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Lord Clarendon's Conspiracy Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Thomas H. Robinson
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Extract

Lord Clarendon created his History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England by conflating a narrative history of the struggle between king and parliament which he had written between 1646 and 1648 with an autobiography, covering his life and times up to the Restoration, which he had composed—between 1668 and 1670—after his removal as Lord Chancellor and subsequent exile to France. The finished History, probably completed in 1672, tended—insofar as it was drawn from the autobiography—to be an apology for Clarendon's political career, his autobiographical work begun after completing the History and covering the years after the return of Charles II being unabashedly apologetical. To the extent that the History was drawn from the earlier, narrative history, however, it tended to be analytical rather than apologetical in nature. The original history, according to Sir Charles Firth, “was written with a definite practical purpose: [Clarendon] undertook not only to relate the events of the Rebellion and the causes which produced it, but to point out the errors of policy committed on the King's side. The trusty few who read it would learn from it how to avoid like errors in the future. …” This first version of the later History, however, contained not merely an analysis of the mistakes made by the king and his ministers, but also certain indications as to what were the motives and methods of those who had entered into rebellion against Charles I. Clarendon's conception of the opposition to the king, which was born in the propaganda tracts which he began writing for the king late in 1641 and which he expanded upon and refined in his later political and historical works, did not take the form of a general theory of the rebellion. General theories were not really Clarendon's style. He was an accomplished polemicist with a facility for dealing with matters of theory, but his instincts were those of a narrative historian.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , Summer 1981 , pp. 96 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1981

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References

1 The best study of the creation of the History is to be found in three sequential articles by Firth, C.H.: “Clarendon's ‘History of the Rebellion’: Part I, The Original History,” English Historical Review 19 (January 1904): 26–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Clarendon's ‘History of the Rebellion’: Part II, The ‘Life’ of Himself,” ibid. (April 1904): 246-62; and “Clarendon's ‘History of the Rebellion’: Part III, The ‘History of the Rebellion,’” ibid. (July 1904): 464-83. Firth, who found the original history to be more accurate than the autobiography, but who felt also that the latter had much greater literary value, called the melding of the two “a literary crime”: see Firth, C.H., Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, as Statesman, Historian, and Chancellor of the University (Lecture delivered 18 February 1909; Oxford, 1909), p. 21.Google Scholar

2 See earl of Clarendon, , The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, Lord High Chancellor of England, and Chancellor of the University of Oxford: in which is included, A Continuation of his History of the Grand Rebellion, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1857)Google Scholar. The Continuation, which is the autobiography covering the years from 1660, takes up the latter half of the first volume and the whole of the second.

3 Firth, , Edward Hyde, p. 15Google Scholar. But Clarendon did not intend that his narrative should be sequestered and pondered by a “trusty few” only. He wrote to Sir Edward Nicholas in November 1646 to request that, when he had finished writing his history—if he should then die—Nicholas would see that “somewhat by your care may be published, and the original [manuscript] be delivered to the King…” See State Papers Collected by Edward, Earl of Clarendon, vol. 2, ed. Scrope, Richard (Oxford, 1773), p. 289.Google Scholar

4 Trevor-Roper, H.R., “Clarendon and the Practice of History,” in Milton and Clarendon (Los Angeles, 1965), p. 36Google Scholar. It will be shown below that “the wicked” were wicked because they were conspirators. A similar reluctance to find a conspiracy theory in the History is manifested by Macgillivray, Royce in Restoration Historians and the English Civil War (The Hague, 1974), pp. 209–13.Google Scholar

5 For the first three books of the History, see: Edward, earl of Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England Begun in the Year 1641, ed. Macray, W. Dunn, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1888), 1:1–378Google Scholar. Where appropriate, succeeding references to the History will appear in the main body of the text. The process whereby Hyde's earlier views were “enveloped” within the History is discussed in Robinson, Thomas H. “Lord Clarendon's Politics” (Ph.D. diss., Claremont Graduate School, 1976), ch. 2.Google Scholar

6 According to Firth, “At the beginning of the Long Parliament whatever design of change or revolution existed” in Clarendon's mind “was confined to half a dozen men” (“Clarendon's ‘History of the Rebellion’: Part I,” p. 35). On the subject of Clarendon's opinion that only a small number of men was behind the movement against the king, see also Wormald, B.H.G., Clarendon: Politics, History and Religion, 1640-1660 (Cambridge, 1951), pp. 180–1.Google Scholar

7 History, 1:442Google ScholarPubMed; regarding the similar reasons for the abandonment of the king by many of his followers, see idem. 4:491.

