Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Equation" to "Ethics" (part 3)

In summing up the merits and defects of Esperanto we must begin by admitting that it is the most reasonable and practical artificial language that has yet appeared. Its inventor has had the double advantage of being able to profit by the mistakes of his predecessors, and of being himself, by force of circumstances, a better linguist. It must further be admitted that he has made as good a use of these advantages as was perhaps possible without systematic training in scientific philology in its widest sense. This last defect explains why the enthusiasm which his work has excited in the great world of linguistic dilettantes has not been shared by the philologists: in spite of its superiority to Volapük, they see in it the same radical defects. Whether they are rash or not in predicting for it a similar fate, remains to be seen. The Esperantists, warned by the fate of Volapük, have adopted the wise policy of suppressing all internal disunion by submitting to the dictatorship of the inventor, and so presenting a united front to the enemy. One thing is clear: either Esperanto must be taken as it is without change, or else it must crumble to pieces; its failure to work out consistently the principle of the maximum of internationality for its root-words is alone enough to condemn it as hopelessly antiquated even from the narrow point of view which regards “international” as synonymous with “European”—a view which political development in the Far East has made equally obsolete.

(H. Sw.)

ESPINAY, TIMOLÉON D’ (1580-1644), French soldier, was the eldest of the four sons of François d’Espinay, seigneur de Saint Luc (1554-1597), and was himself marquis de Saint Luc. In 1603 he accompanied Sully in his embassy to London. In 1622, in his capacity as vice-admiral of France, he gained some advantages over the defenders of La Rochelle, obliging the Huguenot commander, Benjamin de Rohan, seigneur de Soubise, to evacuate the islands of Ré and Oléron. In 1627 he was named lieutenant-general of Guienne and marshal of France.

ESPINEL, VICENTE MARTINEZ (1551-1624), Spanish poet and novelist, was baptized on the 28th of December 1551, and educated at Salamanca. He was expelled from the university in 1572, and served as a soldier in Flanders, returning to Spain in 1584 or thereabouts. He took orders in 1587, and four years later became chaplain at Ronda, absented himself from his living, and was deprived of his cure; but his musical skill obtained for him the post of choirmaster at Plasencia. His Diversas Rìmas (1591) are undeniably good examples of technical accomplishment and caustic wit. Espinel, however, survives as the author of a clever picaresque novel entitled Relaciones de la vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregón (1618). It is, in many passages, an autobiography of Espinel with picturesque embellishments. Marcos is not a chivalresque “esquire,” but an adventurer who seeks his fortune by attaching himself to great men; and the object of the author is to warn young men against such a life. Apart from the unedifying confessions of the hero, the book contains curious anecdotes concerning prominent contemporaries, and the episodical stories are told with great spirit; the style is extremely correct, though somewhat diffuse. Le Sage has not scrupled to borrow from Marcos de Obregón many of the incidents and characters in Gil Blas—a circumstance which induced Isla to give to his Spanish translation of Le Sage’s work the jesting title, Gil Blas restored to his Country and his Native Tongue. In the 1775 edition of the Siècle de Louis XIV. Voltaire grossly exaggerates in saying that Gil Blas is taken entirely from Marcos de Obregón. Espinel was a clever musician and added a fifth string to the guitar. He revived the measure known as décimas or espinelas, consisting of a stanza of ten octosyllabic lines. Most of the poems which he left in manuscript remain unpublished owing to their licentious character.

Bibliography.—J. Perez de Guzmán’s edition of Marcos de Obregón (Barcelona, 1881) includes a valuable introduction; Léo Claretie, Le Sage romancier (Paris, 1890), discusses exhaustively the question of Le Sage’s indebtedness to Espinel. For some previously unpublished poems see Pedro Salvá y Mallén, Catálogo de la biblioteca de Salvá (Valencia, 1872).

ESPIRITO SANTO, a maritime state of Brazil, bounded N. by Bahia, E. by the Atlantic Ocean, S. by Rio de Janeiro, and W. by Minas Geraes. Pop. (1890) 135,997; (1900) 209,783; area, 17,316 sq. m. With the exception of Sergipe it is the smallest of the Brazilian states. The western border of the state is traversed by low ranges of mountains forming a northward continuation of the Serra do Mar. The longest and most prominent of these ranges, which are for the most part the eastern escarpments of the great Brazilian plateau, is the Serra dos Aymores, which extends along fully two-thirds of the western frontier. Farther S. the ranges are much broken and extend partly across the state toward the seaboard; the more prominent are known as the Serra do Espigão, Serra da Chibata, Serra dos Pilões and Serra dos Purys. The eastern and larger part of the state belongs to the coastal plain, in great part low and swampy, with large areas of sand barrens, and broken by isolated groups and ranges of hills. With the exception of these sandy plains the country is heavily forested, even the mountain sides being covered with vegetation to their summits. The northern and southern parts are fertile, but the central districts are comparatively poor. The coastal plain comprises a sandy, unproductive belt immediately on the coast, back of which is a more fertile tertiary plain, well suited, near the higher country, to the production of sugar and cotton. The inland valleys and slopes are very fertile and heavily forested, and much of the Brazilian export of rosewood and other cabinet woods is drawn from this state. There is only one good bay on the coast, that of Espirito Santo, on which the port of Victoria is situated. The river-mouths are obstructed by sand bars and admit small vessels only. The principal rivers of the state are the Mucury, which rises in Minas Geraes and forms the boundary line with Bahia, the Itaunas, São Domingos, São Matheus, Doce, Timbuhy, Santa Maria, Jucú, Benevente, Itapemirim, and Itabapoana, the last forming the boundary line with Rio de Janeiro. The Doce, São Matheus, and Itapemirim rise in Minas Geraes and flow entirely across the state. The lower courses of these rivers are generally navigable, that of the Rio Doce for a distance of 90 m. The climate of the coastal zone and deeper valleys is hot, humid and unhealthy, malarial fevers being prevalent. In the higher country the temperature is lower and the climate is healthy. Espirito Santo is almost exclusively agricultural, sugar-cane, coffee, rice, cotton, tobacco, mandioca and tropical fruits being the principal products. Agriculture is in a very backward condition, however, and the state is classed as one of the poorest and most unprogressive in the republic. The rivers and shallow coast waters are well stocked with fish, but there are no fishing industries worthy of mention. There are three railway lines in operation in the state—one running from Victoria to Cachoeira do Itapemirim (50 m.), and thence, by another line, to Santo Eduardo in Rio de Janeiro (58 m.), where connexion is made with the Leopoldina system running into the national capital, and a third running north-westerly from Victoria to Diamantina, Minas Geraes, about 450 m. The chief cities and towns of the state, with their populations in 1890, are Victoria, São Matheus (municipality, 7761) on a river of the same name 16 m. from the sea, Serra (municipality, 6274), Guarapary (municipality, 5310), a small port S. by W. of the capital, Conceicão da Barra (municipality, 5628), the port of São Matheus and Cachoeira do Itapemirim (4049), an important commercial centre in the south.

Espirito Santo formed part of one of the original captaincies which were given to Vasco Fernandes Coutinho by the Portuguese crown. The first settlement (1535) was at the entrance to the bay of Espirito Santo, and its name was afterwards given to the bay and captaincy. It once included the municipality of Campos, now belonging to the state of Rio de Janeiro.

The islands of Trinidade and Martim Vaz, which lie about 715 m. E. of Victoria, belong politically to this state. They are uninhabited, but considerable importance is attached to the former because Great Britain has twice attempted to take possession of it. It rises 1200 ft. above sea-level and is about 6 m. in circumference, but it has no value other than that of an ocean cable station. An excellent description of this singular island is to be found in E.F. Knight’s Cruise of the “Alerte” (London, 1895).

ESPRONCEDA, JOSÉ IGNACIO JAVIER ORIOL ENCARNACIÓN DE (1808-1842), Spanish poet, son of an officer in the Bourbon regiment, was born at or near Almendralejo de los Barros on the 25th of March 1808. On the close of the war he was sent to the preparatory school of artillery at Segovia, and later became a pupil of the poet Lista, then professor of literature at St Matthew’s College in Madrid. In his fourteenth year he had attracted his master’s attention by his verses, and had joined a secret society. Sentenced to five years’ seclusion in the Franciscan convent at Guadalajara, he began an epic poem entitled Pelayo, of which fragments survive. He escaped to Portugal and thence to England, where he found the famous Teresa whom he had met at Lisbon; here, too, he became a student of Shakespeare, Milton and Byron. In 1830 he eloped with Teresa to Paris, took part in the July revolution, and soon after joined the raid of Chapalangarra on Navarre. In 1833 he returned to Spain and obtained a commission in the queen’s guards. This, however, he soon forfeited by a political song, and he was banished to Cuéllar, where he wrote a poor novel entitled Sancho Saldaña ó el Castellano de Cuéllar (1834). He took an active part in the revolutionary risings of 1835 and 1836, and, on the accession to power of the Liberal party in 1840, was appointed secretary of legation at the Hague; in 1842 he was elected deputy for Almería, and seemed likely to play a great part in parliamentary life. But his constitution was undermined, and, after a short illness, he died at Madrid on the 23rd of May 1842. His poems, first published in 1840, at once gained for him a reputation which still continues undiminished. The influence of Byron pervades Espronceda’s life and work. It is present in an ambitious variant on the Don Juan legend, El Estudiante de Salamanca, Elvira’s letter being obviously modelled on Julia’s letter in Don Juan; the Canción del Pirata is suggested by The Corsair; and the Byronic inspiration is not wanting even in the noble fragment entitled El Diablo Mundo, based on the story of Faust. But in El Mendigo, in El Reo de Muerte, in El Verdugo, and in the sombre vehement lines, A Jarifa en una orgía, Espronceda approves himself the most potent and original lyrical poet produced by Spain during the 19th century.

Bibliography.—Obras poéticas y escritos en prosa (Madrid, 1884), edited by Blanca Espronceda de Escosura, the poet’s daughter (the second volume has not been published); E. Rodriguez Solís, Espronceda; su tiempo, su vida, y sus obras (Madrid, 1883); E. Piñeyro, El Romanticismo en España (Paris, 1904).

ESQUIRE (O. Fr. escuyer, Mod. Fr. écuyer, derived through the form escudier from Med. Lat. scutarius, “shield-bearer”), originally the attendant on a knight, whose helm, shield and lance he carried at the tournament or in the field of battle. The esquire ranked immediately below the knight bachelor, and his office was regarded as the apprentice stage of knighthood. The title was regarded as one of function, not of birth, and was not hereditary. In time, however, its original significance was lost sight of, and it came to be a title of honour, implying a rank between that of knight and valet or gentleman, as it technically still remains. Thus in the later middle ages esquire (armiger) was the customary description of holders of knight’s fees who had not taken up their knighthood, whence the surviving custom of entitling the principal landowner in a parish “the squire” (see Squire). Camden, at the close of the 16th century, distinguished four classes entitled to bear the style: (1) The eldest sons of knights, and their eldest sons, in perpetual succession; (2) the eldest sons of the younger sons of peers, and their eldest sons, in like perpetual succession; (3) esquires created by royal letters patent or other investiture, and their eldest sons; (4) esquires by office, e.g. justices of the peace and others who bear any office of trust under the crown. To these the writer in the 3rd edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1797) added Irish peers and the eldest sons of British peers, who, though they bear courtesy titles, have in law only the right to be styled esquires. Officers of the king’s courts, and of the royal household, counsellors at law and justices of the peace he described as esquires only “by reputation”; and justices of the peace have the title only as long as they are in commission; while certain heads of great landed families are styled “esquires” by prescription. “But the meaner ranks of people,” he adds indignantly, “who know no better, do often basely prostitute this title; and, to the great confusion of all rank and precedence, every man who makes a decent appearance, far from thinking himself in any way ridiculed by finding the superscription of his letters thus decorated, is fully gratified by such an address.”

It is clear, however, that the title of esquire was very loosely used at a much earlier date. On this point Selden is somewhat scornfully explicit. “To whomsoever, either by blood, place in the State or other eminency, we conceive some higher attribute should be given, than that sole Title of Gentleman, knowing yet that he hath no other honorary title legally fixed upon him, we usually style him an Esquire, in such passages as require legally that his degree or state be mentioned; as especially in Indictments and Actions whereupon he may be outlawed. Those of other nations who are Barons or great Lords in their own Countries, and no knights, are in legal proceedings stiled with us, Esquires only. Some of our greatest Heralds have their divisions of Esquires applied to this day. I leave them as I see them, where they may easily be found.” Coke, too, says that every one is entitled to be termed esquire who has the legal right to call himself a gentleman (2. Institutes, 688).

At the present time the following classes are recognized as esquires on occasions of ceremony or for legal purposes:—(1) All sons of peers and lords of parliament during their fathers’ lives, and the younger sons of such peers, &c., after their fathers’ deaths; the eldest sons of peers’ younger sons, and their eldest sons for ever. (2) Noblemen of all other nations. (3) The eldest sons of baronets and knights. (4) Persons bearing arms and the title of esquire by letters patent. (5) Esquires of the Bath and their eldest sons. (6) Barristers-at-law. (7) Justices of the peace and mayors while in commission or office. (8) The holders of any superior office under the crown. (9) Persons styled esquires by the sovereign in their patents, commissions or appointments. (10) Attorneys in colonies where the functions of counsel and attorney are united (in England solicitors are “gentlemen,” not “esquires”).

In practice, however, the title of esquire, now to all intents and purposes meaningless, is given to any one who “can bear the port, charge and countenance of a gentleman.” The word has followed the same course as that of “gentleman” (q.v.), and for very similar reasons. It is still not customary in Great Britain to address e.g. a well-to-do person engaged in trade as esquire at his shop; it would be offensive not to do so at his private residence. In America, on the other hand, the use of the word “esquire” is practically obsolete, “Mr” (“Mister” or “Master,” at one time the title special to a “gentleman”) being the general form of address.

See Selden, Titles of Honor (1672); Camden, Britannia (ed. London, 1594); Coke, Institutes; Enc. of the Laws of England, s. “Esquire”; Du Cange, Glossarium (ed. 1886), s. “Scutarius,” “Scutifer” and “Armiger”; New English Dictionary, s. “Esquire.”

(W. A. P.)

In practice this means every one receiving such a patent, commission or appointment.

ESQUIROL, JEAN ÉTIENNE DOMINIQUE (1772-1840), French alienist, was born at Toulouse on the 3rd of February 1772. In 1794 he became a pupil of the military hospital of Narbonne, and subsequently studied in Paris at the Salpêtrière under P. Pinel, whose assistant he became. In 1811 he was chosen physician to the Salpêtrière, and in 1817 he began a course of lectures on the treatment of the insane, in which he made such revelations of the abuses existing in the lunatic asylums of France that the government appointed a commission to inquire into the subject. Esquirol in this and other ways greatly assisted Pinel’s efforts for the introduction of humaner methods. The asylums of Rouen, Nantes and Montpellier were built in accordance with his plans. In 1823 he became inspector-general of the university of Paris for the faculties of medicine, and in 1826 chief physician of the asylum at Charenton. He died at Paris on the 13th of December 1840. Besides contributing to the Dictionnaire des sciences médicales and the Encyclopédie des gens du monde, Esquirol wrote Des maladies mentales, considérées sous les rapports médical, hygiénique, et médico-légal (2 vols., Paris, 1838).

ESQUIROS, HENRI FRANÇOIS ALPHONSE (1812-1876), French writer, was born in Paris on the 23rd of May 1812. After some minor publications he produced L’Évangile du peuple (1840), an exposition of the life and character of Jesus as a social reformer. This work was considered an offence against religion and decency, and Esquiros was fined and imprisoned. He was elected in 1850 as a social democrat to the Legislative Assembly, but was exiled in 1851 for his opposition to the Empire. Returning to France in 1869 he was again a member of the Legislative Assembly, and in 1876 was elected to the senate. He died at Versailles on the 12th of May 1876. He turned to account his residence in England in L’Angleterre et la vie anglaise (5 vols., 1859-1869). Among his numerous works on social subjects may be noted:—Histoire des Montagnards (2 vols., 1847); Paris, ou les sciences, les institutions et les mœurs au XIXe siècle (2 vols., 1847); and Histoire des martyrs de la liberté (1851).

ESS, JOHANN HEINRICH VAN (1772-1847), German Catholic theologian, was born at Warburg, Westphalia, on the 15th of February 1772. He was educated at the Dominican gymnasium of his native town, and in 1790 entered, as a novice, the Benedictine abbey of Marienmünster, in the bishopric of Paderborn. His Benedictine name was Leander. He was priest at Schwalenberg from 1799 to 1812, after which he became extraordinary professor of theology and joint-director of the teachers’ seminary at Marburg. In 1818 he received the doctorate of theology and of canonical law. In 1807, in conjunction with his cousin Karl van Ess, he had published a German translation of the New Testament, and, as its circulation was discountenanced by his superiors, he published in 1808 a defence of his views, entitled Auszüge aus den heiligen Vätern und anderen Lehrern der katholischen Kirche über das nothwendige und nützliche Bibellesen. An improved edition of this tractate was published in 1816, under the title Gedanken über Bibel und Bibellehre, and in the same year appeared Was war die Bibel den ersten Christen? In 1822 he published the first part of a German translation of the Old Testament, which was completed in 1836. In 1822 he resigned his offices at Marburg in order to devote his whole time to the defence of his views regarding Bible reading by the people, and to endeavour to promote the circulation of the scriptures. He was associated first with the Catholic Bible Society of Regensburg, and then with the British and Foreign Bible Society. He died at Affolderbach in the Odenwald on the 13th of October 1847.

ESSAY, ESSAYIST (Fr. essai, Late Lat. exagium, a weighing or balance; exigere, to examine; the term in general meaning any trial or effort). As a form of literature, the essay is a composition of moderate length, usually in prose, which deals in an easy, cursory way with the external conditions of a subject, and, in strictness, with that subject, only as it affects the writer. Dr Johnson, himself an eminent essayist, defines an essay as “an irregular, undigested piece”; the irregularity may perhaps be admitted, but want of thought, that is to say lack of proper mental digestion, is certainly not characteristic of a fine example. It should, on the contrary, always be the brief and light result of experience and profound meditation, while “undigested” is the last epithet to be applied to the essays of Montaigne, Addison or Lamb. Bacon said that the Epistles of Seneca were “essays,” but this can hardly be allowed. Bacon himself goes on to admit that “the word is late, though the thing is ancient.” The word, in fact, was invented for this species of writing by Montaigne, who merely meant that these were experiments in a new kind of literature. This original meaning, namely that these pieces were attempts or endeavours, feeling their way towards the expression of what would need a far wider space to exhaust, was lost in England in the course of the eighteenth century. This is seen by the various attempts made in the nineteenth century to coin a word which should express a still smaller work, as distinctive in comparison with the essay as the essay is by the side of the monograph; none of these linguistic experiments, such as essayette, essaykin (Thackeray) and essaylet (Helps) have taken hold of the language. As a matter of fact, the journalistic word article covers the lesser form of essay, although not exhaustively, since the essays in the monthly and quarterly reviews, which are fully as extended as an essay should ever be, are frequently termed “articles,” while many “articles” in newspapers, dictionaries and encyclopaedias are in no sense essays. It may be said that the idea of a detached work is combined with the word “essay,” which should be neither a section of a disquisition nor a chapter in a book which aims at the systematic development of a story. Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding is not an essay at all, or cluster of essays, in this technical sense, but refers to the experimental and tentative nature of the inquiry which the philosopher was undertaking. Of the curious use of the word so repeatedly made by Pope mention will be made below.

