246

Dutch fleet (with four thousand landsmen under the 349 command of Doleman, a renegado English colonel on board) came up the Thames in the beginning of June; and forcing the defendants to quit the platform at Sheerness, entered the Medway, and burnt some of the best ships of the English navy at Chatham.

This disaster set all the ill humours in the nation afloat; the people of England were furious with rage, and exclaimed universally against the conduct of a ministry that knew neither how to make war nor peace. The duke of Buckingham took this opportunity to make his submission; and a little above a fortnight after that insult on the ports of England, surrendered himself to Mr. secretary Morrice, and was sent to the Tower. In his way thither he dined with the lords Rivers and Vaughan and some other company at the Sun in Bishopsgatestreet, where he shewed himself to a numerous body of spectators with great ceremony from the balcony, openly threatening his accuser; and that the parliament should execute vengeance on his enemies. He was the bolder in this respect, because that accuser was dead just before; and being on July 8 brought before the council, he denied the charge against him, and was remanded to the Tower. His imprisonment served only to make him popular, and was very short, being released on the Sunday following; and two or three days afterwards introduced to the king at the countess of Castlemaine's lodgings, and allowed to kiss his hand, as well as to come to court. This reception was soon followed with a restitution to all his places and employments, and to his former favour and credit with his majesty.

247 This was the prelude to the earl of Clarendon's disgrace. His enemies had found means, by a swarm of libels, and by an infinite number of little emissaries, to possess the people with a notion that he was the cause of all the late miscarriages in affairs; though he had

never intermeddled in any part of the management of the war, to which he had ever been very averse. His lease of Worcester-house, wherein he had lived ever since the restoration, expiring this year, and the owner of it resolving to make it the place of his own habitation, he had taken a very unhappy resolution of building an house in a piece of ground which the king had given him near St. James's. There he erected a magnificent pile, at a much greater expense than he imagined or intended, which almost ruined him in his fortune, by loading him with an heavy debt, and at the same time raised the envy of the world, who were willing enough to suppose it built by money corruptly gotten. He had removed thither in the April before the affront put upon the nation at Chatham, and the clamours and fury of the populace raised on that occasion were all levelled at him, whom they were misled to think the author of all the calamities of the kingdom; so that he was in continual apprehensions that they would pull down his house about his ears, and that he should fall a sacrifice to the fury of a misguided and enraged multitude. In this situation he was still intrepid, supported by the clearness of his conscience, and well satisfied he had done nothing that he ought to be ashamed of himself, or his friends for him. To this undeserved misfortune of popular odium some natural ones were added; the dukes of Cambridge and Kendal, sons to the duke of York, and the lady Clarendon, died within a few days of one another. This last was an excellent woman, and her loss left him scarce any thing desirable in life; yet he bore all with an equanimity which his friends could not sufficiently admire. He had lost a little before (on May 16) his chief friend the earl of Southampton, upon whose death the treasury was put into the hands of the duke of Albemarle, lord Ashley, sir T. Clifford, sir W. Coventry, and sir John Duncombe, none of them well-affected to the chancellor.

E

-248.

is induced to deprive him of the great seal. (1667.) 299
He was thereby left in a manner alone, and giving an
account of that event to the duke of Ormond, expresseth 350
well the greatness of his loss, or of his sense of it, by
saying, that, besides him, he had not another friend left
in the world. He knew that the duke's presence in Ire-
land was necessary, and that a journey into England
would be very inconvenient to his domestic affairs; so
that he did not press his coming over, yet seemed to
wish his presence more for the good of the public, and
for the steadiness of the king's counsels, than for his
own support, which he rested entirely upon his own
innocence.

248 The chancellor was certainly a minister of as great
probity, disinterestedness, and integrity, as hath been
known in any age: his whole conduct, and his letters to
the duke of Ormond, (to a friend towards whom he had
no reserve,) are an irrefragable proof of this part of his
character. But he seems to have fallen into that very
mistake (which he remarks in the character of archbishop
Laud) of imagining that a man's own integrity will sup-
port him, in all times and all circumstances of affairs, in
the measures which he takes for the public good. He
was passionate, and though solemn and cool in debate,
did not bear an unreasonable contradiction with that
temper which selfish, artful, and designing men always
take care to preserve. He was not without the pride of
a conscious virtue, and knowing well the just reasons
upon which he gave his advice on any occasion, when he
found it rejected, he thought himself the less concerned
to prevent the ill consequences of measures taken by
others' counsels in opposition to his own, which were
dictated purely by his zeal for the king's service, and his
regard to the good of the kingdom. From the time that
lord Arlington was made secretary of state, he was apt
on occasion to complain that he had no credit at court,
which disobliged the king; and to clear himself from

249

having any hand in certain resolutions, which perhaps would otherwise not have been approved in the event; and yet his dislike thereof was still represented as the reason of their miscarriage, and served the advisers for an excuse. He always gave the king prudent and honest advice; but if it was overruled, (as was too often the case,) he did not care to intermeddle, but left it to wiser men (as he styled them) to follow their own measures, and to perform what they had confidently undertaken for the king's service. This manner of conduct made him neglect his interest (of which few ministers have ever had a greater, and yet founded upon virtue) in the house of commons, till at last it was utterly ruined. Archbishop Sheldon saw early what would be the issue of this way of proceeding, and did not fail to represent it to the chancellor; but he was not to be removed from the plan of conduct which he had laid down to himself: so that Sheldon could not forbear complaining in his letters to the duke of Ormond, that Clarendon had by that means ruined himself, and suffered the church to fall into that danger wherein it was at the time that the seals were taken from him.

The king too by a like negligence had brought upon himself all the difficulties wherewith he was surrounded. He was too fond of pleasures to love business, and gave up himself so much to them, that he left the management of public affairs to those ministers whom he particularly trusted. He suffered so much in his reputation on this account, that he had need of all those amiable qualities with which he was endowed, and which charmed all that came near him, to prevent the effects from being fatal. But his personal failings did much less prejudice to his affairs than one mistake in his political conduct. Whether, his restoration being brought about by a concurrence of persons of different parties, he had a mind to please them all, or thought that a balance of parties was

an useful method and instrument of government, or at least a proper means to obtain some things which he had at heart, his council was composed of men who had different views and interests, not only in what concerned themselves, but in what regarded the public. Their prin-351 ciples both as to church and state were contradictory to one another, and not having one uniform end in public affairs to pursue, they never agreed in their measures; a discord much more pernicious than those jars which arise from a dispute who shall best serve their prince, or who shall serve him in the highest station, which will ever be found in all courts. Hence it came that there was no concert for the carrying of any point for the public service; no rule whereby those who meant and wished well to it might be guided; no director from whom they might derive instructions for their conduct; but every one said and did what appeared right in his own eyes, and all were left to the accident of wind and tide, in a popular assembly, to drive at random. Hence arose that disunion, irresolution, uncertainty, and uneasiness, which caused many to grow weary of attending the service of the house, and threw others into those distractions and confusions, which, being improved by a small number of disaffected persons, raised a spirit not unlike that which reigned in 1641, and produced such violent measures as threw all good men into a violent consternation, and would have made those who knew the house best expect the like calamities, if they had not been satisfied that the members loved the king and the constitution better than the faction did which prevailed in those days. There was not a member in the house but was incensed against some or other of the great officers of the crown, and whilst each man was for attacking the minister he hated, they all united their passions, and joined in examining into the public accounts and miscarriages in government, and prosecuted these inquiries with so much heat, as