Henry Craik, ed. English Prose. 1916.
Vol. I. Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century
Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon (16091674)
M
He replied smiling, “I will willingly join with you the best I can, but I shall act it very scurvily. My condition,” he said, “is much worse than yours, and different, I believe, from any other man’s; and will very well justify the melancholy that, I confess to you, possesses me. You have satisfaction in your conscience that you are in the right; that the king ought not to grant what is required of him; and so you do your duty and your business together: but for my part, I do not like the quarrel, and do heartily wish that the king would yield and consent to what they desire; so that my conscience is only concerned in honour and in gratitude to follow my master. I have eaten his bread, and served him near thirty years, and will not do so base a thing as to forsake him; and choose rather to lose my life (which I am sure I shall do) to preserve and defend those things which are against my conscience to preserve and defend: for I will deal freely with you, I have no reverence for the bishops, for whom this quarrel subsists.” It was not a time to dispute; and his affection to the church had never been suspected. He was as good as his word; and was killed, in the battle of Edge-hill, within two months after this discourse. And if those who had the same and greater obligations, had observed the same rules of gratitude and generosity, whatever their other affections had been, that battle had never been fought, nor any of that mischief been brought to pass that succeeded it.