Clarendon was unquestionably a lover of truth, and a sincere friend to the free constitution of his country. He defended that constitution in parliament, with zeal and energy, against the encroachments of prerogative, and concurred in the establishment of new securities necessary for its protection. He did indeed, when these had been obtained, oppose with equal determination those continually increasing demands of parliament, which appeared to him to threaten the existence of the monarchy itself: desirous, if possible, to conciliate the maintenance of public liberty with the preservation of domestic peace, and to turn aside from his country all the evils, to which those demands immediately and manifestly tended.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Clarendon was unquestionably a lover of truth, and a sincere friend to the free constitution of his country. He defended that constitution in parliament, with zeal and energy, against the encroachments of prerogative, and concurred in the establishment of new securities necessary for its protection. He did indeed, when these had been obtained, oppose with equal determination those continually increasing demands of parliament, which appeared to him to threaten the existence of the monarchy itself: desirous, if possible, to conciliate the maintenance of public liberty with the preservation of domestic peace, and to turn aside from his country all the evils, to which those demands immediately and manifestly tended." in the context of "Lord Grenville, 'The Editor's Preface', Letters Written by the Late Earl of Chatham to His Nephew Thomas Pitt, Esq. (Afterwards Lord Camelford) Then at Cambridge (1810), pp. xix-xx" to mean that wisdom is timeless.