_2J8	POLITICAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY
down to the opening of 1644, were written between 1646 and
1648. They were not intended for publication, but for the
King and his advisers, not merely as a record of events but as
a manual of political doctrine. His purpose was to tell his
story " lest posterity may be deceived," to show why Charles I
had lost his throne and how it-could be regained.
Hyde was particularly well equipped for his task.   He had
started his public career as a member of the Opposition,
angered, like the great majority of the members of die Long
Parliament, by the abuses of personal government.   He was
never much drawn to Charles I, and he deplored his readiness
to listen to evil counsellors, Buckingham above all.   When,
however, as the struggle developed, Pym and the Parliamen-
tary leaders claimed executive control, the founder of the Tory
party took his stand for the cause of limited monarchy and
championed it to the end.   Like Mirabeau he believed that it
was the best form of government, and argued  that, when
the abuses of autocracy had been swept away, his clear duty
was to support the King.    In this early draft the young
kwyer remains almost entkely in the background, content to
vindicate the party of moderate Royalists to which he belonged.
Why Hyde left his narrative a torso during the long years
of exile aind leisure we do not know.   A second and final mis-
fortune provided the stimulus to its completion.   When he
fled to France at the end of 1667, after ruling England with a
rather heavy hand since the Restoration, he left his manu-
scripts and papers behind.   Instead of continuing the detailed
narrative after an interruption of twenty years, he now wrote
the story of his life down to 1660, covering some of the old
ground but dwelling at length on his early years.   The lack of
documents proved a blessing for literature by compelling him
to trust to his memory.    The Autobiography,  composed
mainly for his children, reveals the author and the friends of
his early manhood in vivid colours.   His style is cumbrous
and his sentences are often too long, but it possesses a certain
massive strength.   There is no finer portrait gallery in exis-
tence than these ekborate studies, with the incomparable
Falkland in the pkce of honour.   The History of the Rebellion
is the vindication of his party, the autobiography the vindica-
tion of himself.   If, like other autobiographers, he sometimes
flatters himself, he was free from vanity;   he admits fail-
ings, and the picture is fairly true to life.    The book, of
which a critical edition is sorely needed, is as superior to