e
year he had been commanded by the King to be ready to rejoin Prince
Charles, and shortly afterwards he received definite instructions from
the Queen to attend on her and the Prince at Paris. He left Jersey
in June, and with his re-entry into active politics his _History_ was
abruptly ended. The seven years of retirement which he had anticipated
were cut down by the outbreak of the Second Civil War to two; and
within a year the King for whose benefit he had begun this _History_
was led to the scaffold. Not for twenty years was Clarendon again to
have the leisure to be an historian. When in 1668 he once more took
up his pen, it was not a continuation of the first work, but an
entirely new work, that came in steady flow from the abundance of his
knowledge.

Clarendon returned to England as Lord Chancellor in 1660, and for
seven years enjoyed the power which he had earned by ceaseless
devotion to his two royal masters. The ill success of the war with the
Dutch, jealousy of his place and influence, the spiteful opposition
of the King's chief mistress, and the King's own resentment at an
attitude that showed too little deference and imprudently suggested
the old relations of tutor and pupil, all combined to bring about his
fall. He fled from England on November 30, 1667, and was never to set
foot in England again. Broken in health and spirit, he sought in vain
for many months a resting-place in France, and not till July 1668 did
he find a new home at Montpelier. Here his health improved, and here
he remained till June 1671. These were busy years of writing, and
by far the greater portion of his published work, if his letters
and state papers be excluded, belongs to this time. First of all he
answered the charge of high treason brought against him by the House
of Commons in _A Discourse, by Way of Vindication of my self_, begun
on July 24, 1668; he wrote most of his _Reflections upon Several
Christian Duties, Divine and Moral_, a collection of twenty-five
essays, some of considerable length, on subjects largely suggested
by his own circumstances; and he completed between December 1668 and
February 1671 his _Contemplations and Reflections upon the Psalms of
David_, an elaborate exposition extending to well over four hundred
folio pages of print, which he had begun at Jersey in 1647. But his
great work at this time was his _Life_, begun on July 23, 1668,
and brought down to 1660 by August 1, 1670. It is by far the most
elabo