After the death of Cromwell, on September 3rd, 1658, there ensued for the
exiled Court twenty months of constant alternation between hope and
despair, in which the gloom greatly preponderated. As the chief pilot of
the Royalist ship, Hyde, now titular Lord Chancellor, had to steer his way
through tides that were constantly shifting, and with scanty gleam of
success to light him on the way. Within the little circle of the Court he
was assailed by constant jealousy, none the less irksome because it was
contemptible. The policy of Charles, so far as he had any policy apart
from Hyde, varied between the encouragement of friendly overtures from
supporters of different complexions at home, and a somewhat damaging
cultivation of foreign alliances, which were delusive in their proffered
help, and might involve dangerous compliance with religious tenets
abhorred in England. The friends in England were jealous and suspicious of
one another, and their loyalty varied in its strength, and was marked by
very wide difference in its ultimate objects. It would have been hard in
any case to discern the true position amidst the complicated maze of
political parties in England; it was doubly hard for one who had been an
exile for a dozen years. To choose between different courses was puzzling.
Inaction was apt to breed apathy; but immature action would only lead to
further persecution of the loyalists, and to disaster to the most gallant
defenders of the rights of the King. With the true instinct of a
statesman, Hyde saw that the waiting policy was best; but it was precisely
the policy that gave most colour to insinuations of his want of zeal. In
spite of his exile, he understood the temper of the nation better than any
of the paltry intriguers round him; to study that temper was not a process
that commended itself to their impatient ambitions. His pen was unresting:
in preparing pamphlets, in writing under various disguises, in carrying on
endless correspondence, in drafting constant declarations. But all such
work met with little acknowledgment from those who thought that their own
intrigues were more likely to benefit the King, and, above all, to advance