Characters from the Histories & Memoirs of the Seventeenth Century Part 26

33.

Clarendon, MS. History, pp. 447-8; _History_, Bk. VII, ed. 1704, vol.

ii, pp. 204-6; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 61-4.

The studied detachment that Clarendon tried to cultivate when writing about his political enemies is nowhere shown better than in the character of Hampden. 'I am careful to do justice', he claimed, 'to every man who hath fallen in the quarrel, on which side soever, as you will find by what I have said of Mr. Hambden himself' (see No.

21, note). The absence of all enthusiasm makes the description of Hampden's merits the more telling. But there is a tail with a sting in it.

The last sentence, it must be admitted, is not of a piece with the rest of the character. There was some excuse for doubting its authenticity. But doubts gave place to definite statements that it had been interpolated by the Oxford editors when seeing the _History_ through the press. Edmund Smith, the author of _Phaedra and Hippolytus_, started the story that while he was resident in Christ Church he was 'employ'd to interpolate and alter the Original', and specially mentioned this sentence as having been 'foisted in'; and the story was given a prominent place by Oldmixon in his _History of England, during the Reigns of the Royal House of Stuart_ (see _Letters of Thomas Burnat to George Duckett_, ed. Nichol Smith, 1914, p. xx).

A controversy ensued, the final contribution to which is John Burton's _Genuineness of L'd Clarendon's History Vindicated_, 1744. Once the original ma.n.u.script was accessible, all doubt was removed. Every word of the sentence is there to be found in Clarendon's hand. But it is written along the margin, to take the place of a deleted sentence, and is evidently later than the rest of the character. This accounts for the difference in tone.

Page 129, ll. 22 ff. Compare Warwick, _Memoires_, p. 240: 'He was of a concise and significant language, and the mildest, yet subtillest, speaker of any man in the House; and had a dexterity, when a question was going to be put, which agreed not with his sense, to draw it over to it, by adding some equivocall or sly word, which would enervate the meaning of it, as first put.'

At the beginning of this short character of Hampden, Warwick says that 'his blood in its temper was acrimonious, as the scurfe commonly on his face shewed'.

Page 131, l. 4. _this that was at Oxforde_, i.e. the overture, February and March 1643: Clarendon, vol. ii, pp. 497 ff.

ll. 24-6. _Erat illi_, &c. Cicero, _Orat. in Catilinam_ iii. 7.

'Cinna' should be 'Catiline'.

34.

Clarendon, MS. History, pp. 525-7; _History_, Bk. VII, ed. 1703, vol.

ii, pp. 353-5; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 321-4.

The character of Pym does not show the same detachment as the character of Hampden. Clarendon has not rejected unauthenticated Royalist rumour.

Page 132, ll. 7-9. This rumour occasioned the publication of an official narrative of his disease and death, 'attested under the Hands of his Physicians, Chyrurgions, and Apothecary', from which it appears that he died of an intestinal abscess. See John Forster's _John Pym_ ('Lives of Eminent British Statesmen', vol. iii), pp. 409-11.

l. 19. He was member for Tavistock from 1624.

Page 133, l. 26. Oliver St. John (1603-42), Solicitor-General, mortally wounded at Edgehill.

ll. 29, 30. Cf. p. 129, ll. 15-18.

Page 134, l. 3. Francis Russell (1593-1641), fourth Earl of Bedford.

'This lord was the greatest person of interest in all the popular party, being of the best estate and best understanding of the whole pack, and therefore most like to govern the rest; he was besides of great civility, and of much more good-nature than any of the others.

And therefore the King, resolving to do his business with that party by him, resolved to make him Lord High Treasurer of England, in the place of the Bishop of London, who was as willing to lay down the office as any body was to take it up; and, to gratify him the more, at his desire intended to make Mr. Pimm Chancellor of the Exchequer, as he had done Mr. St. John his Solicitor-General' (Clarendon, vol. i, p. 333). The plan was frustrated by Bedford's death in 1641. The Chancellors.h.i.+p of the Exchequer was bestowed on Culpeper (_id._, p.

