and Reflections upon the Psalms of David, applied to the Troubles of this Time.” He had soon the affliction of losing the society of his colleague Lord Cottington, who having no wife or children to return to, being worn down by age and infirmity, being reconciled to the Roman Catholic church in which he had been educated, and sickening at the thought of being again plunged into the civil and religious distractions of his native country, resolved to spend the remainder of his days in Spain, and obtained permission from the Spanish government to reside in a private capacity at Valadolid*. Hyde accordingly had his audience of leave as sole ambassador. He had conducted himself during his residence at Madrid so decorously, so inoffensively, and notwith- [MARCH.] standing his narrow circumstances, with so much dignity, that he had made a very favourable impression upon the Spaniards, which now showed itself in spite of the usual selfish and timid policy of the Court. "Hearing that he intended to repair to his family at Antwerp, and stay there till he received other orders from the King his master, they gave him all despatches thither that might be of use to him in those parts. The King of Spain himself used many gracious expressions to him at his last audience, and sent afterwards to him a letter for the Archduke Leopold, in which he expressed the good opinion he had of the ambassador, and commanded that whilst he should choose to reside in those parts under his government, he should receive all respect and enjoy all privileges as an ambassador: all which ceremonies, though they cost him nothing, were of real benefit and advantage to him, for besides the treatment he received from the Archduke himself in Brussels, as ambassador, such directions or recommendations were sent to the magistrates of Antwerp, that he enjoyed the privilege of his chapel, and all the English, who were numerous in that city, repaired thither with all freedom for their devotion; which liberty had never before been granted to any man there.”† CHAPTER LXXVII. CONTINUATION OF THE LIFE OF CLARENDON TILL THE GREAT SEAL WAS DELIVERED TO IIIM AT BRUGES. [JUNE, 1651.] HYDE left Madrid in March, 1651, and after a fatiguing journey, performed chiefly on mules, reached Paris. Here he was received more graciously than usual by Queen Henrietta, who was in a state of great anxiety from the perils to which her son was exposed in Scotland. * He died there the following year in his 77th year. The ex-ambas † Hist. Reb. b. vi. sador then travelled on to Antwerp, where he had, for some months, the exquisite enjoyment of living quietly in the bosom of his family, although disturbed by the sad news of the battle of Worcester, and under long suspense respecting the fate of his young sovereign. At last, news came of Charles's miraculous escape and safe arrival in Normandy. Hyde soon received a summons to repair to Paris, and on Christmas-day, 1651, again took up his residence there as a member of the exiled Court. All the former enmities, and jealousies, and rivalries between the titular ministers now broke out with fresh violence, the Queen recklessly inflaming and exasperating them in her efforts to gain an ascendancy for herself. She was at the head of one party, [A. D. 1652.] and Hyde of another. To strengthen herself, she tried to introduce Sir John Berkeley into the Council, and to have him appointed "Master of the Wards," an office depending upon the oppressive military tenures which the parliament had abolished, and to the abolition of which the late King, at several conferences, had readily agreed. Hyde urged "that the King could not, at the time, do a more ungracious thing, that would lose him more the hearts and affections of the nobility and gentry of England, than in making a Master of the Wards in a time when it would not be the least advantage to his Majesty or the officer; to declare that he resolved to insist upon that part of his prerogative which his father had consented to part with." This opposition succeeded, but rendered the Queen still more hostile to Hyde. In the next controversy between them, I must say it seems to me that he was decidedly wrong, and that he displayed those narrow-minded and bigoted principles, as an ultra-high-church Episcopalian, which subsequently betrayed him into serious errors, and even a sacrifice of good faith. The French government, becoming more and more intolerant, would not suffer any English strangers to have a place of worship in Paris according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England; but at Charenton, in the suburbs, there was a Huguenot chapel, where, the edict on Nantes not being yet repealed, the Protestant service was celebrated according to law, and a very pious and learned divine ministered to a most respectable congregation. The Queen declaring that, notwithstanding her zeal for her own religion, she