"Put it," he resumed, "as the employer of that lawyer whose name begun with a J, and might be Jaggers,--put it as he had come over sea to Portsmouth, and had landed there, and had wanted to come on to you. 'However, you have found me out,' you says just now. Well! However, did I find you out? Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a person in London, for particulars of your address. That person's name? Why, Wemmick."
"You know it's Provis. A letter, under date Portsmouth, from a colonist of the name of Provis, asking for the particulars of your address, on behalf of Magwitch. Wemmick sent him the particulars, I understand, by return of post. Probably it is through Provis that you have received the explanation of Magwitch--in New South Wales?"
"I have been informed by Wemmick," pursued Mr. Jaggers, still looking hard at me, "that he has received a letter, under date Portsmouth, from a colonist of the name of Purvis, or--"
In August 1670 she was created countess of Southampton and duchess of Cleveland, with remainder to her first and third sons, Charles and George Palmer, the king at this time not admitting the paternity of her second son Henry; and she also received many valuable gifts from Charles. An annual income of £4700 from the post office was settled upon her, and also other sums chargeable upon the revenue from the customs and the excise, whilst she obtained a large amount of money from seekers after office, and in other ways. Nevertheless her extravagance and her losses at gaming were so enormous that she was unable to keep up her London residence, Cleveland House, St James's, and was obliged to sell the contents of her residence at Cheam. About 1670 her influence over Charles began to decline. She consoled herself meanwhile with lovers of a less exalted station in life, among them John Churchill, afterwards duke of Marlborough, and William Wycherley; by 1674 she had been entirely supplanted at court by Louise de Kéroualle, duchess of Portsmouth. Soon afterwards the duchess of Cleveland went to reside in Paris, where she formed an intrigue with the English ambassador, Ralph Montagu, afterwards duke of Montagu (d. 1709), who lost his position through some revelations which she made to the king. She returned to England just before Charles's death in 1685. In July 1705 her husband, the earl of Castlemaine, whom she had left in 1662, died; and in the same year the duchess was married to Robert (Beau) Feilding (d. 1712), a union which was declared void in 1707, as Feilding had a wife living. She died at Chiswick on the 5th of October 1709. Entry: CLEVELAND
His long-deserved humiliation only began in the winter of 1212-1213, when Innocent III., finding him so utterly callous as to the interdict, took the further step of declaring him deposed from the throne for contumacy, and handing over the execution of the penalty to the king of France. This act provoked a certain amount of indignation in England, and in the spring of 1213 the king was able to collect a large army on Barham Down to resist the threatened French invasion. Yet so many of his subjects were discontented that he dared not trust himself to the chances of war, and, when the fleet of King Philip was ready to sail, he surprised the world by making a sudden and grovelling submission to the pope. Not only did he agree to receive Stephen Langton as archbishop, to restore all the exiled clergy to their benefices, and to pay them handsome compensation for all their losses during the last five years, but he took the strange and ignominious step of declaring that he ceded his whole kingdom to the pope, to hold as his vassal. He formally resigned his crown into the hands of the legate Cardinal Pandulf, and took it back as the pope's vassal, engaging at the same time to pay a tribute of 1000 marks a year for England and Ireland. This was felt to be a humiliating transaction by many of John's subjects, though to others the joy at reconciliation with the Church caused all else to be forgotten. The political effect of the device was all that John had desired. His new suzerain took him under his protection, and forbade Philip of France to proceed with his projected invasion, though ships and men were all ready (May 1213). John's safety, however, was secured in a more practical way when his bastard brother, William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, made a descent on the port of Damme and burnt or sunk a whole squadron of the French transports. After this John's spirits rose, and he talked of crossing the seas himself to recover Normandy and Anjou. But he soon found that his subjects were not inclined to follow him; they were resigned to the loss of the Angevin heritage, whose union with England brought no profit to them, however much it might interest their king. The barons expressed their wish for a peace with France, and when summoned to produce their feudal contingents pleaded poverty, and raised a rather shallow theory to the effect that their services could not be asked for wars beyond seas--against which there were conclusive precedents in the reigns of Henry I. and Henry II. But any plea can be raised against an unpopular king. John found himself obliged to turn back, since hardly a man save his mercenaries had rallied to his standard at Portsmouth. In great anger and indignation he marched off towards the north, with his hired soldiery, swearing to punish the barons who had taken the lead in the "strike" which had defeated his purpose. But the outbreak of war was to be deferred for a space. Archbishop Langton, who on assuming possession of his see had shown at once that he was a patriotic English statesman, and not the mere delegate of the pope, besought his master to hold back, and, when he refused, threatened to renew the excommunication which had so lately been removed. The old justiciar Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, now on his death-bed, had also refused to pronounce sentence on the defaulters. John hesitated, and meanwhile his enemies began to organize their resistance. Entry: III
