XIV. was sent, informing them that the King had fixed CHAP. a day for their last audience, when they were expected to take their leave; and when this ceremony had been performed, about the beginning of March, the two ambassadors quitted Madrid. 1651. Hyde's poverty while in Spain. Such was the fruitless and mortifying conclusion of fifteen months of suppliant negotiation, and the bitter endurance of penury and neglect. Of the poverty which Hyde then suffered, we have much interesting evidence in his letter to Secretary Nicholas. "All our money is gone," he said, in a letter of the 6th of January; "and let me never Jan. 6. 66 prosper if I know or can imagine how we can get "bread a month longer."* In a letter of the 16th of August he said, "Greater necessities are hardly "felt by any men, than we for the present undergo, such as have almost made me foolish; so "that I have not for my life been able either to pay you any part of my debt,. or to supply the "miserable wants and distresses of my poor wife, "both which I hope shortly to do." His salary, at this time, seems to have been in a great measure dependent upon the advances which the Spanish Government could be prevailed upon to make to Charles. "I assure you," he said in a letter of October the 19th, "I am not more troubled for "the intolerable necessity my wife is in (though 1650. by his ambassador in England, out of the collection of Charles I. The Spanish Court seem to have been too little solicitous, lest they should hurt the feelings of the English ambassadors, to be fairly suspected of such delicacy. * Clarendon's State Papers, iii. 12. CHAP. 1651. "it almost breaks my heart), than that your wants "are increased by your friendship to me, and by "the great debt I owe you: yet I hope, if there be "truth and honour in this people, I shall shortly "be able to pay you a part, and to relieve her, for "they promise us money. But," he added, "they "are a wretched people, without honour or courage; and I doubt not but their friends, the Parliament, will use them accordingly."*"How they "will use us at parting, I yet know not," he said in December; "but I presume I shall have such a present as will carry me to my wife, and some"what to be divided between you and her.”+ 66 66 Yet, thus poor, neglected, mortified, doomed to the bitter task of ineffectual supplication to a despicable Court, he never allowed his firmness to relax, or would admit, for an instant, the unworthy idea of bettering his fortune at the expense of his principles. In letters to Nicholas, about this period, he repels with indignation the thought of composition with the regicide Parliament, of which it would seem there had been some question. "I "know no other counsel to give you than, by the grace of God, I mean to follow myself, which is to "submit to God's pleasure and judgment upon me, "and to starve really and literally, with the comfort "of having endeavoured to avoid it by all honest "means, and rather to bear it than to do any thing 66 66 contrary to my duty. Compounding is a thing I "do not understand, or how a man can do it to * Clarendon's State Papers, iii. 23. + Ibid. iii. 25. 66 66 66 66 save one's life. We must play out the game with "that courage as becomes gamesters who were first engaged by conscience against all motives and temptations of interest, and be glad to let the "world know that we were carried on only by con"science. Heretofore the title of offices, and the good opinion we had with our masters, might be thought our motives; and, with a king, and in his company, mere moral considerations would make "men suffer much: now we are without offices, "and (for aught appears) made incapable of any, and, without any avowed favour from the King, "we must be the more precise and punctual in all "we do, that we may convince all men, that no temptation can make us decline the severe prin 66 66 66 66 ciples we have professed. When our sufferings "are at the highest, they cannot last long." "In"deed," he added, with more emphatic indignation, in a subsequent letter, "all discourse of submitting or compounding with those rogues in England, hath so little of sense or excuse in it, "that there needs no reply to it. You and I "must die in the streets first of hunger."* 66 66 CHAP. XIV. 1651. Spain. Hyde quitted Madrid in March, 1651, unaccom- Hyde quits panied by his colleague. Lord Cottington put in execution the plan, which he seems to have long meditated, of passing the remainder of his life in Spain. His principal inducements were his age and infirmities, and his readmission to the Roman Catholic faith, which he had originally professed, had subsequently abandoned, and had long re * Clarendon's State Papers, iii. 24, 25. XIV. 1651. CHAP. adopted in secret. Having become reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church, he obtained leave from the Spanish Court to reside in a private capacity at Valladolid, where he died in the following year, in the 77th year of his age. He is described by the discriminating pen of his colleague as experienced, calm, resolute, subtle; of an even temper, and a cold heart; "of an excellent humour, and very easy to live with;" a pleasant companion, but not calculated to inspire confidence, or win affection. The Spanish Court vouchsafed some courtesy to Hyde at parting. Hearing that he intended to repair to his family at Antwerp, "and stay there till he "received other orders from the King, his master, they gave him all despatches thither that might "be of use to him in those parts. The King of Spain himself used many gracious expressions to "him at his last audience, and sent afterwards to "him a letter for the Archduke Leopold, in which "he expressed the good opinion he had of the am"bassador, and commanded that, whilst he should "choose to reside in those parts under his govern“ment, he should receive all respect, and enjoy "all privileges, as an ambassador; and Don Louis "de Haro writ likewise to the Archduke, and "the Count of Fuensaldagna, to look upon him as his particular friend: all which ceremonies, though they cost him nothing, were of real "benefit and advantage to the ambassador; for, "besides the treatment he received from the Arch"duke himself in Brussels, as ambassador, such 66 "directions or recommendations were sent to the 66 66 magistrates at Antwerp, that he enjoyed the privilege of his chapel; and all the English, who "were numerous then in that city, repaired thither "with all freedom for their devotion, and the ex"ercise of their religion; which liberty had never "been before granted to any man there, and which "the English and Irish priests, and the Roman "Catholics of those nations, exceedingly mur"mured at, and used all the endeavours the could "to have taken away, though in vain.”* CHAP. XIV. 1651. Hyde remained with his family at Antwerp, till the return of Charles II. to Paris, in the autumn of 1651, after his defeat at Worcester, and the perilous adventures of his remarkable flight. An ineffectual attempt was made, through the instrumentality of Long, to keep Hyde from the royal presence. But he had received from another quarter a summons from the King; and accordingly, in December, he quitted Antwerp, and on Christmas-day arrived at Paris, fatigued and ill, and was Hyde received by the royal exile with cordiality and King at kindness. Here, too, Hyde met Lord Ormond; and from this time commenced his friendship with that distinguished man, a friendship warm, constant, and valuable to each.‡ Within about * Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, vi. 468. + Clarendon's State Papers, iii. 38—41. Carte, with affected accuracy, says that Ormond landed in France in the beginning of January, and went to Paris on the 21st. See Life of Ormond, i. 157. Hyde, in a letter to Nicholas, speaks of him as being at Paris on the 6th; and from another letter we may infer, that he was there even in December. See Clarendon's State Papers, iii. 41, 42. meets the Paris. |