Having returned to England, he entered the new parliament, which met early in 1679, as member for Wootton Bassett; in November 1679 he was appointed First Lord of the Treasury, and for a few years, he was the principal adviser of Charles II.

Compelled to join in arranging the treaty of 1681, by which Louis XIV agreed to pay a subsidy to Charles, he was simultaneously imploring William, Prince of Orange, to save Europe from the ambitions of the French monarch.

The king wished to surround himself with Roman Catholic advisers; the Earl, on the other hand, looked with alarm at his master's leanings to that form of faith.

The conference was held in secret on 30 November at Whitehall and the divines discussed the real presence, with the Catholics taking on the burden of proof.

However, on 17 December James called Rochester into an audience and told him that so high an office of Lord Treasurer could not be held by a staunch Anglican under a Catholic monarch.

[7] In October 1687, James asked the Lord Lieutenants to provide three standard questions to all members of the Commission of the Peace: would they consent to the repeal of the Test Act and the penal laws; would they assist candidates who would do so; and would they accept the Declaration of Indulgence.

As Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, Rochester eagerly pursued this, but was told by the county squires that they would send no man to Parliament who would vote away the safeguards of the Protestant religion.

[10] Rochester opposed the election of William and Mary as king and queen, raising his voice for the establishment of a regency on behalf of the exiled James.

They had four children: Laurence was an affectionate father: Anne, Countess of Ossory, was his favourite child, and her early death in 1685 following a miscarriage was a blow from which some thought he never fully recovered.

They were united with the royal family through the marriage of their sister, Anne, with the future King James II, making her Duchess of York.

In 1676, Laurence Hyde was sent as ambassador to Poland; he then travelled to Vienna, whence he proceeded to Nijmwegen to take part in the peace congress as one of the English representatives.

The main employment of his old age was the preparation for the press of his father's History of the Rebellion, to which he wrote a preface in which he expounded his Tory philosophy.

[15] Thomas Macaulay in his History of England said of Rochester: He had excellent parts, which had been improved by parliamentary and diplomatic experience; but the infirmities of his temper detracted much from the effective strength of his abilities.

When prosperous, he was insolent and boastful; when he sustained a check, his undisguised mortification doubled the triumph of his enemies: very slight provocations sufficed to kindle his anger; and when he was angry he said bitter things which he forgot as soon as he was pacified, but which others remembered many years.

Unlike most of the leading politicians of that generation, he was a consistent, dogged, and rancorous party man, a Cavalier of the old school, a zealous champion of the Crown and of the Church, and a hater of Republicans and Nonconformists.