The Dighton rock is a rock lying in the tide on the side of Taunton River, in Berkeley, Massachusetts, formerly in Dighton, and marked with a curious inscription. It attracted early attention on the part of antiquaries. Rafn in 1837 declared that its markings were a runic inscription of the Northmen, relating to the expedition of Thorfinn Karlsefne, but this view has generally been abandoned, though the central portion may be Norse. Research Dighton Rock
Lord Arthur Capel was a British soldier. He was born about 1600 and died in 1649. The son of Sir Henry Capel, he was raised to peerage by Charles I. During the English Civil War he fought bravely as one of the royalist generals in the west in the engagements at Bristol, Exeter, and Taunton. Having been at length forced to surrender at Colchester to General Fairfax he was imprisoned, and, after some vicissitudes, executed on March the 9th, 1649. His Daily Observations or Meditations was published posthumously with a memoir. Research Arthur Capel
Benjamin Disraeli (LordBeaconsfield) was a British statesman and writer. He was born in 1804 at London and died in 1881. Of Jewish extraction, he was the eldest son of Isaac D'Israeli, author of the Curiosities of Literature. He attended for a time a private school, and was first destined for the law, but showing a decided taste for literature he was allowed to follow his inclination. In 1826 he published Vivian Grey, his first novel; and subsequently travelled for some time, visiting Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Syria, and gaining experiences which were afterwards reproduced in his books. His travels and impressions are embodied in a volume of letters addressed to his sister and his father. In 1831 another novel, The Young Duke, came from his pen. It was followed at short intervals by Contarini Fleming, Alroy, Henrietta Temple, Venetia, The revolutionary Epic (a poem), etc.
In 1832, and on two subsequent occasions, he appeared as candidate for the representation of High Wycombe, with a programme which included vote by ballot and triennial parliaments, but was unsuccessful. His political opinions gradually changed: in 1835 he unsuccessfully contested Taunton as a Tory. In 1837 he gained an entrance to the House of Commons, being elected for Maidstone. His first speech in the house was treated with ridicule; but he finished with the prophetic declaration that the time would come when they would hear him. During his first years in parliament he was a supporter of Peel; but when Peel pledged himself to abolish the corn-laws, Benjamin Disraeli became the leader of the protectionists.
About this time he became a leader of what was known as the 'Young England' party, the most prominent characteristic of which was a sort of sentimental advocacy of feudalism. This spirit showed itself in his two novels of Coningsby and Sybil, published respectively in 1844 and 1845. Having acquired the manorpf Hughenden in Buckinghamshire, he was in 1847 elected for this county, and he retained his seat until raised to the peerage nearly thirty years later.
His first appointment to office was in 1852, when he became chancellor of the exchequer under Lord Derby. The following year, however, the ministry was defeated. He remained out of office until 1858, when he again became chancellor of the exchequer, and brought in a reform bill which wrecked the government. During the time the Palmerston government was in office Benjamin Disraeli led the opposition in the lower house with conspicuous ability and courage. In 1866 the Liberals resigned, and Derby and Benjamin Disraeli came into power, the latter being again chancellor of the exchequer. They immediately brought in, and carried, after a violent and bitter struggle, a reform Bill on the basis of household suffrage.
