Benefit of Clergy was a privilege by which formerly in England the clergy accused of capital offences were exempted from the jurisdiction of the lay tribunals, and left to be dealt with by their bishop. Though originally it was intended to apply only to the clergy or clerks, latterly every one who could read was considered to be a clerk, and the result of pleading 'his clergy' was tantamount to acquittal. A layman could only receive the benefit of clergy once, however, but he was not allowed to go without being branded on the thumb, a punishment which latterly might be commuted for whipping, imprisonment, or transportation. Benefit of Clergy was abolished in 1827. Research Benefit of Clergy
Express was the American name for a system of railwaytransportation which was begun on March the 4th, 1839, by William F Harnden, who established express (railway) communication between New York and Boston. Alvan Adams and P B Burke started the Adams Express Company in 1840. The Wells Fargo Company was started in 1845, the United States Express Company in 1853. Research Express
Prohibition is usually thought of as the legal ban on the sale and consumption of alcoholic liquor. Prohibition is usually promoted by religious fundamentalists, and historically has proven a disastrous experiment.
In America, which has a long history of indulgence in prohibition, it appeared first as an issue in purely State politics in the Maine Legislature in 1837, a prohibitory bill being introduced, but defeated. Later, in 1846 (and permanently in 1851), a prohibitory law was passed in Maine. Following the lead of Maine, prohibitory laws were enacted between 1850 and 1856, in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, Michigan, New York, Iowa and Connecticut. Other States tried the experiment and local option has been established in some of the towns and counties of these and many other States.
Prohibition first appeared as a national issue in America during the session of the Right Worthy Grand Lodge of Good Templars, held in Oswego, New York on May the 25th, 1869. A committee was appointed to issue a call for a convention. This convention assembled at Chicago on September 1st, 1869, and formed the National Prohibition Reform party. The first nominating convention of this party was held at ColumbusOhio on February the 22nd, 1872. James Black, of Pennsylvania, was nominated for President and polled 5608 votes.
Prohibition was largely entered into both national and State politics since that time, but is most influential in the States. In 1876 Henry Blair, of New Hampshire, introduced into the House a joint resolution to amend the Federal Constitution by prohibiting from and after 1900 the manufacture and sale of distilled alcoholic intoxicating liquors. It was not adopted. In national politics the Prohibition vote steadily increased. In 1876 its Presidential candidate, Green Clay Smith, received 9522 votes; in 1880 Neal Dow received 10,305; in 1884 John St John, 150,369; in 1888 Clinton Fiske, 250,290; in 1892 John Bidwell, 268,361.
During the Great War a temporary Wartime Prohibition Act was passed in the USA to save grain for use as food and in 1919 the National Prohibition Act, popularly known as the Volstead Act after its promoter, Congressman Andrew Volstead, was enacted, providing enforcement guidelines and the 18th Amendment was introduced banning the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within and the importation of same into the United States. This resulted in the birth of organised gangs of criminals illegally distilling, importing and selling alcoholic liquor to the masses. This in turn led to gang warfare between rival criminal gangs, a plethora of killings and the notorious gangsters of the 20's. In 1933 prohibition was repealed in the USA by the passing of the 21st Amendment which repealed the 18th Amendment, and once more allowed the manufacture, sale and importation of alcoholic liquor in the United States.
Rape is defined as the act of forcing a woman or girl to have sexual intercourse against her will, or of buggering a man or boy against his will. The ancient Jews, Romans and Goths punished rape with death. During the reign of William I rape was punishable by mutilation and having the eyes removed. This punishment was mitigated by the statute of Westminster in 1274. In 1338 rape was made a felony in Britain, being made punishable by transportation in 1841 and penal servitude for life or a lesser period in 1861. The causes of what leads a person (usually a man, although sometimes women are committed as accessories to rape) to commit a rape are unclear. Some people advocate that it is not about sexual pleasure at all, but about power. But this simplistic explanation does not take into consideration the crime of 'date rape' where by a victim is raped following a date with her assailant. Nor does it take into consideration victims being forced into having sex under the influence of drugs or alcohol, many of which incidents are never reported, but are most likely perpetrated for sexual pleasure. Research Rape
Originally, statistics was the branch of political science dealing with the collection, classification, and discussion of numerical facts relating to the condition of a State or community. Now it is the study of numerical data, their classification and analysis. It embraces every department of activity and knowledge to which numerical comparison can be applied, but properly applies to social facts, and its greatest use is in economics and public administration.