The essay, as a species of literature, was invented by Montaigne, who had probably little suspicion of the far-reaching importance of what he had created. In his dejected moments, he turned to rail at what he had written, and to call his essays “inepties” and “sottises.” But in his own heart he must have been well satisfied with the new and beautiful form which he had added to literary tradition. He was perfectly aware that he had devised a new thing; that he had invented a way of communicating himself to the world as a type of human nature. He designed it to carry out his peculiar object, which was to produce an accurate portrait of his own soul, not as it was yesterday or will be to-morrow, but as it is to-day. It is not often that we can date with any approach to accuracy the arrival of a new class of literature into the world, but it was in the month of March 1571 that the essay was invented. It was started in the second story of the old tower of the castle of Montaigne, in a study to which the philosopher withdrew for that purpose, surrounded by his books, close to his chapel, sheltered from the excesses of a fatiguing world. He wrote slowly, not systematically; it took nine years to finish the two first books of the essays. In 1574 the manuscript of the work, so far as it was then completed, was nearly lost, for it was confiscated by the pontifical police in Rome, where Montaigne was residing, and was not returned to the author for four months. The earliest imprint saw the light in 1580, at Bordeaux, and the Paris edition of 1588, which is the fifth, contains the final text of the great author. These dates are not negligible in the briefest history of the essay, for they are those of its revelation to the world of readers. It was in the delightful chapters of his new, strange book that Montaigne introduced the fashion of writing briefly, irregularly, with constant digressions and interruptions, about the world as it appears to the individual who writes. The Essais were instantly welcomed, and few writers of the Renaissance had so instant and so vast a popularity as Montaigne. But while the philosophy, and above all the graceful stoicism, of the great master were admired and copied in France, the exact shape in which he had put down his thoughts, in the exquisite negligence of a series of essays, was too delicate to tempt an imitator. It is to be noted that neither Charron, nor Mlle de Gournay, his most immediate disciples, tried to write essays. But Montaigne, who liked to fancy that the Eyquem family was of English extraction, had spoken affably of the English people as his “cousins,” and it has always been admitted that his genius has an affinity with the English. He was early read in England, and certainly by Bacon, whose is the second great name connected with this form of literature. It was in 1597, only five years after the death of Montaigne, that Bacon published in a small octavo the first ten of his essays. These he increased to 38 in 1612 and to 58 in 1625. In their first form, the essays of Bacon had nothing of the fulness or grace of Montaigne’s; they are meagre notes, scarcely more than the headings for discourses. It is possible that when he wrote them he was not yet familiar with the style of his predecessor, which was first made popular in England, in 1603, when Florio published that translation of the Essais which Shakespeare unquestionably read. In the later editions Bacon greatly expanded his theme, but he never reached, or but seldom, the freedom and ease, the seeming formlessness held in by an invisible chain, which are the glory of Montaigne, and distinguish the typical essayist. It would seem that at first, in England, as in France, no lesser writer was willing to adopt a title which belonged to so great a presence as that of Bacon or Montaigne. The one exception was Sir William Cornwallis (d. 1631), who published essays in 1600 and 1617, of slight merit, but popular in their day. No other English essayist of any importance appeared until the Restoration, when Abraham Cowley wrote eleven “Several Discourses by way of Essays,” which did not see the light until 1668. He interspersed with his prose, translations and original pieces in verse, but in other respects Cowley keeps much nearer than Bacon to the form of Montaigne. Cowley’s essay “Of Myself” is a model of what these little compositions should be. The name of Bacon inspires awe, but it is really not he, but Cowley, who is the father of the English essay; and it is remarkable that he has had no warmer panegyrists than his great successors, Charles Lamb and Macaulay. Towards the end of the century, Sir George Mackenzie (1636-1691) wrote witty moral discourses, which were, however, essays rather in name than form. Whenever, however, we reach the eighteenth century, we find the essay suddenly became a dominant force in English literature. It made its appearance almost as a new thing, and in combination with the earliest developments of journalism. On the 12th of April 1709 appeared the first number of a penny newspaper, entitled the Tatler, a main feature of which was to amuse and instruct fashionable readers by a series of short papers dealing with the manifold occurrences of life, quicquid agunt homines. But it was not until Steele, the founder of the Tatler, was joined by Addison that the eighteenth-century essay really started upon its course. It displayed at first, and indeed it long retained, a mixture of the manner of Montaigne with that of La Bruyère, combining the form of the pure essay with that of the character-study, as modelled on Theophrastus, which had been so popular in England throughout the seventeenth century. Addison’s early Tatler portraits, in particular such as those of “Tom Folio” and “Ned Softly,” are hardly essays. But Steele’s “Recollections of Childhood” is, and here we may observe the type on which Goldsmith, Lamb and R.L. Stevenson afterwards worked. In January 1711 the Tatler came to an end, and was almost immediately followed by the Spectator, and in 1713 by the Guardian. These three newspapers are storehouses of admirable and typical essays, the majority of them written by Steele and Addison, who are the most celebrated eighteenth-century essayists in England. Later in the century, after the publication of other less successful experiments, appeared Fielding’s essays in the Covent Garden Journal (1752) and Johnson’s in the Rambler (1750), the Adventurer (1752) and the Idler (1759). There followed a great number of polite journals, in which the essay was treated as “the bow of Ulysses in which it was the fashion for men of rank and genius to try their strength.” Goldsmith reached a higher level than the Chesterfields and Bonnel Thorntons had dreamed of, in the delicious sections of his Citizen of the World (1760). After Goldsmith, the eighteenth-century essay declined into tamer hands, and passed into final feebleness with the pedantic Richard Cumberland and the sentimental Henry Mackenzie. The corpus of eighteenth-century essayists is extremely voluminous, and their reprinted works fill some fifty volumes. There is, however, a great sameness about all but the very best of them, and in no case do they surpass Addison in freshness, or have they ventured to modify the form he adopted for his lucubrations. What has survived of them all is the lightest portion, but it should not be forgotten that a very large section of the essays of that age were deliberately didactic and “moral.” A great revival of the essay took place during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and foremost in the history of this movement must always be placed the name of Charles Lamb. He perceived that the real business of the essay, as Montaigne had conceived it, was to be largely personal. The famous Essays of Elia began to appear in the London Magazine for August 1820, and proceeded at fairly regular intervals until December 1822; early in 1823 the first series of them were collected in a volume. The peculiarity of Lamb’s style as an essayist was that he threw off the Addisonian and still more the Johnsonian tradition, which had become a burden that crushed the life out of each conventional essay, and that he boldly went back to the rich verbiage and brilliant imagery of the seventeenth century for his inspiration. It is true that Lamb had great ductility of style, and that, when he pleases, he can write so like Steele that Steele himself might scarcely know the difference, yet in his freer flights we are conscious of more exalted masters, of Milton, Thomas Browne and Jeremy Taylor. He succeeded, moreover, in reaching a poignant note of personal feeling, such as none of his predecessors had ever aimed at; the essays called “Dream Children” and “Blakesmoor” are examples of this, and they display a degree of harmony and perfection in the writing of the pure essay such as had never been attempted before, and has never since been reached. Leigh Hunt, clearing away all the didactic and pompous elements which had overgrown the essay, restored it to its old Spectator grace, and was the most easy nondescript writer of his generation in periodicals such as the Indicator (1819) and the Companion (1828). The sermons, letters and pamphlets of Sydney Smith were really essays of an extended order. In Hazlitt and Francis Jeffrey we see the form and method of the essay beginning to be applied to literary criticism. The writings of De Quincey are almost exclusively essays, although many of the most notable of them, under his vehement pen, have far outgrown the limits of the length laid down by the most indulgent formalist. His biographical and critical essays are interesting, but they are far from being trustworthy models in form or substance. In a sketch, however rapid, of the essay in the nineteenth century, prominence must be given to the name of Macaulay. His earliest essay, that on Milton, appeared in the Edinburgh Review in 1825, very shortly after the revelation of Lamb’s genius in “Elia.” No two products cast in the same mould could, however, be more unlike in substance. In the hands of Macaulay the essay ceases to be a confession or an autobiography; it is strictly impersonal, it is literary, historical or controversial, vigorous, trenchant and full of party prejudice. The periodical publication of Macaulay’s Essays in the Edinburgh Review went on until 1844; when we cast our eyes over this mass of brilliant writing we observe with surprise that it is almost wholly contentious. Nothing can be more remarkable than the difference in this respect between Lamb and Macaulay, the former for ever demanding, even cajoling, the sympathy of the reader, the latter scanning the horizon for an enemy to controvert. In later times the essay in England has been cultivated in each of these ways, by a thousand journalists and authors. The “leaders” of a daily newspaper are examples of the popularization of the essay, and they point to the danger which now attacks it, that of producing a purely ephemeral or even momentary species of effect. The essay, in its best days, was intended to be as lasting as a poem or a historical monograph; it aimed at being one of the most durable and precious departments of literature. We still occasionally see the production of essays which have this more ambitious aim; within the last quarter of the nineteenth century the essays of R.L. Stevenson achieved it. His Familiar Studies are of the same class as those of Montaigne and Lamb, and he approached far more closely than any other contemporary to their high level of excellence. We have seen that the tone of the essay should be personal and confidential; in Stevenson’s case it was characteristically so. But the voices which please the public in a strain of pure self-study are few at all times, and with the cultivation of the analytic habit they tend to become less original and attractive. It is possible that the essay may die of exhaustion of interest, or may survive only in the modified form of accidental journalism.

The essay, although invented by a great French writer, was very late in making itself at home in France. The so-called Essais of Leibnitz, Nicole, Yves Marie André and so many others were really treatises. Voltaire’s famous Essai sur les mœurs des nations is an elaborate historical disquisition in nearly two hundred chapters. Later, the voluminous essays of Joseph de Maistre and of Lamennais were not essays at all in the literary sense. On the other hand, the admirable Causeries du lundi of Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869) are literary essays in the fulness of the term, and have been the forerunners of a great army of brilliant essay-writing in France. Among those who have specially distinguished themselves as French essayists may be mentioned Théophile Gautier, Paul de Saint-Victor, Anatole France, Jules Lemaître, Ferdinand Brunetière and Émile Faguet. All these are literary critics, and it is in the form of the analysis of manifestations of intellectual energy that the essay has been most successfully illustrated in France. All the countries of Europe, since the middle of the 19th century, have adopted this form of writing; such monographs or reviews, however, are not perfectly identical with the essay as it was conceived by Addison and Lamb. This last, it may be supposed, is a definitely English thing, and this view is confirmed by the fact that in several European languages the word “essayist” has been adopted without modification.

In the above remarks it has been taken for granted that the essay is always in prose. Pope, however, conceived an essay in heroic verse. Of this his Essay on Criticism (1711) and his Essay on Man (1732-1734) are not good examples, for they are really treatises. The so-called Moral Essays (1720-1735), on the contrary, might have been contributed, if in prose, either to the Spectator or the Guardian. The idea of pure essays, in verse, however, did not take any root in English literature.

(E. G.)

ESSEG, Essegg or Essek (Hung. Esszék; Croatian Osjek), a royal free town, municipality, and capital of the county of Virovitica (Veröcze), in Croatia-Slavonia, on the right bank of the Drave, 9 m. W. of its confluence with the Danube, and 185 m. S. of Buda-Pest by rail. Pop. (1900) 24,930; chiefly Magyars and Croats, with a few Germans and Jews. At Esseg the Drave is crossed by two bridges, and below these it is navigable by small steamers. The upper town, with the fortress, is under military authority; the new town and the lower town, which is the headquarters of commerce, are under civil authority. The only buildings of note are the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, Franciscan and Capuchin monasteries, synagogue, gymnasium, modern school, hospital, chamber of commerce, and law-courts. Esseg has a thriving trade in grain, fruit, live-stock, plum-brandy and timber. Tanning, silk-weaving and glass-blowing are also carried on.

Esseg owes its origin to its fortress, which existed as early as the time of the Romans under the name of Mursia; though the present structure dates only from 1720. At the beginning of the Hungarian revolution of 1848 the town was held by the Hungarians, but on the 4th of February 1849 it was taken by the Austrians under General Baron Trebersberg.

ESSEN, a manufacturing town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, 22 m. N.E. from Düsseldorf, on the main line of railway to Berlin, in an undulating and densely populated district. Pop. (1849) 8813; (1875) 54,790; (1905) 229,270. It lies at the centre of a network of railways giving it access to all the principal towns of the Westphalian iron and coal fields. Its general aspect is gloomy; it possesses few streets of any pretensions, though those in the old part, which are mostly narrow, present, with their grey slate roofs and green shutters, a picturesque appearance. Of its religious edifices (twelve Roman Catholic, one Old Catholic, six Protestant churches, and a synagogue) the minster, dating from the 10th century, with fine pictures, relics and wall frescoes, is alone especially remarkable. This building is very similar to the Pfalz-Kapelle (capella in palatio) at Aix-la-Chapelle. Among the town’s principal secular buildings are the new Gothic town-hall, the post office and the railway station. There are several high-grade (classical and modern) schools, technical, mining and commercial schools, a theatre, a permanent art exhibition, and hospitals. Essen also has a beautiful public park in the immediate vicinity. The town originally owed its prosperity to the large iron and coal fields underlying the basin in which it is situated. Chief among its industrial establishments are the famous iron and steel works of Krupp (q.v.), and the whole of Essen may be said to depend for its livelihood upon this firm, which annually expends vast sums in building and supporting churches, schools, clubs, hospitals and philanthropic institutions, and in other ways providing for the welfare of its employees. There are also manufactories of woollen goods and cigars, dyeworks and breweries.

Essen was originally the seat of a Benedictine nunnery, and was formed into a town about the middle of the 10th century by the abbess Hedwig. The abbess of the nunnery, who held from 1275 the rank of a princess of the Empire, was assisted by a chapter of ten princesses and countesses; she governed the town until 1803, when it was secularized and incorporated with Prussia. In 1807 it came into the possession of the grand dukes of Berg, but was transferred to Prussia in 1814.

See Funcke, Geschichte des Fürstenthums und der Stadt Essen (Elberfeld, 1851); Kellen, Die Industriestadt Essen in Wort und Bild (Essen, 1902); and A. Shadwell, Industrial Efficiency (London, 1906).

ESSENES, a monastic order among the Jews prior to Christianity. Their first appearance in history is in the time of Jonathan the Maccabee (161-144 B.C.). How much older they may have been we have no means of determining, but our authorities agree in assigning to them a dateless antiquity. The name occurs in Greek, in the two forms Ἐσσηνοί and Ἐσσαῖοι. Ἐσσηνοί is used by Josephus fourteen times, Ἐσσαῖοι six, but the latter is the only form used by Philo (ii. 457, 471, 632). Ἐσσηνοί is also used by Synesius and Hippolytus, and its Latin equivalent by Pliny and Solinus; Ἐσσαῖοι by Hegesippus and Porphyry. In Epiphanius we find the forms Ὀσσαῖοι, Ὀσσηνοί, and Ἰεσσαῖοι. There is a place named Essa mentioned by Josephus (Ant. xiii. 15, § 3), from which the name may have been formed, just as the Christians were originally called Ναζαρηνοί or Ναζωραῖοι, from Nazara. This etymology, however, is not much in favour now. Lightfoot explains the name as meaning “the silent ones,” others as meaning “physicians.” Perhaps there is most authority in favour of deriving it from the Syriac חסיך, which in the emphatic state becomes חסיא, so that we have a Semitic correspondence to both the Greek forms Ἐσσηνοί and Ἐσσαῖοι. This etymology makes the word mean “pious.” It has also been urged in excuse for Philo’s absurd derivation from ὅσιος.

The original accounts we have of them are confined to three authors—Philo, Pliny the Elder, and Josephus. Philo describes them in his treatise known as Quod omnis probus liber (§§ 12, 13; ii. 457-460), and also in his “Apology for the Jews,” a fragment of which has been preserved by Eusebius (Praep. Ev. viii. 11, 12). Pliny (N.H. v. 17) has a short but striking sketch of them, derived in all probability from Alexander Polyhistor, who is mentioned among the authorities for the fifth book of his Natural History. This historian, of whom Eusebius had a very high opinion (Praep. Ev. ix. 17, § 1), lived in the time of Sulla. Josephus treats of them at length in his Jewish War (ii. 8), and more briefly in two passages of his Antiquities (xiii. 5, § 9; xviii. 1, § 5). He has also interesting accounts of the prophetic powers possessed by three individual members of the sect—Judas (B.J. i. 3, § 5; Ant. xiii. 11, § 2), Menahem (Ant. xv. 10, § 5), and Simon (B.J. ii. 7, § 3; Ant. xvii. 13, § 3). Besides this he mentions an Essene Gate in Jerusalem (B.J. v. 4, § 2) and a person called John the Essene, one of the bravest and most capable leaders in the war against the Romans (B.J. ii. 20, § 4; iii. 2, § 1). Josephus himself made trial of the sect of Essenes in his youth; but from his own statement it appears that he must have been a very short time with them, and therefore could not have been initiated into the inner mysteries of the society (De vita sua, 2). After this the notices that we have of the Essenes from antiquity are mere reproductions, except in the case of Epiphanius (died A.D. 402), who, however, is so confused a writer as to be of little value. Solinus, who was known as “Pliny’s Ape,” echoed the words of his master about a century after that writer’s death, which took place in A.D. 79. Similarly Hippolytus, who lived in the reign of Commodus (A.D. 180-192), reproduced the account of Josephus, adding a few touches of his own. Porphyry (A.D. 233-306) afterwards did the same, but had the grace to mention Josephus in the context. Eusebius quoted the account as from Porphyry, though he must have known that he had derived it from Josephus (Praep. Ev. ix. 3, §§ 1, 13). But Porphyry’s name would impress pagan readers. There is also a mention of the Essenes by Hegesippus (Eus. H.E. iv. 22) and by Synesius in his life of Dio Chrysostom. It has been conjectured that the Clementine literature emanated from Essenes who had turned Christian. (See Ebionites.)

The Essenes were an exclusive society, distinguished from the rest of the Jewish nation in Palestine by an organization peculiar to themselves, and by a theory of life in which a severe asceticism and a rare benevolence to one another and to mankind in general were the most striking characteristics. They had fixed rules for initiation, a succession of strictly separate grades within the limits of the society, and regulations for the conduct of their daily life even in its minutest details. Their membership could be recruited only from the outside world, as marriage and all intercourse with women were absolutely renounced. They were the first society in the world to condemn slavery both in theory and practice; they enforced and practised the most complete community of goods. They chose their own priests and public office-bearers, and even their own judges. Though their prevailing tendency was practical, and the tenets of the society were kept a profound secret, it is perfectly clear from the concurrent testimony of Philo and Josephus that they cultivated a kind of speculation, which not only accounts for their spiritual asceticism, but indicates a great deviation from the normal development of Judaism, and a profound sympathy with Greek philosophy, and probably also with Oriental ideas. At the same time we do our Jewish authorities no injustice in imputing to them the patriotic tendency to idealize the society, and thus offer to their readers something in Jewish life that would bear comparison at least with similar manifestations of Gentile life.

There is some difficulty in determining how far the Essenes separated themselves locally from their fellow-countrymen. Josephus informs us that they had no single city of their own, but that many of them dwelt in every city. While in his treatise Quod omnis, &c., Philo speaks of their avoiding towns and preferring to live in villages, in his “Apology for the Jews” we find them living in many cities, villages, and in great and prosperous towns. In Pliny they are a perennial colony settled on the western shore of the Dead Sea. On the whole, as Philo and Josephus agree in estimating their number at 4000 (Philo, Q.O.P.L. § 12; Jos. Ant. xviii. 1, § 5), we are justified in suspecting some exaggeration as to the many cities, towns and villages where they were said to be found. As agriculture was their favourite occupation, and as their tendency was to withdraw from the haunts and ordinary interests of mankind, we may assume that with the growing confusion and corruption of Jewish society they felt themselves attracted from the mass of the population to the sparsely peopled districts, till they found a congenial settlement and free scope for their peculiar view of life by the shore of the Dead Sea. While their principles were consistent with the neighbourhood of men, they were better adapted to a state of seclusion.

The Essenes did not renounce marriage because they denied the validity of the institution or the necessity of it as providing for the continuance of the human race, but because they had a low opinion of the character of women (Jos. B.J. ii. 8, § 2; Philo, “Apol. for the Jews” in Eus. Praep. Ev. viii. 11, § 8). They adopted children when very young, and brought them up on their own principles. Pleasure generally they rejected as evil. They despised riches not less than pleasure; neither poverty nor wealth was observable among them; at initiation every one gave his property into the common stock; every member in receipt of wages handed them over to the funds of the society. In matters of dress the asceticism of the society was very pronounced. They regarded oil as a defilement, even washing it off if anointed with it against their will. They did not change their clothes or their shoes till they were torn in pieces or worn completely away. The colour of their garments was always white. Their daily routine was prescribed for them in the strictest manner. Before the rising of the sun they were to speak of nothing profane, but offered to it certain traditional forms of prayer as if beseeching it to rise. Thereafter they went about their daily tasks, working continuously at whatever trade they knew till the fifth hour, when they assembled, and, girding on a garment of linen, bathed in cold water. They next seated themselves quietly in the dining hall, where the baker set bread in order, and the cook brought each a single dish of one kind of food. Before meat and after it grace was said by a priest. After dinner they resumed work till sunset. In the evening they had supper, at which guests of the order joined them, if there happened to be any such present. Withal there was no noise or confusion to mar the tranquillity of their intercourse; no one usurped more than his share of the conversation; the stillness of the place oppressed a stranger with a feeling of mysterious awe. This composure of spirit was owing to their perfect temperance in eating and drinking. Not only in the daily routine of the society, but generally, the activity of the members was controlled by their presidents. In only two things could they take the initiative, helpfulness and mercy; the deserving poor and the destitute were to receive instant relief; but no member could give anything to his relatives without consulting the heads of the society. Their office-bearers were elected. They had also their special courts of justice, which were composed of not less than a hundred members, and their decisions, which were arrived at with extreme care, were irreversible. Oaths were strictly forbidden; their word was stronger than an oath. They were just and temperate in anger, the guardians of good faith, and the ministers of peace, obedient to their elders and to the majority. But the moral characteristics which they most earnestly cultivated and enjoined will best appear in their rules of initiation. There was a novitiate of three years, during which the intending member was tested as to his fitness for entering the society. If the result was satisfactory, he was admitted, but before partaking of the common meal he was required to swear awful oaths, that he would reverence the deity, do justice to men, hurt no man voluntarily or at the command of another, hate the unjust and assist the just, and that he would render fidelity to all men, but especially to the rulers, seeing that no one rules but of God. He also vowed, if he should bear rule himself, to make no violent use of his power, nor outshine those set under him by superior display, to make it his aim to cherish the truth and unmask liars, to be pure from theft and unjust gain, to conceal nothing from his fellow-members, nor to divulge any of their affairs to other men, even at the risk of death, to transmit their doctrines unchanged, and to keep secret the books of the society and the names of the angels.

