He spoke on behalf of his father on his impeachment in 1667; and after his fall Lord Cornbury became an opponent of the court party and the Cabal Ministry, and attacked Buckingham and Arlington.

[1] The friendship of the Duke of York led to his inclusion with his brother Lawrence in the group whom the Commons early in January 1681 told the king were persons inclined to popery.

By now a court loyalist, he was in a position to visit in the Tower of London both Arthur Capell, 1st Earl of Essex (brother to his first wife), in 1683, and in the next reign the Duke of Monmouth, and to plead the cause of Alice Lisle when she had been sentenced by Judge George Jeffreys.

[1] Richard Talbot, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, had been summoned to London from the command of the military forces in Ireland about the date when Clarendon set out for Dublin (December 1685).

On 24 September 1688, the day after her friendly reception of him, Clarendon found the king himself, in view of the Dutch preparations for invasion, anxious to 'see what the Church of England men will do.'

He became more resolute, and on 22 October, at the council summoned by the king to hear his declaration concerning the birth of the Prince of Wales, declined to sit by the side of Father Edward Petre, and asked to attend as a peer only.

[1] Nine days after the landing of William of Orange Lord Cornbury deserted from the King to him (14 November), a turning point; and very difficult for Clarendon.

In the council of peers called by the King on his return to discuss the question of summoning a free parliament (27 November) Clarendon argued against the royal policy; and on 1 December he set out for Salisbury to make his peace with William.

It was at the conference held at Windsor that Clarendon was said to have suggested the confinement of King James to the Tower; while, according to Gilbert Burnet he proposed his relegation to Breda.

[1] Clarendon took a Tory line, rejecting the Whig assumption that King James had abdicated, and the settlement of the crown upon William III and Mary II.

[1] The remainder of Clarendon's life was passed in tranquillity at his residences in the country, troubled only by his almost endless lawsuit with the Dowager Queen Catherine.

Cornbury House was in 1694, owing to money difficulties, denuded of many of the pictures collected by his father, and of at least a great part of its library; and in 1697, or shortly before, was sold by Clarendon to Rochester, though to spare his pride the sale was kept a secret till his death.

His Diary (1687–1690) and Correspondence, with the letters of his younger brother Rochester, first appeared in 1828; it was edited by Samuel Weller Singer from manuscripts of William Upcott.

[3] He had a fine collection of medals, and was the author of the History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Church at Winchester, continued by Samuel Gale, London, 1715.