respected the dying injunctions of her late husband, and was contented that her son should remain a Protestant, consented to his going to this chapel, as he could not be present at the celebration of mass, and there was no other place of public worship for him to attend. In answer to Hyde's opposition, she observed" that Queen Elizabeth had greatly favoured the Huguenots; that they were recognised as a reformed church; and that their pastors had been admitted into the Church of England without fresh ordination." But Hyde, who heartily disliked the Roman Catholics, but much more any Protestant church that did not rigidly adhere to the " Apostolic succession," declared with much earnestness, "that whatever countenance or favour the Crown or Church of England had heretofore shown to these congregations, it was in a time when they carried themselves with modesty towards both; but that, of late, some of their preachers had countenanced the doctrine that it might be lawful to resist a King by arms, and had even inveighed against Episcopacy; that the Queen, whose ulterior object was the conversion of her son to Popery, intended to unsettle his faith, and weaken his attachment to the only true reformed church, when he would be more accessible to her persuasions; and that, from the King's going to Charenton, it would be concluded everywhere that he thought the Episcopalian profession and Presbyterian profession were indifferent, which would be one of the most deadly wounds to the Church of England which it had yet suffered.” This matter being debated in Council, Charles, who was delighted to be entirely exempted from the restraint of attending public worship, said with affected [A. D. 1652-3.] gravity (having probably first cast a sly look at Buckingham,) "that upon the whole he thought the arguments of the Chancellor of the Exchequer preponderated, and that, out of respect for that true apostolical church to the safety of which his blessed father died a martyer, he would not frequent the heretical conventicle at Charenton."* He was thus at liberty, without any interruption, to devote himself on Sundays to Miss Lucy Walters and other ladies of the same stamp, in whose society he now spent almost the whole of his time.† Plunged in the gaieties of Paris, he forgot the misfortunes of his family, and lost sight of his three kingdoms, content if, from any source, he could be supplied with money to defray his personal expences. Hyde often gave him excellent general advice, which he received with good humour, and neglected,—and all that he would promise with regard to business was, "that a part of every Friday (a day of penance) he would employ in reading and answering letters on public affairs." But the number and publicity of his amours at last caused general scandal among his followers, and was reported to his disadvantage in England. His character particularly suffered from the utter worthlessness of Lucy Walters, who by her arts had won his affections, who by her influence continued to exercise a powerful control over his easy temper, and who was now the mother of a child she called his,-after*Hist. b. vi. Life of Clarendon. (L. C.) 94. † A sincere friend to the Church of England, I cannot conceal my disapprobation of this horror of entering a Presbyterian place of worship, which we still occasionally meet with in the High Church party,-which induced Hyde to advise that Charles should rather live like a heathen, than attend public worship in a French Protestant chapel, and made Dr. Johnson say, when in Scotland, that he would not go to hear Principal Robertson preach, unless he should take a tree for his pulpit. The only argument to support such intolerance place those who use them at the mercy of the Romanists, to whom, perhaps, they would be glad to be re-united. Very different is the conduct of our beloved sovereign Queen Victoria, who, when in Scotland, attends divine service in the church of the parish in which for the time she is residing. wards the celebrated Duke of Monmouth. Hyde, assisted by Ormond, interfered to dissolve this disgraceful connection, and representing to Charles the injury which it did to the royal cause at home, where the appearances at least of morality were so highly respected, they prevailed upon him to separate from her, and as he still renewed his intercourse with her, they induced her by an annuity of 4007., to repair with the child to her native country. When she arrived there she called herself Charles's wife, and Cromwell after keeping her some time in the Tower, sent her back to Paris. But Hyde had little more trouble with her, for her open lewdness was such as to forfeit the royal favour, and she soon after died disgracefully. Her son had been taken from her and placed under the care of the Oratoriens at Paris. A plan was now brought forward by a party in the exiled Court, to marry the King and the Duke of York to Mademoiselle de' Orleans and Mademoiselle de Longueville,-alliances which, from the ladies being Roman Catholics, would have caused extreme dissatisfaction in England, and might seriously have obstructed the restoration of the royal family. This was successfully opposed by Hyde; but he wisely supported the proposal, that the younger brother should serve in the French army, and honourably employ himself in seeking military experience under the great Turenne. In proportion as Cromwell gained an ascendancy in the Continental Courts as well as at home, and the royal party was isolated in the apartments of the Louvre assigned to them, Hyde's difficulties increased-from their want of real business. 