Henry hyde biography

Henry was the eldest son of Edward Hyde, the 1st Earl of Clarendon, and his second wife, Frances, the daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury.

As Royalist exiles, both he and his brother, Laurence (later Earl of Rochester), spent part of their boyhood under their mother's care in Antwerp and Breda. Of their attachment to their father, they afterwards gave ample proof.

Henry hyde biography

Clarendon Senior, during several years before the Restoration, made frequent use of his eldest son as copyist, decipherer and confidential secretary, entrusting him with part of his correspondence with distant Royalists. Many of Henry Hyde's letters from this period are among the 'Clarendon Papers' in the Bodleian Library.

The earliest paper in his handwriting is dated from Cologne, 2nd August 1655. His father called him 'as secret as he ought to be'