The editors of the Norton Anthology of English Literature assert that Clarendon's History of the Rebellion

High praise indeed, but also equivocal praise. Clarendon, it seems, like Shakespeare in Johnson's famous “Preface,” deserves to be classed with the ancients, but he merits this honor because of the breadth of his vision, his rhetorical skills, and his character studies; he is praised more for his rhetoric than for his contribution to the historical literature on the Civil War. This ambiguous praise is wholly in keeping with the treatment of Clarendon in twentieth-century scholarship on historiography, since aside from rather formulaic praise for his character sketches, he is largely ignored in the history of history.

The eighteenth century, of course, did not ignore Clarendon; the History of the Rebellion was an immediate “bestseller,” and although some condemned it as fatally flawed by partiality, “it was widely recognized as a masterpiece.” The twentieth century, however, has been more dubious. John Kenyon declines even to regard Clarendon's History as “the real thing”: declines, that is, to consider the best-known historical work published in England in the century before the appearance of Robinson Crusoe as a genuine work of history.