In 1868 he became premier on the resignation of Lord Derby, but his tenure of office was short. In 1874 he again became prime-minister with a strong Conservative majority, and he remained in power for six years. This period was marked by his elevation to the peerage in 1876 as Earl of Beaconsfield, and by the prominent part he took in regard to the Eastern question and the conclusion of the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. In 1880 parliament was rather suddenly dissolved, and the new parliament showing an overwhelming Liberal majority, he resigned office, though he still retained the leadership of his party. Within a few months of his death the publication of a novel called Endymion (his last, Lothair, had been published ten years before) showed that his intellect was still vigorous. Among others of his writings besides those already mentioned are: A Vindication of the English Constitution, 1834; Alarcos; a Tragedy, 1839; and Lord George Bentinck, a Political Biography, 1852. Research Benjamin Disraeli
Francis Bacon was an English philosopher and statesman, Baron of Verulam, ViscountSt Albans, and Lord High Chancellor of England. He was born in 1561 at London and died in 1626. His father, Nicholas Bacon, was keeper of the great seal under Queen Elizabeth. He was educated at Cambridge and in 1575 was admitted to Gray's Inn. In 1576-79 he was at Paris with Sir Amyas Paulet, the English ambassador. The death of his father called him back to England, and being left in straitened circumstances he zealously pursued the study of law, and was admitted
a barrister in 1582. In 1584 he became member of parliament for Melcombe Regis, and soon after drew up a Letter of Advice to Queen Elizabeth, an able political memoir.
In 1586 he was member of parliament for Taunton, in 1589 for Liverpool. A year or two after he gained the Earl of Essex as a friend and patron. Bacon's talents and his connection with the lord-treasurer Burleigh, who had married his mother's sister, and his son Sir Robert Cecil, first secretary of state, seemed to promise him the highest promotion; but he had displeased the queen, and when he applied for the attorney-generalship, and next for the solicitor-generalship (1595), he was unsuccessful. Essex endeavoured to indemnify him by the donation of an estate in land. Bacon, however, forgot his obligations to his benefactor, and not only abandoned him as soon as he had fallen into disgrace, but without being obliged took part against him on his trial, in 1601, and was active in obtaining his conviction. He had been chosen member for the county of Middlesex in 1593, and for Southampton in 1597, and had long been a queen's counsel.
The reign of James I was more favourable to his interest. He was assiduous in courting the king's favour, and James, who was ambitious of being considered a patron of letters, conferred upon him in 1603 the order of knighthood. In 1604 he was appointed king's counsel, with a pension of 60 pounds; in 1606 he married; in 1607 he became solicitor-general, and six years after attorney-general. Between James and his parliament he was anxious to produce harmony, but his efforts were without avail, and his obsequiousness and servility gained him enmity and discredit. In 1617 he was made lord-keeper of the seals; in 1618 Lord High Chancellor of England and BaronVerulam. In this year he lent his influence to bring a verdict of guilty against Walter Raleigh. In 1621 he was made ViscountSt Albans. Soon after this his reputation received a fatal blow. A new parliament was formed in 1621, and the lord-chancellor was accused before the house of bribery, corruption, and other malpractices. It is difficult to ascertain the full extent of his guilt; but he seems to have been unable to justify himself, and handed in a 'confession and humble submission,' throwing himself on the mercy of the Peers. He was condemned to pay a fine of 40,000 pounds, to be committed to the Tower during the pleasure of the king, declared incompetent to hold any office of state, and banished from court for ever. The sentence, however, was never carried out. The fine was remitted almost as soon as imposed, and he was imprisoned for only a few days. He survived his fall a few years, during this time occupying himself with his literary and scientific works, and vainly hoping for political employment. In 1597 he published his celebrated Essays, which immediately became very popular, were successively enlarged and extended, and translated into Latin, French, and Italian. The treatise on the Advancement of Learning appeared in 1605; The Wisdom of the Ancients in 1609 (in Latin); his great philosophical work,
e Novum Organum (in Latin), in 1620 ; and the De Augmentis Scientiarum, a much enlarged edition (in Latin) of the Advancement, in 1623. His New Atlantis was written about 1614-17; Life of Henry VII. about 1621. Various minor productions also proceeded from his pen. Numerous editions of his works have been published, by far the best being that of Messrs. Spedding, Ellis, & Heath (1858-74).
