great equanimity. He retired into the country to a house in Surrey, which Whitlocke describes as so environed with ponds, moats, and water, that it resembled a ship at sea. Here he declared he meant to cast anchor for the rest of his life, but Cromwell prevailed on him to undertake the command of the fleet of Charles Gustavus of Sweden, then threatened by the Danes and Dutch. Sir George was received with great respect by the Swedes, and remained in this service till the death of Gustavus in 1663. Returning home, soon after the Restoration, he was appointed one of the commissioners of the navy, and on the breaking out of the Dutch war in 1664, he went to sea as rear-admiral of the blue squadron, in which capacity he greatly distinguished himself in the engagement of the 3d of June, 1665. Next year Sir George hoisted his flag on board the Royal Prince, a ship of 100 guns, and was present at the great engagement which began on the 1st of June, between the Dutch fleet and the English. Towards the evening of the third day of that desperate fight, the Royal Prince unfortunately ran upon the sand-bank called the Galloper, and could not be got off. Sir George defended his vessel, with great resolution, until his men compelled him to surrender. The Dutch paid a high compliment to his bravery and worth in the extraordinary parade with which they exhibited their captive in different towns. He was closely imprisoned in the castle of Louvestein, but obtained his release soon after, and returned to his native country, where he spent the remainder of his days in comparative retirement. The date of his death is not certainly known. It appears that he was employed in 1668, and that he hoisted his flag on board the Triumph in 1671. Sir Edward Spragge. DIED A. D. 1673. ANOTHER name which graces the maritime annals of Charles the Second's reign is that of Sir Edward Spragge, who first appears as captain of the Portland in the year 1661. At the commencement of the Dutch war, in 1665, he was appointed to the Royal James, but was in a short time removed to the Triumph. In the great engagement betwixt the duke of York and Opdam, Spragge behaved with distinguished bravery. His services on this occasion were rewarded with the honour of knighthood. In the ensuing spring he was appointed to the Dreadnought, and served as rear admiral of the white. On the death of Sir William Berkeley, Spragge was named vice-admiral of the blue. In the action with the Dutch of the 24th July, 1666, the blue squadron, which was the weakest in the English fleet, found itself opposed to that of Van Tromp, which was the strongest division of the enemy's fleet. Notwithstanding of the odds in his favour, however, Van Tromp found himself so severely handled that, on the wind shifting, he availed himself of it to get out of the reach of his opponents. Sir Edward commanded at Sheerness when that place was attacked by the Dutch in June 1667. The place itself was almost incapable of resistance; its whole defence consisted of a platform, on which were mounted fifteen iron guns. Yet, with these insignificant means, he for a time successfully resisted the approach of the Dutch vessels, and finally made good his retreat to Gillingham. When Van Naes, the Dutch admiral, came up the river again, after his attempt upon Harwich, Sir Edward engaged him about the Hope, and with a considerably smaller force, succeeded in compelling him to retire into his own seas. In 1669, on the appointment of the constable of Castile to the governorship of the Spanish Netherlands, Sir Edward was sent over to compliment him upon that occasion, and to promote the success of some political measures. In this new capacity he acquitted himself to the satisfaction of his royal master. Soon after his return to England he sailed as vice-admiral of the fleet, under Sir Thomas Allen, destined to chastise the Algerines. Sir Thomas returned from the Straits in November, 1670, leaving Sir Edward commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean. Towards the latter end of the ensuing April, having received intelligence of a number of Algerine corsairs laying in Bugia bay, Sir Edward determined on instantly attacking them. A first attempt failed, in consequence of an accident which happened to the fire-ship; and in the meantime the Algerines laboured incessantly to secure their vessels by a strong boom made of yards, topmasts, and cables, buoyed up by casks. On the 8th of May a fine easterly breeze having sprung up, Sir Edward bore into the bay, and came to anchor in four fathoms water, close under the castle, from which an incessant fire was kept up upon him for two hours. During this time the boats of the fleet were employed in cutting the boom, and clearing a passage for the fire-ship. When this service was effected, she was sent in, and the whole Algerine fleet, consisting of seven men-of-war, was destroyed. This important and daring exploft was achieved with the loss of only seventeen men killed, and forty-one wounded. It effectually crippled the power of the Algerines, and brought them to terms with the English government. On the renewal of war with the Dutch in 1671, Sir Edward was appointed to serve in his old station of vice-admiral of the blue, and to him the duke of York confided the trust of equipping the fleet, and arranging every thing that was necessary for its future service. He was present at the battle of Solebay, and sunk one of the largest ships in the enemy's line. On the death of the