1827.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



301 



were all up,aud ready for delivery, attwelye o'clock 

 next day. 



If we could afford space, we should 

 quote an amusing account of the sailors 

 at Walchcren, when on shore their drill- 

 ings playing at soldiers huntings of 

 the French ^harp-shooters, &c. vol. 1.207. 



Historical Inquiries respecting the 

 Character of Edward Hyde, Karl of 

 Clarendon, Lord Chancellor of England, 

 />!/ the Hon. Ar,nr Ellis; 1827. No 

 minister probably ever stood on so high 

 ground in the estimation of posterity for 

 probity and palrioJism for purity in the 

 personal discharge of his office, and re- 

 sistance to the profligate politics of the 

 court, as Clarendon, who has moreover the 

 reputation of having finally sunk in strug- 

 gling against an overwhelming tide of 

 corruption. Where get we these notion*; 

 of Clarendon ? From himself chiefly, and 

 his heedless or ignorant eulogist Hume. 

 He himself pre-occupied the ground with 

 his own partial and voluminous details ; 

 and the manifest and unrivalled superi- 

 ority of his performances excluded com- 

 petitors from the field. He was besides 

 the zealous friend of the Church, and the 

 enemy of the Presbyterians j and has had 

 the incalculable advantage of successive 

 panegyrics, age after age, from the cleri- 

 cal quarter. The ruined non-conformist 

 squeaked indeed ; but the episcopal trum- 

 pet out-brayed his feeble whinings. Mr. 

 Agar Ellis, already favourably distin- 

 guished for his discussions on the " iron 

 Masque," has the merit of first bringing 

 together the scattered evidence, which 

 shews up the chancellor in a very diffe- 

 rent light as rapacious and corrupt in 

 office, and cruel aud tyrannical as a states- 

 man. 



We shall just run our eyes over the 

 evidence. The first witness is Evelyn, 

 speaking, however, through Pepys's 

 report : 



By the way, he (Evelyn) tells me that of all the 

 groat men of England there is none that endea- 

 vours more to raise those that he takes into favour 

 than my Lord Arlington ; and that on that score 

 he is much more to be made one's patron than my 

 Lord Chancellor, who never did nor will do any 

 thing but for money. 



And Evelyn, though not in such direct 

 terms, clearly alludes to the same thing, 

 in his owu diary : 



Visited (says he) the Lord Chancellor, to whom 

 his Majesty had sent for the seals a few days be- 

 fore; I found him in his bed-chamber very sad. 

 The Parliament had accused him, and he had ene- 

 mies at court, especially the buffoons and ladies 

 of pleasure, because he thwarted them, and stood 

 in their way; I could name some of the chief. 

 The truth is, he made few friends during hit 

 grandeur among the royal sufferers, but ad- 

 ranced the old rebels. He was my particular 

 friend on all occasions. 



Now we have only to glanco at Claren- 

 don's own writings, to learn that no body 

 hated these " old rebels" more than he. 

 Then why advance them ? B.-cause (sug- 

 gests Mr. Agar Ellis) they were rich, and 

 the u royal sufferers," just returned from 

 banishment, were poor. The one could 

 pay, and the other not. 



This charge of favouring the old rebels 

 distinctly from corrupt motives -is fully 

 confirmed by another tory, Lord Dart- 

 mouth, in a note of his taken from the 

 Oxford edition of Burnett's History of 

 his own limes the tories had naturally 

 a leaning, it should be remembered, to- 

 wards Clarendon . 



The Earl of Clarendon (says Lord Dartmouth) 

 made it his business to depress every body's merit* 

 to advance his own, and (the king having gratified 

 his vanity with high titles) found it necessary to- 

 wards making a fortune in proportion, to apply 

 himself to other means than what the crown could 

 afford (though he had as much as the king could 

 well grant;) and the people who had suffered most 

 in the civil war were in no condition to purchase 

 his favour. He therefore undertook the protection 

 of those who had plundered and sequestered the 

 others, which he very artfully contrived, by mak- 

 ing the king believe it was necessary for his own 

 ease and quiet to make his enemies his friends: 

 upon which he brought in those who had been 

 the main instruments and promoters of the late 

 troubles, who were not wanting in their acknow- 

 ledgments in the manner he expected, which pro- 

 duced the great house in the Piccadille, furnished 

 chiefly with cavaliers' goods, brought thither for 

 peace-offerings, which the right owners durst not 

 claim when they were in his possession. In my 

 own remembrance Earl Paulett was an humble 

 petitioner to his sons, for leave to take a copy of 

 his grand father and grandmother's pictures (whole 

 lengths, drawn by Vandyck) that had been plun- 

 dered from Hiriton St. George; which was ob- 

 tained with great difficulty, because it was thought 

 that copies might lessen the value of the originals. 

 And whoever has a mind to see what great fami- 

 lies had been plundered during the civil war, 

 might find some remains either at Clarendon House 

 or at Cornbury. 



This specific charge of furniture and 

 pictures rests entirely, as to documentary 

 evidence, on Lord Dartmouth's assertion j 

 but the fact is curiously established by 

 circumstantial evidence. The furniture 

 is of couise gone, but the pictures sur- 

 vive, and can be traced uninterruptedly 

 to their present possessors, Lord Claren- 

 don at the Grove in Hertfordshire, and 

 Lord Douglas at Bothwell Castle. These 

 pictures are a very extraordinary collec- 

 tion all portraits arid portraits of the 

 different members of most of the conspi- 

 cuous royalist families the Stanleys, 

 Cavendishes, Villiers, Hamiltons, Coven- 

 try?, &c. families with whom the par- 

 rcnu Clarendon had not the remotest con- 

 nexion or affinity. They are chiefly 

 painted by Vandyck and Cornelius Jau- 



