1414.full Catholic Nobility

English Historical Review Vol. CXXV No.
517
The Author [2010]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1093/ehr/ceq344
Laurence Hyde and the Politics of Religion in

Later Stuart England*
*I would like to thank DMaris Coffman, Maya Evans, Katherine Halliday, Clive Holmes, John
Morrill, Paul Seaward, Stephen Taylor, Catherine Wright and the referees for this journal for
commenting on drafts of this article, and members of the Religious History of Britain 15001800
Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research for their searching questions. I am particularly
grateful to George Southcombe for reading two different drafts, and to Bill Speck, who not only
read an early draft but also generously allowed me access to then unpublished work. Lastly, I am
happy to acknowledge vital financial assistance from both the Arts and Humanities Research
Council (for graduate studentships) and the British Academy (for a Postdoctoral Fellowship).
1. T. Harris, P. Seaward and M. Goldie, eds., The Politics of Religion in Restoration England
(Oxford, 1990); J. Gregory, The Politics of Religion, Parliamentary History, xii (1993), pp. 28795;
and M. Goldie, Voluntary Anglicans, Historical Journal, xlvi (2003), pp. 97790.
2. C. Hill, The Experience of Defeat: Milton and Some Contemporaries (1984); R. Hutton, review
of C. Holmes, Seventeenth-Century Lincolnshire, ante, xcviii (1983), p. 870.
3. For the sake of consistency, I shall refer to Hyde throughout this article, even with regard to
the years after his creation as earl of Rochester in 1682.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
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One of the most significant dimensions of the re-invigoration of later

Stuart studies over the last 20 years has been the drive to place religion
at the heart of political affairs.1 Where once 1660 marked the experience
of defeat for religious radicals, and the beginnings of the rise of deism,
scepticism or outright atheism, much of the old iron curtain of
seventeenth-century historiography dividing the Restoration period off
from earlier decades has been pulled down by recent scholarship.2 As a
result, recovering different aspects of religious life, and their interactions
with later Stuart politics, has become a major sub-set of early modern
historiography. Nevertheless, with only a few distinguished exceptions,
recent scholars of the later Stuart period have not tended to use
individuals careers to illustrate their arguments about the close interplay
between religion and politics with the same gusto as their colleagues
working on the first half of the seventeenth century.
This article aims to contribute both to the specific trend in Restoration
studies that emphasises the importance of religion in political life, and
the wider tendency towards recognising the value of individual casestudies. It will do this via in-depth analysis of a particularly poorly
known figure: Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester.3 As a consequence of
previous biographical neglect, the first sections will offer some account
of Hydes life in order to contextualise the ensuing discussion of his
religion. It will be argued that this religious position was a central aspect
of Hydes political career, which was in turn of great importance within
public life between the last years of Charles II and the reign of Anne. In
particular, it will be suggested that a vital dimension of Hydes religious
beliefs can be supplied by a detailed consideration of his family life. His
1415
fathers example, his sisters conversion, a series of early deaths and his
relationships with his brother-in-lawJames IIand niecesMary II
and Anneall combined to define Hydes public status. The interplay
of these factors would lead to acute crisis in the winter of 1686/7 and
chronic discontent thereafter until his death in 1711.
4. For a well-written compendium of information from printed sources, see J. Biggs-Davison,

