sedulously cultivated by the English royalists; and at last the death of that extraordinary man led to a series of events which introduced the restoration of Charles II. At the Restoration Sir Edward Hyde was continued as Lord Chancellor; and notwithstanding the constant hostility of the Queen Mother and her faction at court, he maintained for some time a paramount influence with the King, who treated him with the confidence and friendship which his great industry and talents for business, and his faithful attachment to himself and his father so well deserved. In November, 1660, he was raised to the peerage, by the title of Baron Hyde of Hindon in the county of Wilts, and in the spring of the following year he was created Viscount Cornbury and Earl of Clarendon. He was also about this time elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Among the tribes of expectant cavaliers who now flocked to the court of the restored monarch, all impatient to obtain something in recompense for their alleged services and sufferings in the royal cause, these honours and distinctions bestowed upon the Earl of Clarendon raised a storm of envy and malice which eventually caused his ruin. The King’s easiness of access, and, as Lord Clarendon calls it, that “_imbecillitas frontis_, which kept him from denying,” together with the moral cowardice which induced him to escape from the most troublesome importunities, by sending petitioners to the Chancellor for their answers, necessarily increased the dislike with which he was regarded. The discovery of the marriage of his daughter to the Duke of York, afterwards James II., though it probably took place without the knowledge of the Chancellor, gave ample opportunity to the malice of his enemies. The King, however, behaved on this occasion in a manner which did him credit. He not only required the Duke to acknowledge his wife, on being certified that the ceremony had been duly performed, but refused with passion the proffered resignation of the Chancellor, who offered to reside in future beyond seas, and conjured him “never more to think of those unreasonable things, but to attend and prosecute his business with his usual alacrity, since his kindness should never fail him.”