What is the connection between the Earl of Clarendon and the Clarendon estate?
Edward Hyde, Charles IIs Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord Chancellor, was created Baron Hyde of Hindon in November 1660, and in the Coronation honours of April 20, 1661, he was raised to the earldom of Clarendon, having declined a dukedom for fear of invoking the envy of his political rivals. At that time, he owned the Clarendon estate, which Charles I had sold off in the 1640s, but which had been repossessed by his son. From Charles II it passed to George Monck, duke of Albemarle, who sold the estate to Edward Hyde. Through the mechanism of an exchequer payment of 20,000 to Clarendon, the estate passed back to the dukedom of Albemarle, whence it passed by bequest to the earls of Bath. In 1713 the estate was sold to Benjamin Bathurst, a relation of the earls of Bath. In 1737, Clarendon Park house was built for Peter Bathurst, MP for Salisbury. The direct line of the earls of Clarendon died out in 1753 with Henry, the fourth earl. The present earldom is a new creation, dating from 1