Tory Lives from Falkland to Disraeli (1952), pp. 3062.
5. S.W. Singer, ed., The Correspondence of Henry Hyde, Earl of Clarendon and of His Brother
Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester . . . (hereafter Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence) (2 vols.,
1828), passim.
6. W.A. Speck, Hyde, Laurence, first earl of Rochester (bap. 1642, d. 1711), Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).
7. Besides the first earl of Clarendons monumental History and Life, see Singer, ed., Clarendon
Correspondence, ii. pp. 141332 (the second earls diary for 168791); Mary Stuart, Memoirs of Mary
Queen of England (16891693) ..., ed. R. Doebner (1886).
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
Hyde was baptised in March 1642, five months before the beginning of
Englands wars of religion. Family connections, political circumstances
and personal belief would combine to keep religion at the heart of his
career thereafter. He was born the second son of Edward Hyde, earl of
Clarendon, Charles IIs first lord chancellor and a major architect of the
reconstruction of the old regimeincluding the Church of England
after 1660. In middle age, he was James IIs lord treasurer until he was
removed from office for failing to convert to catholicism in late 1686.
Finally, in the decade before his death in 1711, he was one of the most
prominent of those who argued during the reign of Anne that the
Church of England was put in danger by the influence of protestant
nonconformists. Yet despite these formidable claims to status, and the
obvious prominence of spiritual and ecclesiastical matters within them,
little has been written about Hydes religion. In part, this is a function
of the wider lack of biographical work about him; indeed, it is tempting
to say that Hyde is the most significant late Stuart politician not to have
received a published biography.4
Why have historians offered so little discussion of Hydes life and
career? W.A. Specks recent Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
article provides a good deal of welcome detail, as well as some intriguing
analysis, but it also emphasises the wider lacuna. Lack of evidence has
obviously inhibited many scholars. Although a two-volume collection
of letters and diaries written by Hyde and his older brother Henry, the
second earl of Clarendon, was published in 1828, there is a severe
imbalance of material in the latters favour.5 This is no doubt largely due
to the fire which destroyed Hydes Middlesex house, New Park,
Petersham, in 1721, ten years after his death.6 The likely impact of this
fire on his personal papers may have been very significant indeed bearing
in mind the powerful drive to record the events of their own lives that
ran through several generations of the Hyde family.7 Tantalising and
8. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. pp. 589632, 63741; B[ritish] L[ibrary], Add. MS
17016 fos. 25-6v. Singers edition is largely based on BL, Add. MSS 158928.
9. For Hydes thwarted ambition, see G. Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne (1967),
p. 275; W.R. Ward, Georgian Oxford: University Politics in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1958),
p. 41. For his natural arrogance, see A.W. Ward, Laurence Hyde, Dictionary of National Biography.
10. M.F. Yates, The Political Career of Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, as It Illustrates
Government Policy and Party Groupings under Charles II and James II (Univ. of London Ph.D.
thesis, 1935 for 1934), p. iv. For other unpublished theses, see my The Life and Career of Laurence
Hyde, Earl of Rochester, c.1681c.1686 (Univ. of Cambridge M.Phil. thesis, 1999), and
K.P. Shephard, The Political Career of Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, During the Reign of
Queen Anne, 17021711, (Univ. of Wales Aberystwyth M.A. thesis, 1980).
11. Notably by Macaulay and Sir Keith Feiling, relying on character sketches by Sir John
Reresby and Roger North, respectively: T.B. Macaulay, History of England, ed. C.H. Firth (6 vols.,
1913), ii. p. 723; K. Feiling, A History of the Tory Party, 16401714 (Oxford, 1924), p. 191.
12. R. Hutton, Charles II: King of England, Scotland and Ireland (Oxford, 1989), p. 405; Holmes,
British Politics, p. 169.
13. G.E. Aylmer, The Crowns Servants: Government and Civil Service under Charles II, 16601685
(Oxford, 2002), p. 21.
14. [Gilbert Burnet], Burnets History [of My Own Time], ed. O. Airy (2 vols., Oxford, 1897
1900), i. p. 463.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
1416
L AU R E N C E H Y D E A N D T H E P O L I T I C S
fragmentary diaries kept by Hyde survive elsewhere only for the 1670s,
before his rise to the highest offices of state.8
But lack of evidence has not been the only factor inhibiting historical
research into Hydes life. His career has failed to inspire modern scholars,
many of whom have additionally been repelled by his apparently
unpleasant personality.9 Even the one doctoral thesis devoted to Hydes
political lifewritten by M.F. Yates in the 1930sbegins on an
apologetic note by arguing that it was not solely about Hyde since it
would then represent only the study of a politician of the second or
even third rank.10 His hard drinking and explosive temper have often
been emphasised,11 while his politics have also been characterised in
pejorative terms. As a minister under Charles II, Hyde has been
described by Ronald Hutton as an aboriginal Tory, and Geoffrey
Holmes noted that in later life he became perhaps the most cantankerous
of the old High Tory chiefs.12 Such descriptive language is hardly
enticing. Neither a Whig theorist nor a Jacobite, Hyde does not readily
fit into many of the concerns of recent students of the long eighteenth
century.
Taking into account these problems, two things can nevertheless be
said about the shape of Hydes career preparatory to a more extended
discussion of the powerful role of religion within it. First, his was a
notably long and varied career. Hyde sat in every parliament and
convention from 1660 to 1711, first as an MP, and then, from 1685, as a
peer. He undertook diplomatic work in the Low Countries and Poland,
albeit with a striking lack of achievement. He enjoyed preferment at
Court, acting as Master of the Robes (166278), a significant office
thanks to its responsibility for the kings own clothing.13 Here his
success clearly built on a youthful suave style: Burnet described him as
the smoothest man at Court.14 For most of the period 167986, he
1417
dominated the administration of royal finances as first lord of the
treasury and then lord treasurer. In these roles, he consolidated and
extended the work of Danby in stabilising the Stuarts financial position,
notably by championing direct collection of taxation in the place of
inefficient and corrupt revenue farms.15 Much of this was achieved by
sheer hard work and relentless application, Hyde being observed to be
always early plodding at the scrutiny of accounts and estimates before
the other lords [of the Treasury] came.16 The political consequences of
such fiscal spade-work were immense: shoring up the royal finances
removed one of the major sources of monarchical weakness and political
tension with parliament that had bedevilled the English polity
throughout the Stuart period. In recognition of his role, John Dryden
lauded him as Hushai, the friend of David in distress, in Absalom and
Achitophel.17 Above and beyond financial administration, Hyde was also
the minister chosen by Charles to manage negotiations with the French
for a subsidy in early 1681. This success helped to nerve the king for the
stormy third Exclusion Parliament at Oxford in March 1681 and for its
abrupt dissolution. It certainly ensured heavy criticism of Hyde by later
historians writing in the Whig tradition and predisposed to criticise
political actions that allowed monarchs to avoid calling parliament.18
Unfortunately for Hyde, these achievements appear to have gone to his
head: he grew both violent and insolent.19 The combination of holding
the governments purse strings and high-handed dealings with other
ministers ultimately undermined his position with Charles II. The king
tolerated a lengthy and increasingly bitter assault on Hyde by the marquess
of Halifax, who in 1684 succeeded in having him kicked upstairs to the
more senior but less important post of lord president of the council.20
(He would return to the same post in 171011.) Worse stillfrom his own
perspectivehe endured two brief spells as lord lieutenant of Ireland, in
1684/5 and 17002. He was a Privy Councillor for a quarter of a century
(167989, 16921707, 171011). Outside of royal service, he was also High
Steward of the University of Oxford, taking over the role from his older
brother after the latters death in 1709.
O F R E L I G I O N I N L AT E R S T UA RT E N G L A N D
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
15. C.D. Chandaman, The English Public Revenue 1660-1688 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 6975, 1029,
24755, 276; S.B. Baxter, The Development of the Treasury 16601702 (1957), pp. 11718.
16. Roger North, The Lives of the Norths, ed. A. Jessopp (3 vols., 1890), i. p. 302.
17. Quoted in Speck, Hyde, Laurence, ODNB.
18. According to A.W. Ward, this negotiation was the worst political act of Hydes life:
Laurence Hyde.
19. Burnets History, ed. Airy, i. p. 463. The earl of Dartmouth claimed that Hydes temper led
to his creating as many enemies as any man of his time. Ibid., n.3.
20. [Sir John Reresby], Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, ed. A. Browning (2nd edn., with a new
preface and notes by M.K. Geiter and W.A. Speck, 1991), esp. pp. 288300, 31824, 32931, 3345,
3401, 344; Burnets History, ed. Airy, ii. pp. 3402, 4356. The dispute was satirised by Thomas
Shadwell in The Protestant Satire (1684), in G. de F. Lord, ed., Poems on Affairs of State:
Augustan Satirical Verse, 16601714 (7 vols., 196375), iii. pp. 51140.
What can be said about the role of religion within this long and varied
political career? Even if limited materials render a full-scale biography
of Hyde difficult, there still exists an admittedly small and fissiparous
body of evidence from which some discussion of Hydes religious beliefs
can be drawn. This is the more necessary as these beliefs were not only
21. H[istorical] M[anuscripts] C[ommission], Second Report, p. 12; Bodl[eian Library, Oxford],
MS Carte 50 fos. 283, 291; HMC, Ormonde, NS, vi. p. 405.
22. For example, N. Japikse, ed., Correspondentie van Willem III en van Hans Willem Bentinck ...
(RGP, Kleine Serie, xxvii), p. 603 (no. dxc), pp. 7245 (no. dcciii).
23. E. Gregg, Queen Anne (new edn., New Haven, 2001), pp. 3840. Anne cordially disliked
Hydes wife, Lady Henrietta (d. 1687), who had held office in her Court: ibid., p. 18.
24. Ibid., pp. 15768.
25. C. Jones and G. Holmes, eds., The London Diaries of William Nicolson Bishop of Carlisle
17021718 (Oxford, 1985), p. 64; H. Horwitz, Parliament, Policy and Politics in the Reign of
William III (Manchester, 1977), p. 324; H.T. Dickinson, Bolingbroke (1970), p. 20.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
1418
A second characteristic of Hydes career is that it was dominated by
his familial relations to a degree unusual even amongst the tightly-knit
ranks of the early modern English political elite. He owed his youthful
rise in parliament and at Court to his status as one of Clarendons sons.
Even more significant was the fact that his sister, Anne Hyde, married
James, duke of York in 1660. As will become clear, her subsequent
conversion to catholicism made a deep impact on Hyde. But alongside
religious trauma went political success: Hyde became one of Jamess
most loyal and prominent clients. The heir to the throne exerted
influence in Hydes choice of wife, and was subsequently a decisive force
in the marriage negotiations for one of Hydes daughters to the grandson
of the pre-eminent Irish grandee James Butler, duke of Ormond.21
Hydes rise to the most powerful office of statelord treasurerin
February 1685 was one of the more predictable of Jamess early acts.
Thanks to the longevity and closeness of his relationship with James, his
fall in 1686/7 represented one of the most decisive psychological and
symbolic blows to the kings catholicising campaign. Despite taking the
oaths to William and Mary in 1689, Hydes relations with his nieces,
James IIs daughters Mary II and Anne, were deeply troubled throughout
the 1690s and 1700s. Marys relations with Hyde were complicated by
the fact that her husband, William III, loathed Hyde on the basis of
their diplomatic contacts in the 1670s and 1680s.22 For her part, the
young Princess Anne bitterly resented Hydes unwillingness as lord
treasurer to do more to increase the size of her courtly establishment in
the mid 1680s.23 In later years, his over-bearing personality and relentless
attempts to trade on their family ties did not endear him to Anne as
queen.24 Alongside Daniel Finch, earl of Nottingham, Hyde in old age
has been described as one of the Olympian figures in the [House of ]
Lords and his death was one of a number in the early 1710s that marked
a generational change in English political life.25
1419
a central part of his life and career; they are also ripe for historical
re-evaluation. Scholars writing between the 1920s and 1950s lambasted
Hyde for what they saw as his insincere rhetoric, flabby conscience, and
flimsy protestantism, or else treated him more as a labelHigh
Churchmanthan a three-dimensional historical figure.26 More
recently W.A. Speck has argued that Hyde was a court politician before
the Glorious Revolution and only really a high church tory after it.27
By contrast, the remainder of this article will adumbrate the view that
Hydes anglican beliefs were significant from an early age; that they
created opportunities for him in Restoration political life; but were
ultimately to prove an insuperable barrier to royal favour.
Almost no direct evidence for Hydes life between his baptism in 1642
and the Restoration exists, but he shared in his familys exile in Europe
during the interregnum, often in straitened circumstances, living for
some time in Antwerp and Breda.28 Although Hyde made tantalising
reference in a diary written in 1677, during one of his diplomatic
sojourns in the United Provinces, to a visit he made to the school that
he and his brother had once attended, no firm details are known of any
religious education that he received in the 1650s.29 A biographical essay
published immediately after Hydes death in 1711 suggested that
Clarendon took especial Care to give his Son Education suitable to his
Quality, but this can only readily be substantiated in terms of the Hyde
brothers knowledge of French and the classical world.30
What is known is that Clarendons chaplain until his fall in 1667 was
Dr Robert South, one of the leading anglican preachers and writers of
the Restoration period, and that South fulfilled a second role as Hydes
tutor.31 Even here, though, evidence for the interaction of tutor and
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
26. For a sample, see Feiling, Tory Party, pp. 208, 213; D. Ogg, England in the Reigns of James II
and William III (Oxford, 1955), p. 170; G. Every, The High Church Party 16881718 (1956), p. 112;
G. Davies, Tory Churchmen and James II, in id. Essays on the Later Stuarts (San Marino, CA,
1958), p. 41 n.2. Of these, Davies was perhaps the most nuanced: see ibid., p. 64.
27. Speck, Hyde, Laurence, ODNB.
28. Much of what there is can be seen in Yates, Political Career, pp. 14. The whole field of
Clarendons domestic life is poorly documented: T.H. Lister, Life and Administration of Edward,
First Earl of Clarendon (3 vols., 18378), ii. p. 529; I. Green, The Publication of Clarendons
Autobiography and the Acquisition of his Papers by the Bodleian Library, Bodleian Library Record,
x (1982), p. 352; P. Seaward, Hyde, Edward, first earl of Clarendon (1609-1674), ODNB.
29. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. p. 625. Though see recently, A. Hughes and
J. Sanders, Gender, Geography and Exile: Royalists and the Low Countries in the 1650s, in
J. McElligott and D.L. Smith, eds., Royalists and Royalism during the Interregnum (Manchester,
2010), pp. 1389.
30. [Anon.], An Essay Towards the Life of Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester; Late Lord President of
Her Majestys Most Honourable Privy Council ... (1711), p. 4; Yates, Political Career, pp. 23.
31. Robert South, Posthumous Works of the Late Reverend Robert South, D.D. (1717), p. 20. For
South, see B. Griggs, South, Robert (16341716), ODNB; G. Reedy, Robert South (16341716): An
Introduction to His Life and Sermons (Cambridge, 1992). For the claim of the Jersey resident, C. Le
Couteur, to have been Henry Hydes tutor during the familys years of exile, see Bodl., MS Tanner
37, fo. 132v.
32. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. p. 622. See also ibid., i. p. 609.
33. Cal[endar of the] Clar[endon] S[tate] P[apers Preserved in the Bodleian Library . . .], ed.
O. Ogle et al. (5 vols., Oxford, 18691970), v. p. 405. For Clarendons role as patron to Earle, see
K.G. Feiling, Clarendon and the Act of Uniformity, 16623, ante, xliv (1929), p. 290 and the
sources listed in n.9.
34. G.V. Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State, 1688-1730: The Career of Francis Atterbury
(Oxford, 1975), pp. 20, 26, 30; R.A. Beddard, Restoration Oxford and the Remaking of the
Protestant Establishment, in N. Tyacke, ed., The History of the University of Oxford, IV. SeventeenthCentury Oxford (Oxford, 1997), p. 833 and n.189.
35. Beddard, Restoration Oxford, p. 831; An Essay Towards the Life of Lawrence Hyde, p. 5;
Speck, Hyde, Laurence, ODNB; B.D. Henning, ed., The House of Commons, 16601690 (3 vols.,
1983), ii. p. 628.
36. E. OKeeffe, The Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde,
1658-1688 (Univ. of Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 2001), pp. 104, 10812.
37. BL, Stowe MS 746 fo. 73v.
38. HMC, Ormonde, NS, vii. pp. 31314; Bodl., MS Carte 69 fo. 497; Bodl., MS Rawlinson
letters 98 fo. 215; Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, ii. p. 183; R.A. Beddard, James II and
the Catholic Challenge, in Tyacke, ed., Seventeenth-Century Oxford, pp. 9524; G.H. Jones,
Convergent Forces: Immediate Causes of the Revolution of 1688 in England (Ames, IA, 1990), p. 54.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
1420
pupil is sparse. That the two ultimately did not enjoy easy relations is
clear from Hydes diary of his trip to Poland as ambassador in 1676: at
one point Hyde wrote of South feeding up on his own ill-natured
spleen for four days together.32 Nevertheless, the fact that Hyde took
South on the mission, two years after his fathers death, is indicative of
his sense of filial respect, a theme to which I will return. Perhaps more
important than Souths immediate attentions as tutor was Hydes
position within his fathers milieu as lord chancellor, and a pillar of the
Church of England interest in the early Restoration. When the bishop
of Salisbury, John Earle, wrote to Clarendon in 1664 he sent his most
hearty prayers to the lord chancellors family, and particular blessing to
Mr Lau[rence].33
From the early 1660s, Hyde formed an amicable bond with
that bastion of Restoration anglicanism, the University of Oxford.
Following his fathers election as Chancellor, Hyde and his brother were
granted MAs, Hyde gaining a life-long attachment to Christ Church,
soon to emerge as one of the most influential of the collegiate bases for
anglican renewal under the redoubtable John Fell.34 This connection
was most visible in his election as MP (despite being under age) for the
University of Oxford in the Cavalier Parliament, from 1661 to 1679.35 In
later years, the marriage between Hydes daughter, Anne and the
grandson of the first duke of Ormond displayed his alliance with one of
his fathers friends, and a fellow stalwart of the Church of England
interest in government, who also served as Chancellor of Oxford.36 The
two were seen to co-operate in the Universitys interest politically,37 and
after Ormonds death Hyde was quick to support the second dukes
election as Chancellor of Oxford in order to forestall James intruding a
catholic or a catholic sympathiser in 1688.38 Members of the Hyde
family would act as stewards of the university until 1753.
1421
Signs of Hydes religious and aesthetic interests in his thirties are
visible in the diaries he wrote during diplomatic appointments to
Poland and the United Provinces in 16767.39 Both states offered very
different religious environments to the anglican church-state that Hyde
knew in England. During his time in Poland in particular, he took a
lively interest in the diverse religious life evident there, visiting armenian,
jesuit, bernardine and dominican churches and chapelsas well as
the roman catholic cathedral and a jewish synagogueand avidly
commenting on their architecture and furnishings.40 But in his diary,
he displayed most interest in the Greek orthodox Church he saw,
providing a long account of its decorations, altars and ceremonies.41 He
was clearly sufficiently intrigued to discuss the Greek orthodox Churchs
eucharistic beliefs with a theatine father despatched by the Pope to
instruct the local armenians in the Roman faith.42
Intellectual interest and a drive to record what he had seen did not,
of course, necessarily signal real impact on Hyde, any more than it did
for many other English travellers in the period. But the religious
diversity did provide a topic for discussion among the diplomats and
local dignitaries in Poland. One day Hyde recorded that:
Having ascertained that the Polish Treasurer could read English, Hyde
told him if he would read the book, I would for his souls sake send
it to him when I came into England.43 The intertwined issues of
conscience and conversion would return to haunt Hyde in later years.
Nor did Hyde confine himself to discussions of private conscience.
When the French ambassador and the Polish Treasurer contrasted the
39. For Hydes diplomatic activity, see N. Davies, Gods Playground: A History of Poland (2 vols.,
Oxford, 1981), i. pp. 4024; K.H.D. Haley, The Anglo-Dutch Rapprochement of 1677, ante, lxxiii
(1958), pp. 61448, esp. pp. 6357; A. Browning, Thomas Osborne Earl of Danby and Duke of Leeds
16321712 (3 vols., Glasgow, 1951), ii. pp. 57095.
40. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. pp. 604, 607, 608, 616.
41. For such interest in an earlier period, see W.B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the
Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge, 1997), ch. 6; H. Trevor-Roper, From Counter-Reformation to
Glorious Revolution (1992), ch. 5.
42. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. pp. 606, 610.
43. Ibid., i. p. 597. The book was presumably Chillingworths hugely popular and influential
The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation first published in 1638 and reprinted several times
in the Restoration period.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
the Treasurer [of Poland] told me he had been of my religion, and that he
had changed upon the pure motives of conscience, and upon a clear
understanding that he had been in the wrong ... . I told him I wished he
could understand English, that I might give him a book, (I meant
Chillingworth,) where he would see a man of our Church, of great learning
and piety, of no interest or passion, to have changed three times, and giving
the reasons every time for so doing.
as they hope for blessing from God Almighty, that they be never corrupted
by covetousness, or induced by persuasion, or by any other means prevailed
with, to receive by purchase, gift, or any other way, any of the lands, leases
or perquisites due to the Church, and taken away from it by this power that
oppresses it; no, though the King should be induced (which I hope he will
never be) to consent to the alienation of those lands. For I am persuaded,
that the same is sacrilege, by what power soever done, and that it will draw
the judgment of God upon the authors and gainers by it.
Clarendon went so far as to insist that even if his children should

subsequently come to be persuaded that acquiring such properties or
revenues was not sacrilegious, I still require and charge them, to
acquiesce in this command of mine.46
Far from resenting their fathers peremptory commands, both
Laurence and Henry Hyde clearly developed an enduring veneration
for their fathers memory and example. Historians have long recognised
44. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. pp. 5967.

