house, Piccadilly, August 18, 1707, in the sixtyseventh year of his age.

:

8

Collins observes, that his grace was a poet, not by genius only, but by learning and judgment; whence lord Roscommon made him a constant reviser of his poetical productions. He was a master of Horace, and would talk of the other ancients with great relish and knowledge. He had nothing profane or indecent in any line between the wit and the gentleman he knew the difference, and nicely observed it. Dr. Campbell adds, that he was the friend and companion, and at the same time the equal of Ormond, Dorset, Roscommon, and all the noble ornaments of that reign of wit in which he passed his youth. It is however to his honour extremely, that he preserved his public principles from being either tinged with slavish submission, or an enthusiastic fondness for that sort of anarchy which some call liberty. His speeches were smooth and weighty. As a statesman, his whole deportment came up to his noble birth and his eminent stations; nor did he want any of what the world calls accomplishments. He had an elegant taste in painting and all the polite arts; he had great skill in languages, was a true judge of history, a critic in poetry, and had a fine hand in music. 2 At the death of

• To Kennet's funeral sermon on this duke, in 1708, an angry replication was printed by that eccentric fellow John Dunton, who detailed some secret history of his grace, which, if true, had far better have been suppressed.

9 Ut sup. p. 325.

2 Biog. Brit. vol. iii. p. 347

HENRY HYDE,

SECOND EARL OF CLARENDON,

[ELDEST son of the lord-chancellor Clarendon, to whose earldom he succeeded in 1674, when he appears to have been chamberlain to the queen. On the accession of James the second in 1685, he was made lord privy-seal, and in the same year was constituted lord-lieutenant of Ireland; from which kingdom most of his official letters were written. In 1687 he was recalled from his government to make room for lord Tyrconnel, and removed soon after from his office of lord privy-seal, that lord Arundel of Wardour might succeed him. Lord Clarendon's firm attachment to the Protestant religion is conceived to have been the principal reason of his removal. Having refused to take the oaths of allegiance to king William, he passed the remainder of his life in a private manner in the country, and died on the 22d of October 17092, aged seventy.

Lord Orford pointed out by this lord, what he did not think of consequence enough to form a separate article,

"Some Account of the Tombs and Monuments in the Cathedral Church of Winchester, Feb. 1683;" which was continued and printed with the History

2 Preface to his State Letters, &c. p. x.

and Antiquities of that Church, by Samuel Gale, gent. 1715.

But in the year 1763 were published in two vols.

4to.

"The State Letters of Henry, Earl of Clarendon, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, during the Reign of King James the Second; with his Lordship's Diary 3 for the Years 1687, 1688, 1689, and 1690; from the Originals in the Possession of Richard Powney, Esq.” And in Gutch's Collectanea Curiosa 4 the following productions appeared:

"Matter of Fact; by the E. of Cl."

1. Concerning the king's dispensing power.

2. Concerning the act imposing the test, 1678: in answer to the bishop of Oxford's (Dr. Samuel Parker) reasons for abrogating the test, &c.

Two articles from his lordship's Diary may afford the more interesting extracts. The former relates to

This Diary, says the editor, presents us with a picture of the manners of the age in which the writer lived. We may learn from it, that at the close of the seventeenth century a man of the first quality made it his constant practice to go to church, and could spend the day in society with his family and friends, without shaking his arm at a gaming-table, associating with jockies at Newmarket, or murdering time by a constant round of giddy dissipation, if not of criminal indulgence. Preface, p. xxviii. This eulogy might also be applied to the earl of Orrery. Vide infra.

+ Vol. i. p. 309-13. Printed from a transcript by archbishop Sancroft. Messrs. Lysons, in vol. i. of their Magna Britannia, have confounded Henry, earl of Clarendon, with his father, in their account of Swallowfield, Berks.