8 Ibid., 4:2; Macgillivray nicely summed them up as “the natural defects of human psychology: the weakness, vanity, self-delusion, irrationalism, blindness, and so forth, which can make men contribute, knowingly or unknowingly, to a national drift to disaster” (Restoration Historians, pp. 200-2).

9 Edward, earl of Clarendon, “Of Liberty,” Reflections upon Several Christian Duties, Divine and Moral, By Way of Essays, in A Collection of Several Tracts of the Right Honourable Edward, Earl of Clarendon, Author of “The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England” (London, 1727), p. 142.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 143; in a propaganda pamphlet, probably printed late in 1648, Hyde similarly condemned the allegedly fraudulent idealism of revolutionaries, writing that, “In all Rebellions the Chief Authors and Contrivers of it have made all fair Pretences, and enter'd into such specious Oaths, as were most like to seduce and corrupt the People to joyn with them, and to put the fairest Gloss upon their foulest Combination and Conspiracy …” (Sir Edward Hide [sic], “A Full Answer to the Fore-going Infamous and Trayterous Pamphlet,” [the pamphlet being “A Declaration of the Commons Assembled in Parliament” printed 15 February 1647], A Collection of Several Valuable Pieces, of the Right Honourable Edward Earl of Clarendon, 2 vols., [London, 1727], 1:87).Google Scholar

11 History, 1:1–2Google ScholarPubMed, also 4:1, where Clarendon distinguished the “weakness and folly” of the duped from the “malice and wickedness” of those with a “design to ruin and destroy the Crown.”

12 Ibid., 2:85; see also Edward, earl of Clarendon, “Lord Chancellor's Speech, following the King's, at the Prorogation, May 19, 1662,” A Collection of King's Speeches; with the Messages to and from Both Houses of Parliament, Addresses by the Lords and Commons, and the Speeches of the Lords Chancellors and Speakers of the House of Commons; from the Restauration, in the Year One Thousand Six Hundred and Sixty, to the Year One Thousand Six Hundred and Eighty-five, ed. Hay, William (London, 1772), p. 51.Google Scholar

13 History, 2:81Google ScholarPubMed, also 1:244-45 and A Collection of King's Speeches, p. 51.

14 History, 1:430–31Google ScholarPubMed; on the subject of Hyde's desire to effect a compromise between the king and the “governing party,” see Wormald, , Clarendon, pp. 4–18Google Scholar. For the only detailed description and analysis of the scheme upon which that compromise would have been based, see Roberts, Clayton, “The Earl of Bedford and the Coming of the English Revolution,” Journal of Modern History 49 (December 1977): 600–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Roberts' discussion of the Bedford scheme does not differ radically from that of Clarendon in the History, but adds much to it; and it also demonstrates that Clarendon exaggerated the extent to which the king and the Bedfordite faction had reached clear agreement—especially in regard to the fate of the earl of Strafford.

15 History, 1:245Google ScholarPubMed; Bedford had even “subscribed liberally to the repair of St. Paul's church,” a project dear to the hearts of Laud and of Hyde (see idem. p. 308 and Clarendon's Life, 1:25); Essex was “as much devoted as any man to the Book of Common Prayer,” and both Holies and Pym “were pleased with the government itself of the Church” (see History, 1:309 and p. 282Google ScholarPubMed).

16 For the description of the “few English (for there were yet but very few) who were intrusted from the beginning of the enterprise” in Scotland as “men of reserved and dark natures, of great industry and address, and of much reputation for probity and integrity of life,” see ibid., p. 216.