45. Here I rely on M. Dzelzainiss superb essay, Undoubted Realities: Clarendon on Sacrilege,
Historical Journal, xxxiii (1990), pp. 51540.
46. State Papers Collected by Edward, Earl of Clarendon (3 vols., Oxford, 176786), ii. p. 359.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
1422
wealth of Polish bishops with the extent to which English bishops had
lost their privileges and revenues since the Reformation, he argued that
they had lost some of their revenues, but retained still very great ones;
and all their dignities.44
Hydes comments may have been no more than patriotic platitudes
designed to disarm the criticisms of catholic foreigners. But knowledge
of his fathers views suggests that they were also likely to reflect a more
deep-seated regard for the rights and properties of the Church of
England. Although a lawyer by profession, in the 1640s Clarendon had
expressed very different views on the character and significance of the
sin of sacrilege than other leading legal thinkers like John Selden and
the judge John Fountaine.45 In his Of Sacrilege, written in early 1648,
Clarendon had followed Joseph Mede and other clerical authors in a
vehement criticism of individuals and groupsnotably victorious
Parliamentariansdenuding Church property. In his view, the deep sin
of sacrilege infected England like Leprosy. The predatory activity of
many noble and gentry families from the dissolution of the monasteries
onwards had called down Gods judgement on England in the form of
civil war, just as surely as other confiscations had provoked divine wrath
in central Europe in the guise of the Thirty Years War. So seriously did
Clarendon take this problem that the year before writing Of Sacrilege he
had emphasised the point at length in his last Will and Profession
(3 April 1647). In this extraordinary document, he charged all his children:
1423
that Hyde inherited a special relationship with the anglican church and
clergy from his father, just as his contemporary, Daniel Finch, earl of
Nottingham, did from his father, another of Charles IIs lord
chancellors.47 But this has often been presented in cynical terms, as an
early political asset which then became an inescapable mill-stone during
James IIs reign, when Hyde could not shake off his family attachment
to the Church of England in radically changed political and religious
circumstances.48 In reality, Hyde and his brother invoked their fathers
name to each other in private correspondence as a clinching point in
arguments, and to nerve each other for difficult decisions.49 Hyde also
sought to pass on such high regard for Clarendon to the next generation.
He impressed his fathers example and the lustre he had added to the
family name on his young son in a letter of advice in 1682. Written
when Hyde was made earl of Rochester and his son became Lord Hyde,
the letter urged the boy to follow his grandfathers example and to be
known for an honest Man, a Religious man to God, [and] an Obedient
subject to the King.50
Memories of Clarendon were particularly strong in a religious
context. Hydes positive reference to the works of Chillingworth during
his stay in Poland surely provides a clear link with a significant part of
his fathers milieu: William Chillingworth had been a prominent
member of the Great Tew circle.51 And in 1675, Hyde wrote an extensive
set of unfinished but powerful Meditations on the Anniversary Day of
Lord Chancellor Clarendons Death which were suffused with filial
respect and affection.52 In them he wrote that Clarendon was53
47. J.R. Jones, Country and Court: England, 16581714 (1978), p. 23.
48. J.R. Western, Monarchy and Revolution: The English State in the 1680s (1972), 87; J.R. Jones,
The Revolution of 1688 in England (1972), p. 85; J.P. Kenyon, Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland,
16411702 (Cambridge, 1958), pp. 1389.
49. For example, Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. pp. 1819.
50. BL, Add. MS 75373 fo. 20v (copy).
51. W. Chernaik, Chillingworth, William (16021644), ODNB. (I am grateful to Paul Seaward
for emphasising this link to me.) Dzelzainis has, however, convincingly suggested that Clarendons
churchmanship was not constrained by his experience of Great Tew, belonging more obviously to
the mainstream of anglican tradition: Undoubted Realities, p. 538.
53. Ibid., i. p. 645. Clarendon clearly reciprocated these warm feelings: Lister, Life and
Administration of Edward , iii. p. 481.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
the best of fathers, and the kindest and wisest friend I ever met with:
according to whose counsels I pray God I may regulate my actions, and live
and die according to his practice, in imitation of his virtue and honesty
towards man, his integrity and duty to the King (though mistaken and
rejected by him), and his piety and resignation to God Almighty, in those
accidents of his life ...
1424
As such a beginning would suggest, the Meditations are a combination
of bitter resentment about his fathers political fall in 1667 and the
elevation of Clarendon to an almost other-worldly sense of religious
virtue. According to Hyde, Clarendon had preferred his integrity alone
before all the favour and fortune of the world, and had stood as a
religious touchstone for the nation:54
Of so vast importance is it, to have one man in a nation, for whose probity
the greatest part of the rest have so much awe and reverence as to have a fear
of discovering those sins before him, which have since broken out like boils
and diseases upon them; and to have one such righteous man, for whose
sake God would preserve at least for some time, though not spare a nation.

55. Especially Book of Job 2:38.
56. State Papers Collected by Edward, Earl of Clarendon, iii. supplement, xlvi.
57. Ibid., ii. p. 358.
58. Clarendon to Cornbury, Moulins, 17 Mar. 1673/4, ibid., iii. supplement, xlii.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
It is difficult to read these passages without feeling that Hyde perceived

his father in terms analogous to Job, a servant of God whose integrity
had remained unshaken despite the gravest trials.55 In this, he had been
an apt pupil of his fathers views. As Clarendon wrote at the end of his
short 1674 will, his were children of a Father who never committed
fault against his Majesty.56 Hyde certainly accepted without reservation
Clarendons self-image as a truly conscientious man during periods of
exile. In 1647, Clarendon wrote that the envy and malice of his enemies
was the more supportable to me, being in my conscience, I thank God,
free from any fault that might deserve it.57 In 1674, he told his elder son
that he retained a sense of confidence that God Almighty will give me
some signal vindication, even in this world, from all the reproaches I
have been unjustly charged with.58
This sense of a clean conscience inviting providential deliverance may
have been a shared frame of reference within his family, but it did also
create some problems for Hyde. The Meditations he wrote on the
anniversary of his fathers death are shot through with a sense of guilt at
the fact that his own political fortunes had improved after his fathers
fall. Although Clarendon had had the support of a good conscience
and the most unspotted innocency, Hyde railed against the fair-weather
friends who had turned on his father in 1667. He then went on to
reproach himself for counselling his father to flee in the first place,
and for acquiescing in the subsequent act of banishment, the shame
of which he believed to have hastened his father to his grave.59 Such
1425
comments suggest a deep and abiding self-criticism beneath the
superficially powerful public persona.60
Hydes discomfort was not limited to his own conduct during the
short-term political storm that had destroyed his fathers career. In his
view, the exile of his father from England resulted in a decline in the
quality of government for the public,61 and a catastrophe within the
private sphere of his family. In February 1671 Clarendon, trapped in
exile in France, dedicated his Contemplations and Reflexions upon the
Psalms of David to his children, and warned them particularly against
the Church of Rome.62 This was scarcely an idle admonition. At the
time he wrote, Clarendon can have been in little doubt that his daughter,
Anne, had converted to catholicism: rumours strong enough to have
led him to write letters both to her and her husband, the duke of York,
had been circulating since at least 1668.63 She would die shortly after the
dedication was written. Both Clarendon and Hyde wrote of their regret
that Clarendons exile had rendered him unable to talk to his daughter
and satisfy her doubts. In his Meditations on his fathers death, Hyde
argued that in their fathers absence his sister had been:64
Even his own efforts to get an anglican divine to her deathbed had
proved fruitless.65 The loss of his sister to Rome, despite her fathers
admonitions, would continue to preoccupy Hyde for years to come.
Although no direct evidence can be brought to bear, it seems unlikely that
this harrowing experience would not have been in Hydes mind when
James put severe pressure on him to convert to catholicism in 1686.
60. The meditations end painfully and abruptly: I have further to reproach myself, that
during the time of his banishment ...: ibid., p. 650.
61. Allusive comments suggest criticism of the Declaration of Indulgence (1672), and the earl of
Danby (who both Hyde brothers regarded as an enemy of their father): ibid., p. 648; Speck, Henry
Hyde, second earl of Clarendon (16381709), ODNB; Browning, Thomas Osborne, i. p. 153 and n.1.
62. Edward Hyde, The Miscellaneous Works of the Right Honourable Edward, Earl of Clarendon
... (2nd edn., 1751), p. 376 (a mistake for p. 356).
63. State Papers Collected by Edward, Earl of Clarendon, iii, supplement, xxxvii-xl. Abstracts of
these letters are given in Cal. Clar. SP, v. 6312, and they clearly gained a wide scribal circulation,
to judge by the number of extant manuscript copies listed on the BL online catalogue alone. For
Anne Hydes conversion, see J.R. Henslowe, Anne Hyde, Duchess of York (1915), ch. 7; F.C. Turner,
James II (1948), pp. 1078; J. Miller, James II (new edn., New Haven, 2000), pp. 589; J. Callow,
The Making of King James II: The Formative Years of a Fallen King (Stroud, 2000), pp. 1437, 1534;
Cal. Clar. SP, v. 635.
64. Cal. Clar. SP, v. 647.
65. Turner, James II, p. 108. Compare Henslowe, Anne Hyde, pp. 293, 295. A much less active
role is attributed to Hyde in Callow, Making of King James II, p. 154.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
seduced by degrees to have an ill opinion of the religion she was born and
bred in, and overborne by arguments she could not answer herself, and an
unwearied application of those of the Romish Church to gain her, and
almost deserted and betrayed by the most stupid negligence, and coolness,
carelessness, and unconcernedness of most of our own Church ...
The King my Master is truly sensible of the great misfortune of those Princes
whose power must be bounded, and Reason regulated by the Fantastic
humours of their Subjects. Till Princes come to be freed from these
inconveniences, the King my Master sees no probable prospect of
Establishing The most Holy Apostolic Roman Catholic Religion.
Hyde was in no doubt that the pamphlets aim was to excite fears of
popery and arbitrary government within England, and vehemently
66. Biographica Britannica (6 vols. in 7 parts, 174766), iv. p. 2738; Singer, ed., Clarendon
Correspondence, i. xiv.
67. John Verney to Sir Ralph Verney, 20 Nov. 1679, HMC, Seventh Report, 477b; duke of York
to Hyde, 14 Dec. 1680, Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. p. 49.
68. Anchitell Grey, Debates of the House of Commons ... (10 vols., 1769), vii. p. 402; An Essay
Towards the Life of Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, p. 13. Hydes comments came in November 1680,
but were recalled by his parliamentary opponents in Dec. 1680 and Mar. 1681: Grey, Debates, viii.
pp. 152, 328.
69. Duke of York to Hyde, 2 & 28 May 1679, Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. pp. 434.
See also Life of James II, ed. J.S. Clarke (2 vols., 1816), i. pp. 682, 6979. The content of these
intriguing letters is not known.
70. [A breviat of James Harris information against William Raddon, 24 Oct. 1682], Calendar
of State Papers Domestic 1682, 494; earl of Dartmouth to Hyde, Tangier, 29 Dec. 1683, Singer, ed.,
Clarendon Correspondence, i. p. 93.
71. An Inscription Intended to Be Set up for the E-l of R-r, When by the Happy Effects of his Ministry,
the Chapel of St Stephens Is Become a Chapel to the Jesuites ... ([1701]), Translation of the L-d H-s
Speech, now E. of R-r, to the King of Poland 1677, pp. 67, at p. 6. For manuscript copies, see
National Archives of Ireland, Wyche MS 1/1/7; T[he] N[ational] A[rchives], P[ublic] R[ecord]
O[ffice] 30/24/6A; BL, Sloane MS 3516 fos. 4950.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
1426
Long before that crisis, it was his close relationship with the heir to the
throne that brought Hyde his most acute difficulties as Jamess
catholicism became the central political problem of the 1670s. Hyde
had been a member of Jamess household from the earliest years of the
Restoration, holding the titles of Groom of the Stole and Gentleman of
the Bedchamber when he was sent as part of an embassy to congratulate
Louis XIV on the birth of the Dauphin in 1661.66 It was James who
recommended Hyde to Charles II in 1679 as one of a group of young
able statesmen, and was clearly recognised by Hyde as his outstanding
patron.67 In return Hyde was a client zealous for his masters rights,
going so far as to threaten a Whig-dominated House of Commons with
civil war in the event of it passing a bill of Exclusion.68 James evidently
trusted his former brother-in-law implicitly, enclosing letters open to
Hyde which he was to use only if an Exclusion Bill was passed.69
Even without knowledge of Hyde and Jamess personal
correspondence, contemporaries recognised that Hyde was too nearly
related to the Duke of York and that he was sure to suffer with James
in any political misfortune.70 In 1678, Hyde was rendered incandescent
with rage by a libellous pamphlet purporting to be a translation of the
Latin speech he had made to the King of Poland whilst ambassador
there 18 months earlier. The key passage imputed to Hyde was that:71
1427
denied that he had ever in his life called roman catholicism the most
holy Catholic religion.72 Such furious indignation prefigured the House
of Commons accusation in 1680 that Hyde was popishly affected, a
charge which reduced him to tears and an emphatic denial.73 The jibes
must have been particularly galling to Hyde since he frequently urged
James to return to the fold of the Church of England in the late 1670s
and early 1680s, despite his patrons increasingly angry refusals.74
The story of Hydes religious and political life in the years between
the dissolution of Charless last parliament at Oxford in 1681 and his fall
from office in the winter of 1686/7 is central to national events. Hyde
was widely seen by contemporaries as a leading minister in Charless last
years,75 as the premier Minister after Jamess succession, and, at least
retrospectively, the head of the cabinet.76 Hydes relationship with
James remained crucial to his political fortunes77; indeed it has been
argued that he was at the head of a reversionary interest in Charless last
years, particularly as a result of his membership of the Commission for
Ecclesiastical Promotions from 1681 to 1684.78 Whether this commission
really acted as a thoroughgoing instrument for tory reaction, dominated
by a caucus of Hyde and Sancroft, is debateable.79 But there is no doubt
that Hydes status attracted a number of requests for ecclesiastical
patronage. In England, one of the rising stars of the ecclesiastical
firmament, Francis Turner, regularly invoked Hydes name in letters to
Archbishop Sancroft in connection to his own meteoric rise and clerical
protgs.80 Turner and Hyde would later be the guiding forces behind
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
72. Hyde to Clarendon, 7/17 May 1678, Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. p. 14.
73. Grey, Debates, viii. p. 283; Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, ed. Browning, p. 224; Gilbert Burnet,
History of His Own Time, ed. M.J. Routh (6 vols., Oxford, 1823), ii. p. 249. Rumours that Hyde
would be impeached in a future Whig-dominated parliament were still circulating in December
1681: HMC, Ormonde, NS, vi. p. 263.
74. Life of James II, ed. Clarke, i. pp. 584, 7001; Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i.
pp. 45, 51.
75. Pearse Street Library, Dublin, Gilbert MS 109, p. 32; HMC, Ormonde, NS, vi. p. 141;
National Library of Scotland, MS 14405 fo. 21v. Charles explicitly refuted rumours that Hyde
would be made lord treasurer to Halifax: Hutton, Charles II, p. 419.
76. James Fraser to [unknown], 10 Feb. 1685, HMC, Egmont, ii. p. 149; Thomas Bruce, Memoirs
of Thomas, Earl of Ailesbury, ed. W.E. Buckley (2 vols., 1890), i. p. 98.
77. Notably when James maintained his support for Hyde during Halifaxs prolonged assault
on his client over the probity of his financial work in connection with the Hearth Tax. See Pearse
Street Library, Dublin, Gilbert MS 109, p. 32; BL, Add. MS 63057B fo. 67v; BL, Add. MS 75363
(unfol.), 31 Jan. 1682/3; HMC, Ormonde, NS, vi. p. 302.
78. R.A. Beddard, The Commission for Ecclesiastical Promotions, 1681-84: An Instrument of
Tory Reaction, Historical Journal, x (1967), pp. 1140.
79. I intend to publish a separate article on this commission. For now, see the cautionary
remarks in D.R. Hirschberg, The Government and Church Patronage in England, 16601670,
Journal of British Studies, xx (19801), pp. 1223; J. Miller, After the Civil Wars: English Politics and
Government in the Reign of Charles II (Harlow, 2000), p. 292 n.77.
80. Bodl., MS Tanner 34 fos. 142, 173. See also Bodl., MS Rawlinson letters 93 fo. 290 and
Thomas Comber, The Autobiographies and Letters of Thomas Comber, Sometime Precentor of York and
Dean of Durham, ed. C.E. Whiting (Surtees Soc., pp. 1567, 19467 for 19412), i. p. 17 for other
clergymen using Turner to influence Hyde.
81. Bodl., MS Tanner 34 fos. 58r-v; ibid., 32 fo. 37.