BINGHAM, JOSEPH (1668-1723), English scholar and divine, was born at Wakefield in Yorkshire in September 1668. He was educated at University College, Oxford, of which he was made fellow in 1689 and tutor in 1691. A sermon preached by him from the university pulpit, St Mary's, on the meaning of the terms "Person" and "Substance" in the Fathers, brought upon him a most unjust accusation of heresy. He was compelled to give up his fellowship and leave the university; but he was immediately presented by Dr John Radcliffe to the rectory of Headbournworthy, near Winchester (1695). In this country retirement he began his laborious and valuable work entitled _Origines Ecclesiasticae_, or Antiquities of the Christian Church, the first volume of which appeared in 1708 and the tenth and last in 1722. His design, learnedly, exhaustively and impartially executed, was "to give such a methodical account of the antiquities of the Christian Church as others have done of the Greek and Roman and Jewish antiquities, by reducing the ancient customs, usages and practices of the church under certain proper heads, whereby the reader may take a view at once of any particular usage or custom of Christians for four or five centuries." Notwithstanding his learning and merit, Bingham received no higher preferment than that of Headbournworthy till 1712, when he was collated to the rectory of Havant, near Portsmouth, by Sir Jonathan Trelawney, bishop of Winchester. Nearly all his little property was lost in the great South Sea Bubble of 1720. He died on the 17th of August 1723. Entry: BINGHAM
BESANT, SIR WALTER (1836-1901), English author, was born at Portsmouth, on the 14th of August 1836, third son of William Besant of that town. He was educated at King's College, London, and Christ's College, Cambridge, of which he was a scholar. He graduated in 1859 as 18th wrangler, and from 1861 to 1867 was senior professor of the Royal College, Mauritius. From 1868 to 1885 he acted as secretary to the Palestine Exploration Fund. In 1884 he was mainly instrumental in establishing the Society of Authors, a trade-union of writers designed for the protection of literary property, which has rendered great assistance to inexperienced authors by explaining the principles of literary profit. Of this society he was chairman from its foundation in 1884 till 1892. He married Mary, daughter of Mr Eustace Foster-Barham of Bridgwater, and was knighted in 1895. He died at Hampstead, on the 9th of June 1901. Sir Walter Besant practised many branches of literary art with success, but he is most widely known for his long succession of novels, many of which have enjoyed remarkable popularity. His first stories were written in collaboration with James Rice (q.v.). Two at least of these, _The Golden Butterfly_ (1876) and _Ready-Money Mortiboy_ (1872), are among the most vigorous and most characteristic of his works. Though not without exaggeration and eccentricity, attributable to the influence of Dickens, they are full of rich humour, shrewd observation and sound common-sense, and contain characters which have taken their place in the long gallery of British fiction. After Rice's death, Sir Walter Besant wrote alone, and in _All Sorts and Conditions of Men_ (1882) produced a stirring story of East End life in London, which set on foot the movement that culminated in the establishment of the People's Palace in the Mile End Road. Though not himself a pioneer in the effort made by Canon Barnett and others to alleviate the social evils of the East End by the personal contact of educated men and women of a superior social class, his books rendered immense service to the movement by popularizing it. His sympathy with the poor was shown in another attempt to stir public opinion, this time against the evils of the sweating system, in _The Children of Gibeon_ (1886). Entry: BESANT
In Harrison's time the British government had become fully alive to the necessity of determining more accurately the longitude at sea. For this purpose they passed an act in 1713 offering rewards of £10,000, £15,000 and £20,000 to any who should construct chronometers that would determine the longitude within 60, 40 and 30 m. respectively. Harrison applied himself vigorously to the task, and in 1735 went to the Board of Longitude with a watch which he also showed to Edmund Halley, George Graham and others. Through their influence he was allowed to proceed in a king's ship to Lisbon to test it; and the result was so satisfactory that he was paid £500 to carry out further improvements. Harrison worked at the subject with the utmost perseverance, and, after making several watches, went up to London in 1761 with one which he considered almost perfect. His son William was sent on a voyage to Jamaica to test it; and, on his return to Portsmouth in 1762, it was found to have lost only 1 minute 54½ seconds. This was surprisingly accurate, as it determined the longitude within 18 m., and Harrison claimed the full reward of £20,000; but though from time to time he received sums on account, it was not till 1773 that he was paid in full. In these watches compensation for changes of temperature was applied for the first time by means of a "compensation-curb," designed to alter the effective length of the balance-spring in proportion to the expansion or contraction caused by variations of temperature. Harrison died in London on the 24th of March 1776. His want of early education was felt by him greatly throughout life. He was unfortunately never able to express his ideas clearly in writing, although in conversation he could give a very precise and exact account of his many intricate mechanical contrivances. Entry: HARRISON
