salvation for his safety." Such was the language addressed to the fallen minister by the Bishop of Winchester, who was charged to deliver the royal message. Clarendon, old and in weak health, set out immediately. It was on the night of the 25th of November, 1667. Scarcely had he touched the soil of France when the two Houses voted his banishment; at the same time making it unlawful to grant him any pardon without the authority of Parliament. {358} Dejected and without hope, Clarendon established himself at Montpelier. There he wrote his admirable _History of the Rebellion_, his memoirs, and several works of piety. When he died, at Rouen in 1674, he had not seen England again, and had not received from the king any testimony of affection or remembrance--a striking example of royal ingratitude, as well as of the incapacity of an exile to govern a country the life of which he had long ceased to share or to understand. With the downfall of Clarendon commenced the reign of the intriguers, the corrupt and the corrupters, and the moral decline of the party of the government, composed at first of men who were honest even in their excesses, but were soon bought by money or favors, and led into concessions and to a line of policy often of shameful kinds. The ministry of the Cabal, as it was called, from the names of the politicians who composed it--Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale--was not formed in the interest of any settled principles either political or social. By turns flattering liberals and arbitrary absolutionists, complaisant to the whims of the king, and lavish of their favors towards men whose votes or support were necessary, they sought abroad the alliance of the King of France, and soon sank into dependence upon him, impelled towards that degradation by the need of an _éclat_ which they could find only in war, with the all-powerful succor of Louis XIV. {359}