Within the limits of the society there were four grades so distinct that if any one touched a member of an inferior grade he required to cleanse himself by bathing in water; members who had been found guilty of serious crimes were expelled from the society, and could not be received again till reduced to the very last extremity of want or sickness. As the result of the ascetic training of the Essenes, and of their temperate diet, it is said that they lived to a great age, and were superior to pain and fear. During the Roman war they cheerfully underwent the most grievous tortures rather than break any of the principles of their faith. In fact, they had in many respects reached the very highest moral elevation attained by the ancient world; they were just, humane, benevolent, and spiritually-minded; the sick and aged were the objects of a special affectionate regard; and they condemned slavery, not only as an injustice, but as an impious violation of the natural brotherhood of men (Philo ii. 457). There were some of the Essenes who permitted marriage, but strictly with a view to the preservation of the race; in other respects they agreed with the main body of the society.

It will be apparent that the predominant tendency of the society was practical. Philo tells us expressly that they rejected logic as unnecessary to the acquisition of virtue, and speculation on nature as too lofty for the human intellect. Yet they had views of their own as to God, Providence, the soul, and a future state, which, while they had a practical use, were yet essentially speculative. On the one hand, indeed, they held tenaciously by the traditional Judaism: blasphemy against their lawgiver was punished with death, the sacred books were preserved and read with great reverence, though not without an allegorical interpretation, and the Sabbath was most scrupulously observed. But in many important points their deviation from the strait path of Judaic development was complete. They rejected animal sacrifice as well as marriage; the oil with which priests and kings were anointed they accounted unclean; and the condemnation of oaths and the community of goods were unmistakable innovations for which they found no hint or warrant in the old Hebrew writings. Their most singular feature, perhaps, was their reverence for the sun. In their speculative hints respecting the soul and a future state, we find another important deviation from Judaism, and the explanation of their asceticism. They held that the body is mortal, and its substance transitory; that the soul is immortal, but, coming from the subtlest ether, is lured as by a sorcery of nature into the prison-house of the body. At death it is released from its bonds, as from long slavery, and joyously soars aloft. To the souls of the good there is reserved a life beyond the ocean, and a country oppressed by neither rain, nor snow, nor heat, but refreshed by a gentle west wind blowing continually from the sea (cf. Hom. Od. iv. 566-568), but to the wicked a region of wintry darkness and of unceasing torment. Josephus tells us too that the Essenes believed in fate; but in what sense, and what relation it bore to Divine Providence, does not appear.

The above evidence has left students in doubt as to whether Essenism is to be regarded as a pure product of the Jewish mind or as due in part to some foreign influence. On the one hand it might be maintained that the Essenes out-Pharisee’d the Pharisees. They had in common with that sect their veneration for Moses and the Law, their Sabbatarianism, their striving after ceremonial purity, and their tendency towards fatalism. But if the Pharisees abstained from good works on the Sabbath, the Essenes abstained even from natural necessities (Jos. B.J. ii. 8, § 9); if the Pharisees washed, the Essenes bathed before dinner; if the Pharisees ascribed some things to Fate, the Essenes ascribed all (Jos. Ant. xiii. 5, § 9). But on the other hand the Essenes avoided marriage, which the Pharisees held in honour; they offered no animal-sacrifices in the Temple; they refrained from the use of oil, which was customary among the Pharisees (Luke vii. 46); above all, they offered prayers to the sun, after the manner denounced in Ezekiel (viii. 16). These and other points of divergences are not explained by Ritschl’s interesting theory that Essenism was an organized attempt to carry out the idea of “a kingdom of priests and an holy nation” (Ex. xix. 6).

Granting then that some foreign influence was at work in Essenism, we have four theories offered to us—that this influence was Persian, Buddhist, Pythagorean, or lastly, as maintained by Lipsius, that of the surrounding Syrian heathenism. Each of these views has had able advocates, but it must not be supposed that they are mutually exclusive. If we consider how Philo, while remaining a devout Jew in religion, yet managed to assimilate the whole Stoic philosophy, we can well believe that the Essenes might have been influenced, as Zeller maintained that they were, by Neo-Pythagoreanism. But as Pythagoras himself came from Samos, and his doctrines have a decidedly Oriental tinge, it may very well be that both he and the Essenes drew from a common source; for there is no need to reject, as is so commonly done, the statements of our authorities as to the antiquity of the Essenes. This common source we may believe with Lightfoot to have been the Persian religion, which we know to have profoundly influenced that of Israel, independently of the Essenes.

The fact that the Pharisees and Sadducees so often figure in the pages of the New Testament, while the Essenes are never mentioned, might plausibly be interpreted to show that the New Testament emanated from the side of the Essenes. So far as concerns the Epistle of St James this interpretation would probably be correct. That work contains the doctrine common to the Essenes with Plato, and suggestive of Persian Dualism, that God is the author of good only. There are also certain obvious points of resemblance between the Essenes and the early Christians. Both held property in common; both had scattered communities which received guests one from the other; both avoided a light use of oaths; both taught passive obedience to political authority. The list might be enlarged, but it would not necessarily prove more than that the early Christians shared in the ideas of their age. Christianity was to some extent a popularization of Essenism, but there is little reason for believing that Jesus himself was an Essene. De Quincey’s contention that there were no Essenes but the early Christians is now a literary curiosity.

The original sources of our knowledge of the Essenes have been mentioned at the beginning of this paper; the best modern discussions of them are to be found in such works as Zeller’s Philosophie der Griechen, vol. iii.; Ewald, Geschichte d. V. Israël, iii. 419-428; Reuss, La Théologie chrétienne au siècle apostolique, i. 122-131; Keim, Life of Jesus of Nazara, vol. i.; Lightfoot on the Colossians; Lucius, Der Essenismus in seinem Verhältniss zum Judenthum; Wellhausen, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte; Ed. Schürer, The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, div. ii. vol. ii. § 30. The copious bibliography in Conybeare’s edition of Philo’s De vita contemplativa bears upon the Essenes as well as upon the Therapeutes. For a specially Jewish view of the Essenes see Kohler’s article in the Jewish Encyclopaedia. They are there regarded as being “simply the rigorists among the Pharisees.” But we are also told that “the Pharisees characterized the Essene as ‘a fool who destroyed the world.’”

(T. K.; St G. S.)

ESSENTUKI, a watering-place of south Russia, in the government of Terek, 11 m. by rail W. from Pyatigorsk; altitude, 2096 ft. Its alkaline and sulphur-alkaline mineral waters, similar to those of Ems, Selters and Vichy, are much visited in summer. The climate shows great variations in temperature. Pop. (1897) 9974.

ESSEQUIBO, or Essequebo, one of the three settlements of British Guiana, taking its name from the river Essequibo. (See Guiana.)

ESSEX, EARLS OF. The first earl of Essex was probably Geoffrey de Mandeville (q.v.), who became earl about 1139, the earldom being subsequently held by his two sons, Geoffrey and William, until the death of the latter in 1189. In 1199 Geoffrey Fitzpeter or Fitzpiers (d. 1213), who was related to the Mandevilles through his wife Beatrice, became earl of Essex, and on the death of Geoffrey’s son William in 1227 the earldom reverted for the second time to the crown. Then the title to the earldom passed by marriage to the Bohuns, earls of Hereford, and before 1239 Humphrey de Bohun (d. 1275) had been recognized as earl of Essex. With the earldom of Hereford the earldom of Essex became extinct in 1373; afterwards it was held by Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, a son of Edward III. and the husband of Eleanor de Bohun; and from Gloucester it passed to the Bourchiers, Henry Bourchier (d. 1483), who secured the earldom in 1461, being one of Gloucester’s grandsons. The second and last Bourchier earl was Henry’s grandson Henry, who died early in 1540. A few weeks before his execution in 1540 Thomas Cromwell (q.v.) was created earl of Essex; then in 1543 William Parr, afterwards marquess of Northampton, obtained the earldom by right of his wife Anne, a daughter of the last Bourchier earl. Northampton lost the earldom when he was attainted in 1553; and afterwards it passed to the famous family of Devereux, Walter Devereux, who was created earl of Essex in 1572, being related to the Bourchiers. Robert, the 3rd and last Devereux earl, died in 1646. In 1661 Arthur Capel was created earl of Essex, and the earldom is still held by his descendants.

ESSEX, ARTHUR CAPEL, 1st Earl of (1632-1683), English statesman, son of Arthur, 1st Baron Capel of Hadham (c. 1641), executed in 1649, and of Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Sir Charles Morrison of Cashiobury in Hertfordshire, was baptized on the 28th of January 1632. In June 1648, then a sickly boy of sixteen, he was taken by Fairfax’s soldiers from Hadham to Colchester, which his father was defending, and carried every day round the works with the hope of inducing Lord Capel to surrender the place. At the restoration he was created Viscount Malden and earl of Essex (20th of April 1661), with special remainder to the male issue of his father, and was made lord-lieutenant of Hertfordshire and a few years later of Wiltshire.

He early showed himself antagonistic to the court, to Roman Catholicism, and to the extension of the royal prerogative, and was coupled by Charles II. with Holles as “stiff and sullen men,” who would not yield against their convictions to his solicitations. In 1669 he was sent as ambassador to King Christian V. of Denmark, in which capacity he gained credit by refusing to strike his flag to the governor of Kronborg. In 1672 he was made a privy councillor and lord-lieutenant of Ireland. He remained in office till 1677, and his administration was greatly commended by Burnet and Ormonde, the former describing it “as a pattern to all that come after him.” He identified himself with Irish interests, and took immense pains to understand the constitution and the political necessities of the country, appointing men of real merit to office, and maintaining an exceptional independence from solicitation and influence. He held a just balance between the Roman Catholics, the English Church and the Presbyterians, protecting the former as far as public opinion in England would permit, and governing the native Irish with firmness and moderation. The purity and patriotism of his administration were in strong contrast to the hopeless corruption prevalent in that at home and naturally aroused bitter opposition, as an obstacle to the unscrupulous employment of Irish revenues for the satisfaction of the court and the king’s expenses. In particular he came into conflict with Lord Ranelagh, to whom had been assigned the Irish revenues on condition of his supplying the requirements of the crown, and whose accounts Essex refused to pass. He opposed strongly the lavish gifts of forfeited estates to court favourites and mistresses, prevented the grant of Phoenix Park to the duchess of Cleveland, and refused to encumber the administration by granting reversions. Finally the intrigues of his enemies at home, and Charles’s continual demands for money, which Ranelagh undertook to satisfy, brought about his recall in April 1677. He immediately joined the country party and the opposition to Danby’s government, and on the latter’s fall in 1679 was appointed a commissioner of the treasury, and the same year a member of Sir William Temple’s new-modelled council. He followed the lead of Halifax, who advocated not the exclusion of James, but the limitation of his sovereign powers, and looked to the prince of Orange rather than to Monmouth as the leader of Protestantism, incurring thereby the hostility of Shaftesbury, but at the same time gaining the confidence of Charles. He was appointed by Charles together with Halifax to hear the charges against Lauderdale. In July he wrote a wise and statesmanlike letter to the king, advising him to renounce his project of raising a new company of guards. Together with Halifax he urged Charles to summon the parliament, and after his refusal resigned the treasury in November, the real cause being, according to one account, a demand upon the treasury by the duchess of Cleveland for £25,000, according to another “the niceness of touching French money,” “that makes my Lord Essex’s squeasy stomach that it can no longer digest his employment.”

Subsequently his political attitude underwent a change, the exact cause of which is not clear—probably a growing conviction of the dangers threatened by a Roman Catholic sovereign of the character of James. He now, in 1680, joined Shaftesbury’s party and supported the Exclusion Bill, and on its rejection by the Lords carried a motion for an association to execute the scheme of expedients promoted by Halifax. On the 25th of January 1681 at the head of fifteen peers he presented a petition to the king, couched in exaggerated language, requesting the abandonment of the session of parliament at Oxford. He was a jealous prosecutor of the Roman Catholics in the popish plot, and voted for Stafford’s attainder, on the other hand interceding for Archbishop Plunket, implicated in the pretended Irish plot. He, however, refused to follow Shaftesbury in his extreme courses, declined participation in the latter’s design to seize the Tower in 1682, and on Shaftesbury’s consequent departure from England became the leader of Monmouth’s faction, in which were now included Lord Russell, Algernon Sidney, and Lord Howard of Escrick. Essex took no part in the wilder schemes of the party, but after the discovery of the Rye House Plot in June 1683, and the capture of the leaders, he was arrested at Cashiobury and imprisoned in the Tower. His spirits and fortitude appear immediately to have abandoned him, and on the 13th of July he was discovered in his chamber with his throat cut. His death was attributed, quite groundlessly, to Charles and James, and the evidence points clearly if not conclusively to suicide, his motive being possibly to prevent an attainder and preserve his estate for his family. He was, however, undoubtedly a victim of the Stuart administration, and the antagonism and tragic end of men like Essex, deserving men, naturally devoted to the throne, constitutes a severe indictment of the Stuart rule.

He was a statesman of strong and sincere patriotism, just and unselfish, conscientious and laborious in the fulfilment of public duties, blameless in his official and private life. Evelyn describes him as “a sober, wise, judicious and pondering person, not illiterate beyond the rule of most noblemen in this age, very well versed in English history and affairs, industrious, frugal, methodical and every way accomplished”; and declares he was much deplored, few believing he had ever harboured any seditious designs. He married Lady Elizabeth Percy, daughter of Algernon, 10th earl of Northumberland, by whom, besides a daughter, he had an only son Algernon (1670-1710), who succeeded him as 2nd earl of Essex.

Bibliography.—See the Lives in the Dict. of Nat. Biography and in Biographia Britannica (Kippis), with authorities there collected; Essex’s Irish correspondence is in the Stow Collection in the British Museum, Nos. 200-217, and selections have been published in Letters written by Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex (1770) and in the Essex Papers (Camden Society, 1890), to which can now be added the Calendars of State Papers, Domestic, which contain a large number of his letters and which strongly support the opinion of his contemporaries concerning his unselfish patriotism and industry; see also Somers Tracts (1813), x., and for other pamphlets relating to his death the catalogue of the British Museum.

i.e. in the Capel line.

Hist. MSS. Comm. ser.; Duke of Beaufort’s MSS. 45.

Life of Ormonde, by T. Carte, viii. 468 (1851), vol. iv. p. 529.

Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. app. 477b.

Ib. 6th Rep. app. 741b.

Diary and Corresp. (1850), ii. 141, 178.

ESSEX, ROBERT DEVEREUX, 2nd Earl of (1566-1601), son of the 1st Devereux earl, was born at Netherwood, Herefordshire, on the 19th of November 1566. He entered the university of Cambridge and graduated in 1581. In 1585 he accompanied his stepfather, the earl of Leicester, on an expedition to Holland, and greatly distinguished himself at the battle of Zutphen. He now took his place at court, where so handsome a youth soon found favour with Queen Elizabeth, and in consequence was on bad terms with Raleigh. In 1587 he was appointed master of the horse, and in the following year was made general of the horse and installed knight of the Garter. On the death of Leicester he succeeded him as chief favourite of the queen, a position which injuriously affected his whole subsequent life, and ultimately resulted in his ruin. While Elizabeth was approaching the mature age of sixty, Essex was scarcely twenty-one. Though well aware of the advantages of his position, and somewhat vain of the queen’s favour, his constant attendance on her at court was irksome to him beyond all endurance; and when he could not make his escape to the scenes of foreign adventure after which he longed, he varied the monotony of his life at court by intrigues with the maids of honour. He fought a duel with Sir Charles Blount, a rival favourite of the queen, in which the earl was disarmed and slightly wounded in the thigh.

In 1589, without the queen’s consent, he joined the expedition of Drake and Sir John Norris against Spain, but in June he was compelled to obey a letter enjoining him at his “uttermost peril” to return immediately. In 1590 Essex married the widow of Sir Philip Sidney, but in dread of the queen’s anger he kept the marriage secret as long as possible. When it was necessary to avow it, her rage at first knew no bounds, but as the earl did “use it with good temper,” and “for her majesty’s better satisfaction was pleased that my lady should live retired in her mother’s house,” he soon came to be “in very good favour.” In 1591 he was appointed to the command of a force auxiliary to one formerly sent to assist Henry IV. of France against the Spaniards; but after a fruitless campaign he was finally recalled from the command in January 1592. For some years after this most of his time was spent at court, where he held a position of unexampled influence, both on account of the favour of the queen and from his own personal popularity. In 1596 he was, after a great many “changes of humour” on the queen’s part, appointed along with Lord Howard of Effingham, Raleigh and Lord Thomas Howard, to the command of an expedition, which was successful in defeating the Spanish fleet, capturing and pillaging Cadiz, and destroying 53 merchant vessels. It would seem to have been shortly after this exploit that the beginnings of a change in the feelings of the queen towards him came into existence. On his return she chided him that he had not followed up his successes, and though she professed great pleasure at again seeing him in safety, and was ultimately satisfied that the abrupt termination of the expedition was contrary to his advice and remonstrances, she forbade him to publish anything in justification of his conduct. She doubtless was offended at his growing tendency to assert his independence, and jealous of his increasing popularity with the people; but it is also probable that her strange infatuation regarding her own charms, great as it was, scarcely prevented her from suspecting either that his professed attachment had all along been somewhat alloyed with considerations of personal interest, or that at least it was now beginning to cool. Francis Bacon, at that time his most intimate friend, endeavoured to prevent the threatened rupture by writing him a long letter of advice; and although perseverance in a long course of feigned action was for Essex impossible, he for some time attended pretty closely to the hints of his mentor, so that the queen “used him most graciously.” In 1597 he was appointed master of the ordnance, and in the following year he obtained command of an expedition against Spain, known as the Islands or Azores Voyage. He gained some trifling successes, but as the Plate fleet escaped him he failed of his main purpose; and when on his return the queen met him with the usual reproaches, he retired to his home at Wanstead. This was not what Elizabeth desired, and although she conferred on Lord Howard of Effingham the earldom of Nottingham for services at Cadiz, the main merit of which was justly claimed by Essex, she ultimately held out to the latter the olive branch of peace, and condescended to soothe his wounded honour by creating him earl marshal of England. That, nevertheless, the irritated feelings neither of Essex nor of the queen were completely healed was manifested shortly afterwards in a manner which set propriety completely at defiance. In a discussion on the appointment of a lord deputy to Ireland, Essex, on account of some taunting words of Elizabeth, turned his back upon her with a gesture indicative not only of anger but of contempt, and when she, unable to control her indignation, slapped him on the face, he left her presence swearing that such an insult he would not have endured even from Henry VIII.

In 1599, while Ulster was in rebellion under the earl of Tyrone, the office of lieutenant and governor-general of Ireland was conferred on Essex, and a large force put at his command. His campaign was an unsuccessful one, and by acting in various ways in opposition to the commands of the queen and the council, agreeing with Tyrone on a truce in September, and suddenly leaving the post of duty with the object of privately vindicating himself before the queen, he laid himself open to charges more serious than that of mere incompetency. For these misdemeanours he was brought in June 1600 before a specially constituted court, deprived of all his high offices, and ordered to live a prisoner in his own house during the queen’s pleasure. Chiefly through the intercession of Bacon his liberty was shortly afterwards restored to him, but he was ordered not to return to court. For some time he hoped for an improvement in his prospects, but when he was refused the renewal of his patent for sweet wines, hope was succeeded by despair, and half maddened by wounded vanity, he made an attempt (Feb. 7, 1601) to incite a revolution in his behalf, by parading the streets of London with 300 retainers, and shouting, “For the queen! a plot is laid for my life!” These proceedings awakened, however, scarcely any other feelings than mild perplexity and wonder; and finding that hope of assistance from the citizens was vain, he returned to Essex House, where after defending himself for a short time he surrendered. After a trial—in which Bacon, who prosecuted, delivered a speech against his quondam friend and benefactor, the bitterness of which was quite unnecessary to secure a conviction entailing at least very severe punishment—he was condemned to death, and notwithstanding many alterations in Elizabeth’s mood, the sentence was carried out on the 25th of February 1601.

Essex was in person tall and well proportioned, with a countenance which, though not strictly handsome, possessed, on account of its bold, cheerful and amiable expression, a wonderful power of fascination. He was a patron of literature, and himself a poet. His carriage was not very graceful, but his manners are said to have been “courtly, grave and exceedingly comely.” He was brave, chivalrous, impulsive, imperious sometimes with his equals, but generous to all his dependants and incapable of secret malice; and these virtues, which were innate and which remained with him to the last, must be regarded as somewhat counterbalancing, in our estimation of him, the follies and vices created by temptations which were exceptionally strong.

See Hon. W.B. Devereux, Lives of the Earls of Essex (1853); and Bacon and Essex, by E.A. Abbott (1877). Also the article Bacon, Francis, and authorities there.

i.e. in the Devereux line.

ESSEX, ROBERT DEVEREUX, 3rd Earl of (1591-1646), son of the preceding, was born in 1591. He was educated at Eton and at Merton College, Oxford. Shortly after the arrival of James I. in London, Essex (whose title was restored, and the attainder on his father removed, in 1604) was placed about the prince of Wales, as a sharer both in his studies and amusements. At the early age of fifteen he was married to Frances Howard, daughter of the earl of Suffolk, but she was his wife only in name; during his absence abroad (1607-1609) she fell in love with Sir Robert Carr (afterwards earl of Somerset), and on her charging her husband with physical incapacity, the marriage was annulled in 1613. A second marriage which he contracted in 1631 with Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Paulet, also ended unhappily. From 1620 to 1623 he served in the wars of the Palatinate, and in 1625 he was vice-admiral of a fleet which made an unsuccessful attempt to capture Cadiz. In 1639 he was lieutenant-general of the army sent by Charles against the Scottish Covenanters; but on account of the irresolution of the king no battle occurred, and the army was disbanded at the end of the year. Essex was discharged “without ordinary ceremony,” and refused an office which at that time fell vacant, “all which,” says Clarendon, “wrought very much upon his rough, proud nature, and made him susceptible of some impressions afterwards which otherwise would not have found such easy admission.” Having taken the side of the parliament against Charles, he was, on the outbreak of the civil war in 1642, appointed to the command of the parliamentary army. At the battle of Edgehill he remained master of the field, and in 1643 he captured Reading, and relieved Gloucester; but in the campaign of the following year, on account of his hesitation to fight against the king in person, nearly his whole army fell into the hands of Charles. In 1645, on the passing of the self-denying ordinance, providing that no member of parliament should hold a public office, he resigned his commission; but on account of his past services his annuity of £10,000 was continued to him for life. He died on the 14th of September 1646, of a fever brought on by over-exertion in a stag-hunt in Windsor Forest; his line becoming extinct.

See the “Life of Robert Earl of Essex,” by Robert Codrington, M.A., printed in Hart. Misc.; Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, and Hon. W.B. Devereux, Lives of the Earls of Essex (1853).

i.e. in the Devereux line.

ESSEX, WALTER DEVEREUX, 1st Earl of (1541-1576), the eldest son of Sir Richard Devereux, was born in 1541. His grandfather was the 2nd Baron Ferrers, who was created Viscount Hereford in 1550 and by his mother was a nephew of Henry Bourchier, a former earl of Essex. Walter Devereux succeeded as 2nd Viscount Hereford in 1558, and in 1561 or 1562 married Lettice, daughter of Sir Francis Knollys. In 1569 he served as high marshal of the field under the earl of Warwick and Lord Clinton, and materially assisted them in suppressing the northern insurrection. For his zeal in the service of Queen Elizabeth on this and other occasions, he in 1572 received the Garter and was created earl of Essex, the title which formerly belonged to the Bourchier family. Eager to give proof of “his good devotion to employ himself in the service of her majesty,” he offered on certain conditions to subdue and colonize, at his own expense, a portion of the Irish province of Ulster, at that time completely under the dominion of the rebel O’Neills, under Sir Brian MacPhelim and Tirlogh Luineach, with the Scots under their leader Sorley Boy MacDonnell. His offer, with certain modifications, was accepted, and he set sail for Ireland in July 1573, accompanied by a number of earls, knights and gentlemen, and with a force of about 1200 men. The beginning of his enterprise was inauspicious, for on account of a storm which dispersed his fleet and drove some of his vessels as far as Cork and the Isle of Man, his forces did not all reach the place of rendezvous till late in the autumn, and he was compelled to entrench himself at Belfast for the winter. Here, by sickness, famine and desertions, his troops were diminished to little more than 200 men. Intrigues of various sorts, and fighting of a guerilla type, followed with disappointing results, and Essex had difficulties both with the deputy Fitzwilliam and with the queen. Essex was in straits himself, and his offensive movements in Ulster took the form of raids and brutal massacres among the O’Neills; in October 1574 he treacherously captured MacPhelim at a conference in Belfast, and after slaughtering his attendants had him and his wife and brother executed at Dublin. Elizabeth, instigated apparently by Leicester, after encouraging Essex to prepare to attack the Irish chief Tirlogh Luineach, suddenly commanded him to “break off his enterprise”; but, as she left him a certain discretionary power, he took advantage of it to defeat Tirlogh Luineach, chastise Antrim, and massacre several hundreds of Sorley Boy’s following, chiefly women and children, discovered hiding in the caves of Rathlin. He returned to England in the end of 1575, resolved “to live henceforth an untroubled life”; but he was ultimately persuaded to accept the offer of the queen to make him earl marshal of Ireland. He arrived in Dublin in September 1576, and three weeks afterwards died of dysentery. There were suspicions that he had been poisoned by Leicester, who shortly after his death married his widow, but these were not confirmed by the post-mortem examination. The endeavours of Essex to better the condition of Ireland were a dismal failure; and the massacres of the O’Neills and of the Scots of Rathlin leave a dark stain on his reputation.

See Sidney Lee’s article in the Dict. Nat. Biog.; Lives of the Devereux Earls of Essex, by Hon. Walter B. Devereux (1853); Froude’s History of England, vol. x.; J.S. Brewer, Athenaeum (1870), part i. pp. 261, 326.

i.e. in the Devereux line.

ESSEX, an eastern county of England, bounded N. by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, E. by the North Sea, S. by the Thames, dividing it from Kent, W. by the administrative county of London and by Hertfordshire. Its area is 1542 sq. m. Its configuration is sufficiently indicated by the direction of its rivers. Except that in the N.W. the county includes the heads of a few valleys draining northward to the Cam and so to the Great Ouse, all the streams, which are never of great size, run southward and eastward, either into the Thames, or into the North Sea by way of the broad, shallow estuaries which ramify through the flat coast lands. The highest ground lies consequently in the north-west, between the Cam basin and the rivers of the county. Its principal southward extension is that between the Lea (which with its tributary the Stort forms a great part of the western boundary) and the Roding, and east of the Roding valley. The other chief rivers may be specified according to their estuaries, following the coast northward from Shoeburyness at the Thames mouth. That of the Roach ramifies among several islands of which Foulness is the largest, but its main branch joins the Crouch estuary. Next follows the Blackwater, which receives the Chelmer, the Brain and other streams. Following a coast of numerous creeks and islets, with the large island of Mersea, the Colne estuary is reached. The Colne and Blackwater may be said to form one large estuary, as they enter the sea by a well-marked common mouth, 5 m. in width, between Sales Point and Colne Point. There is a great irregular inlet (Hamford Water) receiving no large stream, W. of the Naze promontory, and then the Stour, bounding the county on the north, joins its estuary to that of the Orwell near the sea. There are several seaside watering-places in favour owing to their proximity to London, of which Southend-on-Sea above the mouth of the Thames, Clacton-on-Sea, Walton-on-the-Naze, and Dovercourt adjoining Harwich are the chief. These and other stations on the estuaries are also in favour with yachtsmen. The sea has at some points seriously encroached upon the land within historic times. The low soft cliffs at various points are liable to give way against the waves; in other parts dykes and embankments are necessary to prevent inundation. Inland, that is apart from the flat coast-district, the country is pleasantly undulating and for the most part well wooded. It was formerly, indeed, almost wholly forested, the great Waltham Forest stretching from Colchester to the confines of London. Of this a fragment is preserved in Epping Forest (see Epping) between the Lea and the Roding. On the other side of the Roding Hainault Forest is traceable, but was disafforested in 1851. The oak is the principal tree; a noteworthy example was that of Fairlop in Hainault, which measured 45 ft. in girth, but was blown down in 1820.

Geology.—The geological structure of the county is very simple: the greater part is occupied by the London clay with underlying Reading beds and Thanet sands, with here and there small patches of Bagshot gravels on elevated tracts, as at High Beech, Langdon Hill, Brentwood and Rayleigh; and occasionally the same beds are represented by the large boulder-like Sarsen stones on the lower ground. In the north, the chalk, which underlies the Tertiary strata over the whole county, appears at the surface and forms the downs about Saffron Walden, Birdbrook and Great Yeldham; it is brought up again by a small disturbance at Grays Thurrock where it is quarried on a large scale for lime, cement and whiting. Small patches of Pleistocene Red Crag rest upon the Eocene strata at Beaumont and Oakley, and are very well exposed at Walton-on-the-Naze where they are very fossiliferous. Most of the county is covered by a superficial deposit of glacial drifts, sands, gravel and in places boulder clay, as at Epping, Dunmow and Hornchurch where the drift lies beneath the Thames gravel. An interesting feature in relation to the glacial drift is a deep trough in the Cam valley revealed by borings to be no less than 340 ft. deep at Newport; this ancient valley is filled with drift. In the southern part of the county are broad spreads of gravel and brick earth, formed by the Thames; these have been excavated for brick-making and building purposes about Ilford, Romford and Grays, and have yielded the remains of hippopotamus, rhinoceros and mammoth. More recent alluvial deposits are found in the valley at Walthamstow and Tilbury, in which the remains of the beaver have been discovered.

The roads of this county with a clay soil foundation were for generations repaired with flints picked by women and children from the surface of the fields. Gravel is difficult of access. With the exception of chalk for lime (mainly obtained at Ballingdon in the north and Grays in the south), septaria for making cement, and clay for bricks, the underground riches of the county are meagre.

Agriculture.—As an agricultural county Essex ranks high. Some four-fifths of the total area is under cultivation, and about one-third of that area is in permanent pasture. Wheat, barley and oats, in that relative order, are the principal grain crops, Essex being one of the chief grain-producing counties. The wheat and barley are in particularly high favour, the wheat of various standard species being exported for seed purposes, while the barley is especially useful in malting. Beans and peas are largely grown, as are vegetables for the London market. Hop-growing was once important. From the comparative dryness of the climate Essex does not excel in pasturage, and winter grazing receives the more attention. The numbers of cattle increase steadily, and store bullocks are introduced in large numbers from Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Ireland and Wales. Of sheep there are but few distinct flocks, and the numbers decrease. Pigs are generally of a high-class Berkshire type.

Other Industries.—The south-west of the county, being contiguous to London, is very densely populated, and is the seat of large and varied industries. For example, there are numbers of chemical works, the extensive engine shops and works of the Great Eastern railway at Stratford, government powder works in the vicinity of Waltham Abbey, and powder stores at Purfleet on the Thames. The extensive water-works for east London, by the Lea near Walthamstow, may also be mentioned. The docks at Plaistow and Tilbury on the Thames employ many hands. Apart from this industrial district, there are considerable engineering works, especially for agricultural implements, at Chelmsford, Colchester and elsewhere; several silk works, as at Braintree and Halstead; large breweries, as at Brentwood, Chelmsford and Romford; and lime and cement works at Grays Thurrock. The oyster-beds of the Colne produce the famous Colchester natives, and there are similar beds in the Crouch and Roach, for which Burnham-on-Crouch is the centre; and in the Blackwater (Maldon).

Communications.—Railway communications are supplied principally by the Great Eastern railway, of which the main line runs by Stratford, Ilford, Romford, Brentwood, Chelmsford, Witham, Colchester, and Manningtree. The Cambridge and northern line of this company, following the Lea valley, does not touch the county until it diverges along the valley of the Stort. The chief branches are those to Southend and Burnham, Witham to Maldon, Colchester to Brightlingsea, to Clacton and to Walton, and Manningtree to Harwich, on the coast; and Witham to Braintree and Bishop’s Stortford, and Mark’s Tey to Sudbury and beyond, inland; while there are several branch lines among the manufacturing and residential suburbs in the south-west, to Walthamstow and Buckhurst Hill, Chigwell, Loughton, Epping, Ongar, &c. The London, Tilbury & Southend railway, following the Thames, serves the places named, and the Colne Valley railway runs from Chappel junction near Mark’s Tey by Halstead to Haverhill.

On the Thames, besides the great docks at Plaistow (Victoria and Albert) and the deep-water docks at Tilbury, the principal calling places for vessels are Grays, Purfleet and Southend, while Barking on the Roding has also shipping trade, and the Lea affords important water-connexions. Elsewhere, the principal port is Harwich, at the mouth of the Stour, one of the chief ports of England for European passenger traffic. Other towns ranking as lesser estuarine ports are: Brightlingsea and Wivenhoe on the Colne, forming a member of the Cinque Port of Sandwich; Colchester, Maldon on the Blackwater, and Burnham-on-Crouch. The Stour, Chelmer, and Lea and Stort are the principal navigable inland waterways.

Population and Administration.—The area of the ancient county is 986,975 acres, with a population in 1891 of 785,445 and in 1901 of 1,085,771. The area of the administrative county is 979,532 acres. The county contains nineteen hundreds. It is divided into eight parliamentary divisions, and it also includes the parliamentary boroughs of Colchester and West Ham, the latter consisting of two divisions. Each of these returns one member. The county divisions are—Northern or Saffron Walden, North-eastern or Harwich, Eastern or Maldon, Western or Epping, Mid or Chelmsford, South-eastern, Southern or Romford, South-western or Walthamstow, returning one member each. The municipal boroughs are—Chelmsford (12,580), Colchester (38,373), East Ham (96,018), Harwich (10,070), Maldon(5565), Saffron Walden (5896), Southend-on-Sea (28,857), and one county borough, West Ham (267,358). The following are the other urban districts—Barking Town (21,547), Braintree (5330), Brentwood (4932), Brightlingsea (4501), Buckhurst Hill (4786), Burnham-on-Crouch (2919), Chingford (4373), Clacton (7456), Epping (3789), Frinton-on-Sea (644), Grays Thurrock (13,834), Halstead (6073), Ilford (41,234), Leigh-on-Sea (3667), Leyton (98,912), Loughton (4730), Romford (13,656), Shoeburyness (4081), Waltham Holy Cross (6549), Walthamstow (95,131), Walton-on-the-Naze (2014), Wanstead (9179), Witham (3454), Wivenhoe (2560), Woodford (13,798). Essex is in the South-eastern circuit, and assizes are held at Chelmsford. The boroughs of Harwich and Southend-on-Sea have separate commissions of the peace, and the boroughs of Colchester, Maldon, Saffron Walden and West Ham have, in addition, separate courts of quarter sessions. The county is ecclesiastically within the diocese of St Albans (with a small portion within that of Ely) and is divided into two archdeaconries; containing 452 parishes or districts wholly or in part. There are 399 civil parishes.

There is a military station and depot for recruits at Warley, and a garrison at Tilbury. At Shoeburyness there are a school of gunnery and an extensive ground for testing government artillery of the largest calibre.

History (see also below under Essex, Kingdom of).—Essex probably originated as a shire in the time of Æthelstan. According to the Domesday Survey it comprised nineteen hundreds, corresponding very closely in extent and in name with those of the present day. The additional half-hundred of Thunreslan on the Suffolk border has disappeared; Witbrictesherna is now Dengie; and the liberty of Havering-atte-Bower appears to have been taken out of Becontree. Essex and Hertfordshire were under one sheriff until the time of Elizabeth. At the time of the Survey Count Eustace held a vast fief in Essex, and the court of the Honour of Boulogne was held at Witham. Bentry Heath in Dagenham, Hundred Heath in Tendring and Castle Hedingham in Hinckford were the meeting-places of their respective hundreds. The stewardship of the forest of Essex was held by the earls of Oxford until deprived of it for adherence to the Lancastrian cause. In 1421 certain parts of Essex inherited by Henry V. from his mother were brought under the jurisdiction of the duchy of Lancaster.

Essex was part of the see of London from the time of the foundation of the bishopric in the 7th century. The archdeaconries are first mentioned in 1108; that of Essex extended over the south of the county and in 1291 included eight deaneries; the north of the county was divided between the archdeaconries of Middlesex and Colchester, comprising three and six deaneries respectively. Colchester was constituted a suffragan bishopric by Henry VIII. In 1836 Essex was transferred to the diocese of Rochester, with the exception of nine parishes which remained in London. In 1845 the archdeacon of Middlesex ceased to exercise control in Essex, and the deaneries were readjusted. In 1875 Essex was transferred to the newly created diocese of St Albans, and in 1877 the archdeaconry of Essex was subdivided into eighteen deaneries and that of Colchester into sixteen.

Owing to its proximity to the capital Essex was intimately associated with all the great historical struggles. The nobility of Essex took a leading part in the struggle for the charter, and of the twenty-four guardians of the charter, four were Essex barons. The castles of Pleshey, Colchester, and Hedingham were held against the king in the Barons’ War of the reign of Henry III., and 5000 Essex men joined the peasant rising of 1381. During the Wars of the Roses the Lancastrian cause was supported by the de Veres, while the Bourchiers and Lord Fitz-Walter were among the Yorkist leaders. Several Essex men were concerned in the Gunpowder Plot, and in the Civil War of the 17th century the county rendered valuable aid to the parliament.

After the Conquest no Englishman retained estates in Essex of any importance, and the chief lay barons at the time of the Survey were Geoffrey de Mandeville and Aubrey de Vere. The de Veres, earls of Oxford, were continuously connected with the county until the extinction of the title two centuries ago. Pleshey was the stronghold of the Mandevilles, and, although the house became extinct in 1189, its descendants in the female line retained the title of earls of Essex. The Honour of Hatfield Peverel held by Ranulf Peverel after the Conquest escheated to the crown in the reign of Henry I., and in the same reign the fief of Robert Gernon passed to the house of Mountfichet.

Essex has always been mainly an agricultural county, and the ordinary agricultural pursuits were carried on at the time of the Domesday Survey, which also mentions salt-making, wine-making, bee-culture and cheese-making, while the oyster fisheries have been famous from the earliest historic times. The woollen industry dates back to Saxon times, and for many centuries ranked as the most important industry. Cloth-weaving was introduced in the 14th century, and in the 16th century Colchester was noted for its “bays and says.” Colchester also possessed a valuable leather industry in the 16th century, at which period Essex was considered an exceptionally wealthy and prosperous county; Norden, writing in 1594, describes it as “moste fatt, frutefull, and full of all profitable things.” The decline of the cloth industry in the 17th century caused great distress, but a number of smaller industries began to take its place. Saffron-culture and silk-weaving were extensively carried on in the 17th century, and the 18th century saw the introduction of the straw-plait industry, potash-making, calico-printing, malting and brewing, and the manufacture of Roman cement.

The county returned four members to parliament in 1290. From 1295 it returned two members for the county and two for Colchester. Maldon acquired representation in 1331 and Harwich in 1604. Under the Reform Act of 1832 the county returned four members in four divisions. Under the Representation of the People Act of 1868 Maldon and Harwich each lost one member, and the county returned six members in three divisions.

Antiquities.—It is supposed by many antiquaries that Saxon masonry can be detected in the foundations of several of the Essex churches, but, with the exception of Ashingdon church tower, believed to have been erected by Canute after his victory over Edmund Ironside, there is no obviously recognizable building belonging to that period. This is probably to be in part ascribed to the fact that the comparative scarcity of stone and the unusual abundance of timber led to the extensive employment of the latter material. Several of the Essex churches, as Blackmore, Mountnessing, Margaretting, and South Benfleet, have massive porches and towers of timber; and St Andrew’s church, Greenstead, with its walls of solid oak, continues an almost unique example of its kind. Of the four round churches in England one is in Essex at Little Maplestead; it is both the smallest and the latest. The churches of South Weald, Hadleigh, Blackmore, Heybridge and Hadstock may be mentioned as containing Norman work; with the church of Castle Hedingham for its fine Transitional work; Southchurch, Danbury and Boreham as being partly Early English; Ingatestone, Stebbing and Tilty for specimens of Decorated architecture; and Messing, Thaxted, Saffron Walden, and the church of St Peter ad Vincula at the small town of Coggeshall, near Colchester, as specimens of Perpendicular. Stained glass windows have left their traces in several of the churches, the finest remains being those of Margaretting, which represent a tree of Jesse and the daisy or herb Margaret. Paintings have evidently been largely used for internal decoration: a remarkable series, probably of the 12th century, but much restored in the 14th, exists in the chancel of Copford church; and in the church at Ingatestone there was discovered in 1868 an almost unique fresco representation of the seven deadly sins. The oldest brasses preserved in the county are those of Sir William Fitz-Ralph at Pebmarsh, about 1323; Richard of Beltown, at Corringham, 1340; Sir John Gifford, at Bowers Gifford, 1348; Ralph de Kneyton, at Aveley, 1370; Robert de Swynbourne, at Little Horkesley, 1391; and Sir Ingelram de Bruyn, at South Ockendon, 1400. The brass of Thomas Heron, aged 14, at Little Ilford, though dating only from 1517, is of interest as a picture of a schoolboy of the period. Ancient wooden effigies are preserved at Danbury, Little Leighs and Little Horkesley.