82. Clarendon appointed to the rectory of Blundeston in 1684, and Hyde to the vicarage of
Wootton Bassett in 1691. TNA, PRO, IND/17008, pp. 343, 362. I am grateful to Andrew Barclay
for directing me to these indexes of the institution books.
83. Bodl., MS Tanner 34 fos. 79, 132; ibid., p. 32 fo. 168v; T. Harmsen, Hickes, George
(16421715), ODNB.
84. For example, HMC, Ormonde, NS, vi. p. 494.
85. BL, Add. MS 75355 (unfol.), 16 May [1681 or 1682].
86. For contemporary perceptions of Hydes influence, or requests for favour, see Humphrey
Prideaux, Letters of Humphrey Prideaux, Sometime Dean of Norwich, to John Ellis . . ., ed.
E.M. Thompson, Camden Society, new series, xv (1875), pp. 1445; Bodl., MS Tanner 30 fo. 145;
Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. pp. 146, 385.
87. HMC, Ormonde, NS, vi. p. 294.
88. Bodl., MS Tanner 41 fo. 84.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
1428
attempts to maintain political support for James in December 1688.
Nevertheless, Turner was not Hydes first choice for preferment, and the
wily cleric used his help mainly as an auxiliary force or as a safety
precaution against being stymied.81 Although no direct evidence can be
marshalled to prove the point conclusively, it may be that Turners
wariness around Hyde was a result of the fact that he had once been
Anne Hydes anglican chaplain: her conversion to catholicism can
hardly have been a feather in Turners professional cap.
Hyde was often mentioned in partnership with his brother. If the
siblings direct ecclesiastical patronage was slight, limited to a couple of
benefices in Wiltshire,82 Clarendon was nevertheless a supporter of
leading anglican propagandists in the 1680s like John Nalson and
George Hickes. Both of these men championed the necessity of
prosecuting dissenters, and Hickes at least also had connections with
Hyde.83 As well as cooperating with his brother, Hyde worked in
conjunction with the duke of Ormond in regard to both English and
Irish clerical appointments.84 He was also credited as having a unique
degree of influence over the lord chancellor, Heneage Finch, and his
huge reserves of patronage.85 Nevertheless, we should be wary about
over-confident assignments of vast influence to Hyde alone.86 Within
the commission for ecclesiastical promotions, he sometimes worked
with Halifax, before the political tension between the two led to a
severing of friendly relations,87 and the former leading presbyterian
peer John Robartes, earl of Radnor.88
Although the links between Hyde and his older brother remained
strong in this period, he suffered other family traumas that combined to
maintain his vivid awareness of his fathers example and a looming sense
of dynastic tragedy. His younger brother James died in a shipwreck in
1682 while accompanying the duke of York to Scotland.89 After years of
ill health, his wife died in 1687. But his sense of divine punishment, and
a fear that much of it was the result of his own actions, seems to have
1429
been most actuated by the death of his daughter, Anne. He composed
another set of Meditations in January 1685 in the wake of her death, in
which he wrote that he had drawn down this untimely death upon my
innocent child as a result of failing sufficiently to acknowledge Gods
favour. Even after the disgrace and exile of his father I had been
preserved in his Majestys favour and countenance, that I seemed to be
like a tree planted by the water side, whose leaf does not wither, and
whatsoever I did seemed to prosper.90 Coming 10 years after his
meditations on his fathers death, these comments reveal how raw
memories of the mid-1670s remained, and once again point to Hydes
private habit of intense introspection and continuing feelings of guilt.
90. Ibid., i. p. 173. (Hydes phraseology closely follows Psalm 1:3.) See also Bodl., MS Carte 217
fo. 111; OKeeffe, Family and Marriage Strategies of James Butler, p. 111.
91. Grey, Debates, vii. p. 401 (1 Nov. 1680).
92. For example, Yates, Political Career, pp. 373, 382, 409, 4234.
93. Memoirs of Thomas, Earl of Ailesbury, ed. Buckley, i. p. 98.
94. Life of James II, ed. Clarke, ii. p. 63. See also Burnet, History of His Own Time, ed. Routh,
iii. p. 8.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
The meditations on his daughters death are particularly significant

since they were penned less than a month before the accession of James
II as Englands first catholic ruler since Mary. During the Exclusion
Crisis, Hyde had staunchly defended his fathers reputation in
government: I know not any Minister the King has had since, that has
done so well to keep out Popery and preserve the Protestant Religion.91
Yet for all his own prominence in Church of England circles,
Hydes protestant faith was heavily tainted, in the eyes of both his
contemporaries and later historians, by his actions between 1685 and
1688. The change of monarch reversed Hydes political decline in the
last 18 months of Charles IIs life. But it also left him in the ultimately
untenable position of being the protestant chief minister of a catholic
king. For some historians, Hydes career at this time serves as a
straightforward example of the politicians craven determination to
cling on to power for as long as possible. Writing in the 1930s,
M.F. Yates consistently presented examples of Hydes religious
scruples under James as political miscalculations, rather than as signs
of deeply held beliefs.92 In the light of the foregoing discussion, this
seems unhelpfully reductionist: a key dimension of this crucial
ministers thinking throughout Jamess turbulent reign was that of his
familys past and present confessional identity.
Hyde gained some credit for the auspicious start to the reign, with
Jamess much publicised commitment to maintain the Church of
England as by law established.93 But despite these happy beginnings, in
which Hydes appointment as lord treasurer had been one of the first
things his Majesty thought of after his comeing to the Crown,94 things
95. Kenyon, Robert Spencer, p. 122.

96. Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, ed. Browning, pp. 393, 3956; Davies, Tory Churchmen,
p. 52; H.C. Foxcroft, The Life and Letters of Sir George Savile, Bart., First Marquis of Halifax (2 vols.,
1898), i. pp. 44857; Yates, Political Career, p. 397. See also Memoirs of Thomas, Earl of Ailesbury,
ed. Buckley, i. pp. 121, 124.
97. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. 146; Bodl., MS Tanner 30 fo. 145.
98. J.H. Wilson, Nell Gwyn, Royal Mistress (1952), pp. 2378. For examples of Hydes financial
work on Gwyns behalf, see W.A. Shaw, ed., Calendars of Treasury Books (32 vols., 190457), vii, pt.
2, 1110, 1348; viii, pt. 1, 263.
99. HMC, Sixth Report, 477b; HMC, Ninth Report, 455ab.
100. For the Sedley affair, see Yates, Political Career, pp. 41012; Turner, James II, pp. 29731;
HMC, Stuart, vi. 4; Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. pp. 4934, 577; ii. p. 66.
101. Letters and Diplomatic Instructions of Queen Anne, ed. B.C. Brown (1935), p. 30.
102. Feiling, Tory Party, p. 216.
103. HMC, Fourteenth Report, appendix, pt. ix. p. 274.
104. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. p. 258.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
1430
rapidly went awry. The French ambassador, Paul Barillon, saw Hyde as
a powerful barrier to any programme of catholicising policies, and
worked to undermine the lord treasurer accordingly.95 The removal of
his old rival Halifax from government in October 1685 paradoxically left
Hyde increasingly vulnerable as a protestant figurehead whilst at the
nominal height of his power and prestige.96 Although he was the main
channel for protestant clergy such as Sir Jonathan Trelawny and William
Lloyd, bishop of St Asaph, seeking preferment from James for themselves
or their friends,97 his prominent isolation also allowed the skilful earl of
Sunderland gradually to subvert and supplant him at court. Hydes
links with Jamess protestant mistress Catherine Sedley, created countess
of Dorchester, proved particularly damaging. This was ironic, since
although Hyde had had a good relationship with Nell Gwyn, the selfproclaimed protestant whore,98 he had also attracted criticism in
Charles IIs reign for his associations with one of the kings catholic
mistresses, Barbara Palmer, duchess of Cleveland.99 Now Jamess second
wife, Mary of Modena, took against him,100 and Hydes wifes position
in the queens household was not sufficient to protect him from
Sunderlands assault.101 When he eventually fell from office in December
1686/January 1687, the event marked the definite victory of the catholic
cabal.102
Before his fall, Hyde committed a number of actions which would
stain his reputation. As early as June 1685, he authorised in his capacity
as lord treasurer a warrant to stop process against recusants Lands,
Goods, and Chattels.103 In 1686, Hyde was forced by James severely to
reprimand Dr William Sherlock and to stop his pension as a punishment
for his anti-catholic preaching.104 He also had to badger Archbishop
Sancroft for the payment of first fruits owing to the Crown even though
he must have known that, in the words of an anonymous writer, the
first fruits and tenths will pinch our Churchmen severely, and all the
1431
artful ways taken that may be to bring them low. On each occasion,
it was Hydes financial officeonce the source of his power and
influencewhich he now found to be a trap from which it was difficult
to escape.
At Easter 1686, Hyde, Jeffreys and Sunderland retired to their own
houses in order to escape attendance at court, and the inevitable demand
to attend Mass with James. As one contemporary writer sardonically
observed, they did so either for the private satisfaction in their
consciences, or to avoid showing in town whether they had any or
no.106 The cynical edge to this comment has been followed by modern
historians, notably M.F. Yates, who has argued from a syntactically
confusing passage in John Evelyns diary that Hyde urged Evelyn to
ignore his conscience and, in his capacity as a commissioner for the
privy seal, to affix the seal to a licence for the printing of catholic
books.107 This is most likely a misreading of the text: Evelyn reports
Hyde telling him that he did not think there would be any other hazard
(presumably legal issues) if in Conscience I could dispence with it (i.e.
his objection to acting). In other words, Hyde was proceeding in a
deliberately casuistical way, making the case for compliance, but only if
Evelyns conscience allowed him to proceed, a condition he would
have known to be highly improbable for the scrupulous churchman.
Disregarding conscience would also have been an unlikely argument for
Hyde to have made bearing in mind his emphasis on the clear conscience
of the father whose memory he revered. Certainly within a few months
time, he would trumpet his own conscience as a crucial impediment in
the way of converting to catholicism.108
More obviously damaging to his reputation was the fact that Hyde
agreed to sit on Jamess infamous Commission for Ecclesiastical Causes,
established by the king to control the Church of England now that her
supreme governor was a roman catholic.109 J.P. Kenyon has suggested
that the practical actions of the commission bore more resemblance to
its disciplinarian laudian predecessor than to an instrument of catholic
105
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
105. Hyde to archbishop of Canterbury, 30 Oct. 1686, Bodl., MS Tanner 127 fo. 218; [anon.] to
John Ellis, 13 July 1686, The Ellis Correspondence (16868), ed. G.A.E. Ellis [Lord Dover] (2 vols.,
1829), i. pp. 1412.
106. [Anon.] to John Ellis, 6 Apr. 1686, Ellis Correspondence, ed. Ellis, i. p. 91.
107. Yates, Political Career, p. 417; John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E.S. de Beer
(6 vols., Oxford, 1955), iv. p. 512 (see also ibid., i. pp. 312); Beddard, James II and the Catholic
Challenge, esp. pp. 9256. (Evelyn was acting as one of the three commissioners discharging the
office of lord privy seal while his friend Clarendon was lord lieutenant in Ireland.)
108. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, ii. pp. 88, 91. For sensible remarks on the complex
interplay of forces underpinning individual decisions to change religion, see M.C. Questier,
Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 15801625 (Cambridge, 1996), esp. ch. 3.
109. Life of James II, ed. Clarke, ii. p. 89.
1432
110
despotism. Hydes successor on the commission, Theophilus Hastings,
earl of Huntingdon, certainly laid weight on Hydes participation in
its activities as showing that hee owned the extent of itt, in terms of
disciplining clerics in their administrative and legal capacities.111
Nevertheless it was the commissions high-profile early actions
against Bishop Comptonwho had refused to crack-down on
anti-catholic preaching by the London clergy, or to recognise the
commissions jurisdictionwhich must have most influenced the
public mind. Clarendon was sufficiently anxious at the news of
the commission to write from Dublin in an unusually forthright
tone to his brother:112
The lord treasurers defence for his actionsas described by Thomas

