English statesman and barrister. 1st Earl of Clarendon. Born the third son of Henry Hyde and Mary Langford, he first attended Gillingham School before enrolling at Magdalen Hall (modern-day Hertford College) Oxford University, graduating in February 1626. In November 1633, despite originally planning to have a career in the Church of England, he was "called to the bar" and admitted to the Middle Temple as a barrister. In December of 1634, he was appointed by Archbishop William Laud as Keeper of the Writs & Rolls of the Court of Common Pleas. In April of 1640, he was elected as a Member of Parliament for both Shaftesbury and Wootton Bassett in the Short Parliament, and chose to sit for the latter. In November of that same year, he was elected MP for Saltash in the Long Parliament. After the Grand Remonstrance in late 1641, he became an informal adviser to King Charles I. In February 1643, he was knighted and appointed to the Privy Council by the King. In the following month he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. The next year, he was appointed by then Prince of Wales, Charles, to the Royalist-controlled West Country General Council. In 1646, he and the Prince fled to Jersey following the Royalist's defeat. Until 1648, he occupied himself writing "The History of the Rebellion", though it would not be published until 1702. In 1651, he was appointed Prince Charles as an advisor, following their defeat in the Third English Civil War. On 13 January 1658, he was appointed Lord Chancellor. Two years later, he returned to England following the Stuart Restoration, and was elected to serve as Chancellor of Oxford University until 1667. He became closer to the royal family when his daughter, Anne, married James, then Duke of York, Charles II's brother. On 19 June of that same year, he was appointed as 1st Lord of the Treasury and served until 8 September of that same year, when he stepped down. He was appointed Baron Hyde of Hindon, County of Wiltshire. On 23 April 1661, during the coronation ceremony of Charles II, he was appointed 1st Viscount Cornbury and 1st Earl of Clarendon. In 1663, he became one of the eight Lord Proprietors who were given titles to a huge tract of land in North America, which was known at the time as the Province of Carolina. In protest, George Digby, 2nd Earl of Bristol, attempted to have him impeached, an attempt which failed. Following the Plague of 1665, the Great London Fire of 1666, and defeat in the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1667, he was removed from office, ending a political career of over 30 years. In November 1667, he was impeached by the House of Commons for violating the Habeas Corpus Act; he had prisoners sent outside of England and held within foreign prisons without a given trial. After being found guilty, he fled to France. He first settled in Calais, and his health began to decline. He succumbed to ill health in Rouen after a long battle with gout. His body was returned to England and was buried in a private ceremony at Westminster Abbey on 4 January 1675. Two of his granddaughters, Mary and Anne, served as queen in their own right. A county in the State of South Carolina, was named for him.