Page 125, l. 23. Clarendon has a great passage in Book VII (vol. iii, pp. 224-6) on the value of Councils, even when the experience and wisdom of the councillors individually may not promise the right decisions. The passage is suggested by, and immediately follows, a short character of Prince Rupert. Page 126, ll. 15, 16. Clarendon refers to the retreat of the Parliamentary Army at Lostwithiel, on August 31, 1644, when Essex embarked the foot at Fowey and escaped by sea, and Sir William Balfour broke away with the horse. In describing it, Clarendon says that 'the notice and orders came to Goring when he was in one of his jovial exercises; which he received with mirth, and slighting those who sent them, as men who took alarms too warmly; and he continued his delights till all the enemy's horse were passed through his quarters, nor did then pursue them in any time' (vol. iii, p. 403; cf. p. 391). But Goring's horse was not so posted as to be able to check Balfour's. See the article on Goring by C.H. Firth in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ and S.R. Gardiner's _Civil War_, 1893, vol. ii, pp. 13-17. Clarendon was misinformed; yet this error in detail does not impair the truth of the portrait. 33. Clarendon, MS. History, pp. 447-8; _History_, Bk. VII, ed. 1704, vol. ii, pp. 204-6; ed. Macray, vol. iii, pp. 61-4. The studied detachment that Clarendon tried to cultivate when writing about his political enemies is nowhere shown better than in the character of Hampden. 'I am careful to do justice', he claimed, 'to every man who hath fallen in the quarrel, on which side soever, as you will find by what I have said of Mr. Hambden himself' (see No. 21, note). The absence of all enthusiasm makes the description of Hampden's merits the more telling. But there is a tail with a sting in it. The last sentence, it must be admitted, is not of a piece with the rest of the character. There was some excuse for doubting its authenticity. But doubts gave place to definite statements that it had been interpolated by the Oxford editors when seeing the _History_ through the press. Edmund Smith, the author of _Phædra and Hippolytus_, started the story that while he was resident in Christ Church he was 'employ'd to interpolate and alter the Original', and specially mentioned this sentence as having been 'foisted in'; and the story was given a prominent place by Oldmixon in his _History of England, during the Reigns of the Royal House of Stuart_ (see _Letters of Thomas Burnat to George Duckett_, ed. Nichol Smith, 1914, p. xx). A controversy ensued, the final contribution to which is John Burton's _Genuineness of L'd Clarendon's History Vindicated_, 1744. Once the original manuscript was accessible, all doubt was removed. Every word of the sentence is there to be found in Clarendon's hand. But it is written along the margin, to take the place of a deleted sentence, and is evidently later than the rest of the character. This accounts for the difference in tone.