The Chancellor succumbed under the burden both of his virtues and his defeats. "Raised by the Restoration to the summit of authority, he succeeded to power with a hatred for all that had passed during twenty years, and with an intention of restoring everything in Church and State to the point at which the revolution had found it. But he had what is often wanting, or is quickly dissipated in active and elevated spheres of life, namely, opinions and faith in duty. He was often in error; he committed, or suffered to be committed, iniquities; but truth and virtue were not in his eyes chimeras. Often irrational and unjust in his relations with the national party, he was towards his own party firm, enlightened, and virtuous. A severe censor of the corruption of Charles II., frankly Protestant in a Papist court, notwithstanding his personal hatred towards the Presbyterians; grave and austere in the midst of frivolous and greedy courtiers; moderate by reason, though his nature was harsh and perhaps even vindictive; he constantly set his face against those wild disorders, that reckless and capricious tyranny, to which the government was unceasingly impelled by the vices of the king and the passions of the Cavaliers. As a returned exile he did not control the evil genius of the Restoration, and did not even conceive the idea of controlling it. An Englishman of the old type, he opposed to the perverse nature of his party all his power, ability, and virtue." {357} It was the virtues of Clarendon that alienated from him the mind of the king. Weary of the constraint which the principles of his minister imposed upon him, the king deprived him of the seals in the month of August, 1667. "The Chancellor was as much surprised as he could have been if one had presented to him an order for his execution," says Clarendon himself in his memoirs. He had believed himself assured of the heart and the fidelity of the king against all his enemies. The House of Commons proceeded at once to the impeachment. Clarendon was avaricious, yet at the same time lavish. His princely dwelling was the object of jealousy among all the Cavaliers, who had been ruined by the sequestrations and the disadvantageous liquidations to which they had been subjected under the Commonwealth. "The Act of Indemnity for the enemies of the king had become an act of oblivion for his friends," said the country gentlemen who had been deprived of their property. They accused the Chancellor of having enriched himself more rapidly than was consistent with honor. The House of Lords defended him without success. Charles pressed his old servant to leave England, in order to prevent, as he said, the evils that might result to the kingdom from the division which had manifested itself between the two Houses. Clarendon resisted; the king at length gave him the order to depart. "It is absolutely necessary that he should go promptly; I answer upon my