Francis Bacon was great as a moralist, a historian, a writer on politics, and a rhetorician; but it is as the father of the inductive method in science, as the powerful exponent of the principle that facts must be observed and collected before theorizing, that he occupies the grand position he holds among the world's great ones. His moral character, however, was not on a level with his intellectual, self-aggrandizement being the main aim of his life. Research Francis Bacon
Henry Labouchere (Baron Taunton) was an English politician. He was born in 1798 and died in 1869. Descended from a Huguenot family, his father was a banker from Amsterdam who had emigrated to England. Educated at Winchester and at Christ Church, Oxford he entered parliament in 1826 as member for a Cornish borough and in 1832 took office in the Whig government, filling a succession of minor posts until 1839. As a cabinet minister he was president of the board of trade from 1839 until 1841 and again from 1847 until 1852 and was secretary for the colonies from 1855 until 1858. From 1846 until 1847 he was chief secretary for Ireland. In 1859 he was made a peer, being given the title of Baron Taunton, having represented Taunton in parliament since 1830. Upon his death the title became extinct. Research Henry Labouchere
Oliver Cromwell was Lord-protector of the commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. He was born at Huntingdon in 1599 and died in 1658. His father, Robert Cromwell, who represented the borough of Huntingdon in the parliament of 1593, was a younger son of Sir Henry Cromwell, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I; and Sir Henry again was a son of Sir Richard Williams, a nephew of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, whose name he took. Oliver Cromwell's mother was a daughter of William Steward, of Ely, and could trace her descent back to Alexander, lord-steward of Scotland, the founder of the house of Stuart. The first really authentic fact in his biography is his leaving school at Huntingdon and entering Sidney - Sussex College, Cambridge, on April the 23rd, 1616.
On the death of his father in 1617 he returned home, and in 1620 married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Bourchier. In 1628 he was member of parliament for the borough of Huntingdon, to which he returned on the dissolution in 1629. In 1631 he went with his family to a farm which he had taken at St Ives; and in 1636 to Ely, where he had inherited a property worth nearly 500 pounds a year.
During the Short and Long Parliaments he represented Cambridge, his influence gradually increasing. In the summer of 1642 he was actively engaged in raising and drilling volunteers for the parliamentary party, in view of the impending struggle with the king. He served as captain and colonel in the earlier part of the war, doing good service with his troop of horse at Edgehill;
and it was his energy and ability which made the Eastern Association the most efficient of those formed for mutual defence. At the battle of Winceby in 1643 he led the van, narrowly escaping death, and in the following year he led the victorious left at Marston Moor, deciding the result of the battle. A few months later he was present at the second battle of Newbury, and his action being fettered by the timidity of Manchester, he impeached the conduct of the earl. As the result of this disagreement Sir Thomas Fairfax was made lord general, while Oliver Cromwell, notwithstanding the Self-denying Ordinance, was placed under him, with the command of the cavalry and the rank of lieutenant-general.
As the result of the discipline introduced by Oliver Cromwell the decisive victory of Naseby was gained in 1645, and Leicester, Taunton, Bridgewater, Bristol, Devizes, Winchester, and Dartmouth fell into the hands of the parliament. On the occasion of the surrender of Charles by the Scottish army in 1646 Oliver Cromwell was one of the commissioners, and in the distribution of rewards for services received 2500 pounds a year from the estates of the Marquis of Worcester.
Though at first supporting parliament in its wish to disband the army, which refused to lay down its arms until the freedom of the nation was established, he afterwards saw reason to decide in favour of the latter course. Hastily suppressing the Welsh rising, he marched against the Scottish royalists, whom he defeated with a much inferior force at Preston on August the 17th,1648. Then followed the tragedy of the king's execution, Oliver Cromwell's name standing third in order in the death-warrant. Affairs in Ireland demanding his presence, he was appointed lord-lieutenant and commander-in-chief; and by making a terrible example of Drogheda in September, 1649, crushed the royalist party in that country within six months. Resigning the command to Ireton, he undertook, at the request of the parliament, a similar expedition against Scotland, where Charles II had been proclaimed king. With an army greatly reduced by sickness he saved himself from almost inevitable disaster by the splendid victory at Dunbar on September the 3rd, 1650, and a year later put an end to the struggle by his total defeat of the royalists at Worcester on September the 3rd, 1651. For these services he was rewarded with an estate of 4000 pounds a year, besides other honours.