Essex was rich in monastic foundations, though the greater number have left but meagre ruins behind. The Benedictines had an abbey at Saffron Walden, nunneries at Barking and Wickes, and priories at Earl’s or Monk’s Colne and Castle Hedingham; the Augustinian canons had an abbey at Waltham (see Waltham Abbey; the portion remaining shows Norman work of the finest character), priories at Thoby, Blackmore, Bicknacre, Little Leighs, Little Dunmow and St Osyth (see Brightlingsea); there were Cistercian abbeys at Coggeshall, Stratford and Tilty; the Cluniac monks were settled at Prittlewell, the Premonstratensians at Beleigh Abbey, and the Knights Hospitallers at Little Maplestead. Barking Abbey is said to date its first origin from the 7th century; most of the others arose in the 12th and 13th centuries. Besides the keep at Colchester there is a fine Norman castle at Castle Hedingham, and two dilapidated round towers still stand at Hadleigh near Southend. Ongar, the house of the de Lacys, and Pleshey, the seat of the earls of Essex, have left only mounds. Havering-atte-Bower, the palace that was occupied by many queens, is replaced by a modern house; Wickham, the mansion of the bishops of London, no longer stands. New Hall, which was successively occupied by Henry VIII., Elizabeth, the earl of Essex, George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, and Cromwell, is now a nunnery of the order of the Holy Sepulchre. Audley End, the mansion of Lord Braybrooke, is a noble example of the domestic architecture of the Jacobean period; Layer Marney is an interesting proof of the Italian influences that were at work in the time of Wolsey. Horeham Hall was built by Sir John Cutt in the reign of Henry VII., and Gosfield Hall is of about the same date.

See Norden, Speculi Britanniae Pars: an Hist. and Geogr. Descrip. of the County of Essex (1594) (edited for the Camden Society by Sir Henry Ellis, 1840, from the original MS. in the Marquis of Salisbury’s library at Hatfield); Nicholas Tindal, Hist. of Essex (1720); N. Salmon, The Hist. and Antiq. of Essex (London, 1740)—based on the collections of James Strangman of Hadleigh (v. Trans. of Essex Arch. Soc. vol. ii.); P. Morant, Hist. and Antiq. of the County of Essex (London, 1768); P. Muilman, New and Complete Hist. of Essex from a late Survey, by a Gentleman (Chelmsford, 6 vols., 1770-1772, London, 1779); Elizabeth Ogbourne, Hist. of Essex (London, part i., 1814); Excursions through Essex, illustrated with one hundred engravings (2 vols., London, 1818); T. Wright, Hist. and Topography of Essex (1831); W. Berry, Pedigrees of Families in Essex (1841); A. Suckling, Memorials of the Antiquities, &c., of the County of Essex (London, 1845); W. Andrews (ed.), Bygone Essex (London, 1892); J.T. Page (ed.), Essex in the Days of Old (London, 1898); Victoria County History, Essex; Transactions of the Essex Arch. Soc. from 1858. An account of various MS. collections connected with the county is given by H.W. King in vol. ii. of the Transactions (1863).

ESSEX, KINGDOM OF, one of the kingdoms into which Anglo-Saxon Britain was divided, properly the land of the East Saxons. Of its origin and early history we have no record except the bare statement of Bede that its settlers were of the Old Saxon race. In connexion with this it is interesting to notice that the East Saxon dynasty claimed descent from Seaxneat, not Woden. The form Seaxneat is identical with Saxnot, one of three gods mentioned in a short continental document probably of Old Saxon origin. Bede does not mention this kingdom in his narrative until 604, the year of the consecration of Mellitus to the see of London. The boundaries of Essex were in later times the rivers Stour and Thames, but the original limits of the kingdom are quite uncertain; towards the west it probably included most if not the whole of Hertfordshire, and in the 7th century the whole of Middlesex. In 604 we find Essex in close dependence upon Kent, being ruled by Saberht, sister’s son of Æthelberht, under whom the East Saxons received Christianity. The three sons of Saberht, however, expelled Mellitus from his see, and even after their death in battle against the West Saxons, Eadbald of Kent was unable to restore him. In the year 653 we find North-umbrian influence paramount in Essex, for King Sigeberht at the instance of Oswio became a Christian and received Cedd, the brother of St Chad, in his kingdom as bishop, Tilbury and Ythanceastere (on the Blackwater) being the chief scenes of his work. Swithhelm, the successor of Sigeberht, was on terms of friendship with the East Anglian royal house, King Æthelwald being his sponsor at his baptism by Cedd. It was probably about this time that Erconwald, afterwards bishop of London, founded the monastery of Barking. Swithhelm’s successors Sigehere and Sebbe were dependent on Wulfhere, the powerful king of Mercia, who on the apostasy of Sigehere sent Bishop Jaruman to restore the faith. There are grounds for believing that an East Saxon conquest of Kent took place in this reign. A forged grant of Ceadwalla speaks of the fall of Kent before Sigehere as a well-known event; and in a Kentish charter dated 676 a king of Kent called Swebhard grants land with the consent of his father King Sebbe. In 692 or 694 Sebbe abdicated and received the monastic vows from Waldhere, the successor of Erconwald at London. His sons Sigeheard and Swefred succeeded him as kings of Essex, Sigehere being apparently dead. As the laws of Ine of Wessex speak of Erconwald as “my bishop,” it is possible that the influence of Wessex for a short time prevailed in Essex; but a subsequent charter of Swefred is approved by Coenred of Mercia, and Offa, the son of Sigehere, accompanied the same king to Rome in 709. From this time onwards the history of Essex is almost a blank. In 743 or 745 Æthelbald of Mercia is found granting privileges at the port of London, and perhaps the western portion of the kingdom had already been annexed, for henceforward London is frequently the meeting-place of the Mercian council. The violent death of Selred, king of Essex, is mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle under the year 746; but we have no more information of historical importance until the defeat of the Mercian king Beornwulf in 825, when Essex, together with Kent, Sussex and Surrey, passed into the hands of Ecgbert, king of Wessex. After 825 we hear of no more kings of Essex, but occasionally of earls. About the year 870 Essex passed into the hands of the Danes and was left to them by the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum. It was reconquered by Edward the Elder. The earldom in the 10th century apparently included several other counties, and its most famous holder was the ealdorman Brihtnoth, who fell at the battle of Maldon in 991.

The following is a list of kings of Essex of whom there is record: Saberht (d. c. 617); three sons of Saberht, including probably Saweard and Seaxred; Sigeberht (Parvus); Sigeberht II.; Swithhelm (d. c. 664); Sigehere (reigned perhaps 664-689); Sebbe, son of Seaxred (664-694); Sigeheard (reigning in 693-694); Swefred (reigning in 693-694 and in 704); the two last being sons of Sebbe; Swebriht (d. 738); Selred (d. 746); Swithred, grandson of Sigeheard (succ. 746); Sigeric, son of Selered (abd. 798); Sigered, son of Sigeric (reigning in 823).

See Bede, Hist. Eccl., edited by C. Plummer (Oxford, 1896), ii. 3, 5; Saxon Chronicle (Earle and Plummer, Oxford, 1899), s.a. 823, 894, 904, 913, 921, 994; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, Rolls Series (ed. Stubbs, 1887-1889); Simeon of Durham, s.a. 746 (ed. T. Arnold, 1882) and appendix, s.a. 738; Florence of Worcester (ed. B. Thorpe, London, 1848-1849); H. Sweet, Oldest English Texts, p. 179 (London, 1885).

(F. G. M. B.)

ESSLINGEN, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Württemberg, in a fertile district on the Neckar, 9 m. S.E. from Stuttgart, on the railway to Ulm. Pop. (1905) 29,750. It is surrounded by medieval walls with towers and bastions, and has thirteen suburbs, one lying on an island in the river. On a commanding height above the town lies the old citadel. The inner town has an old (1430) and a new Rathaus, the latter, formerly a palace, an exceedingly handsome edifice. The church of Our Lady (Frauenkirche) is a fine Gothic building of the 15th century, and has a beautifully sculptured doorway and a lattice spire 240 ft. high. The church of St Dionysius dated from the 13th century, and possesses a fine screen and a ciborium of 1486. Esslingen possesses several schools, a theatre and a richly endowed hospital, while its municipal archives contain much valuable literature bearing especially on the period of the Reformation. The town has railway, machine and electrical works; cloth, gloves and buttons are also manufactured here, and there are spinning-mills. There is a large lithographic establishment, and a considerable trade is done in wine and fruit, the wines of Esslingen being very famous.

Esslingen, which dates from the 8th century, became a town in 886. It was soon a place of importance; it became a free imperial city in 1209 and was surrounded with walls by order of the emperor Frederick II. Its liberty was frequently threatened by the rulers of Württemberg, but it did not become part of that country until 1802.

See K.H.S. Pfaff, Geschichte der Reichsstadt Esslingen (Esslingen, 1852); and Ströhmfeld, Esslingen in Wort und Bild (Esslingen, 1902).

ESTABLISHMENT (O. Fr. establissement, Fr. établissement, late Norm. Fr. establishement, from O. Fr. establir, Fr. établir, Lat. stabilire, to make stable), generally the act of establishing or fact of being established, and so by transference a thing established. Thus we may speak of the establishment (i.e. setting up) of a business, the “long establishment” of a business, and of the manager of “the establishment.” In a special sense the word is applied, with something of all the three above-mentioned connotations, to certain religious bodies in their relation to the state. It is with this latter that the present article is concerned.

Perhaps the best definition which can be given, and which will cover all cases, is that establishment implies the existence of some definite and distinctive relation between the state and a religious society (or conceivably more than one) other than that which is shared in by other societies of the same general character. Of course, a certain relationship must needs exist between the state and every society, religious or secular, by virtue of the sovereignty of the state over each and all of its members. Every society must possess certain principles or perform certain acts, and the state may make the profession of such principles unlawful, or impose a penalty upon the performance of such acts; and, moreover, every society is liable before the law as to the fulfilment of its obligations towards its members and the due administration of its property should it possess any. With all this establishment has nothing to do. It is not concerned with what pertains to the religious society qua society, or with what is common to all religious societies, but with what is exceptional. It denotes any special connexion with the state, or privileges and responsibilities before the law, possessed by one religious society to the exclusion of others; in a word, establishment is of the nature of a monopoly. But it does not imply merely privilege. The state and the Church have mutual obligations towards one another: each is, to some extent, tied by the existence of this relationship, and each accepts the limitations for the sake of the advantages which accrue to itself. The state does so in view of what it believes to be the good of all its members; for “the true end for which religion is established is not to provide for the true faith, but for civil utility” (Warburton), even if the latter be held to be implied in the former. On the other hand, the Church accepts these relations for the facilities which they involve, i.e. for its own benefit. It will be seen that this definition excludes, and rightly, many current presuppositions. Establishment affirms the fact, but does not determine the precise nature, of the connexion between the state and the religious society. It does not tell us, for example, when or how it began, whether it is the result of an unconscious growth (as with the Gallican Church previous to the French Revolution), or of a determinate legislative act (as with the same Church re-established by the Concordat of 1801). It does not tell us whether an endowment of the religious society by the state is included; what particular privileges are enjoyed by the religious society; and what limitations are placed upon the free exercise of its life. These things can only be ascertained by actual inquiry; for the conditions are precisely similar in no two cases.

To proceed to details. At the present day there is no established religion in the United States, the German empire as a whole, Holland, Belgium, France and Austria-Hungary (saving, indeed, “the rights of the sovereign arising from ecclesiastical dignity”); whereas there are religious establishments in Russia, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Prussia, Spain, Portugal and even in Italy, as well as in England and Scotland. These, however, differ greatly amongst themselves. In Russia the “Orthodox Catholic Eastern” is the state religion. The emperor is, by the fundamental laws of the empire, “the sovereign defender and protector of the dogmas of the dominant faith, who maintains orthodoxy and holy discipline within the Church,” although, of course, he cannot modify either its dogmas or its outward order. Further, “the autocratic (i.e. imperial) power acts in the ecclesiastical administration by means of the Most Holy Ruling Synod, created by it”; and all the officers of the Church are appointed by it. The enactments of the Synod do not become law till they have received the emperor’s sanction, and are then published, not in its name but in his; and a large part of the revenues of the Church is derived from state subsidies. In Greece “the dominant religion (Ἡ ἐπικρατοῦσα θρησκεία) is that of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ”; and although toleration is otherwise complete, no proselytism from the Church of Greece is allowed. The king swears to protect it, but no powers pertain to him with regard to it such as those which the tsar enjoys; the present king is not a member of it, but his successors must be. In Sweden, Lutheranism was adopted as the state religion by the synod of Upsala (Upsala möte) in 1593, and the king must profess it. The “Lutheran Protestant Church” retains an episcopal order, and is supported out of its own revenues. Archbishops and bishops are chosen by the king out of those names submitted to him, and he also nominates to royal peculiars. The ecclesiastical law (Kyrkolag), first constituted in 1686, is part of the law of the state, but may not be modified or abrogated without consent of a General Synod; and although ad interim interpretations of that law may be given by the king on the advice of the Supreme Court, since 1866 these have been subject to review and rejection by the next General Synod. In Norway the “Evangelical-Lutheran” is the “official religion,” but the Church is supported by the state, its property having been secularized. It is also more subject to the king, who by the constitution is to “regulate all that concerns divine service and the clergy,” and to see that the prescribed order is carried out. It is much the same in Denmark, where, however, the “Evangelical-Lutheran Church” has since the fundamental constitutional law of the 5th of June 1849 been officially described as the National Church (Folkekirche) instead of the State Church (Statskirche) as formerly, and the constitution provides for its regulation by further legislation, which has not yet been passed. For Prussia, see under that heading; it need only be added that self-government still tends to increase, but that the emperor William II. has exercised his office as summus episcopus more freely than most of his predecessors. In Spain the “Catholic, Apostolic and Roman” religion is that of the state, “the nation binds itself to maintain its worship and its ministers,” and the rites of any other religion are only permitted in private. The patriarch of the Indies and the archbishops are senators by right, and the king may nominate others from amongst the bishops; only laymen may sit in the chamber of deputies. Convents were suppressed, and their property confiscated, in 1835 and 1836; in 1859 the remaining ecclesiastical property was exchanged for untransferable government securities and the support of the clergy of the State Church is assured by an unrepealed law previous to the present constitution. In Portugal it is much the same, but all the home bishops sit in the upper chamber as peers (Pares do Reino) by right, and there is no restriction on membership of the chamber of deputies. A more important point is that the king confers all ecclesiastical benefices and nominates the bishops, instead of their being chosen, as in Spain, by agreement between the civil power and the papacy. In Italy, in spite of the feud between the papacy and the civil power, the fact remains that, by the Statuto fondamentale, “the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion is the sole religion of the state,” and the king may nominate “archbishops and bishops of the state” to be senators. The Legge sulle prerogative del Summo Pontifice, &c., or “Law of Guarantees,” by which the papal prerogatives are secured, has been declared by the Council of State to be a fundamental law; and while many civil restrictions upon the activities of the Church are removed by it, outside Rome and the suburbicarian dioceses the royal exequatur is still required before a bishop is installed. Moreover, the bulk of Church property having been secularized, the Italian clergy receive a stipend from the state.

Establishment is, of course, a distinctively English term, but it implies precisely the same thing as “Staatsreligion” or “église dominante” does elsewhere, neither more nor less. It denotes the existence of a special relationship between Church and state without defining its precise nature. The statement that the Church of England or the Scottish Kirk is “established by law” denotes that it has a peculiar status before the law; but that is all. (a) There is no basis whatever for the once popular assumption that the word “established” as applied to the Church means “created,” or the like; on the contrary, the modern use of the word in this sense is a misleading perversion. To establish is to make firm or stable; and a thing cannot be established unless it is already in existence. A few examples will make it clear that this is the true sense of the word, and that in which it is used here. “Stablish the thing, O God, that thou hast wrought in us” (Ps. lxviii. 28, P.B.; A.V. and R.V. “strengthen”) implies that the thing is already wrought; it could not be “stablished” else. “Stablish your hearts” (Jas v. 8) implies that the hearts are already in existence. “Until he had her settled in her raine With safe assuraunce and establishment” (Faerie Queene, v. xi. 35) would have been impossible unless the reign had already begun. This is the meaning of the words in many Tudor acts of parliament, “be it enacted, ordained and established,” or the like (21 Hen. VIII. c. 1; 27 Hen. VIII. c. 28, s. 9; 28 Hen. VIII. c. 13 [Ireland]; 28 Hen. VIII. c. 18 [Ireland]; 33 Hen. VIII. c. 27; 1 Eliz. c. 1, ss. 15, 17; 1 Eliz. c. 4, s. 4); that which is then and there enacted is to be valid for the future. (b) Nor is it necessarily implied that establishment is a process completed once for all. Every law touching the Church slightly alters its conditions; everything that affects the relations of Church and state may be regarded as a measure of establishment or the reverse. When the two Houses of Parliament, in an address to William III. after his coronation, spoke of their proposed measures of toleration, the king said in his reply, “I do hope that the ease which you design to Dissenters will contribute very much to the establishment of the Church” (Cobbett, Parl. Hist. v. 218). And Defoe (in 1702) published an ironical tract with the title, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, or Proposals for the Establishment of the Church. (c) Nor is it necessarily implied that there was any specific time at which establishment took place. Such may indeed be the case, as with the Kirk in Scotland; but it certainly cannot be said that the English Church was established at any particular time, or by any particular legislative act. There were, no doubt, periods when the existing relations between Church and state were modified or re-defined, notably in the 16th and 17th centuries; but the relations themselves are far older. In fact, they existed from the very first: the English Church and state grew up side by side, and from the beginning they were in close relations with one another. But although the state of things which it represented was there from the first, the term “established” or “established by law” only came into use at a later date. Until there was some other religious society to be compared with it such a distinctive epithet would have had no point. As, however, there arose religious societies which had no status before the law, it became more natural; and yet more so when the formularies of the Church came to be “established” by civil sanctions (the Books of Common Prayer by 5 and 6 Edw. VI. c. 1, s. 4, &c; the Articles by 13 Eliz. c. 12; the new Ordinal by 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 4, title). Accordingly the Church itself came to be spoken of as established by law; first, it would seem, in the Canons of 1604, and subsequently in many statutes (Act of Settlement, 6 Anne, c. 8 and c. 11, &c). In all such cases the Church is described as already established, not as being established by the particular canon or statute. In other words, the constitutional status of the Church is affirmed, but nothing is said as to how it arose.

The legislative changes of the 16th and 17th centuries brought “establishment” into greater prominence and greatly modified its conditions, but a moment’s thought will show that it did not begin then. If, e.g., all post-Reformation ecclesiastical statutes were non-existent, the relations between Church and state would be very different, but there would still be an “establishment.” The bishops would sit in the House of Lords, the clergy would tax themselves in convocation, the Church courts would possess coercive jurisdiction, and so on. The present relations of Church and state in England may be briefly summed up as follows:—(1) The personal relation of the crown to the Church, including (a) restraints upon the action of convocation (formulated by 25 Hen. VIII. c. 19); (b) nomination of bishops, &c. (25 Hen. VIII. c. 20); (c) power of supervision as visitor, long disused (26 Hen. VIII. c. 1; 1 Eliz. c. 1, s. 17); (d) power of receiving appeals as the fount of civil justice (25 Hen. VIII. c. 19, &c). In connexion with these, it must be borne in mind that (a) the holder of the crown receives coronation from the church and takes an oath having reference to it (1 Will. III. c. 6), and (b) the crown is held on the condition of communion with the Church of England (Act of Settlement; the conditions of communion are laid down in the Prayer Book, which itself is sanctioned by law). (2) The relation of the Church to the crown in parliament. No change has been permitted in its doctrine or formularies without the sanction of an act of parliament. (3) Privileges of the Church and clergy. Of these may be mentioned (a) the coercive jurisdiction of the Church courts; (b) the right of bishops to sit in the House of Lords. It need hardly be said that establishment in England does not include an endowment of the Church by the state. Nothing of the kind ever took place on any large scale, and the grants for Church purposes in the 18th century are comparable with the regium donum to Nonconformists.

The position of the Church of Ireland until its disestablishment (see below) was not dissimilar. With Scotland the case is different. The establishment of the Kirk was an entirely new process, carried out by a more or less definite series of legislative and administrative acts. The Convention of Estates which met at Edinburgh in 1560 ordered the drawing up of a new Confession of Faith, which was done in four days by a committee of preachers, and on the 24th of August it passed three acts, one abolishing the pope’s authority and all jurisdiction of Catholic prelates, another repealing the old statutes in favour of the Old Church, the third forbidding the celebrating and hearing of mass under penalty of imprisonment, exile and death. The intention was to make a clean sweep of the Old Church, which was denounced as “the Kirk Malignant.” The new model thus set up was confirmed by the Scottish act of 1567, c. 6, which declared it to be “the onely true and halie kirk of Jesus Christ within this realme.” Again, after the revolution of 1688 had put an end to the attempts of the Stuart kings to impose the episcopal model on Scotland, by the act of 1690, c. 5, the crown and estates “ratifie and establish the Confession of Faith, ... as also they do establish, ratifie and confirm the Presbyterian government and discipline.” The “Act of Security” of 1705, as incorporated in the Act of Union 1706, speaking of it “as now by law established,” says that “Her Majesty ... doth hereby establish and confirm” it, and finally declares this act, “with the Establishment therein contained,” to be “a fundamental and essential condition of the Union.” Nevertheless, the conditions of establishment in the Scottish Kirk are much easier than those of the Church of England. It is bound by the statutes sanctioning its doctrine and order, but within these limits its legislative and judicial freedom is unimpaired. A royal commissioner is present at the meetings of the general assembly, but he need not be a member of the Kirk; and there is no constitutional tie between the crown and the Kirk such as there is in England. There is what may accurately be described as a state endowment, the bulk of the property of the Old Church having been conferred upon the Scottish Kirk.

