether in this connection or generally, the
opening sentence of this celebrated repository of anecdotes and
witty sayings, as well as of extracts from sermons', sufficiently
illustrates the miscellaneous nature of the writer's interests, and
his unwillingness to narrow their range.
In the reign of Charles I, the stream of memoir literature
flows copiously. Precedence may be allowed to two autobio-
graphical works by men of high intellectual eminence, of which
1. A puritan is a curious corrector of things indifferent. '


## p. 222 (#238) ############################################

222
Historical and Political Writings
a
that of lord Herbert of Cherbury has already received
noticel. The other, likewise, is a book sui generis, but of a
strange fantastic character, such as cannot be said to belong to
lord Herbert's monument of his own excellences. The Private
Memoirs of Sir Kenelm Digby, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber
to King Charles the First, are a narrative of Digby's wooing,
and finally wedding, a celebrated beauty, the names of persons
and places being veiled under more or less fictitious disguises.
This, together with the long sentimental dialogues, gives an
appearance of unreality to the book (which the author calls
'Loose Fantasies,' and which he states himself to have written
in order to preserve his virtue by evoking the remembrance of his
heroine, when beset by the favours of certain ladies in the 'island
of Milo').
The result is a production as unreadable to modern generations
as a Scudéry romance, which, indeed, in form it very much
resembles. To the curiosity of contemporaries, however, these
Memoirs, though they can have circulated in manuscript only,
must have commended themselves in more ways than one.
Sir Kenelm Digby had in him something of the genius of Ralegh
and something of the impudence of Dr Dee (Digby's celebrated
'sympathy powders' make the comparison permissible); but he
was also a fine gentleman, an able diplomatist? and, on occasion, a
successful naval commander3. In person he was of 'gigantic' pro-
portions, but, according to Clarendon, ‘marvellously graceful’; and,
in accordance with the fashion of the times, he was an eager
duellist. He was vainglorious in other respects also, and per-
suaded himself that Mary de' Medici was in love with him. Digby
was master of six languages and well seen in divinity-in 1636 he
returned to the church of Rome of which he had originally been a
member; and he seems to have possessed genuine scientific insight
as well as philosophising acumen. (He sat on the council of the
Royal Society when it was first incorporated. ) His political in-
stability was more signal than that of his religious opinions; and,
indeed, his attitude towards causes and persons was a strange
mixture of knight-errantry and criticism, the passion of action
running through all. In his Memoirs, he is Theagenes and Venetia
Stanley is Stelliana. Mardontius, her other lover, is now held to
be Sir Edward Sackville. The narrative is embedded in a great
Ante, pp. 204, 205.
? He was in Spain during the stay of Charles and Buckingham in 1623.
3 See his Journal of a Voyage into the Mediterranean.


