ABSTRACT
Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, wrote what is now known as The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England over two periods of political exile. The first was after the defeat of Charles I in 1646. During he became one of the closest advisers to his son, Charles II, and returned to England with him in a triumphant restoration in 1660. The second was after his flight, in expectation of impeachment at the hands of his political enemies, in 1667. In his second exile, he added an account of his period as Charles II's chief adviser. A sense of loss hangs, of course, over his writing: his History was originally designed, in part, as a memorial to and justification of the royalist cause in the Civil War and of those who died on its behalf; his own Life records how so much had irrevocably changed because of the war.