earl of Sandwich, Sir Edward succeeded him as admiral of the blue. Campbell says, with regard to this appointment, "When the duke of York, by the passing of the test act, was obliged to part with his command, and the court, to gratify the desires of the nation, lay under an absolute necessity of making use of Prince Rupert, they took care to secure the fleet notwithstanding, by employing on board such officers only as they could best and he could least trust.' We are not quite disposed to adduce this statement as evidence that Sir Edward possessed "every virtue that could render a commander great, or human nature respectable." On the contrary, we regard the fact of Sir Edward's appointment, in place of Sir Robert Holmes, whom the prince had specially recommended, as furnishing a very conclusive Charnock, vol. i. 74. proof that Sir Edward was, with all his merits as a seaman, entirely under the influence of a corrupt and unprincipled government. The jealousy which existed between Sir Edward and his principal did not, however, prevent these brave officers doing their duty, nor blind them to each other's merits in the hour of battle. We find Prince Rupert, in a letter to the earl of Arlington, highly commending Sir Edward's bravery and indomitable resolution. In the great and decisive engagement of the 11th of August, 1673, Sir Edward found himself once more opposed to his old rival, Van Tromp. Both, intent probably on encountering each other, had fallen several leagues to leeward of their own fleets. After several hours fighting, during which the two admirals twice found it necessary to go on board fresh ships, Sir Edward found it expedient-the ship in which he was then fighting, the St George, being almost a wreck-to remove on board a third ship, the Royal Charles. This was a necessary, perhaps, but a fatal resolution. The boat in which he placed himself had not rowed ten times its own length from the St George, before it was struck by a cannon shot, upon which the crew endeavoured to return to the St George again, but before they could effect their purpose, the boat went down, and Sir Edward, not being a swimmer, perished in the waves. Edward, Earl of Clarendon. BORN A. D. 1608.-DIED A. D. 1673. RIGHTLY to estimate the actions, and measure the moral worth of this eminent personage, is no easy task. He has been alernately deified and defamed for party-purposes. Southey declares him to have been the wisest and most upright of statesmen. Brodie hesitates not to represent him as a miserable sycophant and canting hypocrite. Hume speaks of him with the greatest respect and admiration. Hallam is cautious and guarded in his praise. Agar Ellis unhesitatingly pronounces him an unprincipled man of talent. The subject of these conflicting opinions was born at Dinton in Wiltshire, in February 1608. His father was a private gentleman of an ancient Cheshire family of the name of Hyde. At the early age of thirteen, young Hyde was sent to Magdalene. college, Oxford, whence, at the invitation of his uncle Nicholas Hyde, afterwards chief-justice of the king's bench, he removed to London, and applied himself to the study of the law. In his twenty-first year, he married the daughter of Sir George Ayliffe, but became a widower in the brief space of six months. Three years afterwards he married the daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, master of requests. He started almost at once into notice at the bar. His good fortune in this respect was probably not a little owing to the rule which, as he himself informs us in his Life,' he early adopted, namely, to aim always at good company, and to select for his intimate associates none but persons considerable either for fortune, rank, or accomplishments. How well he carried this maxim into practice, appears from the list of his acquaintances, where amongst other names we find Ben Jonson, Selden, May, Sir Kenelm Digby, Edmund Waller, Lucius Carey, Sheldon, Morley, Earles, Hales, and Chillingworth. But it was the patronage of the marquess of Hamilton, "who had at that time the most credit of any man about the court," and that of Archbishop Laud, that brought our young barrister most into repute in Westminster hall, and marked him out in the eyes of the world as a rising man. At this period, while diligent in his vocation, he appears to have occasionally indulged himself in the company of such men as the earl of Dorset, Lord Conway, and Lord Lumley, "men who excelled in gratifying their appetites," in other words, abandoned rakes. "In that very time," says Hyde in his Life of himself, "when fortune seemed to smile and to intend well towards him, and often afterwards, he was wont to say, that when he reflected upon himself, and his past actions, even from the time of his first coming to the Middle Temple, he had much more cause to be terrified upon the reflection, than the man had, who viewed Rochester-bridge in the morning that it was broken, and which he had gallopped over in the night; that he had passed over more precipices than the other had done, for many nights and days and some years together, from which nothing but the immediate hand of God could have preserved him.” The best and brightest period in Hyde's history, is that in which he appears to us commencing his parliamentary career. In the long-parliament-in which he represented Saltash-he was active in exposing the court system, and in denouncing the illegal conduct of Strafford. At this juncture he was associated with