## p. 223 (#239) ############################################

Wallington. Sir Simonds d'Ewes 223
deal of moralising and speculative writing, which, here and there,
assumes a tone of impassioned ardour. The manuscript is stated
to contain several sensuous passages, which have been excised
from the published edition but which should not be left out of
account in estimating Digby's strange idiosyncrasy.
We re-enter a homelier sphere in mentioning among records
covering the earlier, as well as the later, years of Charles I's fateful
reign, the Historical Notices of Nehemiah Wallington of St
Leonard's, Eastcheap, London, which, indeed, go back as far as
1623, and occasionally refer to much earlier dates. This worthy
annalist, a London shopkeeper without family connections of
a higher social order, was, at the same time, bookish in his
tastes and a great reader of tracts, which he constantly quotes.
His chronicle is of a miscellaneous sort, noting all kinds of unusual
sights and occurrences, and remarkable judgments of God, as, for
instance, upon those that break the Sabbath day. Public events
he notes in the same strain ; on the meeting of the Long parlia-
ment, he recognises the flow of God's mercies in the judgments
done upon Strafford and Laud; the troubles in Ireland are brought
home to him by the sufferings there of his wife's brother Zechariah;
and the memoranda end with the execution of the king, on which
he comments: “Whatever may be unjust with men, God is righteous
and just in whatever he doth. '
Of more importance, though in some respects not very
different in spirit, is the Autobiography and Correspondence
of Sir Simonds d'Ewes, Bart. After serving as high sheriff
of Suffolk in 1640, he in 1642 entered parliament as member
for Sudbury.
He took the covenant. The Autobiography,
which becomes a record of affairs abroad (the great German
war in particular) as well as at home, shows forth a man who is
not a violent partisan. He judges the character of James I fairly,
without ignoring his vices and deviations, and, in the following
reign, wished for mutual concession and reconciliation between
king and parliament, but was equally opposed to Rome and to the
Anglicanism of Laud. He bad in him something of the genuine
spirit of puritanism, and disliked his own university, Cambridge,
not only because of the licence of life, but, also, because of the
‘hatred of all piety and virtue under false and adulterate nick-
names,' which he found obtaining there. There are touches of
other kinds which go some way towards reconciling us to the
1 The family letters subjoined to the Autobiography in some instances touch on
public affairs during the period 1600——49.


## p. 224 (#240) ############################################

224
Historical and Political Writings
pedantry of a man who, though no great orator', was probably an
excellent specimen of the average member of parliament in his
day. For the rest, the Autobiography ends in 1636, some years
before he took his seat, with the pathetic mention of the death of
the writer's “sweet and only surviving son, 'whose delicate favour
and bright grey eyes were deeply imprinted in our hearts. '
In contrast to the Autobiography of Sir Simonds d'Ewes may
be mentioned that of Sir Henry Slingsby of Scriven, who, after
being created a Nova Scotia baronet in 1638, sat for Knares-
borough in both the Short and Long parliaments, and in 1641 was
one of the fifty-nine members who voted against the bill for the
attainder of Strafford. In 1642, he appears to have ceased to
attend; but his Diary, which begins in 1638, continues to 1649,
the death of Charles I being the last public event noted in it? .
Slingsby's estates, though sequestered, were bought in for him by
friendly trustees; but he had to live in privacy, and having been
involved in a plot for a northern rising, underwent imprisonment
at Hull. He was afterwards entrapped into mixing himself up
with Ormonde's design, and, after being tried in London, was
beheaded on Tower hill, June 1658. His Diary is interesting as
exhibiting the life of a country gentleman, as well as on account of
its political memoranda. He writes with businesslike directness
but not without feeling, and can rise to saying of life here and
hereafter: 'Every man loves his Inn rather than his home. '
A special interest belongs to the Diary of John Rous, in-
cumbent, from 1625 to 1643, of Santon Downham, Suffolk. John
Rous, educated at Emmanuel college, Cambridge, was, for the last
third of his life, minister of a village or hamlet adjoining the
parish of which his father was rector. Thus, nothing could have
been more humdrum than the course of his life; but his Diary,
which seems to have been intended entirely for private use, pro-
bably gained, rather than lost, from the conditions of his existence.
For, while paying much attention to political and religious
controversy, he was a lover of literature, and thus he was led to
preserve, from no party point of view, an amount of contemporary
satirical verse which, considering the limits of his Diary, is
curiously large”, besides occasional political and other documents.
· He mentions with pride the compliments paid to him on one of his speeches by
the earl of Holland (vol. II, p. 289).
2 'He end'd his good life upon the 20th of January, 1648—9, I hear: heu me, quid
heu me? humana perpessi sumus. '
"I hate these following, railing rimes
Yet kepe them for president (precedent) of the times' (p. 109).
6
3


## p. 225 (#241) ############################################

The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow 225
At the same time, he was a thinking man, and one who expressed
his opinions, temperate as they were, with distinctness ; so that,
notwithstanding his moderation, it is clear that he believed time
to be on the side of the parliament rather than on that of the king.
What remains of his Diary has, accordingly, a flavour and value
of its own, while forming a sort of repertory of contemporary
satirical literature.
Leaving aside, as referred to elsewhere in this volume, the
personal records of archbishop Laud, and merely mentioning,
together with the vindictive Memoirs of Denzil, lord Holles,
the modest account of his own services written by Fairfax,
we are constrained to pause on the Memoirs of Edmund
Ludlow, which, though those of a contemporary, are not always
those of an eye-witness; thus, he was in Ireland during the
period after Worcester, in which, in his opinion, Cromwell's
designs first clearly manifested themselves. Of these designs,
and of everything which made for the superiority of the military
over the civil power, and of the monarchical over the de-
mocratic principle, he was a consistent adversary; and the
simple strength of his convictions invests his narrative with a
moral interest wbich neither the dogmatism of some of his later
utterances nor his occasional lack of intellectual sincerity can, in
the long run, obscure. His censures on Charles I and on Oliver
Cromwell necessarily gave rise to a great deal of controversy, in-
cluding a Just Defence of the Royal Martyr King Charles I from
the many false and malicious aspersions in Ludlow's Memoirs, etc.
(1699), and a Vindication of Oliver Cromwell from the accusations
of Lieutenant General Ludlow (1698). The latter of these tracts
was honoured by a brief 'moral' from the pen of Carlyle, who
could not, perhaps, be expected to recognise the fact that it is
on the completeness with which they are assimilated by partly
wooden men’ that the enduring influence of great currents of
opinion 'partly' depends. Ludlow's Memoirs form one of the
historical documents of English republicanism.
From a literary point of view, however, no biographical work of
the time equals in interest the life of yet another parliamentary
officer, written, in this instance, by his wife. The Memoirs of the
Life of Colonel Hutchinson, Governor of Nottingham Castle and
Town, etc. , etc. Written by his Widow Lucy, daughter of Sir Allen
Apsley, Governor of the Town, etc. , are inseparable from The Life
of Mrs Lucy Hutchinson, written by herself, albeit the latter is
i See ante, chap. VI.
2 See bibliography.
15
>
E. L. VII.
CH. IX.


