judgment and his experience of men taught him how exposed such a position
was to every blast of envy. It was partly owing to his consciousness of
rectitude, partly to a certain unbending rigidity of character, that Hyde
neglected the caution that might have enabled him to shelter himself
against these blasts. With all his experience of Courts, Hyde never
learned the arts of a courtier. He was naively unconscious how little the
steadfast honesty of his purpose could render his blunt plainness of
diction palatable to a master, the chief feature of whose character was
callous selfishness, and whose self-love might for the moment allow him to
overlook, but never permitted him to forget, the liberty that presumed to
curb his caprices or to criticize his conduct.

But for the time the relations between Charles and his Minister were
cordial enough; [Footnote: These relations, in their intimacy and apparent
freedom from restraint, are perhaps best reflected in what are known as
the "Council notes," preserved in the Bodleian, and consisting of scraps
of memoranda passing between Charles and his Chancellor. Most of them are,
no doubt, mere notes passed across the table during a discussion in the
Council, and abound in those hieroglyphics on the margin, which sufferers
from tedious colloquies are impelled to make, and which perhaps indicate
the frequent boredom of the King. But others are evidently messages
transmitted from Whitehall to the Chancellor. In all alike there is a
singular lack of formality, or even of orderliness, and they might have
passed between business colleagues, who were on terms of close intimacy
and easy familiarity. Clarendon's tone is almost uniformly brusque and
off-hand, and he must have tried the King's patience terribly by the
infamous illegibility of his handwriting. Charles's writing is a schoolboy
scrawl, but it is uniformly legible.] and amongst his colleagues Hyde
could count some who were his warmest and most trusted friends. They
formed an inner circle, with common sympathies at once in their memories