“Of all historians,” English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper intriguingly wrote in an essay on Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, “he is probably the greatest master of disdain. Sometimes it is olympian disdain, as his humanity is also olympian.” This comports with the impression I got from reading the opening pages of The History of the Rebellion and Civil wars in England begun in the year 1641: this is a book with some fighting words. The author, while frequently praised by critics for his majestic style, is equally as often dinged for presenting a history biased towards the Royalist side he favored. In fact, the book was immensely controversial upon its release from 1702 to 1704 during the reign of Queen Anne, despite the fact that decades had passed since its author had died and the events it described were long over, so much so that the first editions of the book were printed in Oxford (the center of Royalist loyalty) rather than in London, where the English term catalogue shows it would only be printed three years later.

(My second impression upon reading the book’s opening pages was that Clarendon comes from the Giuccardini school of writing really long, deeply involved Proustian sentences, a judgment Trevor-Roper confirms when he states that that the author read Tacitus in preparation for writing his book.)

But Trevor-Roper argues against the traditional idea that Clarendon was a biased, partisan historian. It is true, TR says, that Clarendon was not only a loyalist to the Royalist cause during the English Civil War period, he arguably was the single individual most responsible for causing war to break out between Parliament and Charles I when he chose to switch from the Parliamentary side and advocate for Charles. After the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, the king asked Clarendon to write a history of the period, and Clarendon set to work on what would become his masterpiece, The History of the Rebellion and Civil wars in England begun in the year 1641, first published decades after its author’s death, in 1703. But the book as we have it was not one unified work; after the execution of Charles I and the flight of Charles II to France, Clarendon abandoned work of his history and instead set to work on behalf of his monarch, writing letters and organizing and preparing to restore the monarchy he had chosen to side with. When Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, Clarendon achieved the pinnacle of his power as he was appointed Lord High Chancellor and was the first minister of the king. However he was ousted and forced into exile seven years later, after which Clarendon, now much older, found himself living a life in penury in Calais on the continent. Cut off from his books, he set out to write his own autobiography from memory. But after his family managed to get him the forgotten manuscript of the history he had begun two decades before, and Clarendon saw an opportunity to finish the great history he had begun long before. He decided his history could not see the light of day while he was alive, so he wrote in his will that his two sons should decide after his death whether to suppress the work or have it published.

In the end, the book would wait decades to see the light of day. It appears to have been initially released in three versions: a large 40cm folio edition, a much smaller octavo edition, and a deluxe 44cm extra-large paper version, which I had a look at in the Lilly Library Reading Room. The impression I get is that this book was definitely meant to make a splash upon its release, even if the splash it made was to ignite further political controversy.