COLOMB, PHILIP HOWARD (1831-1899), British vice-admiral, historian, critic and inventor, the son of General G. T. Colomb, was born in Scotland, on the 29th of May 1831. He entered the navy in 1846, and served first at sea off Portugal in 1847; afterwards, in 1848, in the Mediterranean, and from 1848 to 1851 as midshipman of the "Reynard" in operations against piracy in Chinese waters; as midshipman and mate of the "Serpent" during the Burmese War of 1852-53; as mate of the "Phoenix" in the Arctic Expedition of 1854; as lieutenant of the "Hastings" in the Baltic during the Russian War, taking part in the attack on Sveaborg. He became what was known at that time as a "gunner's lieutenant" in 1857, and from 1859 to 1863 he served as flag-lieutenant to rear-admiral Sir Thomas Pasley at Devonport. Between 1858 and 1868 he was employed in home waters on a variety of special services, chiefly connected with gunnery, signalling and the tactical characteristics and capacities of steam warships. From 1868 to 1870 he commanded the "Dryad," and was engaged in the suppression of the slave trade. In 1874, while captain of the "Audacious," he served for three years as flag-captain to vice-admiral Ryder in China; and finally he was appointed, in 1880, to command the "Thunderer" in the Mediterranean. Next year he was appointed captain of the steam reserve at Portsmouth; and after serving three years in that capacity, he remained at Portsmouth as flag-captain to the commander-in-chief until 1886, when he was retired by superannuation before he had attained flag rank. Subsequently he became rear-admiral, and finally vice-admiral on the retired list. Entry: COLOMB
As an actress Nell Gwyn was largely indebted to Dryden, who seems to have made a special study of her airy, irresponsible personality, and who kept her supplied with parts which suited her. She excelled in the delivery of the risky prologues and epilogues which were the fashion, and the poet wrote for her some specially daring examples. It was, however, as the mistress of Charles II. that she endeared herself to the public. Partly, no doubt, her popularity was due to the disgust inspired by her rival, Louise de Kéroualle, duchess of Portsmouth, and to the fact that, while the Frenchwoman was a Catholic, she was a Protestant. But very largely it was the result of exactly those personal qualities that appealed to the monarch himself. She was _piquante_ rather than pretty, short of stature, and her chief beauty was her reddish-brown hair. She was illiterate, and with difficulty scrawled an awkward E. G. at the bottom of her letters, written for her by others. But her frank recklessness, her generosity, her invariable good temper, her ready wit, her infectious high spirits and amazing indiscretions appealed irresistibly to a generation which welcomed in her the living antithesis of Puritanism. "A true child of the London streets," she never pretended to be superior to what she was, nor to interfere in matters outside the special sphere assigned her; she made no ministers, she appointed to no bishoprics, and for the high issues of international politics she had no concern. She never forgot her old friends, and, as far as is known, remained faithful to her royal lover from the beginning of their intimacy to his death, and, after his death, to his memory. Entry: GWYN
In this as in former wars, attacks on Dutch commerce preceded a formal declaration of hostilities. On the 13th of March 1672 Sir Robert Holmes fell upon a Dutch convoy under the command of Van Ness in the Channel. In the penury of the dockyards Holmes could not be provided with the force he was promised, and the enterprise was but partially successful. It was characteristic of the morality of his time and the spirit of the English navy as it had been shaped by the corrupt government of Charles II., that the officers concerned quarrelled violently and accused one another of fraud. A fleet of 60 sail was with difficulty got together under the duke of York, who now went to sea for the second time. The duke was joined in May, and at Portsmouth, by 40 French ships under the comte d'Estrées, a soldier and noble who had been made an admiral late in life. The allies entered the North Sea but did not take the offensive against the Dutch. The English were ill supplied, and were compelled to anchor at Southwold Bay on the coast of Suffolk in order to obtain water and provisions. The Dutch, who had to contend with an overwhelming French invasion on shore, nevertheless fitted out a fleet of 70 to 80 sail of the line and the command was given to De Ruyter. On the 28th of May 1672 he fell upon the allies in a N.W. wind. D'Estrées, who