Birth of the First Earl of Clarendon

The Hydes were well-to-do Wiltshire country gentry. One of the younger sons, Henry Hyde, married Mary Langford, the daughter of a rich merchant. Her father left her a fortune and the pair shared a comfortable house in the village of Dinton, near Salisbury, where Henry spent most of his time quietly among his books. He also served several times as a member of the House of Commons during Queen Elizabeth’s reign, but in 40 years of their married life, Mary never once visited London. Edward Hyde, born at Dinton, was the couple’s third son of four and the only one who survived. He was educated partly by the village schoolmaster and partly by his father, before being sent off to university at Oxford when he was 13. He got into idle and drunken ways and later said it was not a good thing that a boy should be given so much freedom so young. He took a degree and at 16, in 1625, was sent to the Middle Temple in London to be a lawyer. He was not enthusiastic for the law and spent much time in rough company but, as he said in his autobiography years later, he always enjoyed history, especially Roman history.

Edward made a promising marriage to Anne Ayliffe, daughter of another Wiltshire landowner, who brought him links with the powerful Villiers family, but she died of a miscarriage after only six months of their marriage. He later wrote of his desperate unhappiness and confusion at her loss, but he persisted with the law in London, while becoming a friend of dramatist Ben Jonson.