Lord Clarendon, or reasoning on political morality. Review of: Sokolov A.B. Klarendon i yego vremya. Strannaya istoriya Edvarda Khayda: kantslera i izgnannika [Clarendon and his time. the strange story of Edward Hyde: chancellor and exile]. SPb.: Aletheia, 2017. 472 p.

This review considers a new monograph entitled “Clarendon and His time. The Strange Story of Edward Hyde: Chancellor and Exile” by A.B. Sokolov, Dr. Hab. (History), Dean of the Faculty of History, Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University named after K.D. Ushinsky. The review focuses on the analysis of a new approach in the study of the English revolution of the 17th century in Russian historiography - through the intellectual biography of Ed. Hyde A.B. Sokolov gives the interpretation of the ideology of the royalist camp and its leaders. The review is structured according to the seven chapters of the monograph by A. Sokolov and the main periods of the life of Lord Clarendon. The Lord Chancellor is shown, on the one hand, as an outstanding royalist politician of the English Revolution, who ensured the legitimate accession of the Stuarts to the English throne in 1660, on the other hand, as one of the most important historians of England, as author of the most influential contemporary history of the Civil War “The History of the Rebellion”. This historical work of Lord Clarendon became the main historical source in the pre-review's monograph - A.B. Sokolov focused on what about the author of “The History of the Rebellion” kept silent. This action of investigating a wide portrait gallery of contemporaries of Ed. Hyde Sokolov makes a conclusion about the Clarendon's omissions and subjective interpretations of the events of the English revolution XVII century. The review shows that A.B. Sokolov pays special attention to the reconstruction of the circumstances that led to the fall of Lord Clarendon - the impeachment of 1667. It is interesting that the famous Clarendon Code is interpreted by A.B. Sokolov as the work of the Cavaliers Parliament, - this conclusion has an obvious novelty in historiography, i.e. it is shown that Clarendon had in fact was forced to break with the spirit of tolerance of the Declaration of Breda. A.B. Sokolov considers the “conflict” of interpretations around the heritage of Lord Clarendon. He fixes the traditional two directions - “Whigs” and “Tory” and shows that in the framework of the third Marxist historiography Edward Hyde remains an anti-hero. The monograph shows that the historians of the Whigs historiography S. Gardiner, H. Gallam and others maintained a critical approach: they considered him a conservative royalist and evaluate negatively. Historians of the conservative school H. Trevor-Roper, R. Harris and others saw in Clarendon the author of a modern theory of “mixed monarchy”, considering him a defender of constitutional freedoms and a predecessor of Ed. Burke, D. Hume and E. Gibbon. The most quoted throughout the monograph is the historian R. Ollard, who is close to the revisionists C. Russell, J. Morrill. Following them A.B. Sokolov writes about Clarendon with great sympathy as a man of solid principles who prefers to solve matters peacefully. Thus, we can talk about the “glorious revolution” in Russian historiography - A.B. Sokolov finally shifts the focus of attention from representatives of the left camp of the “English bourgeois revolution” to the camp of the gentlemen-royalists.

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