was stationed with his squadron at the south end of the line, went to sea on the port tack, heading to the S.E. The English, who constituted the centre and rear, stood out on the starboard tack. Thus the allies were at once divided into two widely separated bodies, and the Dutch admiral was able to concentrate nearly his whole force on the centre division, which suffered severely. The flagship of the duke of York, the "Prince" (100), was so shattered that he was compelled to leave her, and go to the "St Michael." The "Royal James" (100), the flagship of his second in command, the earl of Sandwich, after being much shattered by the Dutch artillery, was set alight by a fire-ship, and destroyed with enormous loss of life. The earl himself perished. His body was picked up three days afterwards, so disfigured that it was only recognized by the star on his coat. The ships at the head of the English line at last tacked to the support of the centre, and at evening De Ruyter drew off. A foolish attempt was made to claim his retreat as a victory, but the allies were too severely damaged to attempt an attack on the Dutch during the rest of the year. The Republic was so hard pressed by the French invasion that it had to land the gunpowder from its ships for the service of its army. Entry: I
In 1747 Hawke had been elected M.P. for Portsmouth, which he continued to represent for thirty years, though he can seldom have been in his place, and it does not appear that he often spoke. A seat in parliament was always valuable to a naval officer at that time, since it enabled him to be useful to ministers, and increased his chances of obtaining employment. Hawke had married a lady of fortune in Yorkshire, Catherine Brook, in 1737, and was able to meet the expenses entailed by a seat in parliament, which were considerable at a time when votes were openly paid for by money down. In the interval between the war of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War, Hawke was almost always on active service. From 1748 till 1752 be was in command at home, and he rehoisted his flag in 1755 as admiral in command of the Western Squadron. Although war was not declared for some time, England and France were on very hostile terms, and conflicts between the officers of the two powers in America had already taken place. Neither government was scrupulous in abstaining from the use of force while peace was still nominally unbroken. Hawke was sent to sea to intercept a French squadron which had been cruising near Gibraltar, but a restriction was put on the limits within which he might cruise, and he failed to meet the French. The fleet was much weakened by ill-health. In June 1756 the news of John Byng's retreat from Minorca reached England and aroused the utmost indignation. Hawke was at once sent out to relieve him in the Mediterranean command, and to send him home for trial. He sailed in the "Antelope," carrying, as the wits of the day put it, "a cargo of courage" to supply deficiencies in that respect among the officers then in the Mediterranean. Minorca had fallen, from want of resources rather than the attacks of the French, before he could do anything for the assistance of the garrison of Fort St Philip. In winter he was recalled to England, and he reached home on the 14th of January 1757. On the 24th of February following he was promoted full admiral. Entry: HAWKE
BYNG, JOHN (1704-1757), British admiral, was the fourth son of George Byng, Lord Torrington, and entered the navy in 1718. The powerful influence of his father accounts for his rapid rise in the service. He received his first appointment as lieutenant in 1723, and became captain in 1727. His career presents nothing of note till after his promotion as rear-admiral in 1745, and as vice-admiral in 1747. He served on the most comfortable stations, and avoided the more arduous work of the navy. On the approach of the Seven Years' War the island of Minorca was threatened by an attack from Toulon and was actually invaded in 1756. Byng, who was then serving in the Channel with the rank of admiral, which he attained in 1755, was ordered to the Mediterranean to relieve the garrison of Fort St Philip, which was still holding out. The squadron was not very well manned, and Byng was in particular much aggrieved because his marines were landed to make room for the soldiers who were to reinforce the garrison, and he feared that if he met a French squadron after he had lost them he would be dangerously undermanned. His correspondence shows clearly that he left prepared for failure, that he did not believe that the garrison could hold out against the French force landed, and that he was already resolved to come back from Minorca if he found that the task presented any great difficulty. He wrote home to that effect to the ministry from Gibraltar. The governor of the fortress refused to spare any of his soldiers to increase the relief for Minorca, and Byng sailed on the 8th of May. On the 19th he was off Minorca, and endeavoured to open communications with the fort. Before he could land any of the soldiers, the French squadron appeared. A battle was fought on the following day. Byng, who had gained the weather gauge, bore down on the French fleet of M. de la Galissonière at an angle, so that his leading ships came into action unsupported by the rest of his line. The French cut the leading ships up, and then slipped away. When the flag captain pointed out to Byng that by standing out of