Sprat, bishop of Rochester, as part of an apologia for his own complicity
in the commissionwas two-fold. First, that two judges had agreed to
sit on the commission, and they could be assumed to know what was
lawful and what was not. And, secondly, that he acted with a purpose
of doing as much Good as we were able, and of hindering as much Evil,
as we possibly could, in that Unfortunate Juncture of Affairs.113
Although the latter is, of course, a classic extenuating argument after
any revolution has rendered a prior regime odious,114 it needs to be
supplied with a broader context. Whilst there seems little doubt that
110. J.P Kenyon, The Commission for Ecclesiastical Causes 1686-1688: A Reconsideration,
Historical Journal, xxxiv (1991), pp. 72736. For contemporary disquiet at the new commission, see
Ellis Correspondence, ed. Ellis, i. pp. 1448, 165; Sir John Bramston, The Autobiography of Sir John
Bramston of Skreens, ed. R.G. Braybrooke, Camden Society, xxxii (1845), p. 234.
111. Bodl., MS Carte 239 fo. 305. (See also ibid., fos. 304a r-v; W. Gibson, James II and the Trial
of the Seven Bishops (Basingstoke, 2009), p. 57.) Huntingdons aim was, of course, to exonerate
himself from blame.
112. Clarendon to Hyde, 27 July 1686, Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. pp. 51112. See
Autobiography of Sir John Bramston, ed. Braybrooke, p. 240, for an account of Hydes refusal to
agree to Comptons request for more time to prepare his case.
113. Thomas Sprat, A Letter from the Bishop of Rochester, to the Right Honourable the Earl of Dorset
and Middlesex ... Concerning His Sitting in the Late Ecclesiastical Commission (1688/9), pp. 57.
(Hyde had acted as one of Sprats patrons in 16834: Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. p. 91.)
For Hydes efforts to protect John Sharp, dean of Norwich, at this time, see A.T. Hart, The Life and
Times of John Sharp Archbishop of York (1949), pp. 956.
114. Clarendon repeated this defence of his brother to a critical Halifax in November 1688:
Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, ii. p. 203.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
I know not how to wish you joy of your new place in the church affairs:
though we have forty abstracts of the Commission, yet I do not understand
it; and I confess I am naturally no friend to new judicatures. God send those
who contrived it are friends to our religion! For Gods sake let me beg you to
be careful how you act, and be not prevailed upon to hurt the best church in
the world, and which, notwithstanding all the calamities she is now under,
will yet flourish and be triumphant, even in this world. You will pardon me
for my zeal.
1433
Hyde was indeed extremely reluctant to do anything that might risk
him losing the office of lord treasurer that he had sought for so long, we
should not be too cynical about the desire of both Hyde brothers to
maintain themselves in government in order to be able to offer James
good counsel.115 In June 1686, the Spanish ambassador argued that
Hyde was in danger, because he will not moderate his view [on
catholicism]. I think that as he will have to do so in the end, he should
do it soon.116 What seemed to Ronquillo to be Hydes immoderate
views were seen in precisely the opposite way by a protestant English
writer in the previous month. Halifaxs brother, Henry Savile, reported
although he could hardly believe the rumourthat Lord Chancellor
Jeffreys being a little frightened with the brisk proceedings here, is
leaving my Lord President [Sunderland] for my Lord Treasurer [Hyde],
to join with him in moderating counsells: in other words, moderating
the kings drive for catholicising policies. The Scottish Parliaments
hostile reaction to such policies north of the Border had been a rebuke
that frightens one half [of the catholics], and encourages the other. And
though some care be taken to secure them against insults at their City
Chapel, very few of them expose themselves to the hazard of being ill
usd, so that their congregation is small and liker a Conventicle than the
Church Triumphant.117 Hyde was thus still seen as presenting a robustly
protestant input into government, and from a position that did not yet
seem as hopeless to contemporaries as it does to us in retrospect. Loyal
Tory anglicans, mentally weighed down with years of exalting the
crown, could still have hoped that James might be influenced to the
good.
As 1686 wore on, however, the pressure on Hyde mounted,
culminating in the royal demand that he become a member of the
Church of Rome. The precise sequence and nature of the religious
conferences which presaged his fall are difficult to recover accurately
due to the strong but differing biases of the main sources,118 and the
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
115. For Clarendons discussion with Hyde about the need to offer good counsel to James, see
Tapsell, Life and Career of Laurence Hyde, pp. 645.
116. Don Pedro de Ronquillo to Sir William Trumbull, 12 June 1686, HMC, Downshire, i.
p. 182.
117. [Henry Savile] to [marquess of Halifax], Windsor, 29 May 1686, BL, Add. MS 75375 fo. 7v.
For the context, see C. Jackson, Restoration Scotland, 1660-1690: Royalist Politics, Religion and Ideas
(Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 15762.
118. Simon Patrick, The Autobiography of Symon Patrick, Bishop of Ely, ed. J.H. Parker (Oxford,
1839), pp. 10620; A Relation of a Conference before His Majesty, and the Earl of Rochester, Lord HighTreasurer, Concerning the Real Presence and Transubstantiation, Nov. 30. 1686 ... (1722); The Life of
James II, ed. Clarke, ii. pp. 98102; and Hydes own minutes, in Singer, ed., Clarendon
Correspondence, ii. pp. 879, 901, 11618.
119. Autobiography of Symon Patrick, ed. Parker, p. 116. Despite rumours in London about a
religious conference involving Hyde, one newsletter writer apologised to his employer that he
could give no account of it as it was spoken of so darkly: Bulstrode newsletters, 20 Dec. 1686,
Austin, Texas, H[arry] R[ansom] H[umanities] R[esearch] C[enter]. See also N. Johnston to Sir
John Reresby, 21 Dec. 1686, Leeds, West Yorkshire Archive Service, MX/R/46/23.
120. Autobiography of Sir John Bramston, ed. Braybrooke, p. 258.
121. Extracts of letters to duke of Beaufort, 30 Dec. 1686/3 Jan. 1687, Bodl., MS Carte 130 fo. 23v.
122. R. Morrice, The Entring Book of Roger Morrice 16771691, ed. M. Goldie (7 vols., Woodbridge,
20079), iii. pp. 3256.
123. Macaulays account of Hydes slow-motion fall from power remains the fullest in print,
even though its value is vitiated by his extreme dislike for the dismissed minister: History of
England, ed. Firth, ii. pp. 797806.
124. Autobiography of Symon Patrick, ed. Parker, pp. 1067; Bonaventure Giffard to Hyde,
15 Nov. 1686, Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, ii. p. 63.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
1434
extent to which James attempted to keep a veil of secrecy over events.119
From the outset, it should be said that Hyde fell purely on account of
his refusal to convert. James took pains to argue the contrary in public
after removing Hyde from office, motivated, no doubt, both by an
unwillingness to emphasise the way in which catholic truth had failed
to open Hydes eyes and a continuing regard for his former brother-inlaws long-time service and loyalty. Instead he claimed that he found the
office of lord treasurer too great a burden for one man. This was a
curious argument as he had trumpeted the superiority of a lord treasurer
over a treasury commission less than two years earlier, since the latter
looked too like Commonwealth government.120 But contemporary
observers viewed Hydes fall in straightforward confessional terms. As
the powerful regional magnate, the duke of Beaufort was informed,
James had urged Hyde to consider well of his religion as early as the
Exclusion Crisis, for w[oul]d he change, all things w[oul]d turn to his
wishes. In December 1686, the king reiterated the same message, but
Hyde replied that he must make ye same ans[we]r yt his conscience
w[oul]d not suffer him to alter his religion.121 The presbyterian
intelligencer, Roger Morrice, heard that the king told Hyde it was fit he
should hear reasons to join the Roman Catholic Church as during the
previous reign Hyde had pressed James to hear reasons why he should
return to the Church of England.122 The kings zeal prompted an
extended series of conferences which placed Hyde under immense
pressure to convert.123
In the face of James being so urgent in pressing him very much to
change his religion, Hyde consented to hear a catholic divine,
Bonaventura Giffard, in mid-November. Giffard triedand failedto
convince Hyde that since all men ought to base their faith on the
ancient, primitive, Apostolical Church, he should become a member of
the Church of Rome.124 In reply, Hyde affirmed that he had been
taught that the Protestant Church was the ancient Church, and that it
now teaches the same doctrine which the Church taught in the five first
ages, and that the Roman Church had separated from that Ancient
1435
Church, by bringing in these errors, transubstantiation, praying to
saints, praying for the dead, &c.125 Such a response points directly to
Hydes engagement with a major theme in anglican apologetic: its
maintenance of the best traditions of the early church.126 Giffards
response was to challenge Hyde to find anglican divines who could
maintain these positions.127 This formed the agenda for the conference
before James on 30 November. Before that Hyde met with William Jane
and Simon Patrick, the two anglican divines then in attendance at the
royal chapel,128 after which Janehimself a product of Christ Church,
Oxfordwrote a reply to Giffards letter which was submitted to both
Hyde and James.129
The conference which took place in the kings chamber on 30
November was attended only by James, Hyde and the four divines
(Giffard and Thomas Godden for the catholics, Jane and Patrick for the
anglicans), and lasted between three and a half and four and a quarter
hours.130 It consisted of the gruelling trading of examples from patristic
texts, and rival accusations of ignorance offered by the catholic
and protestant divines, who mostly spoke in English but occasionally
lapsed into Greek and Latin. Hydes fate was bound up in the outcome
and there is no reason to suppose that he sat, completely
uncomprehending, whilst such lengthy and erudite claims to his soul
were made. Though by his own admission he may not have understood
all that was said, his intellectual curiosity about different christian
confessions during his diplomatic trips to Europe has already been
stressed, and he would ask for written copies of the evidence used by the
divines. The pressure exerted on the minds of Hyde and his clerical
champions by the presence of James must have been intense. The king
even went so far as to disagree openly with their arguments, and to
tolerate a last minute harangue by Giffard for Hyde immediately to
declare his agreement with the catholics. Instead, Hyde requested and
was granted more time to think about all that had been said.131
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
125. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, ii. p. 63.

