The Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British Worthies (Volume 7-8)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1846 Excerpt: ... The father of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, was Henry Hyde, of Dinton, in Wiltshire, who was the third son of Lawrence Hyde, of Westhatch, younger son of Robert Hyde, of Norbury and Hyde, in the county of Chester. Clarendon's own account, in what is called his Life, is, that the estate of Norbury had been in the family, and had descended from father to son, from before the Conquest, and that that of Hyde had been long afterwards acquired by marriage; but it appears that Hyde was the original family estate, and that the other was acquired in the reign of Henry HI., by the marriage of Sir Robert Hyde, knight, son of Matthew de Hyde, to Agnes de Herdislee, cousin and heiress of Thomas de Norbury. Robert Hyde, of Norbury and Hyde, the great-grandfather of Lord Clarendon, was the eighth in descent from this Sir Robert Hyde. See note in Lister's Life of Clarendon, vol. i. p. 2. Lawrence Hyde, who was a clerk in the office of the Auditor of the Exchequer, and had purchased the estate of Westhatch, left four sons and four daughters, who all, his descendant tells us, lived above forty years after the death of their father. Henry, the third son, had been educated at Oxford, and was a student of the Middle Temple when his father died; but being the favourite of his mother, who had been left very rich, and having no mind to the practice of the law, but a great inclination to travel beyond the seas, "which," says his son, "in that strict time of Elizabeth was not usual, except to merchants and such gentlemen who resolved to be soldiers," he prevailed on his mother to let him go to the Spa for his health, whence he made his way first to Florence and eventually to Rome, where, under the protection of Cardinal Allen, he remained without molestation for some months. On h...