d and
the new conditions of political affairs. And it was Hyde who was the
scapegoat when things did not run the course that Englishmen desired.
As the head of the administration he was held responsible even for those
acts which he had strongly but vainly reprobated in Council. It was Hyde
who was blamed when Charles sold Dunkirk to the French, and spent the
money in harlotry; it was Hyde who was blamed because the Queen was
childless.

The reason for this last lay in the fact that the wrong done to Hyde's
daughter Anne had now been righted by marriage with the Duke of York.
Now the Duke of York was the heir-apparent, and the people, ever ready
to attach most credit to that which is most incredible and fantastic,
believed that to ensure the succession of his own grandchildren Hyde had
deliberately provided Charles with a barren wife.

When the Dutch, sailing up the Thames, had burnt the ships of war at
Chatham, and Londoners heard the thunder of enemy guns, Hyde was openly
denounced as a traitor by a people stricken with terror and seeking a
victim in the blind, unreasoning way of public feeling. They broke his
windows, ravaged his garden, and erected a gibbet before the gates of
his superb mansion on the north side of Piccadilly.

Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, and Lord Chancellor of England,
commanded the love of his intimates, but did not possess those qualities
of cheap glitter that make for popularity with the masses. Nor did he
court popularity elsewhere. Because he was austere in his morals,
grave and sober in his conduct, he was hated by those who made up the
debauched court of his prince. Because he was deeply religious in his
principles, the Puritans mistrusted him for a bigot. Because he was
autocratic in his policy he was detested by the Commons, the day of
autocracy being done.

Yet might he have weathered the general hostility had Charles been half
as loyal to him as he had ever been loyal to Charles. For a time, it is
true, the King stood his friend, and might so have continued to the
end had not the women become mixed up in the business. As Evelyn, the
diarist, puts it, this great man's fall was the work of "the buffoones
and ladys of pleasure."

It really is a very tangled story--this inner history of the fall of
Clarendon, with which the school-books are not concerned. In a sense, it
is also the story of the King's marriage and of Catherine of Braganza,
his unfortunate little ugly Queen, who mus