Edited by Hester Lees-Jeffries; introduction by Ian Donaldson.

Edward Hyde (1609-1674), politician and historian, was educated at Magdalen Hall (now Hertford College), Oxford. In autumn 1625 he entered the Middle Temple, where for a time he ‘stood at Gaze’, hesitating over the wisdom of following a formal career in the law: for which he would nevertheless in his later life, as a constitutional royalist, always maintain the greatest respect. But Hyde was also much taken by ‘polite learning’ and in particular the study of history, as well as by the conversation and company of the brilliant circle he encountered in and around the Inns of Court. Ben Jonson had enjoyed close friendships with many members of the Inns since the 1590s, and had hailed those institutions in his dedication of the folio edition of Every Man Out of His Humour (1616) as ‘the noblest nurseries of humanity and liberty in the kingdom’. By the mid-1620s Jonson still had many friends amongst the London legal community, and it is not surprising that he and Hyde should have become acquainted around this time.

The jurist and historian John Selden (1584-1654), whom Hyde here names amongst his ‘chief Acquaintance’ in the 1620s, was a member of Clifford’s Inn and later of the Inner Temple, and a formidable defender of constitutional rights. Jonson and he had been associated since at least 1605, when Selden was amongst those ‘banqueted’ by Jonson after his release from prison following the troubles over Eastward Ho! (Informations,110-11). In conversation with William Drummond, Jonson had described Selden as ‘the law-book of the judges of England, the bravest man in all languages’ (Informations, 483-4); in verses prefixed to Selden’s Titles of Honor in 1616 (reprinted as The Underwood, 14) he had hailed him as a ‘Monarch in letters!’ Hyde shared Jonson’s deep admiration of Selden’s qualities, testifying to his ‘stupendous learning in all kinds and in all languages’ and his ‘humanity, courtesy, and affability’. Despite their diverging political sympathies during the years that followed, Hyde continued to hold Selden in pre-eminent regard, looking on him ‘with so much affection and reverence, that he always thought himself best when he was with him’ (Life, 1. 36-7).

Elsewhere in the Life Hyde offers short pen-portraits of other friends from the 1620s who are briefly named in the excerpt below. He praises the sweetness and gentleness of Charles Cotton (died 1658), father of the burlesque poet and translator of Montaigne, Charles Cotton junior, while adding parenthetically: ‘the superstructure of learning not raised to a considerable height’. He notes the supercilious nature of Sir John Vaughan (1603-74), the future Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, who ‘looked most into those part of the law which disposed him to the least reverence to the Crown, and most, to popular authority; yet without inclination to any change of government’ (Life, 1. 37-8). Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665), natural philosopher and adventurer, was Jonson’s close friend and later his literary executor. He is glimpsed indirectly in poems by Jonson addressed to his wife, Venetia (The Underwood, 78, 84). Hyde describes him as ‘a man of very extraordinary person and presence, which drew the eyes of all men upon him, which were more fixed by a wonderful graceful behaviour, a flowing courtesy and civility, and such a volubility of language that surprised and delighted’. Thomas May (1595-1650) was a member of Gray’s Inn and future chronicler of the Long Parliament who published in 1627 a translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia that won Jonson’s admiration (CWBJ Print Edition, 6.159). Thomas Carew (1594/5-1640) entered the Middle Temple in 1612, where, growing restive (like Hyde) with legal study, he began to establish his future career as a poet. Carew was a not uncritical admirer of Jonson. His poem ‘To Saxham’ is in the tradition of Jonson’s ‘To Penshurst’, The Forest, 2. Yet his response to Jonson’s ‘Ode to Himself’ (‘Come leave the loathèd stage’, written after the apparent failure of The New Inn) – ‘’Tis true, dear Ben, thy just chastising hand/ Hath fixed upon the sotted age a brand’ (Literary Record, Online CWBJ) – together with his comments on Jonson’s vanity and self-absorption, as reported by James Howell in Letter (m) (Online CWBJ), show an affection for Jonson tempered by sharper observation.

In 1640 Edward Hyde entered the Long Parliament as member for Saltash, and was soon to become a chief supporter and adviser of Charles I. After Charles’s execution he followed the King’s son into exile, returning at the Restoration as Charles II’s Lord Chancellor and chief adviser. In 1660 he was created Baron Hyde, and the following year Viscount Cornbury and Earl of Clarendon. Facing impeachment charges in England, Hyde fled in 1667 to France, where he spent his final years writing his History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, published in 1702, and, in 1668-70, for the benefit of his children, the first part of his Life, published in 1759.

Whilst he was only a Student of the Law, and stood at Gaze, and irresolute what Course of Life to take, his chief Acquaintance were Ben. Johnson, John Selden, Charles Cotton, John Vaughan, Sir Kenelm Digby, Thomas May, and Thomas Carew, and some others of eminent Faculties in their several Ways. Ben Johnson’s Name can never be forgotten, having by his very good Learning and Severity of his Nature and Manners, very much reformed the Stage; and indeed the English Poetry itself: His natural advantages were, Judgment to order and govern Fancy, rather than Excess of Fancy, his Productions being slow and upon Deliberation, yet then abounding with great Wit and Fancy, and will live accordingly; and surely as He did exceedingly exalt the English Language in Eloquence, Propriety, and masculine Expressions; so he was the best Judge of, and fittest to prescribe Rules to Poetry and Poets, of any Man who had lived with, or before him, or since: If Mr. Cowley had not made a flight beyond all men, with that Modesty yet, to ascribe much of this, to the Example and Learning of Ben. Johnson. His Conversation was very good, and with the Men of most Note; and He had for many Years an extraordinary Kindness for Mr. Hyde, till He found He betook himself to Business, which he believed ought never to be preferred before his Company: He lived to be very old, and till the Palsy made a deep Impression upon his Body, and his Mind.

Bibliography
The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon