The Restoration was a complete triumph for Hyde's policy. He lays no stress on his own great part in it, but it was owing to him that the Restoration was a national one, by the consent and invitation of parliament representing the whole people and not through the medium of one powerful faction enforcing its will upon a minority, and that it was not only a restoration of Charles but a restoration of the monarchy. By Hyde's advice concessions to the inconvenient demands of special factions had been avoided by referring the decision to a "free parliament," and the declaration of Breda reserved for parliament the settlement of the questions of amnesty, religious toleration and the proprietorship of forfeited lands.
Hyde entered London with the king, all attempts at effecting his fall having failed, and immediately obtained the chief place in the government, retaining the chancellorship of the exchequer till the 13th of May 1661, when he surrendered it to Lord Ashley. He took his seat as speaker of the House of Lords and in the court of chancery on the 1st of June 1660. On the 3rd of November 1660 he was made Baron Hyde of Hindon, and on the 20th of April 1661 Viscount Cornbury and earl of Clarendon, receiving a grant from the king of £20,000 and at different times of various small estates and Irish rents. The marriage of his daughter Anne to James, duke of York, celebrated in secret in September 1660, at first alarmed Clarendon on account of the public hostility he expected thereby to incur, but finding his fears unconfirmed he acquiesced in its public recognition in December, and thus became related in a special manner to the royal family and the grandfather of two English sovereigns.[8]