The usefulness of statistics is seriously reduced by the ease with which they may be slewed. For example: statistically air transportation is safer than travelling by motor car when comparing accidents over the distance travelled, that is per mile travelled. However, when one compares the statistics of fatalities over the number of journeys made, irrespective of distance, then travelling by aeroplane is ten times more likely to be fatal than travelling by motor car (according to the British Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents).
A further example of how statistics can be slewed is in the popular use of averages, properly the mean average. The reliability of a mean average in establishing the general value of a group of values is strongly dependant upon the large number of elements being compared. For example, if a government wishes to show that the average wage being paid to workers is far higher than it really is, they need only to include a few extraordinary high wage values in the set of figures to offset the more prevalent low values. For example, take a set of 1000 elements each of which has a value between 18,000 and 20,000. Obviously the mean average will accurately describe a value between 18,000 and 20,000. Now add a single value of 500,000 to the set and the mean average will rise by over 450, and yet the most common value will remain the same, between 18,000 and 20,000.
Careful selection of values for inclusion in statistics can also be used to slew the results. A survey of members of the public sounds objective, and gives the impression of being representative of the populace. However, a survey of the public in which only men wearing business suits are selected will in all likelihood produce very different results to a survey in which equal proportions of men and women of varying ages, ethnic origins, and modes of dress are sampled.
Similarly, a survey on morality carried out among adults leaving church on a Sunday morning, should be expected to reveal a different result to a survey carried out among adults leaving a night club in the early hours of a Sunday morning, and yet both could be honestly described as a survey of adults.
The willingness with which the general public accept the findings of statistics, and the difficulty in establishing the objectivity of otherwise of such findings, has long been a powerful weapon in the arsenal of propaganda used by politicians and by advertising firms. Research Statistics
Transportation is the policy of punishing crime by removing offenders to some penal settlement abroad for a period of years or life. In England the Vagrancy Act of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I first empowered justices to order that certain classes of offenders might be sent beyond the seas, and by the reign of Charles II convicts were regularly transported to America where they were forced to work on plantations. Transportation to the American colony ended with the American War of Independence, and in 1788 the first batch of convicts landed at Botany Bay in New South Wales. The convicts sent to Australia were sent with a view to colonising the country. However, in 1835 a party was formed with the view of abolishing the transportation of convicts into Australia and from 1840 convicts were instead sent to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) where penal settlements already existed.
The system of transportation was abolished in Britain in 1853 in favour of penal servitude, by the Penal Servitude Act. Research Transportation
Bal Gangadhar Tilak was an Indian patriot. He was born in 1856 at Batnagiri and died in 1920. Born of the Brahmancaste of Chitpavans, he was educated at the Deccan college, became a lawyer and in 1880 founded two newspapers, The Mahratta, printed in English and The Kesari printed in a local language. From his newspapers he attacked British occupation of India and appealed for independence. He was imprisoned by the British for sedition, and in 1908 following violent resistance among his supporters to the British occupation, he was sentenced to six years' transportation. In 1918 he went to Britain to prosecute his action against Sir Valentine Chirol claiming defamation contained in articles written by Chirol. Research Bal Tilak
Elizabeth Canning was an English malefactor. She was born in 1734 at London and died in 1773. She was a domestic servant in Aldermanbury, London in 1753 when she disappeared on January the 1st. After she had been publicly advertised for, she reappeared at her mother's house on January 29th in a distressed state. She claimed that she had been attacked by two men in Moorfields, robbed, stunned and finally dragged to a house on the Hertfordshire road where an old woman had kept her in close confinement because she refused to lead an immoral life. She subsequently identified an old gypsy woman, Mary Squires, as the woman and a house kept by a Mrs Wells as the place of her confinement. Mary Squires was tried, and despite an alibi was convicted and sentenced to death. Wells was convicted and sentenced to be burnt in the hand. Subsequently, the lord mayor, Sir Crisp Gascoyne, being dissatisfied with the case procured the pardon of Mary Squires, and the case of Canning v Squires divided all London. Elizabeth Canning was tried for wilful perjury, and on May the 30th 1754 was sentenced to transportation for seven years. She was sent to New England, married and became a school-mistress, but never revealed what really happened during January 1753. Research Elizabeth Canning