such men as Falkland, Hales, and Chillingworth. But he had neither the integrity of purpose which distinguished these great men, nor was he comparable to any of them in talents. On the approach of direct hostilities, Hyde withdrew to the king at York, by whom he was exceedingly well received. Towards the end of the year 1642, upon the promotion of Sir John Colepepper to the rolls, Hyde succeeded him in the chancellorship of the exchequer; the same year, he was knighted, and made a privy councillor, in which latter capacity he was ever sedulous in instilling into the ear of his royal master those miserable maxims of ecclesiastical polity which cost him his crown and his life. Southampton and Falkland, would have had Charles to yield some at least of the disputed points of prerogative and church-government, but their prudent counsels were checked and rendered abortive by the influence of Hyde, who had so far won upon the king's confidence and attachment that, in a letter to his queen, written about this time, he says, "I must make Ned Hyde secretary of state, for I can trust no one else." "During his (the king's stay) at Newcastle," says Brodie, "all the entreaties of the queen and his lay advisers, to yield to the presbyterian establishment, had utterly failed, and nothing could move him to accede to the less rigorous propositions of the army; but he had now become surrounded with advisers who approved of his resolution. These were ecclesiastics (Sheldon, Hammond, and others), who, having lost their livings, were hostile to any arrangement that should for ever exclude them from power Lord Clarendon, too, encouraged him by letters, to the same course. Exempted himself from pardon by all the propositions, he founded all his hopes of being restored to his country, and rewarded by the crown, on a steady refusal of accommodation-which, however fatal it might prove to his present master, would, he flattered himself ultimately be triumphant in the person of the prince. It therefore appears, by his private correspondence, that he deemed it better that the king should fall a victim to his principles than yield to his enemies. In the clash of parties he expected that the successor would be recalled unshackled; but thought that if what he supposed the best jewels of the crown were once renounced, they might never be recovered." · It was during his retirement in Jersey, that Hyde projected his two celebrated works, the History of the Rebellion,' and Memorials of his own Life.' These works have been published separately and under different titles, but they were originally intended to form one and the same book; we may speak of them therefore as one in this rapid sketch of their author. Hyde's historical writings are valuable as the testimony of one who was contemporary with the events he relates. Their style is in general lucid and flowing; and there is an air of liberality and high-mindedness infused into the whole which creates a very favourable impression for the author. Warburton declares that in the knowledge of human nature, "this great author excels all the Greek and Latin historians put together." This is large praise; but it is extravagant and untrue. There is little real political science in the work, and very little accurate analysis of the springs and workings of human conduct and the true motives of agents. "Clarendon's own idea of the 'genius and spirit and soul of an historian,' says an anonymous but able writer, may be gathered from one of his essays, where he speaks of those endowments as 'contracted by the knowledge and course and method of business, and by conversation and familiarity in the inside of courts, and the most active and eminent persons in the government.' Assuredly, whatever could be gained from such sources to the value of a history was combined in his; and it is difficult to resist the first impression of so dazzling and imposing an aggregate. But a closer view discovers by how very wide an interval is separated the ablest man of the world from the truly philosophical historian-how imperfectly the lore of court-intrigues and state-expedients can expound the great events of a political crisis, and how miserable a substitute for genuine candour and tolerance are the guarded phrase and tone of high society. It were vain to look to Clarendon for any thing like a rational account of the first springs of civil commotion; and his pages do not even exhibit the true interdependences and sequences of events at all more clearly than their origin. Every thing is referred to party cabals and personal influences with a truly court-like nearness and minuteness of vision; and the outward show of exemption from the passionate heats of controversy is belied by an intolerant zeal for mere names and forms, which, had it been expressed in uncouth language by uneducated men, would have been stigmatized as desperate and hopeless fanaticism. The historical merits of Clarendon have been modestly compared by his panegyrists to those of the great author of the History of Henry VII.' as his essays have in similar style been characterised by their editor as an appropriate companion to the little volume which contains the essays of Lord Bacon'-an instance of juxtaposition only allowable in reference to the size of the volumesunless the circumstance of both authors having been chancellors of England be considered to complete the resemblance. However, the former parallel is at least less extravagant, from the marked inferiority |