Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England is made up of two works composed with different purposes and at a distance of twenty years.  The first, which may be called the ‘Manuscript History’, belongs to 1646-8; the second, the ’Manuscript Life’, to 1668-70.  They were combined to form the History as we now read it in 1671, when new sections were added to give continuity and to complete the narrative.  On Clarendon’s death in 1674 the manuscripts passed to his two sons, Henry Hyde, second Earl of Clarendon, and Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester; and under the supervision of the latter a transcript of the History was made for the printers.  The work was published at Oxford in three handsome folio volumes in 1702, 1703, and 1704, and became the property of the University.  The portions of the ‘Manuscript Life’ which Clarendon had not incorporated in the History as being too personal, were published by the University in 1759, under the title The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, and were likewise printed from a transcript.[1]

The original manuscripts, now also in the possession of the University of which Clarendon’s family were such generous benefactors, enable us to fix the dates of composition.  We know whether a part belongs originally to the ‘Manuscript History’ or the ‘Manuscript Life’, or whether it was pieced in later.  More than this, Clarendon every now and again inserts the month and the day on which he began or ended a section.  We can thus trace the stages by which his great work was built up, and learn how his art developed.  We can also judge how closely the printed texts represent what Clarendon had written.  The old controversy on the authenticity of the first edition has long been settled.[2] The original editors did their work faithfully according to the editorial standards of their day; and they were well within the latitude allowed them by the terms of Clarendon’s instructions when they occasionally omitted a passage, or when they exercised their somewhat prim and cautious taste in altering and polishing phrases that Clarendon had dashed down as quickly as his pen could move.[3] Later editors have restored the omitted passages and scrupulously reproduced Clarendon’s own words.  But no edition has yet reproduced his spelling.  In the characters printed in this volume the attempt is made, for the first time it is believed, to represent the original manuscripts accurately to the letter.[4]

On the defeat of the last Royalist army in Cornwall in February 1646 it was necessary to provide for the safety of Prince Charles, and Clarendon, in these days Sir Edward Hyde, accompanied him when on the night of March 2 he set sail for Scilly.  They arrived in Scilly on March 4, and there they remained till April 16, when the danger of capture by the Parliamentary fleet compelled them to make good their escape to Jersey.  It is a remarkable testimony to the vigour of Clarendon’s mind that even in the midst of