He already exerted a weighty influence in the supreme direction of affairs, being instrumental in restoring the continental relations of England, which had been almost entirely dissolved, and regulating them so as to promote the interests of commerce. The Navigation Act, from which may be dated the rise of the naval power of England, was framed upon his suggestion, and passed in 1651. The Rump Parliament, as the remnant of the Long Parliament was called, had become worse than useless, and on April the 20th, 1653, Oliver Cromwell, with 300 soldiers, dispersed that body. He then summoned a council of state, consisting mainly of his principal officers, which finally chose a parliament of persons selected from the three kingdoms, nicknamed Barebone's Paliament, or the Little Parliament. Fifteen months after a new annual parliament was chosen; but Oliver Cromwell soon prevailed on this body, who were totally incapable of governing, to place the charge of the commonwealth in his hands.
The chief power now devolving again upon the council of officers on December the 12th 1653, they declared Oliver Cromwell sole governor of the commonwealth, under the name of Lord-protector, with an assistant council of twenty-one men. The new protector behaved with dignity and firmness. Despite the innumerable difficulties which beset him from adverse parliaments, insurgent royalists, and mutinous republicans, the early months of his rule established favourable treaties with Holland, Sweden, Portugal, Denmark, and France. In September 1656 he called a new parliament, which undertook the revisal of the constitution and offered Oliver Cromwell the title of king. On his refusal he was again installed as Lord-protector, but with his powers now legally defined.
Early in the following year, however, he peremptorily dissolved the house, which had rejected the authority of the second chamber. Abroad his influence still increased, reaching its full height after the victory of Dunkirk in June, 1658. But his masterly administration was not effected without severe strain, and upon the death of his favourite daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, in the beginning of August, 1658, his health began to fail him. Towards the end of the month he was confined to his room from a tertian fever, and on September the 3rd 1658, he died at Whitehall, in the sixtieth year of his age. He was buried in King Henry VII's Chapel, in Westminster Abbey, but after the Restoration his body was taken up and hanged at Tyburn, the head being fixed on a pole at Westminster Abbey, and the rest of the remains buried under the gallows.
Great as a general, Oliver Cromwell was still greater as a civil ruler. He lived in a simple and retired way, like a private man, and was abstemious, temperate, indefatigably industrious, and exact in his official duties. He possessed extraordinary penetration and knowledge of human nature; and devised the boldest plans with a quickness equalled only by the decision with which he executed them. No obstacle deterred him; and he was never at a loss for expedients. Cool and reserved, he patiently waited for the favourable moment, and never failed to make use of it. In his religious views he was a tolerant Calvinist. He was about 5 feet 10 inches in height, his body 'well compact and strong'; and his head and face, though wanting in refinement, were impressive in their unmistakable strength.
He had appointed his eldest son, Richard Cromwell, his successor; but the republican and religious fanaticism of the army and officers, with Fleetwood at their head, compelled Richard Cromwell to dissolve parliament; and a few days after he voluntarily abdicated the protectorship, on April the 22nd, 1659. His brother Henry, who from 1654 had governed Ireland in tranquillity, followed the example of Richard, and died in privacy in England.
At the Restoration Richard Cromwell went to the Continent until 1680, when he assumed the name of Clark, and passed the remainder of his days in tranquil seclusion at Cheshunt, Hertfordshire. He died in 1712, at the age of eighty-six.