17 Even later, in the late summer and fall of 1641, Clarendon claimed, the “governing party” and the Scots concerted measures during the king's stay in Scotland, contriving to introduce measures in Scotland which the king—having accepted them there—could not very well reject in England during the second session of the Long Parliament: see ibid., pp. 370-71.

18 As Conrad Russell has written, Clarendon believed that “the Parliamentarians were dominated by a small aristocratic leadership, without whose backing the more widespread political and religious discontents could never have found effective expression.” And so he wished to separate that leadership from its more radical followers. “Recently,” Russell noted, “historians have been coming to take his political judgements … more seriously” (The Origins of the English Civil War [London and Basingstoke, 1975] pp. 3–4).Google Scholar

19 Hexter, J.H., The Reign of King Pym (Cambridge, Mass., 1941), p. 51.Google Scholar

20 Gardiner, Samuel R., History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603-1642, 10 vols. (London, 1883–1884), 9:381–2Google Scholar, also 1:315.

21 Firth, , Edward Hyde, p. 19.Google Scholar

22 Trevor-Roper, , “Clarendon and the Practice of History,” p. 34.Google Scholar

23 Richardson, R.C., The Debate on the English Revolution (London, 1977), p. 32.Google Scholar

24 History, 2:319Google ScholarPubMed; for other examples of the role of Puritans in promoting rebellion, see 1:251, 269, 340, 401, 496; 2:226, 410, 546; 3:302, 320, and 457-58.

25 Ibid., 1:400; Strode actually only seconded the motion: see Coates, Willson Havelock, ed., The Journal of Sir Simonds D'Ewes from the First Recess of the Long Parliament to the Withdrawal of King Charles from London (New Haven, Conn., 1942), pp. 44–5.Google Scholar

26 On this matter, see Wedgwood, C.V., The King's War, 1641-1647 (London, 1958), p. 55.Google Scholar

27 Worden, Blair, The Rump Parliament, 1648-1653 (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 218–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Clarendon, , Life, 1:75.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., p. 76; for another reference to Marten's republicanism, see idem. 2:149.

30 Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England, ed. Cobbett, William, 36 vols. (London, 1806–1820), 2:1345.Google Scholar

31 [Hyde, Edward], Transcendent and Multiplied Rebellion and Treason, Discovered by the Lawes of the Land (n.p., 1645), p. 14.Google Scholar

32 History, 2:14Google ScholarPubMed; for an example of one moderate opponent of the king (Sir John Hotham) who in the summer of 1642 considered changing sides because he felt he was being manipulated by the anti-monarchical radicals, see idem. p. 264.

33 In the mid-1640s Hyde had had a quite different opinion of the Independents, thinking them less sinister, fanatical, and anti-monarchist than the Presbyterians, when he ascribed just that view of the Independents to the king in the History, he was patently referring to one he himself had encouraged the king to adopt: History, 4:157–58Google ScholarPubMed. For example of Hyde's early hopes for cooperation with the Independents, see: State Papers Collected by Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 2:308, 379Google Scholar; and Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers Preserved in the Bodleian Library, vol. 1 (to January 1649)Google Scholar, eds. O. Ogle and W.H. Bliss (Oxford, 1872), p. 384 (item 2554).

34 Clarendon did not believe that this assured the ultimate victory of the Independents, thinking that Essex might have made a comeback, were it not for his death, in 1647 (History, 4:218–19Google ScholarPubMed).

35 Ibid., p. 305; see also pp. 261, 240, 271, and 6:80. For Hyde's earlier views of Cromwell's character see: Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers Preserved in the Bodleian Library, vol. 1 (from the death of Charles I, 1649, to the end of the year 1654), ed. W. Dunn Macray (Oxford, 1869), p. 337 (item 1839), and [SirHyde, Edward], A Letter from a True and Lawfull Member of Parliament; and One Faithfully Engaged with Him, from the Beginning of the War to the End. To One of the Lords of his Highness Councell, upon Occasion of the last Declaration, Showing the Reasons of their Proceedings for Securing the Peace of the Commonwealth, published on the 31st of October 1655 (n.p., 1656).Google Scholar