126. E. Duffy, Primitive Christianity Revived; Religious Renewal in Augustan England, Studies
in Church History, xiv (1977), pp. 287300; R.D. Cornwall, The Search for the Primitive Church:
The Use of Early Church Fathers in the High Church Anglican Tradition, 16801745, Anglican and
Episcopal History, lix (1990), pp. 30329. Clarendon had recommended Dr Otway, the bishop of
Ossory, to Hyde as a person of true primitive piety earlier in the year: Clarendon to Hyde, 14 Feb.
1685/6, Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. p. 253.
128. James had objected to Hydes original choice of Tillotson and Stillingfleet as too blatantly
anti-catholic. (Burnet, History of His Own Time, ed. Routh, iii. p. 116.) I can find no evidence to
support Souths claim that he was originally one of Hydes choices: South, Posthumous Works, p. 111.
129. Autobiography of Symon Patrick, ed. Parker, 109. For the preference that anglican clergy held
for written exchanges with catholics, rather than verbal conferences, see Bodl., MS Rawlinson
letters 98 fos. 85r-v.
130. Autobiography of Symon Patrick, ed. Parker, pp. 107, 113; A Relation, ed. Clarke, p. 36.
131. Autobiography of Symon Patrick, ed. Parker, p. 116.
132. Ibid., pp. 11415. It seems unlikely to have been a coincidence that Hickman had preached
a sermon on 21 Nov. 1686 that, taking as its text Prov. 30: 8, 9, dwelt on the superiority of poverty
with the free exercise of Vertue and Religion over a turbulent, dangerous and unprofitable
greatness. Charles Hickman, A Sermon Preachd before the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor and
Court of Aldermen, at the Guild-hall Chapel, Nov. 21. 1686 (1687), pp. 1, 45.
133. This phrase came to be Hydes persistent gloss on the events which had taken place: Letters
and Diplomatic Instructions of Queen Anne, ed. Brown, p. 21.
134. Autobiography of Symon Patrick, ed. Parker, p. 116.
135. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, ii. pp. 879.
136. Ibid., ii. pp. 889.
137. Ibid., ii. pp. 901.
138. Ibid., ii. pp. 11617. For Jamess later bitter perspective in exile on Hydes actions, see Life of
James II, ed. Clarke, ii. p. 101.
139. I find it difficult to incorporate into the above framework the unique record in Patricks
account of a meeting on 23 December at Hydes house, where Patrick faced not only Giffard but
also three other catholics, including a lawyer, no less man than Judge Allabon, and at which Hyde
refuted the catholic argument that truth was better conveyed over time by word of mouth than by
writing: it was the strangest proposition that ever he heard. (Autobiography of Symon Patrick, ed.
Parker, pp. 11619.)
140. H.C. Foxcroft, ed., A Supplement to Burnets History of My Own Time (Oxford, 1902),
p. 224.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
1436
Although the next day he stated to his own chaplain, Dr Charles
Hickman, the satisfaction he had in our religion,132 and to Jane and
Patrick that the conference had much confirmed him in his religion,133
he consented to another meeting with Giffard and Jane at his house on
11 December, and subsequently asked for a copy of passages concerning
transubstantiation.134 Hyde had already received a visit from Barillon,
the French ambassador, on 3 December, who had refused to say
unequivocally that he knew Hyde would be removed if he did not
change his religion, but had left little doubt that this was the likely
outcome.135 In response Hyde stated that whether I became Catholic
or no, it shall be by the conviction of my conscience, and not for my
place ... I added, as we went down [to the door], that I knew the King,
and I knew he knew me, and I feared nobody.136
For all the parting bravado, Hyde must by now have known that he
would fall if he did not convert. In an emotional meeting with James on
4 December, Hyde again emphasised that he would not change his
religion simply to save his career, a stance which James commended.137
Yet at their final meeting on 19 December, James declaredin Hydes
account almost hysterically and in tearsthat he found it absolutely
necessary for the good of his affairs, that no man must be at the head of
his affairs that was not of his opinion ... that it was impossible to keep
a man in so great a trust, in so eminent a station, where there was so
much dependence, that was of an interest so contrary to that which he
must support and own and advance.138 Hyde refused to convert, and
was duly removed.139 Burnet recorded that Rochester was looked on as
a man lost to us as a result of the pressure which James put him under,
and whilst there were differing accounts of Hydes motivation, yet the
conclusion of it was, that Rochester stood firm.140
1437
Jamess vehement and persistent pursuit of the goal of converting
Hyde showed many things: the depth of his attachment to his favourite;
the power which he believed the catholic message had to move men to
change their opinions (based on his own experiences) and his
determination to have a catholic and catholicising government in his
own image. When Hyde wrote to his brother in Dublin of his removal
from office, Clarendonhimself on the verge of being dismissed from
officereplied in terms which again show how potent their fathers
shade remained:141
Clarendon thanked God for the strength that he has given you to
persevere in the right, and to tread the steps my father went before
us.142 With faith and holy resolution crownd, in the words of a
sympathetic poet, Hyde could ponder the parallels between his own fall
from political favour and that of his father whilst tending to his garden
in Twickenham after his dismissal took formal effect on 4 January
1687.143
Others were left discussing the significance of the lord treasurers
political demise. Coinciding with his brothers dismissal as lord
lieutenant of Ireland, Hydes fall was certainly recognised at the time as
being crucially importantthe two brothers were the Visible heads of
the Church of England interest.144 Though other ministers had been
approached about their religion, the seniority of his position and
proximity to James meant that the person that was the most considered,
was the earl of Rochester, and his decision to keep firm to his religion
meant that he goeth off with honour and applause.145 The wider
message of these events was stark. In the days between the news that a
conference had been held, and Hydes formal surrender of his staff, the
talk in London was that if his lordship cannot support himself with all
that mighty stock of interest and relacion, what is to be expected from
141. Clarendon to Hyde, 30 Dec. 1686, Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, ii. pp. 1267.
142. Ibid., ii. p. 132.
143. An Elogy (1687), l. 9, in De F. Lord, ed., Poems on Affairs of State, iv. p. 99; Autobiography of
Sir John Bramston, ed. Braybrooke, p. 253.
144. Goldie, ed., Entring Book of Roger Morrice, iii. p. 345. For Barillons view, see Singer, ed.,
Clarendon Correspondence, ii. p. 126.
145. Burnet, History of His Own Time, ed. Routh, iii. pp. 11415; [anon.] to John Ellis, 1 Jan.
1687, Ellis Correspondence, ed. Ellis, i. p. 219. For more cynical verdicts, see Autobiography of Sir
John Bramston, ed. Braybrooke, p. 259; WYAS, MX/R/46/23; Burnet, History of His Own Time, ed.
Routh, iii. pp. 11617.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
poor as I am, I hope God will give both you and me the grace to beg, rather
than that we should falter in the religion wherein we have been bred, and for
his steady adhering to which my father was ruined, which can never be
forgotten by me. I am so full at present that I cannot say any more. God
Almighty preserve the King.
1438
other men who want those advantages?.146 The answer to that question
would become increasingly clear during the next 18 months.
146. Charles Bertie to his niece, the Countess of Rutland, 30 Dec. 1686, HMC, Rutland, ii.
p. 111 (Macaulay offered the same analysis: Macaulay, History of England, ed. Firth, ii. p. 810). For
other references to the likely repercussions of the Hydes fall, see Ellis Correspondence, ed. Ellis,
i. pp. 215, 223; Diary of John Evelyn, ed. de Beer, iv. pp. 5356.
147. Bulstrode newsletters, 10 Jan. 1687, HRHRC.
148. Relying on a posthumous panegyric on Hyde, Speck states that in the summer of 1687
Hyde had gone to the Netherlands on the kings business, and that it was on his return from this
diplomatic mission that he was made lord lieutenant. This seems unlikely. Recovering from his
wifes death, Hyde certainly went to the Spa, but his failure to visit William of Orange at that time
caused deep offence to the prince, as Hyde came to realise: Speck, Hyde, Laurence, ODNB;
National Library of Ireland, MS 36 fo. 638; Japikse, ed., Correspondentie (RGP, Kleine Serie, xxviii),
p. 34.
149. Macaulay, History of England, ed. Firth, ii. pp. 9767 and n.1. (The letters he used are now
BL, Add. MS 34515 fos. 33v, 38.) Macaulay also emphasised Hydes need to maintain royal favour
in order to keep the substantial pension he had been awarded at the time of his dismissal from
office.
150. G. Duckett, ed., Penal Laws and Test Act: Questions Touching their Repeal Propounded in
16878 by James II (2 vols., 18823), ii. p. 301. The most detailed account of this campaign is now
S. Sowerby, James IIs Revolution: Remaking Religious Toleration in an Age of Persecution,
16851689 (Harvard Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2006), ch. 3 (I am grateful to Dr Sowerby for allowing me
access to his doctoral work).
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
Although dismissed from office by James, the lengthy relationship that

had existed between patron and client was not utterly destroyed at the
time of Hydes removal. His fall from office was sweetened with a
substantial pension, and kind words from James at the council table
about his loyal service.147 In the autumn of 1687, he was appointed lord
lieutenant of Hertfordshire and had to tender the three questions to
local gentry to gauge their willingness to support Jamess pro-tolerationist
agenda.148 Hyde has been denounced for co-operating with the three
questions, in particular by Macaulay, in whose opinion Hydes actions
signalled a deplorable lack of moral backbone and willingness to defend
the Church of England. Macaulay relied primarily on two letters
by William of Oranges Scottish agent, James Johnstone, for his claim
that Hyde went further than simply executing a royal command,
and harangued the local gentry with offensive warmtha mild
embellishment of more zealous ... then was necessary in the original.149
Unfortunately Hertfordshire is one of two English counties for which
no official records relating to the three questions campaign survive
rendering the report difficult to substantiate.150
Had Hyde offered the kind of heavy-handed support for the three
questions described by Macaulay his action would have been at variance
with the overall tenor of his politics of religion described here. It cannot
entirely be discounted: the pressure on many leading figures to please an
implacable royal master was obviously intense in 1687/8. Hyde was one
of fifteen protestant peers who did not resign their lieutenancies when
1439
asked to appoint catholics as deputy lieutenants in their counties, and
in November was one of a number of peers thought by the French
envoy, Bonrepaux, to be sympathetic to the agenda suggested by the
three questions.151 It is nevertheless striking, as W.A. Speck has recently
noted, that the episode was not dredged up and used in evidence against
Hyde after the Revolution.152 It is at least as striking that several
contemporary chroniclers did not present Hydes actions in this
particular light. Narcissus Luttrell merely recorded that the Hertfordshire
gentry had given in their answer to Hyde, that they were not for taking
of[f ] the penal lawes and test.153 Roger Morrice added the statement
that Hyde sent the three questions into Hertfordshire within a letter
affirming:
If Hyde really had attempted to overawe the Hertfordshire gentry, it

seems likely that Morrice would have taken the opportunity to excoriate
Hyde, just as he did other leading high churchmen, or hierarchists.154
Instead, Morrices description suggests that Hyde pursued a policy of
coded discourse designed to encourage resistance. Even less revealing is
another harsh critic of Hyde, Gilbert Burnet. He does not mention the
Hertfordshire example at all in his account of the three questions,
simply noting that In most of the counties the lords lieutenants put
those questions in so careless a manner, that it was plain they did not
desire they should be answered in the affirmative. Particularly in light
of Morrices account, such casuistical tactics sound most plausible for
Hyde, rather than the reportedly blunter obstructionism of the earl of
Northampton (Bishop Comptons brother) in Warwickshire, who told
the gentry that he did not design to comply with any one of the
questions himself.155
151. Sowerby, James IIs Revolution, pp. 1078; D. Hosford, The Peerage and the Test Act:
A List, c. November 1687, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xlii (1969), pp. 11620.
152. Speck, Hyde, Laurence, ODNB.
153. Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April
1714 (6 vols., Oxford, 1857), i. p. 422.
154. Goldie, ed., Entring Book of Roger Morrice, iv. pp. 1778, xxv. Morrices phrasing indicates
that Hyde was not actually present in Hertfordshire to deal with the gentry in person.
155. Burnet, History of His Own Time, ed. Routh, iii. p. 193 and n.h (Dartmouths recollections).
Other protestant peers who tendered the three questions included the dukes of Beaufort and
Newcastle, and the earls of Bath and Craven, whilst the earls of Abingdon, Gainsborough and
Scarsdale, and Lord Ferrers were removed from their lieutenancies for refusing to pose them:
Sowerby, James IIs Revolution, pp. 1035.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
that he still was as he <alwaies> pretended to be a true son of the Church of