The last of the family was Oliver Cromwell, great-grandson of Henry Cromwell, son of the protector. He was a London solicitor, and clerk to St Thomas' Hospital. He succeeded to the estate of Theobalds, which descended to him through the children of Richard Cromwell, and died at Cheshunt Park in 1821, aged seventy-nine. He wrote the Memoirs of the Protector and his Sons, illustrated by Family Papers, 1820. Research Oliver Cromwell
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet and philosopher. He was born in 1772 at Ottery St Mary in Devon and died in 1834. Sent to school at Christ's Church Hospital, to which he had obtained a representation, the young Samuel Coleridge took little interest in the ordinary sports of childhood, and was noted for a dreamy abstracted manner, though he made considerable progress in classical studies, and was known even at that early age as a devourer of metaphysical and theological works.
From Christ's Church he went with a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he remained for two years, but without achieving much distinction. At this time, too, his ultra-radical and rationalistic opinions made the idea of academic preferment hopeless, and perhaps it was partly to escape the difficulties and perplexities gathering about his future that Samuel Coleridge suddenly quit Cambridge and enlisted in the 15th Dragoons. Rescued by his friends from this position, he took up his residence at Bristol with two congenial spirits, Robert Southey, who had just been obliged to quit Oxford for his Unitarian opinions, and Lovell, a young Quaker. The three conceived the project of emigrating to America, and establishing a pantisocracy as they termed it, or community in which all should be equal, on the banks of the Susquehanna. This scheme, however, never became anything more than a theory, and was finally disposed of when, in 1795, the three friends married three sisters, the Misses Pricket of Bristol.
Samuel Coleridge about this time started a periodical, the Watchman, which did not survived beyond the ninth number. In 1796 he took a cottage at Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire, where, soothed and supported by the companionship of Wordsworth, who came to reside at Allfoxden, he wrote much of his best poetry, in particular the Ancient Mariner and the first part of Christabel. While residing at Nether Stowey he used to officiate in a Unitarian chapel at Taunton, and in 1798 received an invitation to take the charge of a congregation of this denomination at Shrewsbury, where, however, he did nothing further than preach the probation sermon.
An annuity bestowed on him by some friends (the Wedgewoods) furnished him with the means of making a tour to Germany, where he studied at the University of Gottingen. In 1800 he returned to England and took up his residence beside Southey at Keswick, while Wordsworth lived at Grasmere in the same neighbourhood. From this fact, and a certain common vein in their poetry, arose the epithet of 'Lake School' applied to their works. About 1804 Coleridge went to Malta to re-establish his health, seriously impaired by opium-eating. In 1806 he returned to England, and after ten years of somewhat desultory literary work as lecturer, contributor to periodicals, etc, Samuel Coleridge in a sort took refuge from the world in the house of his friend Mr. Gillman at Highgate, London. Here he passed the rest of his days, holding weekly conversaziones in which he poured himself forth in eloquent monologues, being by general consent one of the most wonderful talkers of the time.
His views on religious and political subjects had now become mainly orthodox and conservative, and a great work on the Logos, which should reconcile reason and faith, was one of the dreams of his later years. But Samuel Coleridge had long been incapable of concentrating his energies on anything, and of the many years he spent in the leisure and quietness of Highgate nothing remains but the Table Talk and the fragmentary notes and criticism gathered together, and edited by his nephew, valuable enough of their kind, but less than might have been expected of Samuel Coleridge.
The dreamy and transcendental character of Samuel Coleridge's poetry eminently exhibits the man. In his best moments he has a fine sublimity of thought and expression not surpassed by Milton; but he is often turgid and verbose. As a critic, especially of William Shakespeare, Samuel Coleridge's work is of the highest rank, combining a comprehensive grasp of large critical principles and a singularly subtle insight into details.
Samuel Coleridge's poetical works include The Ancient Mariner, Christabel (incomplete), Remorse, a tragedy, Kubia Khan, a translation of Schiller's Wallenstein, etc; his prose works, Biographia Literaria, The Friend, The Statesman's Manual, Aids to Reflection, On the Constitution of Church and State, etc. Posthumously were published specimens of his Table Talk, Literary Remains, etc. Research Samuel Coleridge
Abbreviations
Research Dighton Rock