Not unnaturally the organization of Anglican Churches in the colonies was followed in some cases by their establishment, which included endowment. It was so, for example, in the East and West Indies; and the disestablishment of the West Indian Church in 1868 was followed, in 1873, by a re-establishment of the Church in Barbados by the colonial legislature. India is the only other part of the empire (outside Great Britain) in which there is to-day a religious establishment.

Disestablishment is in theory the annulling of establishment; but since an established Church is usually rich, disestablishment generally includes disendowment, even where there is no state endowment of religion. It is, in short, the abrogation of establishment, coupled with such a confiscation of Church property as the state thinks good in the interests of the community. The disestablishment of the West Indian Church in 1868 has already been referred to; in 1869 the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill was passed. Private bills relating to Scotland have more than once been brought forward. In 1895 the Liberal government introduced a suspensory bill, intended as the preliminary step towards disestablishing and disendowing the Church in Wales; it was withdrawn, however, in the same session, and the question of Welsh disestablishment slumbered until in 1906 a royal commission was appointed by the Liberal government to inquire into the subject, and in 1909 a bill was introduced on much the same lines as in 1895.

The case of the Irish Church will illustrate the process of disestablishment, although, of course, the precise details would vary in other cases. The Irish Church Act was passed in 1869 by Gladstone’s first government, after considerable opposition, and provided that from January 1, 1871, the union created by statute between the Churches of England and Ireland should be dissolved, and the Church of Ireland should “cease to be established by law.” Existing ecclesiastical corporations were dissolved, and their rights ceased, compensation being given to all individuals and their personal precedence being secured for life. All rights of patronage, including those of the crown, were abolished, with compensation in the case of private patrons; and the archbishops and bishops ceased to have the right of summons to the House of Lords. All laws restraining the freedom of action of the Church were repealed; the ecclesiastical law, however, to subsist by way of contract amongst the members of the Church (until altered by a representative body). Provision was made for the incorporation by charter of the representative body of the Church, should such a body be found, with power to hold landed property. All existing ecclesiastical property was vested in a commission, which was to give compensation for life interests, to transfer to the new representative body the churches, glebe houses, and £500,000 in compensation for endowments by private persons since 1660, and to hold the rest for such purposes as parliament might thereafter determine.

Authorities.—F.R. Dareste, Les Constitutions modernes (Paris, 1891); H. Geffcken, Church and State, trans. by E.F. Taylor (London, 1877); P. Schaff, Church and State in the United States (Papers of the American Hist. Association, vol. ii. No. 4), (New York, 1888); L. Minghetti, Stato e Chiesa (Milan, 1878), French translation, with Introd. by E. de Laveleye (Paris, 1882); C. Cadorna, Religione, diritto, libertà (Milan, 1893); F. Nippold, Die Theorie der Trennung von Kirche und Staat (Bern, 1881); W. Warburton, Alliance between Church and State (London, 1741) (Works, vol. iv., ed. Hurd, London, 1788); Church Problems (ed. by H.H. Henson) (London, 1900); Essays on “Establishment” and “Disendowment”; W.R. Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, vol. ii. chap. ix. (Oxford, 1892); Phillimore, Ecclesiastical Law (London, 1895); J.S. Brewer, Endowments and Establishment of the Church of England (ed. by L.T. Dibdin, London, 1885); A.T. Innes, Law of Creeds in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1867); E.A. Freeman, Disestablishment and Disendowment (London, 1883); G. Harwood, Disestablishment (London, 1876); Annales de l’école libre des Sciences politiques, tom. i. (Paris, 1885), art. “La Séparation de l’Église et de l’État en Angleterre,” by L. Ayral.

(W. E. Co.)

In effect this involves the establishment of all religious denominations, for none can exist without the express authorization of the state, and all are subject to more or less interference on its part. Thus the emperor-king is, in his capacity of head of the state, technically “bishop” of the Evangelical Church, the constitution of which was fixed by an imperial patent in 1866 and modified by. another in 1891 (see Herzog-Hauck, Realencykl. ed. 1904, s. “Österreich”).—[Ed.]

Also in the other German Protestant states. The relations of the Roman Catholic Church with the various governments are settled by separate concordats with the papacy (see Concordat).

Andrew Lang, Hist. of Scotland, ii. p. 75 ff. Compare with this the position of the reformers generally in England, where even so stout a Puritan as William Harrison (Description of England, 1570) does not dream of separating the organic life of the Church of England from that of the pre-Reformation Church. (Ed).

ESTABLISHMENT OF A PORT, the technical expression for the time that elapses between the moon’s transit across the meridian at new or full moon at a given place and the time of high water at that place. The interval (constant at any one place) may vary from 6 mins. (Harwich) to 11 hrs. 45 mins. (North Foreland). At London Bridge it is 1 hr. 58 mins. (See also Tide.)

ESTAING, CHARLES HECTOR, Comte d’ (1729-1794), French admiral, was born at the château of Ruvel, Auvergne, in 1729. He entered the army as a colonel of infantry, and in 1757 he accompanied count de Lally to the East Indies, with the rank of brigadier-general. In 1759 he was made prisoner at the siege of Madras, but was released on parole. Before the ratification of his exchange he obtained command of some vessels, and conducted various naval attacks against the English; and having, on his return to France in 1760, fallen accidentally into their hands, he was, on the ground of having broken his parole, thrown into prison at Portsmouth, but as the charge could not be properly substantiated he was soon afterwards released. In 1763 he was named lieutenant-general in the navy, and in 1777 vice-admiral; and in 1778 he obtained the command of a fleet intended to assist the United States against Great Britain. He sailed on the 13th of April, and between the 11th and the 22nd of July, blockaded Howe at Sandy Hook, but did not venture to attack him, though greatly superior in force. In concert with the American generals, he planned an attack on Newport, preparatory to which he compelled the British to destroy some war vessels that were in the harbour; but before the concerted attack could take place, he put to sea against the English fleet, under Lord Howe, when owing to a violent storm, which arose suddenly and compelled the two fleets to separate before engaging in battle, many of his vessels were so shattered that he found it necessary to put into Boston for repairs. He then sailed for the West Indies on the 4th of November. After a feeble attempt to retake Santa Lucia from Admiral Barrington, he captured St Vincent and Grenada. On the 6th of July 1779 he fought a drawn battle with Admiral John Byron, who retired to St Christopher. Though superior in force, D’Estaing would not attack the English in the roadstead, but set sail to attack Savannah. All his attempts, as well as those of the Americans, against the town were repulsed with heavy loss, and he was finally compelled to retire. He returned to France in 1780. He was in command of the combined fleet before Cadiz when the peace was signed in 1783; but from that time his chief attention was devoted to politics. In 1787 he was elected to the assembly of the notables; in 1789 he was appointed commandant of the national guard; and in 1792 he was chosen admiral by the National Assembly. Though in favour of national reform he continued to cherish a strong feeling of loyalty to the royal family, and on the trial of Marie Antoinette in 1793 bore testimony in her favour. On this account, and because of certain friendly letters which had passed between him and the queen, he was himself brought to trial, and was executed on the 28th of April 1794.

See Marins et soldats français en Amérique, by the Viscomte de Noailles (1903); Beatson, Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain, vol. v.

ESTATE (through O. Fr. estat, mod. état, from Lat. status, state, condition, position, stare, to stand), the state or condition in which a man lives, now chiefly used poetically and in such phrases as “man’s estate,” or “of high estate”; “state” has superseded most of the uses of the word except (1) in property and (2) in constitutional law.

1. In the law of property the word is employed in several senses. In the widest sense a man’s estate comprises his entire belongings; so much of it as consists of land and certain other interests associated therewith is his “real estate”; the rest is his “personal estate.” The word is more particularly applied to interests in land, and in popular and general use “an estate” means the land itself. The strict technical meaning of “an estate” is an interest in lands, and this conception lies at the root of the English theory of property in land. “The first thing that the student has to do,” says Joshua Williams (Law of Real Property), “is to get rid of the idea of absolute ownership. Such an idea is quite unknown to the English law. No man is in law the absolute owner of lands. He can only hold an estate in them.” That is, the notion of tenure, of holding by a tenant from a lord, prevails. The last lord of all from whom all land was ultimately held was the king. Persons holding directly from the king and granting to others were the king’s tenants in capite, and were the mesne lords of their tenants.

Estates in land may be classified according to (1) the quantity of their interest or duration, (2) the time of enjoyment, and (3) the number and connexion of the tenants. According to (1), an estate may be either a freehold of inheritance or a freehold not of inheritance. A freehold of inheritance may be (a) an estate in fee simple, which is the largest estate a man can hold in English law, and comes close to the idea of absolute ownership, repudiated by Williams; an estate in fee simple is inheritable by a man’s heirs generally, he has full powers of disposition over it, and may alienate the whole or part. (b) It may also be in limited fees, which are again subdivided into (i.) qualified or base fee, (ii.) fee conditional, so called at the common law, afterwards, on the passing of the statute De Donis Conditionalibus, fee tail, which may be general as to the heirs of a man’s body, or special, as to the heirs male (or female) of his body. A freehold not of inheritance may be either (1) conventional, as an estate for life, which may be either an estate for one’s own life or for the life of another (pur autre vie); (2) legal, or created by operation of law, as tenancy in tail after possibility of issue extinct (i.e. where an estate is given to a man and the heirs of his body by his present wife, and the wife dies without issue, the husband becomes tenant in tail after possibility of issue extinct); tenancy by curtesy (see Curtesy); tenancy in dower (see Dower).

Estates not of freehold or less than freehold are subdivided into (i.) estates for years (often called estates for a term of years, the instrument creating it being termed a lease or demise, and the estate itself a leasehold interest); (ii.) estates at will, that is, where lands or tenements are let by one man to another to have and to hold at the will of the lessor; (iii.) estates at sufferance, where one comes into possession of land under a lawful title, and continues in possession after his title has determined.

According to (2), estates are either in possession or in expectancy. Estates in expectancy are either (a) in remainder, which may be vested or contingent, or (b) in reversion (see Remainder, Reversion).

According to (3), estates may be either (i.) in severalty, that is, the holding of an estate by a person in his own right only, without any other person being joined or connected with him in point of interest therein; (ii.) estates in joint tenancy (see Joint); (iii.) coparcenary (q.v.); and (iv.) tenancy in common, where two or more hold the same land, by several and distinct titles, but with unity of possession. (See also Real Property.)

2. In constitutional law an estate is an order or class having a definite share as such in the body politic, and participating either directly or by its representatives in the government. The system of representation by estates took its rise in western Europe during the 13th century, at a time when the feudal system was being broken up through various causes, notably the growing wealth and power of the towns. In the feudal council the clergy and the territorial nobles had alone had a voice; but the 13th century, to quote Stubbs (Const. Hist. ii. 168, ed. 1875), “turns the feudal council into an assembly of estates, and draws the constitution of the third estate from the ancient local machinery which it concentrates.” This is, allowing for differences of detail, true of other countries as well as England. To the two estates already existing, clergy and nobles, is added a third, that of the commons (burgesses and knights of the shire) in England, that of the roturiers in France (known as the tiers état). This division into three estates became the norm, but it was not universal, nor inevitable. Even in England there was a tendency to create other estates, the king for instance treating with the merchants separately for grants of money to be raised by taxing the general body of merchants in the country; and there was a similar tendency on the part of the lawyers. But for the accident of their sitting and voting together, the burgesses and knights of the shire would also have formed separate estates. In Aragon the cortes contained four estates (brazos or arms), the clergy, the great barons (ricos hombres), the minor barons (knights or infanzones), and the towns. The Swedish diet had also four—clergy, barons, burghers and peasants.

The system of estates, based on the medieval conception of society as divided into definite orders, formed the basis of whatever constitutional forms survived in Europe till the French Revolution. In England, of course, it had early become obscured, the House of Commons representing the whole nation outside the narrow order of the peers. The creation of an estate of lesser nobles or landowners had been prevented by the fusion of the knights of the shire with the burgesses; the spiritual estate was ruled out by the determination of the clergy to deliberate and tax themselves in their own convocation, leaving the bishops, as spiritual peers, to represent their interests in parliament.

The phrase “the three estates of the realm” still survives, but to most men it conveys no clear meaning. The erroneous conception early arose—Hallam says it was current among the popular lawyers of the 17th century—that the “three estates” were king, lords and commons, as representing the three great divisions of legislative authority. Such a conception might be possible in Hungary, where the crown of St. Stephen symbolizes not so much the royal power as the co-ordination of the powers of all the organs of the state, including the king; but in England the king represents the whole nation and in no sense a separate interest within it, which is the essence of an estate. The phrase “three estates” as applied to the English constitution at present is, in fact, misleading. It is now usually understood of the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, and the commons.

The conception of the “three estates of the realm” as the great divisions of legislative authority led in England to the coining of the phrase “fourth estate,” to indicate some power of corresponding magnitude in the state distinct from them. Fielding thus spoke of “the mob,” and Hazlitt of Cobbett; but the phrase is now usually applied to the press, a usage originating in a speech by Burke (Carlyle, Hero-worship, Lect. v.).

In the constitutional struggles of the European continent, from the Revolution onward, the rival theories of representation by estates and of popular representation have played a great part. The crucial moment of the French Revolution was when the vote according to “order” was rejected and the estates of the clergy and nobles were merged with the tiers état, the states-general thus becoming the National Assembly. This was the precedent followed, generally speaking, during the 19th century in the other countries in which constitutional government was established. In most of them the medieval estates lingered on in provincial diets (Landtage), and the famous Article XIII. of the Federal Act (Bundesakte) of Vienna decreed that “assemblies of estates” should be set up, wherever not already existing, in the German states. The efforts of Metternich and the statesmen of his school were directed, not so much to abolishing the constitutional model, as to establishing it, if need were, on traditional and conservative lines. This is what was meant by the famous reply of the emperor Francis I. to the Magyar deputation; “All the world is playing the fool and demanding fanciful constitutions.” When the need for making constitutional concessions became urgent, the attempt was accordingly made to base them on the system of estates. But the central diet convoked in 1847 by Frederick William IV. to Berlin, technically a concentration of provincial estates, quickly converted itself as Metternich had prophesied—into a national assembly; and precisely the same thing happened in the case of the first Austrian parliament in 1848. In Hungary the revolution was in some respects more conservative in character. The March Laws of 1848 preserved the general character of the House of Magnates, comparable to the British House of Lords, but converted the Lower House from what was practically representative of the estate of the lesser nobles into a national representative assembly. Of all the sovereign states of Europe only the grand-duchies of Mecklenburg still (1909) retain the ancient system of estates untouched. The diet, which is common to the two duchies, consists of the Ritterschaft, in which all tenants in chivalry (Rittergutsbesitzer), whether noble or non-noble, have a voice, and the Landschaft, which consists of the chief magistrates of the towns. The former is taken as representative of the peasant proprietors and copy-holders (Hintersassen), the latter of the burghers.

The plural form Estates or States (Fr. états, Ger. Stände) is the name commonly given to an assembly of estates (assemblée des états, Ständeversammlung). When such an assembly is not merely local or provincial it is called the estates-general or states-general (états généraux), e.g. in France the assembly of the deputies of the three estates of the realm as distinct from the provincial estates which met periodically in the so-called pays d’états.

For further details about the estates in England and elsewhere see W. Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. ii. (1896); H. Hallam, The Middle Ages (1855); F.W. Maitland, Constitutional History of England (1908); A. Luchaire, Histoire des institutions monarchiques de la France (1883-1885); G. Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte (Kiel, 1865-1878); and A.S. Rait, The Scottish Parliament (1901). See also Representation.

In Scotland the three estates were the prelates, the tenants-in-chief and the burgesses, the third estate joining the others for the first time about the beginning of the 14th century. In 1428 commissioners of shires, men elected by the minor tenants-in-chief, were ordered to appear in parliament; the greater tenants-in-chief then coalesced with the prelates and the three estates were the lords, clerical and lay, the commissioners of shires and the burgesses. From 1640 to 1660 parliament was reorganized, the prelates being excluded, but at the Restoration the old order was re-established. The Scottish parliament was accustomed to depute much of its work to a committee, composed of members from each of the three orders, and the committee of the estates was very prominent during the struggle between Charles I. and his people.

These diets are, wherever they still exist, survivals of the “parliaments” of separate territorial units.

ESTATE AND HOUSE AGENTS. A person exercising the calling of a house agent in England is required, under a penalty of £20, to take out yearly a licence upon which £2 is charged as a duty of excise, unless he is licensed as an auctioneer or appraiser, or is an agent employed in the management of landed estates, or a solicitor or conveyancer who has taken out his annual certificate as such. In this connexion a person is deemed to be a house agent if he advertises for sale or for letting, or in any way negotiates for the selling or letting of any furnished house or part of any furnished house (any storey or flat rated and let as a separate tenement being for this purpose a house); subject, however, to the qualification that no one is to be deemed to be a house agent by reason of his letting, or offering to let, or in any way negotiating for the letting of, any house the annual rent or value of which does not exceed £25.

A house agent who is merely instructed to act in the usual way of his calling has no authority to bind his employer by a contract. His business is to endeavour to find a person willing to become a purchaser or tenant and then to communicate his offer to the owner. Unless express authority is given to the agent to sell or let, and for that purpose to enter into a binding contract, the principal reserves his right to accept or refuse the offer. As a rule, a house or estate agent has no authority to receive payment on behalf of the principal. Where he is employed to procure a tenant, he must use reasonable diligence to ascertain that the person to whom the property is let through his agency is fit to be a tenant. He does not, however, in any way guarantee the payment of the rent. A house agent may not, for or in expectation of payment, prepare any deed relating to the sale or letting of real or personal estate. There is, however, no similar prohibition as to agreements not under seal, and it is a common practice for house agents to charge for the preparation of them.

House agents are usually remunerated by way of commission. The scale adopted by the Institute of Estate and House Agents embodies the rates usually charged. In the absence of express provision upon the subject between the principal and the agent, commission is payable only when the latter has found a purchaser or tenant. If, however, he had found a person willing to buy or take property upon the terms upon which the principal intimated to him his willingness to sell or let it, the principal will be liable to pay the amount of the commission, even though in fact he refuses or is unable to sell or let it. Where the agent can show that he has brought about a sale or tenancy he will be entitled to the commission notwithstanding the fact that another agent has been paid, or has recovered in an action, commission in respect of the same sale or tenancy. The agent’s authority may be revoked at any time; but, where he has already performed the service for which he was employed, the principal cannot defeat his right to be paid the amount of the commission by subsequently revoking his authority. If the agent is unsuccessful in finding a purchaser or tenant, as the case may be, he will not, as a rule, have any right to remuneration for his efforts in the matter.

Most auctioneers, in addition to holding auctions, carry on the business of house and estate agency. The number of licences issued to house agents and appraisers in England for the year ended 31st March 1899 was 4429, and for the year ended 31st March 1909, 4618. The number of licences issued to auctioneers in England for the corresponding periods was 6389 and 6543 respectively.

(H. Ha.)

ESTATE DUTY. For purposes of the national revenue in the United Kingdom, the Finance Act 1894 imposed on all property passing by death after the 1st of August 1894 a duty called estate duty, in lieu of certain other duties previously payable. The objects of the act were—(1) simplification of the death duties and equalization as between real and personal property, and (2) aggregation of all the property passing on a death, and taxation at rates graduated according to the value of the whole. Before the act a duty (probate duty) was taken on the free personal property of deceased persons in the hands of the executor or administrator, without regard to the subsequent distribution. The legacy and succession duties were levied on distribution of the property passing on the death, from the persons taking any property under the will or intestacy of the deceased, or under settlement, or by devolution of title on his death. These two latter duties were mutually exclusive, and together covered practically all property passing by death. They were levied at rates graduated according to consanguinity. In 1888 an attempt was made to equalize the rates of the death duties as between property which paid the probate and legacy duties, and property which paid succession duty only. But the Finance Act 1894 replaced the probate duty by a duty extending to all property real or personal passing on or by reference to death, whether by disposition of the deceased or not, without regard to its tenure or destination. The Finance Acts of 1907 and 1909-1910 increased the scale of duties laid down in 1894.