Etienne Arago was a French journalist. He was born in 1802 and died in 1892. The brother of Dominique Arago, he founded the journals La Reforme and Le Figaro. He was director of the Theatre du Vaudeville in 1829 and took part in the revolution of 1848. He was condemned to transportation in 1849; fled from France, but returned in 1859. He was mayor of Paris during the German war, and appointed archivist to the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1878. He was the author of upwards of 100 dramas; La Vie de Moliere; Les Bleus et les Blancs, and other works. Research Etienne Arago
Huguenots is a term of unknown origin, applied by the Roman Catholics to the Protestants of France during the religious struggles of the 16th and 17th centuries. During the early part of the 16th century the doctrines of Calvin, notwithstanding the opposition of Francis I, spread widely in France. Under his successor Henry II, 1547-1559, the Protestant party grew strong, and under Francis II became a political force headed by the Bourbon family, especially the King of Navarre and the Prince of Conde. At the head of the Catholic party stood the Guises, and through their influence with the weak, young king, a fanatical persecution of the Huguenots commenced. The result was that a Huguenot conspiracy, headed by Prince Louis of Conde, was formed for the purpose of compelling the king to dismiss the Guises and accept the Prince of Conde as regent of the realm. But the plot was betrayed, and many of the Huguenots were executed or imprisoned.
In 1560 Francis II died, and during the minority of the next king, Charles IX, it was the policy of the queen mother, Catharine de Medici, to encourage the Protestants in the free exercise of their religion in order to curb the Guises. But in 1562 an attack on a Protestant meeting made by the followers of the Duke of Guise commenced a series of religious wars which desolated France almost to the end of the century. Catharine, however, began to fear that Protestantism might become a permanent power in the country, and suddenly making an alliance with the Guises between them they projected and carried out the massacre of St. Bartholomew's on August the 25th, 1572. The Protestants fled to their fortified towns and carried on a war with varying success.
On the death of Charles IX, Henry III., a feeblesovereign, found himself compelled to unite with the King of Navarre, head of the house of Bourbon and heir-apparent of the French crown, against the ambitious Guises, who openly aimed at the throne, and had excited the people against him to such a degree that he was on the point of losing the crown. After the assassination of Henry III the King of Navarre was obliged to maintain a severe struggle for the vacant throne; and not until he had, by the advice of Sully, embraced the Catholic religion in 1593, did he enjoy quiet possession of the kingdom as Henry IV.
Five years afterwards he secured to the Huguenots their civil rights by the Edict of Nantes, which confirmed to them the free exercise of their religion, and gave them equal claims with the Catholics to all offices and dignities. They were also left in possession of the fortresses which had been ceded to them for their security. This edict afforded them the means of forming a kind of republic within the kingdom, which Richelieu, who regarded it as a serious obstacle to the growth of the royal power, resolved to crush. The war raged from 1624 to 1629, when Rochelle, after an obstinate defence, fell before the royal troops; the Huguenots had to surrender all their strongholds, although they were still allowed freedom of conscience under the ministries of Richelieu and Mazarin. But when Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon set the fashion of devoutness, a new persecution of the Protestants commenced. They were deprived of their civil rights, and bodies of dragoons were sent into the southern provinces to compel the Protestant inhabitants to abjure their faith.
The first Huguenots to settle in America were a small band who had been induced to emigrate under the charter of the Carolinas granted to Sir Robert Heath in 1630. Upon reaching Virginia their means of transportation failed, so they remained in that colony. The Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685, and by this act more than 500,000 Protestant subjects were driven out to carry their industry, wealth, and skill to other countries. In Massachusetts they made a settlement at Oxford in 1686, but were massacred and driven away by the Indians. Parties went to Virginia about 1700 under Claude Philippe de Richebourg. By 1737, they had become an important element in South Carolina, where they founded at Charleston the 'South Carolina Society', a benevolent organization. They also made early settlements in the Middle States, notably in New York.
In the reign of Louis XV a new edict was issued repressive of Protestantism, but so many voices were raised in favour of toleration that it had to be revoked. The revolution first put the Protestants on an equality with their Catholic neighbours. Research Huguenots
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Benefit of Clergy
