s at effecting his fall
having failed, and immediately obtained the chief place in the
government, retaining the chancellorship of the exchequer till the 13th
of May 1661, when he surrendered it to Lord Ashley. He took his seat as
speaker of the House of Lords and in the court of chancery on the 1st of
June 1660. On the 3rd of November 1660 he was made Baron Hyde of Hindon,
and on the 20th of April 1661 Viscount Cornbury and earl of Clarendon,
receiving a grant from the king of L20,000 and at different times of
various small estates and Irish rents. The marriage of his daughter Anne
to James, duke of York, celebrated in secret in September 1660, at first
alarmed Clarendon on account of the public hostility he expected thereby
to incur, but finding his fears unconfirmed he acquiesced in its public
recognition in December, and thus became related in a special manner to
the royal family and the grandfather of two English sovereigns.[8]

Clarendon's position was one of great difficulties, but at the same time
of splendid opportunities. In particular a rare occasion now offered
itself of settling the religious question on a broad principle of
comprehension or toleration; for the monarchy had been restored not by
the supporters of the church alone but largely by the influence and aid
of the nonconformists and also of the Roman Catholics, who were all
united at that happy moment by a common loyalty to the throne.
Clarendon appears to have approved of comprehension but not of
toleration. He had already in April 1660 sent to discuss terms with the
leading Presbyterians in England, and after the Restoration offered
bishoprics to several, including Richard Baxter. He drew up the royal
declaration of October, promising limited episcopacy and a revised
prayer-book and ritual, which was subsequently thrown out by parliament,
and he appears to have anticipated some kind of settlement from the
Savoy Conference which sat in April 1661. The failure of the latter
proved perhaps that the differences were too great for compromise, and
widened the breach. The parliament immediately proceeded to pass the
series of narrow and tyrannical measures against the dissenters known as
the Clarendon Code. The Corporations Act, obliging members of
corporations to denounce the Covenant and take the sacrament according
to the Anglican usage, became law on the 20th of December 1661, the Act
of Uniformity enforcing the use of the prayer-book on ministers, as