For this purpose all property passing on a death is aggregated to form one estate, on the capital value of which the duty is charged, at rates graduated from 1 to 15% according to the aggregate value. Besides the property of which the deceased was competent to dispose at his death, the aggregated estate includes property in which he had an interest ceasing on his death, from the cesser of which a benefit accrues, or which was disposed of by him within twelve months of death, or at any time, with reservation of an interest to himself. The extent to which property is deemed to pass on the cesser of a limited interest is measured by the proportion of the income to which the interest extended, without regard to the tenure of the deceased or his successor. Property may therefore be included in the aggregate estate at its capital value owing to the passing of a life-interest only, the property being settled so that the absolute ownership does not pass at all. But when the duty has once been paid on property passing under a settlement, the property does not again become chargeable until it passes on the death of a person who is or has been competent to dispose of it. To compensate for this advantage, when property passing under a settlement made after the act pays the estate duty, a further duty of 2% (settlement estate duty) is taken, except where the only subsequent life-interest is that of the wife or husband of the deceased.

The rate of duty being fixed according to the aggregate capital value of the whole estate, the charge is distributed according to the different modes of disposition of the property comprised in the estate. The duty on the personalty which passes to the executor as such is paid by him, as the probate duty was, and comes out of the general estate. For the other property passing, trustees, or any person to whom it passes for a beneficial interest in possession, are made accountable, and are required to bring in an account of the property and pay the duty. The duty is a first charge on such property, and, when it is paid by a person having a life-interest only, he may charge the corpus of the property with it. The duty on real property included in an account is payable by eight yearly or sixteen half-yearly instalments, becoming due twelve months after the death, and bearing interest at 3% from that date. On other property, except in a few special cases, the duty bears interest at 3% from the date of the death. When the estate duty has been paid no further duty is chargeable on property comprised in the estate which passes to lineal relations of the deceased. But on property passing to collaterals or strangers legacy or succession duty, as the case may be, is payable by the devisees or successors, at a rate (which is the same whichever duty be payable) fixed according to consanguinity.

For a detailed account of the provisions of the act of 1894 and subsequent amending acts, and of the practical working of the duty, reference is made to Austen-Cartmell, Finance Acts (1894-1907); Hanson, Death Duties (London, 1904); Soward, Handbook to the Estate Duty (4th ed., London, 1900); and to the reports of the commissioners of Inland Revenue for 1894-1895 and subsequent years.

ESTCOURT, RICHARD (1668-1712), English actor, began by playing comedy parts in Dublin. His first London appearance was in 1704 as Dominick, in Dryden’s Spanish Friar, and he continued to take important parts at Drury Lane, being the original Pounce in Steele’s Tender Husband (1705), Sergeant Kite in Farquhar’s Recruiting Officer, and Sir Francis Gripe in Mrs Centlivre’s Busybody. He was an excellent mimic and a great favourite socially. Estcourt wrote a comedy, The Fair Example, or the Modish Citizen (1703), and Prunella (1704), an interlude.

ESTE, one of the oldest of the former reigning houses of Italy. It is in all probability of Lombard origin, and descended, according to Muratori, from the princes who governed in Tuscany in Carolingian times. The lordship of the town of Este was first acquired by Alberto Azzo II., who also bore the title of marquis of Italy (d. c. 1097); he married Kunitza or Kunegonda, sister of Welf or Guelph III., duke of Carinthia. Welf died without issue, and was succeeded by Welf IV., son of Kunitza, who married a daughter of Otto II., duke of Bavaria, and who obtained the duchy of Bavaria in 1070. Through him the house of Este became connected with the princely houses of Brunswick and Hanover, from which the sovereigns of England are descended. The Italian titles and estates were inherited by Folco I. (1060-1135), son of Alberto Azzo by his second wife Gersende, daughter of Herbert I., count of Maine. The house of Este played a great part in the history of medieval and Renaissance Italy, and it first comes to the front in the wars between the Guelphs and Ghibellines; as leaders of the former party its princes received at different times Ferrara, Modena, Reggio and other fiefs and territories.

Obizzo I., son of Folco, was the first to bear the title of marquis of Este. He entered into the Guelphic league against the emperor Frederick I., and was comprehended in the treaty of Venice of 1177 by which municipal podestàs (foreigners chosen as heads of cities to administer justice impartially) were instituted. He was elected podestà of Padua in 1178, and in 1184 he was reconciled with Frederick, who created him marquis of Genoa and Milan, a dignity somewhat similar to that of imperial vicar. By the marriage of his son Azzo to the heiress of the Marchesella family (the story that she was carried off to prevent her marrying an enemy of the Este is a pure legend), he came to acquire great influence in Ferrara, although he was opposed by the hardly less powerful house of Torelli.

Obizzo died in 1194 and Azzo V. having predeceased him, the marquisate devolved on his grandson Azzo VI. (1170-1212), who became head of the Guelph party, and to him the people of Ferrara sacrificed their liberty by making him their first lord (1208). But during his lifetime civil war raged in the city, between the Este and the Torelli, each party being driven out again and again. Azzo (also called Azzolino) died in 1212 and was succeeded by Aldobrandino I., who in 1213 concluded a treaty with Salinguerra Torelli, the head of that house, to divide the government of the city between them. On his death in 1215 he was succeeded by his brother Azzo VII. (1205-1264), surnamed Novello, but Salinguerra Torelli usurped all power in Ferrara and expelled Azzo (1222). In 1240 Pope Gregory IX. determined on another war against the emperor Frederick II., but deemed it wise to begin by crushing the chief Ghibelline houses. Thus Azzo found himself in league with the pope and various Guelph cities in his attempt to regain Ferrara. That town underwent a four months’ siege, and was at last compelled to surrender; Salinguerra was sent to Venice as a prisoner, and Azzo ruled in Ferrara once more. The Ghibelline party was annihilated, but the city enjoyed peace and happiness within, although her citizens took part in the wars raging outside. The Guelph cause triumphed, Frederick being defeated several times, and after his death Azzo helped in crushing the terrible Eccelino da Romano (q.v.) who upheld the imperial cause, at the battle of Cassano (1259). He died in 1264 and was succeeded by Obizzo II. (1240-1293) his grandson, who in 1288 received the lordship of Modena, and that of Reggio in 1289. He was a capable but cruel ruler, and while professing devotion to the Guelph cause, did homage to the German king Rudolph I. when he descended into Italy.

Obizzo II. died in 1293 and was succeeded by his son Azzo VIII., but the latter’s brothers, Aldobrandino and Francesco, who were to have shared in the government, were expelled and became his bitter enemies. The misgovernment of Azzo led to the revolt of Reggio and Modena, which shook off his yoke. Enemies arose on all sides, and he spent his last years in perpetual fighting. He died in 1308, and having no legitimate children, his brothers, his natural son Fresco, and others disputed the succession. A papal legate was appointed, and though the Este returned they were placed under pontifical tutelage.

The history of the house now becomes involved and of little interest until we come to Nicholas III. (1384-1441), who exercised sway over Ferrara, Modena, Parma and Reggio, waged many wars, was made general of the army of the Church, and in his later years governor of Milan, where he died, not without suspicion of poison. To him succeeded Lionello (1407-1450), a wise and virtuous ruler and a patron of literature and art; then Borso (1413-1471), his brother, who was created duke of Modena and Reggio by the emperor Frederick III., and duke of Ferrara by the pope. In spite of the wars by which all Italy was torn, Ferrara enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity under Borso; he patronized literature, established a printing-press at Ferrara, surrounded himself with learned men, and his court was of unparalleled splendour. He also protected industry and commerce, and ruled with great wisdom. His brother Ercole I. (1431-1505), who succeeded him in 1471, was less fortunate, and had to engage in a war with Venice, owing to a dispute about the salt monopoly, with the result that by the peace of 1484 he was forced to cede the district of Polesine to the republic. But the last years of his life were peaceful and prosperous, so that afterwards men looked back to the days of Ercole I. as to a golden age; his capital was noted both for its luxury and as the resort of men eminent in literature and art. Boiardo the poet was his minister, and Ariosto obtained his patronage.

Ercole’s daughter Beatrice d’Este (1475-1497), duchess of Milan, one of the most beautiful and accomplished princesses of the Italian Renaissance, was bethrothed at the age of five to Lodovico Sforza (known as il Moro), duke of Bari, regent and afterwards duke of Milan, and was married to him in January 1491. She had been carefully educated, and availed herself of her position as mistress of one of the most splendid courts of Italy to surround herself with learned men, poets and artists, such as Niccolò da Correggio, Bernardo Castiglione, Bramante, Leonardo da Vinci and many others. In 1492 she visited Venice as ambassador for her husband in his political schemes, which consisted chiefly in a desire to be recognized as duke of Milan. On the death of Gian Galeazzo Sforza, Lodovico’s usurpation was legalized, and after the battle of Fornovo (1495) both he and his wife took part in the peace congress of Vercelli between Charles VIII. of France and the Italian princes, at which Beatrice showed great political ability. But her brilliant career was cut short by death through childbirth, on the 3rd of January 1497. She belongs to the best class of Renaissance women, and was one of the culture influences of the age; to her patronage and good taste are due to a great extent the splendour of the Castello of Milan, of the Certosa of Pavia and of many other famous buildings in Lombardy.

Her sister Isabella d’Este (1474-1539), marchioness of Mantua, was carefully educated both in letters and in the arts like Beatrice, and was married when barely sixteen to Francesco Gonzaga, marquis of Mantua (1490). She showed great diplomatic and political skill, especially in her negotiations with Cesare Borgia (q.v.), who had dispossessed Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, the husband of her sister-in-law and intimate friend Elisabetta Gonzaga (1502). She received the deposed duke and duchess, as well as other princes in the same condition, at her court of Mantua, which was one of the most brilliant in Italy, and like her sister she gathered together many eminent men of letters and artists, Raphael, Andrea Mantegna and Giulio Romano being among those whom she employed. Both she and her husband were greatly influenced by Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529), author of Il Cortigiano, and it was at his suggestion that Giulio Romano was summoned to Mantua to enlarge the Castello and other buildings. Isabella was “undoubtedly, among all the princesses of the 15th and 16th centuries, the one who most strikingly and perfectly personified the aspirations of the Renaissance” (Eugène Müntz); but her character was less attractive than that of her sister, and in her love of collecting works of art she showed a somewhat grasping nature, being ever anxious to cut down the prices of the artists who worked for her.

To Ercole I. succeeded his son Alphonso I. (1486-1534), the husband of Lucrezia Borgia (q.v.), daughter of Pope Alexander VI. During nearly the whole of his reign he was engaged in the Italian wars, but by his diplomatic skill and his military ability he was for many years almost always successful. He was gifted with great mechanical skill, and his artillery was of world-wide reputation. On the formation of the league of Cambrai against Venice in 1508, he was appointed to the supreme command of the papal troops by Julius II.; but after the Venetians had sustained a number of reverses they made peace with the pope and joined him against the French. Alphonso was invited to co-operate in the new combination, and on his refusal war was declared against him; but although he began by losing Modena and Reggio, he subsequently inflicted several defeats on the papal troops. He fought on the side of the French at the battle of Ravenna (1512), from which, although victorious, they derived no advantage. Soon afterwards they retired from Italy, and Alphonso, finding himself abandoned, tried to make his peace with the pope, through the mediation of Fabrizio Colonna. He went to Rome for the purpose and received absolution, but on discovering that Julius meant to detain him a prisoner, he escaped in disguise, and the pope’s death in 1513 gave him a brief respite. But Leo X. proved equally bent on the destruction of the house of Este, when he too was cut off by death. Alphonso availed himself of the troubles of the papacy during the reign of the equally hostile Clement VII. to recapture Reggio (1523) and Modena (1527), and was confirmed in his possession of them by the emperor Charles V., in spite of Clement’s opposition.

He died in 1534, and was succeeded by his son Ercole II. (1508-1559), who married Renée, daughter of Louis XII. of France, a princess of Protestant proclivities and a friend of Calvin. On joining the league of France and the papacy against Spain, Ercole was appointed lieutenant-general of the French army in Italy. The war was prosecuted, however, with little vigour, and peace was made with Spain in 1558. The duke and his brother, Cardinal Ippolito the Younger, were patrons of literature and art, and the latter built the magnificent Villa d’ Este at Tivoli. He was succeeded by Alphonso II. (1533-1597), remembered for his patronage of Tasso, whom he afterwards imprisoned. He reorganized the army, enriched the public library, encouraged agriculture, but was extravagant and dissipated. With him the main branch of the family came to an end, and although at his death he bequeathed the duchy to his cousin Cesare (1533-1628), Pope Clement VIII., renewing the Church’s hostility to the house of Este, declared that prince to be of illegitimate birth (a doubtful contention), and by a treaty with Lucrezia, Alphonso’s sister, Ferrara was made over to the Holy See. Cesare held Modena and Reggio, but with him the Estensi cease to play an important part in Italian politics. For two centuries this dynasty had been one of the greatest powers in Italy, and its court was perhaps the most splendid in Europe, both as regards pomp and luxury and on account of the eminent artists, poets and scholars which it attracted.

The subsequent heads of the family were: Alphonso III., who retired to a monastery in 1629 and died in 1644; Francis I. (1610-1658), who commanded the French army in Italy in 1647; Alphonso IV. (1634-1662), the father of Mary Beatrice, the queen of James II. of England, who fought in the French army during the Spanish War, and founded the picture gallery of Modena; Francis II. (1660-1694), who originated the Este library, also at Modena, and founded the university; Rinaldo (1655-1737), through whose marriage with Charlotte Felicitas of Brunswick-Lüneburg the long-separated branches of the house of Este were reunited; Francis III. (1698-1780), who married the daughter of the regent Philip of Orleans. Francis III. wished to remain neutral during the war between Spain and Austria (1740), but the imperialists having occupied and devastated his duchy, he took the Spanish side and was appointed generalissimo of the Spanish army in Italy. He was re-established in his possessions by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), and on being reconciled with the empress Maria Theresa, he received from her the title of governor of Lombardy in 1754. With his son Ercole III. Rinaldo (1727-1803), who at the peace of Campoformio lost his duchy, the male line of the Estensi came to an end. His only daughter, Marie Beatrice (d. 1829), was married to the archduke Ferdinand, third son of the emperor Francis I. Ferdinand was created duke of Breisgau in 1803, and at his death in 1806 he was succeeded by his son Francis IV. (q.v.), to whom the duchy of Modena was given at the treaty of Vienna in 1814. He died in 1846 and was succeeded by Francis V. (q.v.), who lost his possessions by the events of 1859. With his death in 1875 the title and estates passed to the archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The children of Lady Augusta Murray, daughter of the earl of Dunmore, by her marriage with Augustus Frederick, duke of Sussex, sixth son of George III. of Great Britain, assumed the old name of d’ Este, and claimed recognition as members of the royal family; but as the marriage was in violation of the royal marriages act of 1773, it was declared invalid, and their claims were set aside.

Bibliography.—G. Antonelli, Saggio di una bibliografia storica ferrarese (Ferrara, 1851); L.A. Muratori, Delle antichità estensi ed italiane (3 vols., 1717, &c.), the chief and most reliable authority on the subject, containing a quantity of documents; A. Frizzi, Memorie per la storia di Ferrara (2nd ed., Ferrara, 1847); A. Solerti, Ferrara e la corte estense nella seconda metà del sec. XVI. (Città di Castello, 1900); C. Antolini, Il dominio estense in Ferrara (Ferrara, 1896), which deals with the siege of 1240 and other special points; E.G. Gardner, Princes and Poets of Ferrara (London, 1904), a bulky volume dealing only with the Renaissance period, full of interesting and unpublished matter, especially about the literary and artistic associations of the house, but not well put together (contains good bibliography); G. Bertoni, La Biblioteca estense e la coltura ferrarese ai tempi del duca Ercole I. (Turin, 1903), useful for the literary aspect of the subject; P. Litta, Le Celebri Famiglie italiane, vol. iii. (Milan, 1831), still a valuable work; E. Noyes, The Story of Ferrara (London, 1904); Julia Cartwright’s Isabella d’Este (London, 1903), and Beatrice d’Este (1899), pleasantly written but amateurish volumes based on A. Luzio’s Mantova e Urbino (Turin, 1893); A. Luzio and R. Renier, “Delle relazioni di Isabella d’Este Gonzaga con Lodovico e Beatrice Sforza” (Milan, 1890, Archivio Storico Lombardo, xvii.).

(L. V.*)

i.e. Margrave of the Empire (marchio Sancti Imperii) in Italy. (See Marquess.)

Another son of Azzo and Gersende became count of Maine as Hugh III. (d. 1131).

ESTE (anc. Ateste, q.v.), a town and episcopal see of Venetia, Italy, in the province of Padua, 20 m. S.S.W. of it by rail. Pop. (1901) 8671 (town); 10,779 (commune). It lies 49 ft. above sea-level below the southern slopes of the Euganean Hills. The external walls of the castle still rise above the town on the N., but the interior is now occupied by the cattle-market. A fragment of the once enormous Palazzo Mocenigo, of the 16th century, is now occupied by the important archaeological museum (see Ateste). The cathedral was erected in 1690-1720, on the site of an older building destroyed by an earthquake in 1688. S. Martino is a church in the Lombard Romanesque style. The archives in the Palazzo Comunale are important.

After the Roman period the history of Este is a blank until the Lombard period, in which it was dependent on Monselice. In the 10th century the family of Este (see above) established itself in the castle above the town. At the end of the 13th century Padua, which had already captured Este more than once, became definitely mistress of it. When the Carrara family succumbed in 1405, Este voluntarily surrendered to Venice and was allowed its independence, under a podestà; and thenceforth it followed the fortunes of Venetia.

ESTÉBANEZ CALDERÓN, SERAFÍN (1799-1867), a Spanish author, best known by the pseudonym of “El Solitario,” was born at Málaga on the 27th of December 1799. His first literary effort was El Listón verde, a poem signed “Safinio” and written to celebrate the revolution of 1820. He was called to the bar, and settled for some time at Madrid, where he published a volume of verses in 1831 under the assumed name of “El Solitario.” He obtained an exaggerated reputation as an Arabic scholar, and played a minor part in the political movements of his time. He died at Madrid on the 5th of February 1867. His most interesting work, Escenas andaluzas (1847), is in a curiously affected style, the vocabulary being partly archaic and partly provincial; but, despite its eccentric mannerisms, it is a vivid record of picturesque scenes and local customs. Estébanez Calderón is also the author of an unfinished history, De la conquista y pérdida de Portugal (1883), issued posthumously under the editorship of his nephew, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo.

ESTELLA, a town of northern Spain, in the province of Navarre, on the left bank of the river Ega, 15 m. W.S.W. of Pamplona. Pop. (1900) 5736. Estella, which occupies the site of a Roman town of uncertain name, contains several monasteries and churches, a medieval citadel, and a college which was formerly a university. Its principal industries are the manufacture of woollen and linen fabrics and brandy-making; and it has a considerable trade in fruit, wine and cattle. Estella commands several defiles on the roads from Castile and Aragon, and on that account occupies a position of considerable strategic importance. It was long the headquarters of Don Carlos, who was proclaimed king here in 1833. In 1873 it was the chief stronghold of the Carlists, and in 1874, when driven from other places, they succeeded in retiring to Estella. On the 16th of February 1876 the Carlists in the town surrendered unconditionally. For an account of the Carlist rising see Spain: History.

ESTERHÁZY OF GALÁNTHA, a noble Magyar family. Its origin has been traced, not without some uncertainty, to Salamon of Estoras, whose sons Péter and Illyés divided their patrimony in 1238. Péter founded the family of Zerházy, and Illyés that of Illyesházy, which became extinct in the male line in 1838. The first member of the family to emerge definitely into history was Ferencz Zerházy (1563-1594), vice lord-lieutenant of the county of Pressburg, who took the name of Esterházy when he was created Freiherr of Galántha, an estate acquired by the family in 1421. His eldest son, Dániel (d. 1654), founded the house of Czesznek, the third, Pál (d. 1641), the line of Zólyom (Altsohl), and the fourth, Miklós, that branch of the family which occupies the most considerable place in Hungarian history, that of Fraknó or Forchtenstein.

This Miklós [Nicholas] Esterházy of Galántha (1582-1645) was born at Galántha on the 8th of April 1582. His parents were Protestants, and he himself, at first, followed the Protestant persuasion; but he subsequently went over to Catholicism and, along with Cardinal Pázmány, his most serious rival at court, became a pillar of Catholicism, both religiously and politically, and a worthy opponent of the two great Protestant champions of the period, Gabriel Bethlen and George I. Rákóczy. In 1611 he married Orsolyá, the widow of the wealthy Ferencz Mágocsy, thus coming into possession of her gigantic estates, and in 1622 he acquired Fraknó. Matthias II. made him a baron (1613), count of Beregh (1617), and lord-lieutenant of the county of Zólyom and magister curiae regiae (1618). At the coronation of Ferdinand II., when he officiated as grand-standard-bearer, he received the order of the Golden Fleece and fresh donations. At the diet of Sopron, 1625, he was elected palatine of Hungary. As a diplomatist he powerfully contributed to bring about the peace of Nikolsburg (1622) and the peace of Linz (1645) (see Hungary: History). His political ideal was the consolidation of the Habsburg dynasty as a means towards freeing Hungary from the Turkish yoke. He himself, on one occasion (1623), defeated the Turks on the banks of the Nyitra; but anything like sustained operations against them was then impossible. He was also one of the most eminent writers of his day. He died at Nagy-Heflán on the 11th of September 1645, leaving five sons.

