Selections from "The History of the Rebellion" and "The Life by Himself"

by Edward Hyde

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Summary

Early in 1648 King Charles I asked his friend Edward Hyde, later the Earl of Clarendon, to write a true history of the rebellion. The result, which took 28 years to complete, has become a classic of historical writing and of political philosophy which anticipates the work of Hume, Burke and Acton. This selection groups together passages from the History with extracts fromhis autobiography, The Life by Himself, to form a narrative account of the period 1640-1667, interspersed with those vignettes at which Clarendon was such a master. 'I am careful to do justice to every man who hath fallen in the quarrel, on which side soever', he wrote -- and, indeed what other royalist historian would have had the courage or the magnanimity to praise the 'great heart' of Cromwell?

Clarendon's writings remain an important source of information for seventeenth century historians, and of pleasure for admirers of a full, flowing and vigorous style. For this new edition of the selection originally made for the World's Classics series, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of History in the University of Oxford, has contributed a new introdution

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