l wars, were
demolished.

* King James's Memoirs. This prince says, that Vernier's
insurrection furnished a reason or pretence for keeping up
the guards, which were intended at first to have been
disbanded with the rest of the army.

Clarendon not only behaved with wisdom and justice in the office of
chancellor; all the counsels which he gave the king tended equally to
promote the interest of prince and people. Charles, accustomed in his
exile to pay entire deference to the judgment of this faithful servant,
continued still to submit to his direction; and for some time no
minister was ever possessed of more absolute authority. He moderated the
forward zeal of the royalists, and tempered their appetite for revenge.
With the opposite party, he endeavored to preserve inviolate all the
king's engagements: he kept an exact register of the promises which had
been made for any service, he employed all his industry to fulfil
them. This good minister was now nearly allied to the royal family.
His daughter, Ann Hyde, a woman of spirit and fine accomplishments, had
hearkened, while abroad, to the addresses of the duke of York, and under
promise of marriage, had secretly admitted him to her bed. Her pregnancy
appeared soon after the restoration; and though many endeavored to
dissuade the king from consenting to so unequal an alliance, Charles,
in pity to his friend and minister, who had been ignorant of these
engagements, permitted his brother to marry her.[*] Clarendon expressed
great uneasiness at the honor which he had obtained; and said that, by
being elevated so much above his rank, he thence dreaded a more sudden
downfall.

* King James's Memoirs.

Most circumstances of Clarendon's administration have met with applause:
his maxims alone in the conduct of ecclesiastical politics have by
many been deemed the effect of prejudices narrow and bigoted. Had the
jealousy of royal power prevailed so far with the convention parliament
as to make them restore the king with strict limitations, there is no
question but the establishment of Presbyterian discipline had been
one of the conditions most rigidly insisted on. Not only that form of
ecclesiastical government is more favorable to liberty than to royal
power; it was likewise, on its own account, agreeable to the majority of
the house of commons, and suited their religious principles. But as
the impatience of the people, the danger of delay, the general