erected a gibbet before the gates of his superb mansion on the
north side of Piccadilly.

Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, and Lord Chancellor of England,
commanded the love of his intimates, but did not possess those
qualities of cheap glitter that make for popularity with the
masses. Nor did he court popularity elsewhere. Because he was
austere in his morals, grave and sober in his conduct, he was
hated by those who made up the debauched court of his prince.
Because he was deeply religious in his principles, the Puritans
mistrusted him for a bigot. Because he was autocratic in his
policy he was detested by the Commons, the day of autocracy being
done.

Yet might he have weathered the general hostility had Charles
been half as loyal to him as he had ever been loyal to Charles.
For a time, it is true, the King stood his friend, and might so
have continued to the end had not the women become mixed up in
the business. As Evelyn, the diarist, puts it, this great man's
fall was the work of "the buffoones and ladys of pleasure."

It really is a very tangled story--this inner history of the fall
of Clarendon, with which the school-books are not concerned. In a
sense, it is also the story of the King's marriage and of Catherine
of Braganza, his unfortunate little ugly Queen, who must have
suffered as much as any woman wedded to a sultan in any country
where the seraglio is not a natural and proper institution.

If Clarendon could not be said to have brought about the
marriage, at least he had given it his suffrages when proposed by