## p. 226 (#242) ############################################

226 · Historical and Political Writings
only a fragment. It extends in fact over only a few pages; but
it is an excellent piece of writing, descriptive of the authoress's
birth and parentage, and giving a curious picture of an overtrained
but self-controlled girl who, when about seven years of age, ‘had at
one time eight tutors in several qualities, languages, music, dancing,
writing and needlework, but her genius was quite averse from all her
book. ' The picture of her mother has much charm, and proves
what a woman's kindness can do in any surroundings—for the wife
of the governor was 'a mother to all the prisoners that came into
the Tower. ' The character of her husband which is subjoined, and
which she drew up for her children, opens with a nobly worded
reference to his dying command to her ‘not to grieve at the
common rate of desolate women,' and purports to be 'a naked,
undressed narrative, speaking the simple truth of him. ' But it
appears that Mrs Hutchinson was so dissatisfied with what she had
written that she made another essay, which, however, her husband's
descendant Julius Hutchinson suppressed in favour of what he
thought the less laboured and more characteristic effort of the two.
It certainly brings out with much force colonel Hutchinson's deep
religiosity, his perfect veracity, his piety in his affections—which
seemed his most distinctive qualities to his sorrowing widow, who
says of herself that all that she is now at best is his pale shadow. '
The biography proper of colonel Hutchinson is a work com-
posed with great care and elaboration. We see him at Peter
House, where he was constant at their chapel,' and 'began to
take notice of their stretching superstition to idolatry. ' We follow
him to Lincoln's inn and witness his courtship, in which he gained
the hand of a woman, at first sight terribly superior to himself,
'after about fourteen months' various exercise of his mind, in the
pursuit of his love. ' Then we have an account of the condition of
the kingdom before the outbreak of the civil war-not very
original, or more fair in one way than Clarendon's is in another,
but of great interest as a direct apology for the puritans. They
were not, as they were believed to be, 'an illiterate, morose,
melancholy, discontented, crazed sort of men. ' On the other
hand, the moral purity of the king's court is acknowledged. At
the end of this disquisition, the writer refers her readers to May's
History, on which, indeed, it is largely based. The account of the
civil conflict in Notts (one of the counties whence the godly
bad to emigrate, and where the castle and adjoining town alone
remained in the hands of the parliament) is full of interest.
Hutchinson was long in expectation of a siege, first by Newcastle
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The Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson 227
and then by prince Rupert; but he held his own both against these
dangers and against the perpetual worrying of the parliamentary
committee, till times changed after Marston moor. Yet his
worst troubles began after he had come up to London, as a
member of parliament; and his wife's story now has to accompany
him through a tortuous course, which, after bringing him into
relations of deep mutual distrust with Cromwell, finally exposed
him, as one of the 'regicides,' to the vengeance of the restoration.
Although, with the skilful aid of his wife's exertions, he escaped
with his life and with most of his estate, he became suspect in
connection with the so-called Yorkshire plot, and was finally
brought home from prison to his grave. His ‘murderers,' writes
his uncompromising biographer, had confined him in Sandown
castle, where the place had killed him. '
The character of colonel Hutchinson, as drawn by his widow,
need not be accepted exactly as presented by her. It was some
time after the outbreak of the civil war that, as he phrases it, he
found 'a clear call from the Lord' to take up arms on the side
of his choice; and, again, he retained his seat in the House of
Commons even after proceedings to which his wife states him to
have objected. According to the same authority, he was a regicide
on compulsion; and this, perhaps, made it easier for her, at the
restoration, to plead in his name a 'signal' and not inopportune
repentance. ' She may have gone rather far in asserting that
‘ '
'there was nothing he durst not do but sin against God'; in return,
her high spirit and enthusiasm, together with her learning and
ability, more than justify her husband's dying commendation of
her above the pitch of ordinary women,' while her heroic devotion
to him, during a long succession of perils and trials, entitles her to
a place near that of Alcestis among the good women' of all time.
The form of her book is worthy of its spirit, and contributes to
illustrate the supreme force which belonged to religious conceptions
and associations as determining conduct in the age of which she
was a representative. The dignity of her style does not interfere
with its candour; on the other hand, the general sobriety of her
narrative is not out of harmony with occasional passages of deep
personal feeling and, now and then, of emotion almost passionate
in its directness.
The only royalist commander who played an important part in
the civil war and of whom a contemporary biography remains to
us was not less fortunate than colonel Hutchinson in the fact that
this record is from the hand of his wife. The Life of William
اد
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## p. 228 (#244) ############################################

228
Historical and Political Writings
Cavendish, duke of Newcastle, too, may be regarded as one of the
lesser classics of English biographical literature, and contains, like
its counterpart, a supplementary True Relation of the Birth,
Breeding and Life of his faithful companion in adversity as well
as in prosperity. It is true that many different estimates have
been formed by different critics of the literary claims of Margaret,
duchess of Newcastle, who, as became a loyal wife, has left
behind her a biography of her husband which may be described
as ample, but only a brief relation of what was personal to herself.
Among her contemporaries, at a season when the university of
Cambridge was prostrating itself in corpore before both their
graces, Pepys confided to his cipher that the writer of this
biography was 'a mad, conceited, ridiculous woman,' and the duke
'an ass to suffer her to write what she writes to him and of him'-
for her literary monument to her husband, singularly enough, was
erected during his lifetime. On the other hand, Charles Lamb
said of the book that ‘no casket is rich enough, no casing sufficiently
durable, to honour and keep such a jewel,' and indulged in other
paradoxes of praise with regard to the letters' of 'that princely
woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle.