Even in the seventeenth century, gilded as it was by the slowly dying radiance of romance, the “glory and the dream” of chivalry, the strange tale reads like a fable, and yet the life, short as it was, of Anne Hyde, had results for her age and country which even now can hardly be measured accurately and dispassionately, like the ever-widening circles on the surface of a pool into which a pebble has been cast. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. PARENTAGE 1 II. YOUTH 18 III. JAMES STUART 73 IV. THE MARRIAGE 109 V. THE DUCHESS 159 VI. THE FALL OF CLARENDON 211 VII. THE TURNING-POINT 239 VIII. THE END 276 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ANNE HYDE _Frontispiece_ ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF BOHEMIA 26 JAMES DUKE OF YORK 102 HENRY DUKE OF GLOUCESTER 136 HENRIETTA MARIA, “MOTHER 144 QUEEN” JOHN EVELYN 156 PRINCE RUPERT 168 ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF 178 CHESTERFIELD FRANCES JENNINGS, DUCHESS OF 192 TYRCONNEL EDWARD EARL OF CLARENDON 234 HENRIETTA DUCHESS OF ORLEANS 286 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ANNE HYDE, DUCHESS OF YORK CHAPTER I PARENTAGE THERE is, after all, something to be said for the birth of Anne Hyde. Edward Hyde, the famous Chancellor and historian of the Great Rebellion, though the first peer of his name, could still, quite honestly, boast of long and honourable descent. The Hydes of Norbury, in the county of Cheshire, celebrated by Camden in his “Britannia,” had handed down that possession from father to son since the far-back days before the Norman Conquest, but the first of the race with whom we need concern ourselves is the grandfather of the future Chancellor.[3] Footnote 3: “Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, from his Birth to the Restoration of the Royal Family,” written by himself. (1759.)