CLARENDON-PARK, a liberty (extra-parochial),
in the hundred of ALDERBURY, county of WILTS, 3
miles (E. by S.) from Salisbury, containing 183 inhabitants.
Here were anciently two palaces, termed the
King's and the Queen's. At a very remote period this'
was a royal chase and residence: here Edward the
Martyr spent the day preceding his assassination in
hunting; Henry II. frequently kept his court here,, and
in 1164 held the council which enacted the celebrated
edicts, called "The Constitutions of Clarendon," denning
the limits of ecclesiastical authority in England:
Richard, John, and Henry III., often resided at this
place; and in 1357, when the plague was raging in Lon-
don, and in many of the principal towns in the kingdom,
Edward III., with his royal prisoners, the kings of France
and Scotland, passed the. summer at his palace of Clarendon,
of which no part is now standing, save a lofty
wall. The park was enclosed by act of parliament in the
sixteenth of Charles II., and granted to General Monk,
who had been created Duke of Albemarle; and in the
same reign Clarendon gave the title of earl to Edward
Hyde, a native of Dinton, in this county, Lord
High Chancellor of England, ancestor of the queens
Mary II. and Anne, and author of the History of the
Rebellion. The Roman way from Winchester to Old
Sarum passes through this liberty.