457).

ll. 27 ff. The authority for this story is the _Mercurius Academicus_ for February 3, 1645-6 (pp. 74-5), a journal of the Court party published at Oxford (hence the t.i.tle), and the successor of the _Mercurius Aulicus_. The Irishman is there reported to have made this confession on the scaffold.

Page 135, ll. 25-8. _The last Summer_, i.e. before Pym's death, 1643.

See Clarendon, vol. iii, pp. 116, 135, 141.

Page 136, ll. 7-10. He died on December 8, 1643, and was buried on December 13 in Westminster Abbey, whence his body was ejected at the Restoration.

35.

Clarendon, MS. History, Bk. X, p. 24 (or 570); _History_, ed. 1704, vol. iii, pp. 84-5; ed. Macray, vol. iv, pp. 305-7.

The two characters of Cromwell by Clarendon were written about the same time. Though the first is from the ma.n.u.script of the History, it belongs to a section that was added in 1671, when the matter in the original History was combined with the matter in the Life. It describes Cromwell as Clarendon remembered him before he had risen to his full power. He was then in Clarendon's eyes preeminently a dissembler--'the greatest dissembler living'. The other character views him in the light of his complete achievement. It represents him, with all his wickedness, as a man of 'great parts of courage and industry and judgement'. He is a 'bad man', but a 'brave, bad man', to whose success, remarkable talents, and even some virtues, must have contributed. The recognition of his greatness was unwilling; it was all the more sincere.

'Crumwell' is Clarendon's regular spelling.

Page 136, l. 22. Hampden's mother, Elizabeth Cromwell, was the sister of Cromwell's father.

Page 138, l. 18. _the Modell_, i.e. the New Model Army, raised in the Spring of 1645. See C.H. Firth's _Cromwell's Army_, 1902, ch. iii.

l. 21. _chaunged a Generall_, the Earl of Ess.e.x. See No. 40.

36.

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 549-50; _History_, Bk. XV, ed. 1704, vol.

iii, pp. 505-6, 509; ed. Macray, vol. vi, pp. 91-2, 97.

Page 139, ll. 3, 4. _quos vituperare_, Cicero, _Pro Fonteio_, xvii.

39 'Is igitur vir, quem ne inimicus quidem satis in appellando significare poterat, nisi ante lauda.s.set.'

ll. 19, 20. _Ausum eum_, Velleius Paterculus, ii. 24.

Page 140, ll. 9-12. Machiavelli, _The Prince_, ch. vii.

ll. 17-22. Editorial taste in 1704 transformed this sentence thus: 'In a word, as he was guilty of many Crimes against which d.a.m.nation is denounced, and for which h.e.l.l-fire is prepared, so he had some good Qualities which have caused the Memory of some Men in all Ages to be celebrated; and he will be look'd upon by Posterity as a brave wicked Man.'

37.

Memoires Of the reigne of King Charles I, 1701, pp. 247-8.

Page 141, l. 17. _a servant of Mr. Prynn's_, John Lilburne (1614-57).

But it is doubtful if he was Prynne's servant; see the article in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. Lilburne's pet.i.tion was presented by Cromwell on November 9, 1640, and referred to a Committee; and on May 4, 1641, the House resolved 'That the Sentence of the Star-Chamber, given against John Lilborne, is illegal, and against the Liberty of the Subject; and also, b.l.o.o.d.y, wicked, cruel, barbarous, and tyrannical' (_Journals of the House of Commons_, vol. ii, pp. 24, 134).

ll. 29, 30. Warwick was imprisoned on suspicion of plotting against the Protector's Government in 1655.

38.

A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq.; Edited by Thomas Birch, 1742, vol. i, p. 766.

This pa.s.sage is from a letter written to 'John Winthrop, esq; governor of the colony of Connecticut in New England', and dated 'Westminster, March 24, 1659'.

Maidston was Cromwell's servant.

39.