'It is hard," he says in a spirit of good-natured sarcasm, "for people who have nothing to do, to forbear doing something which they ought not to do. Whilst there are Courts in the world, emulation and ambition will be inseparable from them; and Kings who have nothing to give shall be pressed to promise. Men who would not have had the presumption to have asked the same thing if the King had been in England, thought it very justifiable to demand it, because he was not there, since there were so many hazards that they should never live to enjoy what he promised." Upon Hyde was thrown the unpopular task of refusing these solicitations, for in the illness and absence of Secretary Nicholas, he was now considered the acting and sole Secretary of State. As Chancellor of the Exchequer devolved upon him the duty of attending to the scanty finances of the improverished King. A handsome revenue had been expected from the prizes to be made by the fleet under the orders of Prince Rupert; but he returned from his buccaneering expedition to the West Indies, bringing in an account by which he made the King his debtor, and nothing was now to be expected from this quarter except a trifle by the sale of the decayed ships and their guns and stores. * 2 Clar. Pap. iii. 180. Thurloe, v. 169. 178. Hist. Reb. b. vi. In a letter written to Sir Richard Brown, in August 1652, Hyde says, "A sum lately received at Paris for the King is all he hath received since he came hither, and doth not enable his cooks and back-stairs men to go on in providing his diet, but they protest they can undertake it no longer." The deficit increased. In the end of this year, the Finance Minister writes, "the King is reduced to greater distress than you can believe or imagine;" and in the summer of the following year, he thus describes the state of the treasury: I do not know that any man is yet dead for want of bread, which really I wonder at. I am sure the King himself owes for all he has eaten since April; and I am not acquainted with one servant of his who hath a pistole in his pocket. Five or six of us cat together one meal a day for a pistole a week; but all of us owe for God knows how many weeks to the poor woman that feeds us."* This may seem the language of badinage; but to other correspondents he writes in a strain which proves that his own personal sufferings from poverty were most severe. At this time I have neither clothes nor fire to preserve me from the sharpness of the season."+ "I am so cold, that I am scarce able to hold my pen, and have not three sous in the world to buy a faggot." "I have not been master of a crown these many months, am cold for want of clothes and fire, and owe for all the meat I have eaten these three months, and to a poor woman who is no longer able to trust; and my poor family at Antwerp (which breaks my heart) is in as sad a state as I am."{ “I owe so much money here to all sorts of people, that I would not wonder if I were cast into prison to-morrow; and if the King should remove, as I hope he will shortly have occasion to do, and not enable me to pay the debt I have contracted for his service, I must look for that portion, and starve there." His new honour of "Foreign Secretary" added greatly to his embarrassments, as the letters for his Government were all directed to him. "I cannot," he says, "avoid the constant expense of seven or eight livres the week for postage of letters, which I borrow scandalously out of my friends' pockets, or else my letters must more scandalously remain still at the post-house: and I am sure that all those which concern my own private affairs would be received for ten sous a week; so that all the rest are for the King, from whom I have not received one penny since I came hither."¶ He bore up nobly amidst all these embarrassments. In a frame of mind firm, cheerful, and resigned, he thus writes to Nicholas; * Clar. Pap. iii. 174. § Clar. Pap. iii. 124. The Queen could not be blamed for not assisting her son with money; for it is related that about this time she was obliged to keep her daughter Henrietta all day in bed during a severe frost, because she had not money to buy fuel to light a fire to warm her. |