Clarendon, First Earl of

Clarendon, First Earl of 

(Edward Hyde). Born Feb. 18, 1609, in Dinton, Wiltshire; died Dec. 9, 1674, in Rouen, France. Earl from 1661, British statesman, first historian of the English bourgeois revolution of the 17th century.

During the revolution, Clarendon was one of the leaders of the royalist opposition and in 1646 left England. After the restoration of the Stuarts, he became prime minister (lord chancellor) to Charles II (1660). Widespread dissatisfaction with Clarendon’s reactionary domestic policy and England’s military defeats forced Charles II to dismiss Clarendon in 1667. Accused of high treason, he emigrated to France. His chief work, History of the Great Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (vols. 1–3, 1704), is a loquacious statement of the royalist case against the English revolution and its partisans. His counterrevolutionary views exerted considerable influence on the interpretation of the history of the English revolution by the reactionary wing of the bourgeois historians.