CLARENDON, EDWARD HYDE, 1ST EARL OF, VISCOUNT CORNBURY

born Feb. 18, 1609, Dinton, Wiltshire, Eng. died Dec. 9, 1674, Rouen, Fr. also called (164360) Sir Edward Hyde, or (166061) Baron Hyde Of Hindon English statesman and historian, minister to Charles I and Charles II and author of the History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England. Additional reading A detailed, scholarly biography of Clarendon has yet to be written, but one of the earliest attempts, T.H. Lister, The Life and Administration of Edward, First Earl of Clarendon, 3 vol. (183738), is still valuable for its use of Clarendon's vast correspondence. By far the most acute and sensitive appraisal of Clarendon's early political career is B.H.G. Wormald, Clarendon: Politics, History and Religion, 16401660 (1951). It is a remarkable study in historiography that skillfully disentangles the motives of Hyde's actions in the 1640s from his subsequent explanation of them in the 1670s. An earlier reconstruction of Clarendon's historical methods is C.H. Firth, Clarendon's History of the Rebellion,' English Historical Review, 19:2654, 246262, 464483 (1904); and Firth's general appreciation of Clarendon as an author was published in his Essays, Historical and Literary, ed. by Godfrey Davies (1938). A recent discussion of Clarendon's position in the English literary tradition is H.R. Trevor-Roper, Clarendon and the Practice of History, in Milton and Clarendon: Papers on 17th Century English Historiography (1965).