Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (18 February 1609 – 9 December 1674) was Lord Chancellor of England from 1658 to 1667, succeeding Edward Herbert and preceding Orlando Bridgeman.
Biography[]
Edward Hyde was born in Dinton, Wiltshire, England on 18 February 1609, and he graduated from Oxford in 1626 and was destined to take on holy orders for the Church of England before being made his father's heir. He became known as an eloquent speaker and a master of the art of law, becoming a lawyer in 1633. In 1640, he became MP for Shaftesbury, Wootton Bassett, and Saltash, and he was intitially a moderate critic of King Charles I of England before coming to support the King after he began to accept reforming bills from Parliament. He became a staunch Anglican and opposed the execution of Charles' advisor Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, and he rejoined the King at York on 20 May 1642 at the start of the English Civil War. He came to despise the Parliamentarians after the death of his friend Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland at the First Battle of Newbury in September 1643, and he also harshly criticized other Cavalier commanders whom he blamed for King Charles' defeat. In 1646, he helped the Prince of Wales (the future King Charles II of England) flee to Jersey, and he was horrified when the King was executed. Between 1649 and 1651, he began to write his great history of the civil war, and he went on to serve as King Charles II's Lord Chancellor from 1658 to 1667. His daughter Anne Hyde went on to marry the Duke of York (the future James II of England), making him the grandfather of Queen Mary II of England and Queen Anne. However, his authority as Chancellor was undermined by his back and gout issues and by conspiracies by his enemies; the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of London, and the Dutch Raid on the Medway ruined his career. He died in exile in Rouen, France in 1674.
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