The History of the Rebellion

Originally published between 1702 and 1704 as The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, it was the first detailed account from a key player in the events it covered.

Royalists considered it an unlawful rebellion against their sovereign; in 1669, diarist and naval civil servant Samuel Pepys was asked by Duke of York to change a reference to "the late disruption between king and Parliament" to 'rebellion".

For example, he opposed those Royalists in Paris headed by the Queen, who urged Charles to agree to compromises over the Church of England to win support from the Presbyterian Scots Covenanters against Parliament.

He denigrates the logic for accepting such compromise by attributing widespread support for Puritan reforms to the church as simple disaffection by a wicked faction.

[6] In the preface to the first volume of his father's work, Laurence Hyde referred to his time as "an age when so many memoirs, narratives, and pieces of history come out as it were on purpose to justify the taking up arms against that king, and to blacken, revile, and ridicule the sacred majesty of an anointed head in distress; and when so much of the sense of religion to God, and of allegiance and duty to the crown is so defaced".

[12] The debate over the Civil War continued into the 18th century, with Tory defences of the History against Whig criticisms appearing in 1716 by Henry Cantrell, in 1731 by Francis Atterbury, in 1732 by William Shippen and in 1739 by John Davys.

In 1757, the former Whig Secretary of State Thomas Robinson claimed "the creed of those gentlemen was in the preface to Clarendon's History", i.e. that written by Laurence Hyde in 1701.