England which was rightly understood by those he Writt to, and a great
incouragement for them to refuse And also by the Court, and he is thereby
fallen under their further displeasure, but they are reported generally not to
Concur.
156. Goldie, ed., Entring Book of Roger Morrice, iv. p. 196; Gibson, James II and the Trial of the
Seven Bishops, p. 71.
157. A passing reference in January 1688 to a continuing Rochesterian faction in the court,
lacks support: Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, ii. p. 153.
158. Anne to Mary, The Cockpit, 20 Mar. 1688, Letters and Diplomatic Instructions of Queen
Anne, ed. Brown, p. 35.
159. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, ii. p. 179; Sowerby, James IIs Revolution, p. 293;
Gibson, Trial of the Seven Bishops, via index, sub Clarendon.
160. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, ii. pp. 1912. Clarendon only records his brother
attending on the king twice in 1688 before September: ibid., ii. p. 162 (14 Feb.), 183 (26 July).
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
1440
Whatever the precise nature of Hydes activity in November 1687, he
had certainly not chosen to make an overt martyr of himself for the
protestant cause once more. Unlike Northampton and many others,
he was not immediately removed from his lord lieutenancy. But he did
have to face up to a controversy that reflected on his whole familys
honour and position. In December, catholics at Jamess court generated
rumours casting doubt on the validity of the kings first marriage, to
Hydes sister in 1660, thus bastardizing the two daughters, Mary and
Anne. Hyde had to move rapidly to defend the legitimacy of his sisters
marriage to James by finding the cleric who had conducted the service,
and obtaining his signed evidence about its validity.156
Surprisingly little is known about Hydes activities during the first 9
months of the critical year, 1688. The impression given by a few shards
of information is that of nervous isolation.157 In the spring, he learned
that William of Orange and Mary were very angry with him, and
rushed to vindicate himself to Princess Anne, professing ignorance of
the grounds of their displeasure. Expressing her scorn for her uncle,
Anne painted a picture for her sister of a deeply anxious man: the
pitifulness of his spirit was what motivated his expressions of loyalty to
his nieces at a time of deepening concern about Mary of Modenas
pregnancy. Should she give birth to a male heir, Mary and Anne would
be demoted down the line of succession, and fears for the future of
English protestantism would grow. Hyde assured his nieces that he
would not be so ungrateful to his sisters memory as to do anything
wilfully to displease her children.158 In changed political circumstances,
his failure to visit William whilst staying at the Spa the previous summer
must have appeared a major miscalculation. In June, he was not closely
involved in the seven bishops crisis: although his brother acted as one of
the bishops most visible supporters, Hyde did not attend their trial
having chosen to stay at Bath during the confrontation.159 Despite all
his care not overtly to antagonise the king, he does not seem to have
returned to significant favour. James attempted to use Hyde as a conduit
to the bishops in September, but their old intimacy was clearly gone.160
In October, he was reduced to displaying his weakness to a long-term
ministerial rival, the earl of Dartmouth, claiming with mild hyperbole
that he has not had the happiness of being once spoken to by the King
1441
The former lord treasurer found himself
161
161. Hyde to earl of Dartmouth, 6 Oct. 1688, Whitehall, HMC, Dartmouth, i. p. 146.
162. M. Goldie, The Political Thought of the Anglican Revolution, in R. Beddard, ed., The
Revolutions of 1688 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 10236, esp. pp. 1089.
163. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, ii. pp. 205, 206, 209.
164. The pre-eminent interpreter of this period remains R. Beddard: see esp. The Loyalist
Opposition in the Interregnum: A Letter of Dr Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely, on the Revolution
of 1688, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xl (1967), pp. 1019; The Guildhall
Declaration of 11 December 1688 and the Counter-Revolution of the Loyalists, Historical Journal,
xi (1968), pp. 40320; A Kingdom Without a King: The Journal of the Provisional Government in the
Revolution of 1688 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 965; The Unexpected Whig Revolution of 1688, in id. ed.,
Revolutions of 1688, pp. 11101.
166. Ibid., ii. pp. 2267.
167. Diary of John Evelyn, ed. de Beer, iv. p. 626.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
in any kind for some time.

out in the political cold.
Hyde thereafter suffered swings of fortune in the remainder of 1688
as severe as any other significant politician. Thanks to the anglican
revolution of the autumn, he once more appeared likely to be a powerful
figure as James attempted to veer back to his old Tory friends in order
to shore up his monarchy in the face of an imminent Dutch invasion.162
But the Indian summer of a Hyde-influenced Tory government rapidly
faded to nothing after William of Oranges fleet landed at Tor Bay on 5
November. His vehement efforts to persuade James to call a parliament
as the only remedy in our present circumstances were resented by the
king, and even more so by the queen.163 Yet his sincere zeal for Jamess
kingly rights deeply alienated William and Mary. In tandem with
Francis Turner, bishop of Ely, Hyde led efforts to save James, and even
after the king had fled the country he was a leading supporter of a
regency rather than the wholesale transfer of the throne to William and
Mary.164 As early as 5 December, Clarendon learned from Gilbert
Burnet that William had a very ill opinion of my brother.165 When
Clarendon took Hyde to Windsor to meet William on 16 December,
the prince received Hyde very coldly, and deliberately snubbed him by
pointedly inviting only Clarendon to dinner.166 Having failed to
persuade the archbishop of Canterbury to lend his support to the
loyalist cause by attending the Convention, both brothers spoke
passionately in the crucial debates on 6 February that resulted in the
throne being declared vacant, and the declaration of William and Mary
as king and queen. Clarendons friend, John Evelyn, recorded the
general opinion that Clarendons vehemence . . . put him by all
preferment from the new monarchs, and Hyde overshot himselfe by
the same carriage and stiffnesse. Friendly observers thought they might
well have spared the extent of their efforts when they saw how it was
like to be overruld.167 Although William would subsequently allow
Hyde to kiss his hand as king, Mary took longer to be mollified, initially
refusing to see either Hyde or his children.168
169. Ibid., ii. pp. 264, 266.

