Marvell was wrong in his estimate of Clarendon’s character now seems certain; Clarendon did not get a penny of the Dunkirk money.  The case made against him by the House of Commons in their articles of impeachment was felt even at the time to be flimsy and incapable of proof, and in the many records that have come to light since Clarendon’s day nothing has been discovered to give them support.  And yet Marvell was a singularly well-informed member of Parliament, a shrewd, level-headed man of affairs, who knew Lord Clarendon in the way we know men we have to see on business matters, whose speeches we can listen to, and whose conduct we discuss and criticise.  “Gently scan your brother-man” is a precept Marvell never took to heart; nor is the House of Commons a place where it is either preached or practised.

When Clarendon was well nigh at the height of his great unpopularity, he built himself a fine big house on a site given him by the king where now is Albemarle Street.  Where did he get the money from?  He employed, in building it, the stones of St. Paul’s Cathedral.  True, he bought the stones from the Dean and Chapter, but if the man you hate builds a great house out of the ruins of a church, is it likely that so trivial a fact as a cash payment for the materials is going to be mentioned?  Splendid furniture and noble pictures were to be seen going into the new palace—­the gifts, so it was alleged, of foreign ambassadors.  What was the consideration for these donations?  England’s honour!  Clarendon House was at once named Dunkirk House, Holland House, Tangiers House.

Here is Marvell upon it:—­

    UPON HIS HOUSE

    “Here lie the sacred bones
    Of Paul beguiled of his stones: 
    Here lie golden briberies,
    The price of ruined families;
    The cavalier’s debenture wall,
    Fixed on an eccentric basis: 
    Here’s Dunkirk-Town and Tangier-Hull,
    The Queen’s marriage and all,
    The Dutchman’s templum pacis.”

Clarendon’s fall was rapid.  He knew the house of Stuart too well to place any reliance upon the king.  Evelyn visited him on the 27th of August 1667 after the seals had been taken away from him, and found him “in his bed-chamber very sad.”  His enemies were numerous and powerful, both in the House of Commons and at Court, where all the buffoons and ladies of pleasure hated him, because—­so Evelyn says—­“he thwarted some of them and stood in their way.”  In November Evelyn called again and found the late Lord-Chancellor in the garden of his new-built palace, sitting in his gout wheel-chair and watching the new gates setting up towards the north and the fields.  “He looked and spoke very disconsolately.  After some while deploring his condition to me, I took my leave.  Next morning I heard he was gone."[139:1]

The news was true; on Saturday, the 29th of November, he drove to Erith, and after a terrible tossing on the nobly impartial Channel the weary man reached Calais, and died seven years later in Rouen, having well employed his leisure in completing his history.  His palace was sold for half what it cost to the inevitable Monk, Duke of Albemarle.