his line he could bring the centre of the enemy to closer action, he declined on the ground that Thomas Mathews had been condemned for so doing. The French, who were equal in number to the English, got away undamaged. After remaining near Minorca for four days without making any further attempt to communicate with the fort or sighting the French, Byng sailed away to Gibraltar leaving Fort St Philip to its fate. The failure caused a savage outburst of wrath in the country. Byng was brought home, tried by court-martial, condemned to death, and shot on the 14th of March 1757 at Portsmouth. The severity of the penalty, aided by a not unjust suspicion that the ministry sought to cover themselves by throwing all the blame on the admiral, led in after time to a reaction in favour of Byng. It became a commonplace to say that he was put to death for an error of judgment. The court had indeed acquitted him of personal cowardice or of disaffection, and only condemned him for not having done his utmost. But it must be remembered that in consequence of many scandals which had taken place in the previous war the Articles of War had been deliberately revised so as to leave no punishment save death for the officer of any rank who did not do his utmost against the enemy either in battle or pursuit. That Byng had not done all he could is undeniable, and he therefore fell under the law. Neither must it be forgotten that in the previous war in 1745 an unhappy young lieutenant, Baker Phillips by name, whose captain had brought his ship into action unprepared, and who, when his superior was killed, surrendered the ship when she could no longer be defended, was shot by sentence of a court-martial. This savage punishment was approved by the higher officers of the navy, who showed great lenity to men of their own rank. The contrast had angered the country, and the Articles of War had been amended precisely in order that there might be one law for all. Entry: BYNG
20. _Operations of Essex's, Waller's and Manchester's Armies._--After the success of Lostwithiel there was little to detain Charles's main army in the extreme west, and meanwhile Banbury, a most important point in the Oxford circle, and Basing House (near Basingstoke) were in danger of capture. Waller, who had organized a small force of reliable troops, had already sent cavalry into Dorsetshire with the idea of assisting Essex, and he now came himself with reinforcements to prevent, so far as lay in his power, the king's return to the Thames valley. Charles was accompanied of course only by his permanent forces and by parts of Prince Maurice's and Hopton's armies--the Cornish levies had as usual scattered as soon as the war receded from their borders. Manchester slowly advanced to Reading, Essex gradually reorganized his broken army at Portsmouth, while Waller, far out to the west at Shaftesbury, endeavored to gain the necessary time and space for a general concentration in Wiltshire, where Charles would be far from Oxford and Basing and, in addition, outnumbered by two to one. But the work of rearming Essex's troops proceeded slowly for want of money, and Manchester peevishly refused to be hurried either by his more vigorous subordinates or by the Committee of Both Kingdoms, saying that the army of the Eastern Association was for the guard of its own employers and not for general service. He pleaded the renewed activity of the Newark Royalists as his excuse, forgetting that Newark would have been in his hands ere this had he chosen to move thither instead of lying idle for two months. As to the higher command, things had come to such a pass that, when the three armies at last united, a council of war, consisting of three army commanders, several senior officers, and two civilian delegates from the Committee, was constituted. When the vote of the majority had determined what was to be done, Essex, as lord general of the Parliament's first army, was to issue the necessary orders for the whole. Under such conditions it was not likely that Waller's hopes of a great battle at Shaftesbury would be realized. On the 8th of October he fell back, the royal army following him step by step and finally reaching Whitchurch on the 20th of October. Manchester arrived at Basingstoke on the 17th, Waller on the 19th, and Essex on the 21st. Charles had found that he could not relieve Basing (a mile or two from Basingstoke) without risking a battle with the enemy between himself and Oxford;[4] he therefore took the Newbury road and relieved Donnington Castle near Newbury on the 22nd. Three days later Banbury too was relieved by a force which could now be spared from the Oxford garrison. But for once the council of war on the other side was for fighting a battle, and the Parliamentary armies, their spirits revived by the prospect of action and by the news of the fall of Newcastle and the defeat of a sally from Newark, marched briskly. On the 26th they appeared north of Newbury on the Oxford road. Like Essex in 1643, Charles found himself headed off from the shelter of friendly fortresses, but beyond this fact there is little similarity between the two battles of Newbury, for the Royalists in the first case merely drew a barrier across Essex's path. On the present occasion the eager Parliamentarians made no attempt to force the king to attack them; they were well content to attack him in his chosen position themselves, especially as he was better off for supplies and quarters than they. Entry: 20