He began his political career in the Short and Long Parliaments as an opponent of royal authority, but in 1641 he refused to support the Grand Remonstrance, changed sides, and became a trusted adviser of Charles I, and later of Charles II, with whom he shared exile. At the Restoration Charles II made him Lord Chancellor; he helped to carry out the king’s conciliatory policies, and his influence reached its peak when his daughter Anne married the heir apparent, James, Duke of York. Clarendon had little sympathy with the so-called Clarendon Code (1661–65), a series of laws aimed at Roman Catholics and dissenters, but he enforced them against the king’s wishes. He was popularly blamed for the naval disasters of the second Anglo-Dutch War. He fell from power in 1667 and fled to France to avoid impeachment. His History of the Rebellion (published 1702–04) is a masterly account of the English Civil War, written from a royalist standpoint but with a considerable degree of objectivity.