170. P. Hopkins, Francis Turner, and C. Butler, Thomas Turner, ODNB; G.V. Bennett,
Loyalist Oxford and the Revolution, in L.S. Sunderland and L.G. Mitchell, eds., The History of
the University of Oxford, Vol. V: The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1986), p. 23.
171. P.U. Bonomi, Edward Hyde, ODNB. For Clarendons mortification at the news that his
son had proved himself a rebel, see Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, ii. pp. 204, 205, 213, 215,
250.
172. A.W. Ward, Henry Hyde, DNB; Speck, Henry Hyde. Clarendons eldest son and his
wife were said to be starving at this time: E. Cruickshanks, S. Handley and D.W. Hayton, eds.,
The House of Commons, 16901715 (5 vols., Cambridge, 2002), iv. p. 462. For the tensions between
the brothers arising from Hydes substantial financial support of Clarendon, see T. Lewis, Lives of
the Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon: Illustrative of Portraits in his Gallery
(3 vols., 1852), i. pp. 45*6*.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
1442
Despite all his aggressive endeavours to save James, and the political
fall-out of that decision, Hyde nevertheless took the oath of allegiance
to William and Mary in 1689. His older brother did not, inflexibly
telling Gilbert Burnet on 11 January 1689 that I should preserve my
allegiance, and startling Williams adviser, Dyckvelt, on 14 January with
the argument that our religion did not allow of the deposing of
Kings.169 The division of opinion between the siblings, who had
previously been so close in their political and religious opinions, is
impossible to explain definitively without more of Hydes personal
papers. At a general level, the non-jurors were never numerous, even if
they were vocal: in taking the oath of allegiance Hyde was travelling
with the Tory majority. The profound sense of responsibility for family
fortunes and dynastic continuity that imbued the English elite may also
have played a role in Laurence and Henrys different decisions. The
Hydes were not the only family to be sundered politically by the
consequences of 1688, even if personal relationships continued. While
Hydes key clerical supporter in December 1688, Francis Turner, bishop
of Ely, refused to abandon his allegiance to James II, his brother Thomas,
President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford took the new oaths.170
Hedging bets provided Francis Turner with an Oxford base in which to
hide for part of the 1690s. If this is what happened with the Hydes, it
helped to maintain their dynastic fortunes into the eighteenth century:
Henrys son, Edward, the third earl of Clarendon, was appointed
governor-general of New York and New Jersey in 1702. Although his
record of seasonable service as an early defector to William during the
Revolution was probably a more significant factor than the actions of
his uncle,171 Hydes willingness to serve in government under a man his
brother regarded as a usurper threw a protective cover over the family as
a whole. It certainly allowed him to speak out in efforts during 1691 to
save his brother from the consequences of Jacobite plotting, and to
retain the wherewithal secretly to purchase his brothers country
residence, Cornbury, around 1697, when Clarendons financial position
was in crisis.172 Ultimately, Clarendons rigid view that the Church of
1443
England could not countenance the replacement of James with William
and Mary was one rejected by many otherwise conscientious Tories,
notably the earls of Nottingham and Danby.173 Hydes support for
James until 6 February 1689, and willingness to offer his allegiance to
the new regime thereafter, was an acutely uncomfortable experience
that most Tories were nevertheless willing to endure in order to maintain
their voice in government on the issues they cared about.174
173. H. Horwitz, Revolution Politicks: The Career of Daniel Finch, Second Earl of Nottingham,
16471730 (Cambridge, 1968), ch. 5; Browning, Thomas Osborne, i. ch. 18.
174. For criticism of Hyde as a Judas, see A Letter to the Lady Osbourne (1688), l. 60, in De F. Lord,
ed., Poems on Affairs of State, v. p. 81.
175. Bennett, Tory Crisis, passim.
176. Speck, Hyde, Laurence, ODNB .
177. For Hydes mixed relations with William in the 1690s, see Horwitz, Parliament , pp. 67,
77, 99, 132, 260, 276.
178. Ibid., pp. 1034, 279. Hydes views on limited military involvement on the continent
would continue in Annes reign, not least as a result of his hostility to Marlborough: Holmes,
British Politics, pp. 724; Gregg, Queen Anne, pp. 15760, 166; H.L. Snyder, ed., The MarlboroughGodolphin Correspondence (3 vols., Oxford, 1975), i. pp. 87, 99, 156, 203, 251, 259, 453; ii. pp. 695,
699, 801, 1172.
179. G.V. Bennett, King William III and the Episcopate, in G.V. Bennett and J.D. Walsh,
eds., Essays in Modern English Church History in Memory of Norman Sykes (1966), p. 111.
180. J. Spurr, The Church of England, Comprehension and the Toleration Act of 1689, ante,
civ (1989), pp. 92746.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
In the decades after the revolution, the most important of those issues
was the character and status of the Church of England. This was the key
facet of the Tory crisis in church and state that destabilised political
life.175 W.A. Speck has argued that it was only during this last phase of his
life that Hyde became a committed high church Tory, having previously
acted primarily as a court politician.176 This perceived shift is, however,
in large part an optical illusion based on the widespread scholarly neglect
of his pre-1688 career. In reality, the continuities across the 1688 divide are
more striking than the inevitable changes inflicted by the development of
a new political world, one in which Williams determination to avoid
becoming the pawn of any single group of English politicians forced
Tories to re-evaluate their relations with central government.
Although he was sufficiently rehabilitated to be reappointed to the
privy council in 1692, Hydes return to significant political office was
delayed until 1700.177 During the 1690s, he had proved a vocal and
determined opponent of Williams policy of consistent English
involvement in continental warfare, trumpeting instead a blue water
policy of reliance on the navy that would be cheaper, and would also
lessen the patronage opportunities for William and his predominantly
Whig ministers.178 But as an informed and convinced Calvinist,179
Williams ambivalence towards Hyde was at least as much due to the
latters prominence as a champion of the Church of Englands rights in
the wake of the Toleration Act.180 Hydes influence was buttressed
181. Bennett, Loyalist Oxford, pp. 267; G.J. Schochet, The Act of Toleration and the Failure
of Comprehension: Persecution, Nonconformity, and Religious Indifference, in D. Hoak and M.
Feingold, eds., The World of William and Mary: Anglo-Dutch Perspectives on the Revolution of 168889
(Stanford, CA, 1996), pp. 1845.
182. Bennett, Loyalist Oxford, pp. 279; id. Against the Tide: Oxford under William III, in
Sutherland and Mitchell, eds., The Eighteenth Century, pp. 3160.
183. William Bromley to Arthur Charlett, 22 Oct. 1702, Bodl., MS Ballard 38, f. 137, qu. in
Bennett, Against the Tide, p. 51. Bromleys campaign to continue as one of the universitys MPs
was approved by Hyde: G.V. Bennett, The Era of Party Zeal 17021714, in Sutherland and
Mitchell, eds., The Eighteenth Century, p. 62.
184. Horwitz, Parliament, p. 278; J. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the University of
Oxford, 15001714 (Early ser., 4 vols., Oxford, 18912), ii. p. 782a; Ward, Georgian Oxford, p. 41.
185. Bennett, William III and the Episcopate, pp. 1289; M. Greig, Heresy Hunt: Gilbert
Burnet and the Convocation Controversy of 1701, Historical Journal, xxxvii (1994), p. 579. For
Hydes influence during the election of a prolocutor of the lower house in this convocation, see
Francis Atterbury, The Epistolary Correspondence ... of ... Francis Atterbury, D.D. Lord Bishop of
Rochester (2nd edn., 4 vols., 178990), i. p. 76.
186. Jones and Holmes, eds., The London Diaries , pp. 31112, 320; Gregg, Queen Anne, p. 214.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
1444
because of his relationships amongst the clerical establishment in
Oxford, connections that pre-dated 1688 and provide some of the key
threads tying his career together. His lengthy associations with Christ
Church were particularly significant. It was the Christ Church man
William Jane, the Regius Professor of Divinity, who had acted as one of
Hydes anglican champions during the conferences in late 1686 over the
lord treasurers religion. And it was Jane who would be elected prolocutor
of the lower house of Convocation in November 1689, almost certainly
with Hydes support.181 This fractious assembly wrecked dissenting and
Court hopes of comprehension for many nonconformists within the
state church. Hyde was a frequent visitor to Christ Church at this time,
and would continue to be so during the 1690s, when the University of
Oxford became a major source of clerical opposition to Williams
religious policies.182
In particular, Oxford men were often the most vociferous critics of
that abominable Hypocrisie, that inexcusable immorality of Occasional
Conformity.183 Hyde stood at the head of this assault on nonconformists
success in vitiating the sacramental test impeding their access to public
office. In pursuit of this campaign, Hyde successfully demanded that
William recall convocation as the price of his return to office in 1700,
the year in which both he and his son were made DCLs at Oxford.184
Hydes house became an important meeting place for leading clergy
during the convocation of 1701, and he told Francis Atterbury that he
was very much pleased with the second edition of the latters The
Rights, Powers, and Priviledges of an English Convocation, especially its
attack on the leading Whig bishop, Gilbert Burnet.185 Convocation
thereafter formed a key dimension of the rage of party during Annes
reign, and the lower houses zeal to outlaw the practice of occasional
conformity a central aspect of Hydes political character. His willingness
bluntly to assert that the church was in danger during House of Lords
debates, even when Anne chose to attend, deeply offended the queen.186
1445
Such intemperate anti-dissenting activity was part of his wider selfidentification as a leading member of the High Church Party, whose
dream was a return to the established churchs strength during the last
years of Charles II.187 Hyde courted controversy by visiting the ultraHigh Tory Oxford cleric, Henry Sacheverell, when the latter was in
custody after preaching his inflammatory assault on nonconformists,
The Perils of False Brethren, in 1709, and went on to present Sacheverells
petition for bail.188
All of this activity was closely interwoven with a post-revolutionary
politics of memory that was deeply inflected with religious concerns.
Sacheverells vehement comparison between modern-day non
conformists and the religious zealots who had executed Charles I on 30
January 1649 was mirrored in Hydes prominent attendance at 30
January sermons into the eighteenth century.189 But it was in his
capacity as keeper of his fathers flame that Hyde most powerfully
connected history, memory, family and religion. Hyde and his brother
had kept close control over their fathers papers since his death, including
the manuscript of his titanic History of the Rebellion, permitting
only close associates like William Sancroft access.190 In the 1690s,
Hyde supervised the lengthy process by which that manuscript would
eventually be published during the next decade. This process involved
Hyde co-opting the help of his clerical clients, notably Bishop Thomas
Sprat, and the Dean of Christ Church, Henry Aldrich, and very frequent
visits to Oxford.191 It would ultimately bring to fruition a project Hyde
had been involved in even while his father was still writing his works: he
carried relevant papers to the exiled Clarendon in 1671 and 1673.192
Besides presenting Clarendon as a uniquely loyal and able minister of
the crown, Hyde took the opportunity of connecting the publication of
the History to his political and religious agenda. Even if Hyde did not
personally write every word of the unsigned prefaces that accompanied
the first three volumes into print in 17024, it is inconceivable that they
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
187. G. Holmes, The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell (1973), p. 43; C. Roberts, The Fall of the
Godolphin Ministry, Journal of British Studies, xxii (1982), pp. 878; G. Holmes, Religion and
Party in Late Stuart England (1975), p. 5.
188. Holmes, Trial, pp. 95, 104. Hydes son voted in the House of Commons against Sacheverells
impeachment: House of Commons 16901715, iv. p. 464, and Hyde himself was satirised for his
prominent support: The Save-Alls. Or, the Bishops Who Voted for Dr Sacheverell, ll. 1718, in De F.
Lord, ed., Poems on Affairs of State, vii. p. 424.
189. Jones and Holmes, eds., London Diaries of William Nicolson, p. 413.
190. Seaward, Hyde, Edward, ODNB.
191. W.G. Hiscock, Henry Aldrich of Christ Church 1648-1710 (Oxford, 1960), pp. 608; Green,
Publication of Clarendons Autobiography, pp. 3535; Bennett, Loyalist Oxford, pp. 267. Hyde
had secured a canonry of Christ Church cathedral for Aldrich, and treated him as a kind of
domestic chaplain: Bennett, Against the Tide, pp. 403.
192. C.H. Firth, Clarendons History of the Rebellion: Part III.The History of the
Rebellion, ante, xix (1904), p. 464.
Hydes religion was critical to his political career. Bearing in mind his
prominence within highly partisan contests over many years, it is hardly
surprising that perspectives on the nature of that religion should have
been sharply polarised. Aside from the dramatic crisis surrounding the
attempts to convert him, James II had recognised his brother-in-law to
193. Hiscock, Henry Aldrich, pp. 602; Seaward, Hyde, Edward; Speck, Hyde, Laurence,
ODNB. For the offence Anne took at the prefaces, see Gregg, Queen Anne, p. 168.
194. For a more detached view of Clarendons religious policy in the early Restoration years, see
P. Seaward, The Cavalier Parliament and the Reconstruction of the Old Regime, 16611667 (Cambridge,
1989), ch. 7.
195. Edward Hyde, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England Begun in the Year 1641,
ed. W.D. Macray (6 vols., Oxford, 1888), i. xxx; BL, Egerton MS 3324 fos. 94r-v (a sardonic
account to Danby in 1678 of Capuchins being forced to plant cabbages upside down in order to
demonstrate their irrational obedience to their superiors).
196. Hyde, History, ed. Macray, i. xlii.
197. Ibid., i. xliii, liiiliv.
198. Ibid., i. xliii, xxxviii.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
1446
could have appeared without his total approbation, and were certainly
understood by contemporaries as expressing his views.193 The preface to
the first volume included extended praise for the Act of Uniformity
(1662)claimed as a Clarendonian achievement194which redeemed
the Church of England from the oppressions it had lain under, and
re-established its decency in worship, without affectation, superstition,
or ostentation. It also featured a sideswipe at the irrationality of catholic
notions of papal infallibility which chimed with views that Hyde had
expressed since at least the 1670s.195 The preface to the second volume
(1703) prefigured Sacheverells rhetoric by blaming the regicide squarely
on those who were no friends to true religion, and argued that the
Monarchy of England is not now capable of being supported but upon
the principles of the Church of England.196 And, the following year,
the preface to the third volume explicitly claimed that evil-minded
contemporaries would learn from the mistakes of their forbears in the
1650s in their quest to ensure greater and longer lasting success in the
future. For good measure, readers were led to High Church conclusions
by closely proximate discussions of the regicide and the emergence in
the 1690s and 1700s of dissenting academies, educating the next
generation of nonconformists.197 In this way, Clarendon was made into
a prophet as well as an historian, by sons who have found themselves
as well the better Christians as the better men for the afflicted, as well as
prosperous, parts of their fathers life.198 Thanks to the close interaction
of history and current affairs in the prefaces, the published History stood
as the finale of a long-term dialogue between Hyde and his father.
1447
be a zealous Protestant. In 1700, Hydes chaplain, Charles Hickman,
praised him for displaying an immovable Zeal for the true Religion
and an unconquerable Affection for the Establishd Church ... even in
the worst of Times, a view shared by the poet William Shippen in 1704:
recalling the pressures on Hyde to convert in 1686, he praised The firm
Resolves of his unbyassd Soul,/True to his Conscience, as the Needle to
the Pole.200 Finally, in the literature published immediately after his
death in 1711, Hyde was described as a true Vindicator of the Church of
England, truly Religious, and as having been a good Protestant.201
Others poured scorn on such pretensions to religious zeal and
constancy. His activities while enjoying the office of lord treasurer in
Jamess reign could always be exhumed to his discredit. During the
parliamentary debates of 1705 surrounding the church in danger
controversy, the Whig peer Lord Wharton was merciless in recalling
past events, sarcastically noting that when Hyde and others had been in
Ecclesiastical Commission to suspend and deprive the Bishops and
Clergy ... then the Church was very safe.202 Some of the laudatory
pamphlets produced after Hydes death were prompted by the
republication in 1711 of a brutally satirical piece, The True Patriot
Vindicated, designed to demolish the religious claims made by Hydes
chaplain in 1700.203 This account dwelt lovingly on both Hydes
willingness to sit on Jamess ecclesiastical commission, and also his
unwillingness after 1688 to discuss the conferences designed to secure
his conversion in 1686. With a snide reference to his fathers non-noble
birth, the author of the satire informed his readers that every one knows
how extremely well bred the noble E[arl] is, and peradventure he might
think it Rude to put the [Catholic] Priests out of Countenance.204
However cruelly intentioned, such a reference to Clarendon reminds
us that Hydes contemporaries viewed him in terms powerfully framed
199
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
199. Life of James II, ed. Clarke, ii. p. 63. (The phrase is not, however, one of the passages
directly imputed to James by the authors of the Life. See E. Gregg, New Light on the Authorship
of the Life of James II, ante, cviii (1993), pp. 94765 for a discussion of the complexities of this
source.) Zealous protestant was used rather more sardonically by Anthony Wood: The Life and
Times of Anthony Wood, Antiquary, of Oxford, 163295, Described by Himself, ed. A. Clark (5 vols.,
Oxford Historical Society, xix, xxi, xxvi, xxx, xl, Oxford, 18911900), iii. p. 206.
200. Charles Hickman, Fourteen Sermons Preachd at St Jamess Church in Westminster (1700),
sig. [A4v]; William Shippen, Faction Displayd (1704), ll. 4423, in De F. Lord, ed., Poems on Affairs
of State, vi. p. 670. Hyde secured Hickmans appointment as bishop of Derry in 1703.
201. [Anon.], The Life and Glorious Character of the Right Honourable Laurence Hyde, Earl of
Rochester ... (1711), p. 6; An Essay Towards the Life of Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, p. 10.
202. C. Jones, Debates in the House of Lords on The Church in Danger, 1705, and on
Dr Sacheverells Impeachment, 1710, Historical Journal, xix (1976), p. 768; Jones and Holmes, eds.,
London Diaries of William Nicolson, p. 323.
203. The True Patriot Vindicated, or a Justification of His Excellency, The Earl of Rochester ...
(1701; repr. 1711).
204. Ibid.
University of St Andrews
G R A N TTA P S E L L
205. Early eighteenth-century alterations to the church of St Batholomew and All Saints in
Wootton Bassett, Wilts., may have been funded by Hyde as lord of the manor, but little evidence
remains: Victoria County History of Wiltshire, ix. p. 202; W.F. Parsons, Wootton Bassett Notes,
Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, xxix (18967), p. 193.
206. A.G. Olson, William Penn, Parliament and Proprietary Government, William & Mary
Quarterly, 3rd series, xviii (1961), p. 180; A.T. Hart, William Lloyd 16271717: Bishop, Politician,
Author and Prophet (1952), pp. 423; M.K. Geiter, William Penn (Harlow, 2000), pp. 28, 29, 31,
356, 38, 46, n.10. For another intriguing reference to Hyde assisting a Quaker in need, see Lloyd,
Quaker Social History, p. 102.
207. Goldie, ed., Entring Book of Roger Morrice, iii. p. 345.
208. C.E. Doble et al., eds., Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne (11 vols., Oxford
Historical Society, ii, vii, xiii, xxxiv, xlii, xliii, xlviii, l, lxv, lxvii, lxx, Oxford, 18851921), iii. p. 160.
Hyde died intestate: Lewis, Lives, i. p. 47*.
EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)
1448
by his family. So should we. The minutiae of Hydes day-to-day private
faith remain elusive, albeit occasionally illuminated by the various
meditations that he penned. For all his interest in foreign church
architecture, next to nothing is known about his preferences within
England.205 He also had some superficially puzzling links with the
Quaker leader William Penn, though in reality this says more about
Penns privileged backgroundincluding a spell at Christ Church
and his skills as a courtier, than any shared religious affinities.206 No
engagement with later Stuart politics as long as Hydes could display
complete consistency. In particular, attempting to maintain his footing
amidst the earthquakes in public affairs during the reign of James II
placed Hyde in a series of uncomfortable positions that would haunt
him ever after. But we can nevertheless see that family concerns, duties
and wider connexion transcended the great caesura of 1688/9, and
connected the young court politician with the old High Churchman. In
Roger Morrices mordant judgement, the Hyde brothers fall proved
that they had made the same mistake as their father in thinking that a
close relationship with the crown would be enough to protect them
against the intrigues of catholics at court.207 It can have surprised no
one that in 1711 Hyde chose to be buried in Westminster, near to the
Graves of his Father and Brother both Earls of Clarendon.208

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English Historical Review Vol. CXXV No.

Laurence Hyde and the Politics of Religion in

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One of the most significant dimensions of the re-invigoration of later

4. For a well-written compendium of information from printed sources, see J. Biggs-Davison,

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Clarendon went so far as to insist that even if his children should

44. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. pp. 5967.

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54. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, i. pp. 6467.

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It is difficult to read these passages without feeling that Hyde perceived

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81. Bodl., MS Tanner 34 fos. 58r-v; ibid., 32 fo. 37.

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The meditations on his daughters death are particularly significant

95. Kenyon, Robert Spencer, p. 122.

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The lord treasurers defence for his actionsas described by Thomas

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EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)

Downloaded from http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Touro College on March 8, 2015

125. Singer, ed., Clarendon Correspondence, ii. p. 63.

EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)

Downloaded from http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Touro College on March 8, 2015

EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)

Downloaded from http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Touro College on March 8, 2015

EHR, cxxv. 517 (Dec. 2010)

Downloaded from http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ at Touro College on March 8, 2015