See Works of Nicholas Esterházy, with a biography by Ferencz Toldi (Hung.) (Pest, 1852); Nicholas Count Esterházy, Palatine of Hungary (a biography, Hung.) (Pest, 1863-1870).

His third son Pál [Paul] (1635-1713), prince palatine, founded the princely branch of the family of Esterházy. He was born at Kis Marton (Eisenstadt) on the 7th of September 1635. In 1663 he fought, along with Miklós Zrinyi, against the Turks, and distinguished himself under Montecuculi. In 1667 he was appointed commander-in-chief in south Hungary, where he defeated the malcontents at Leutschau and Györk. In 1681 he was elected palatine. In 1683 he participated in the deliverance of Vienna from the Turks, and entered Buda in 1686 at the head of 20,000 men. Thoroughly reactionary, and absolutely devoted to the Habsburgs, he contributed more than any one else to the curtailing of the privileges of the Magyar gentry in 1687, when he was created a prince of the Empire, with (in 1712) succession to the first-born of his house. His “aulic tendencies” made him so unpopular that his offer of mediation between the Rákóczy insurgents and the government was rejected by the Hungarian diet, and the negotiations, which led to the peace of Szatmár (see Hungary: History), were entrusted to János Pállfy. He died on the 26th of March 1713. He loved the arts and sciences, wrote several religious works, and was one of the chief compilers of the Trophaeum Domus Inclytae Estoratianae.

See Lajos Merényi, Prince Paul Esterházy (Hung.) (Budapest, 1895).

Prince Pál Antal, grandson of the prince palatine Pál, was a distinguished soldier, who rose to the rank of field-marshal in 1758. On his death in 1762 he was succeeded by his brother.

Prince Miklós József [Nicholas Joseph] (1714-1790), also a brilliant soldier, is perhaps best remembered as a patron of the fine arts. For his services in command of an infantry brigade at Kolin (1757) he was specially mentioned by Count Daun, and became one of the original members of the order of Maria Theresa. In 1762 he was appointed captain of Maria Theresa’s Hungarian body-guard, in 1764 Feldzeugmeister, and in 1768 field marshal. His other honours included the Golden Fleece and the grade of commander in the order of Maria Theresa. Joseph II. conferred the princely title, which had previously been limited to the eldest-born of the house, on all his descendants, male and female. Esterházy died in Vienna on the 28th of September 1790. He rebuilt in the Renaissance style Schloss Esterházy, the splendour of which won for it the name of the Hungarian Versailles. Haydn was for thirty years conductor of his private orchestra and general musical director, and many of his compositions were written for the private theatre and the concerts of this prince.

His grandson, Prince Miklós [Nicholas] (1765-1833) was born on the 12th of December 1765. He began life as an officer in the guards, subsequently making the grand tour, which first awakened his deep interest in art. He quitted the army for diplomacy after reaching the rank of Feldzeugmeister, and was employed as extraordinary ambassador, on special occasions, when he displayed a magnificence extraordinary even for the Esterházys. He made at Vienna an important collection of paintings and engravings, which came into the possession of the Hungarian Academy at Budapest in 1865. At his summer palace of Kis Marton (Eisenstadt) he erected a monument to Haydn. His immense expenditure on building and the arts involved the family in financial difficulties for two generations. When the French invaded Austria in 1797, he raised a regiment of 1000 men at his own expense. In 1809, when Napoleon invited the Magyars to elect a new king to replace the Habsburgs, overtures were made to Prince Nicholas, who refused the honour and, further, raised a regiment of volunteers in defence of Austrian interests. He died at Como on the 24th of November 1833.

His son, Prince Pál Antal [Paul Anthony] (1786-1866), entered the diplomatic service. In 1806 he was secretary of the embassy in London, and in 1807 worked with Prince Metternich in the same capacity in Paris. In 1810 he was accredited to the court of Dresden, where he tried in vain to detach Saxony from Napoleon, and in 1814 he accompanied his father on a secret mission to Rome. He took a leading part in all the diplomatic negotiations consequent upon the wars of 1813-1815, especially at the congress of Châtillon, and on the conclusion of peace was, at the express desire of the prince regent, sent as ambassador to London. In 1824 he represented Austria as ambassador extraordinary at the coronation of Charles X., and was the premier Austrian commissioner at the London conferences of 1830-1836. In 1842 he quitted diplomacy for politics and attached himself to “the free-principles party.” He was minister for foreign affairs in the first responsible Hungarian ministry (1848), but resigned his post in September because he could see no way of reconciling the court with the nation. The last years of his life were spent in comparative poverty and isolation, as even the Esterházy-Forchtenstein estates were unequal to the burden of supporting his fabulous extravagance and had to be placed in the hands of curators.

The cadet branch of the house of Fraknó, the members of which bear the title of count, was divided into three lines by the sons of Ferencz Esterházy (1641-1683).

The eldest of these, Count Antal (1676-1722), distinguished himself in the war against Rákóczy in 1703, but changed sides in 1704 and commanded the left wing of the Kuruczis at the engagements of Nagyszombat (1704) and Vereskö (1705). In 1706 he defeated the imperialist general Guido Stahremberg and penetrated to the walls of Vienna. Still more successful were his operations in the campaign of 1708, when he ravaged Styria, twice invaded Austria, and again threatened Vienna, on which occasion the emperor Joseph narrowly escaped falling into his hands. In 1709 he was routed by the superior forces of General Sigbert Heister at Palota, but brought off the remainder of his arms very skilfully. In 1710 he joined Rákóczy in Poland and accompanied him to France and Turkey. He died in exile at Rodosto on the shores of the Black Sea. His son Bálint József [Valentine Joseph], by Anna Maria Nigrelli, entered the French army, and was the founder of the Hallewyll, or French, branch of the family, which became extinct in the male line in 1876 with Count Ladislas.

See Count Esterházy’s Campaign Diary (Hung.), ed. by K. Thaly (Pest, 1901).

Count Bálint Miklós (1740-1805), son of Bálint József, was an enthusiastic partisan of the duc de Choiseul, on whose dismissal, in 1764, he resigned the command of the French regiment of which he was the colonel. It was Esterházy who conveyed to Marie Antoinette the portrait of Louis XVI. on the occasion of their betrothal, and the close relations he maintained with her after her marriage were more than once the occasion of remonstrance on the part of Maria Theresa, who never seems to have forgotten that he was the grandson of a rebel. At the French court he stood in high favour with the comte d’Artois. He was raised to the rank of maréchal de camp, and made inspector of troops in the French service in 1780. At the outbreak of the French Revolution, he was stationed at Valenciennes, where he contrived for a time to keep order, and facilitated the escape of the French emigrés by way of Namur; but, in 1790, he hastened back to Paris to assist the king. At the urgent entreaty of the comte d’Artois in 1791 he quitted Paris for Coblenz, accompanied Artois to Vienna, and was sent to the court of St Petersburg the same year to enlist the sympathies of Catherine II. for the Bourbons. He received an estate from Catherine II., and although the gift was rescinded by Paul I., another was eventually granted him. He died at Grodek in Volhynia on the 23rd of July 1805.

See Mémoires, ed. by E. Daudet (Fr.) (Paris, 1905), and Lettres (Paris, 1906).

Two other sons of Count Ferencz (d. 1685), Ferencz and József, founded the houses of Dotis and Cseklész (Landschütz) respectively. Of their descendants, Count Móricz (1807-1890) of Dotis, Austrian ambassador in Rome until 1856, became in 1861 a member of the ministry formed by Anton Schmerling and in 1865 joined the clerical cabinet of Richard Belcredi. His bitter hostility to Prussia helped to force the government of Vienna into the war of 1866. His official career closed in 1866, but he remained one of the leaders of the clerical party.

See also Count János Esterházy, Description of the Esterházy Family (Hung., Budapest, 1901).

(R. N. B.)

ESTERS, in organic chemistry, compounds formed by the condensation of an alcohol and an acid, with elimination of water; they may also be considered as derivatives of alcohols, in which the hydroxylic hydrogen has been replaced by an acid radical, or as acids in which the hydrogen of the carboxyl group has been replaced by an alkyl or aryl group. In the case of the polybasic acids, all the hydrogen atoms can be replaced in this way, and the compounds formed are known as “neutral esters.” If, however, some of the hydrogen of the acid remain undisplaced, then “acid esters” result. These acid esters retain some of the characteristic properties of the acids, forming, for example, salts, with basic oxides. Esters may be prepared by heating the silver salt of an acid with an alkyl iodide; by heating the alcohols or alcoholates with an acid chloride; by distilling the anhydrous sodium salt of an acid with a mixture of the alcohol and concentrated sulphuric acid; or by heating for some hours on the water bath, a mixture of an acid and an alcohol, with a small quantity of hydrochloric or sulphuric acids (E. Fischer and A. Speier, Ber., 1896, 28, p. 3252).

The esters of the aliphatic and aromatic acids are colourless neutral liquids, which are generally insoluble in water, but readily dissolve in alcohol and ether. Many possess a fragrant odour and are prepared in large quantities for use as artificial fruit essences. They hydrolyse readily when boiled with solutions of caustic alkalies or mineral acids, yielding the constituent acid and alcohol. When heated with ammonia, they yield acid amides (q.v.). They form unstable addition products with sodium ethylate or methylate. With the Grignard reagent, they form addition compounds which on the addition of water yield tertiary alcohols, except in the case of ethyl formate, where a secondary alcohol is obtained.

N. Menschutkin (Ber., 1882, 15, p. 1445; Ann., 1879, 195, p. 334) examined the rate of esterification of many acids with alcohols. It was found that the normal primary alcohols were all esterified at about the same rate, the secondary alcohols more slowly than the primary, and the tertiary alcohols still more slowly. The investigation also showed that the nature of the acid used affected the result, for in an homologous series of acids it was found that as the molecule of the acid became more complex, the rate of esterification became less. The formation of an ester by the interaction of an acid with an alcohol is a “reversible” or “balanced” action, for as M. Berthelot and L. Péan de St Gilles (Ann. Chim. Phys., 1862 (3), 65, p. 385 et seq.) have shown in the case of the formation of ethyl acetate from ethyl alcohol and acetic acid, a point of equilibrium is reached, beyond which the reacting system cannot pass, unless the system be disturbed in some way by the removal of one of the products of the reaction. V. Meyer (Ber., 1894, 27, p. 510 et seq.) showed that in benzenoid compounds ortho-substituents exert a great hindering effect on the esterification of alcohols by acids in the presence of hydrochloric acid, this hindering being particularly marked when two substituents are present in the ortho positions to the carboxyl group. In such a case the ester is best prepared by the action of an alkyl halide on the silver salt of the acid, and when once prepared, can only be hydrolysed with great difficulty.

Ethyl formate, H·CO2C2H5, boils at 55° C. and has been used in the artificial preparation of rum. Ethyl acetate (acetic ether), CH3·CO2C2H5, boils at 75° C. Isoamylisovalerate, C4H9·CO2C5H11, boils at 196° C. and has an odour of apples. Ethyl butyrate, C3H7·CO2C2H5, boils at 121° C. and has an odour of pineapple. The fats (q.v.) and waxes (q.v.) are the esters of the higher fatty acids and alcohols. The esters of the higher fatty acids, when distilled under atmospheric pressure, are decomposed, and yield an olefine and a fatty acid.

Esters of the mineral acids are also known and may be prepared by the ordinary methods as given above. The neutral esters are as a rule insoluble in water and distil unchanged; on the other hand, the acid esters are generally soluble in water, are non-volatile, and form salts with bases. Ethyl hydrogen sulphate (sulphovinic acid), C2H5·HSO4, is obtained by the action of concentrated sulphuric acid on alcohol. The ester is separated from the solution by means of its barium salt, and the salt decomposed by the addition of the calculated amount of sulphuric acid. It is a colourless oily liquid of strongly acid reaction; its aqueous solution decomposes on standing and on heating it forms diethyl sulphate and sulphuric acid. Dimethyl sulphate, (CH3)2SO4, is a colourless liquid which boils at 187°-188° C., with partial decomposition. It is used as a methylating agent (F. Ullmann). Great care should be taken in using dimethyl and diethyl sulphates, as the respiratory organs are affected by the vapours, leading to severe attacks of pneumonia. Ethyl nitrate, C2H5·ONO2, is a colourless liquid which boils at 86.3° C. It is prepared by the action of nitric acid on ethyl alcohol (some urea being added to the nitric acid, in order to destroy any nitrous acid that might be produced in secondary reactions and which, if not removed, would cause explosive decomposition of the ethyl nitrate). It burns with a white flame and is soluble in water. When heated with ammonia it yields ethylamine nitrate, and when reduced with tin and hydrochloric acid it forms hydroxylamine (q.v.) (W.C. Lossen). Ethyl nitrite, C2H5·ONO, is a liquid which boils at 18° C.; the crude product obtained by distilling a mixture of alcohol, sulphuric and nitric acids and copper turnings is used in medicine under the name of “sweet spirits of nitre.” Amyl nitrite, C5H11·ONO, boils at 96° C. and is used in the preparation of the anhydrous diazonium salts (E. Knoevenagel, Ber., 1890, 23, p. 2094). It is also used in medicine.

ESTHER. The Book of Esther, in the Bible, relates how a Jewish maiden, Esther, cousin and foster-daughter of Mordecai, was made his queen by the Persian king Ahasuerus (Xerxes) after he had divorced Vashti; next, how Esther and Mordecai frustrated Haman’s endeavour to extirpate the Jews; how Haman, the grand-vizier, fell, and Mordecai succeeded him; how Esther obtained the king’s permission for the Jews to destroy all who might attack them on the day which Haman had appointed by lot for their destruction; and lastly, how the feast of Purim (Lots?) was instituted to commemorate their deliverance. Frequent incidental references are made to Persian court-usages (explanations are given in i. 13, viii. 8), while on the other hand the religious rites of the Jews (except fasting), and even Jerusalem and the temple, and the name of Israel, are studiously ignored. Even the name of God is not once mentioned, perhaps from a dread of its profanation during the Saturnalia of Purim. The early popularity of the book is shown by the interpolated passages in the Septuagint and the Old Latin versions.

The criticism of Esther began in the 18th century. As soon as the questioning spirit arose, the strangeness of many statements in the book leaped into view. A moderate scholar of our day can find no historical nucleus, and calls it a sort of historical romance. The very first verses in the book startle the reader by their exaggerations, e.g. a banquet lasting 180 days, “127 provinces.” Farther on, the improbabilities of the plot are noticeable. Esther, on her elevation, keeps her Jewish origin secret (ii. 10; cf. vii. 3 ff.), although she has been taken from the house of her uncle, who is known to be a Jew (iii. 4; cf. vi. 13), and has remained in constant intercourse with him (ii. 11, 19, 20, 22; cf. iv. 4-17). We are further told that the grand-vizier was an Agagite or Amalekite (iii. 1, &c.); would the nobility of Persia have tolerated this? Or did Haman too keep his non-Persian origin secret? Also that Mordecai offered a gross affront to Haman, for which no slighter punishment would satisfy Haman than the destruction of the whole Jewish race (iii. 2-6). Of this savage design eleven months’ notice is given (iii. 12-14); and when the danger has been averted by the cleverness of Esther, the provincial Jews are allowed to butcher 75,000, and those in the capital 800 of their Persian fellow-subjects (ix. 6-16).

It is urged, on the other hand, that the assembly mentioned in i. 3 may be that referred to by Herodotus (vii. 8) as having preceded the expedition against Greece. This hypothesis, however, requires us to suppose that Xerxes had returned from Sardis to Susa by the tenth month of the seventh year of his reign, which is barely credible. In the reckoning of 127 provinces (cf. Dan. vi. 1; 1 Esd. iii. 2) satrapies and sub-satrapies may be confounded. It is at any rate correct to include India among the provinces; this is justified, not only by Herodotus (iii. 94), but by the inscriptions of Darius at Persepolis and Naksh-i-Rustam. Herodotus again (vii. 8) confirms the custom referred to in Esth. ii. 12. But what authority can make the conduct of Mordecai credible? To-day the harem is impenetrable, while “any one declining to stand as the grand-vizier passes is almost beaten to death.” This, surely, is what a real Mordecai would have suffered from a real Haman. Even the capricious Xerxes would never have permitted the entire destruction of one of the races of the empire, nor would a vizier have proposed it.

Serious difficulties of another kind remain. Mordecai is represented as a fellow-captive of Jeconiah (597 B.C.), and grand-vizier in Xerxes’s twelfth year (474 B.C.)! This is parallel to the strange statement in Tobit xiv. 15. And how can we find room for Esther as queen by the side of Amestris (Herod. vii. 14, ix. 112)? How, too, can a Jewess have been a legal queen (see Herod. iii. 84)? Then take the supposed Persian proper names. “Ahasuerus” may no doubt stand, but very few of the rest (see Nöldeke, Ency. Bib. col. 1402). As to the style, the general verdict is that it points to a late date (see Driver, Introd.6, p. 484). Altogether, critics decline to date the book earlier than the 3rd or even 2nd century B.C.

So far we have only been carrying on 18th-century criticism. In more recent years, however, new lines of inquiry have been opened up. First of all by the great Semitic scholar Lagarde. His thesis (seldom defended now) was that Purim corresponds to Fūrdigan, the name of the old Persian New Year’s and All Souls’ festival held in spring, on which the Persians were wont to exchange presents (cf. Esth. ix. 19). In 1891 came a new explanation of Esther from Zimmern. It is true that in its earlier form his theory was very incomplete. But in justice to this scholar we may notice that from the first he looked for light to Babylonia, and that many other critics now take up the same position. There is also another new point which has to be mentioned, viz. that, judging from our experience elsewhere, the Book of Esther has probably passed through various stages of development. Here, then, are two points which call for investigation, viz. (1) a possible mythological element in Esther, and (2) possible stages of development prior to that represented by the Hebrew text.

As to the first point. The Second Targum (on Esth. ii. 7) long ago declared that Esther was so called “because she was like the planet Venus.” Recent scholars have expressed the same idea more critically. Esther is a modification of Ishtar, the name of the Babylonian goddess of fertility and of the planet Venus, whose myth must have been partially known to the Israelites even in pre-exilic times, and after the fall of the state must have acquired a still stronger hold on Jewish exiles. A general knowledge of the myth of Marduk among the Israelites cannot indeed be proved. Singularly enough, the Babylonian colonists in the cities of Samaria are said to have made idols, not of Marduk, but of a deity called Succoth-benoth (2 Kings xvii. 30). Nor does the Second Targum help us here; it gives a wild explanation of Mordecai as “pure myrrh.” Still it is plain that the name of the god Marduk (Merodach) was known to the Jews, and the Cosmogony in Gen. i. is considered by critics to have ultimately arisen out of the myth of Marduk’s conflict with the dragon (see Cosmogony). At any rate the name Mordecai (the vocalization is uncertain) looks very much like Marduk, which, with terminations added, often occurs in cuneiform documents as a personal name. Add to this, that, according to Jensen, Ishtar in mythology was the cousin of Marduk, just as the legend represents Esther as the cousin of Mordecai. The same scholar also accounts for Esther’s other name Hadassah (Esth. ii. 7); hadasshatu in Babylonian means “bride,” which may have been a title of Ishtar.

But we cannot stop short here. Unless the mythological key can also explain Haman and Vashti, it is of no use. Jensen, now followed by Zimmern, is equal to the occasion. Haman, he says, is a corruption of Hamman or Humman or Uman, the name of the chief deity of the Elamites, in whose capital (Susa) the scene of the narrative is laid, while Vashti is Mashti (or Vashti), probably the name of an Elamite goddess.

Following the real or fancied light of these names, Prof. Jensen holds that the Esther-legend is based on a mythological account of the victory of the Babylonian deities over those of Elam, which in plain prose means the deliverance of ancient Babylonia from its Elamite oppressors, and that such an account was closely connected with the Babylonian New Year’s festival, called Zagmuk, just as the Esther-legend is connected with the festival of Purim.

We are bound, however, to mention some critical objections. (1) The Babylonian festival corresponding to Purim was not the spring festival of Zagmuk, but the summer festival of Ishtar, which is probably the Sacaea of Berossus, an orgiastic festival analogous to Purim. (2) According to Jensen’s theory, Mordecai, and not Esther, ought to be the direct cause of Haman’s ruin. (3) No such Babylonian account as Jensen postulates can be indicated. (4) The identifications of names are hazardous. Fancy a descendant of Kish called Marduk, and an “Agagite” called Hamman! Elsewhere Mordecai (Ezra ii. 2; Neh. vii. 7) occurs among names which are certainly not Persian (Bigvai is no exception), and Haman (Tobit xiv. 10) appears as a nephew of Achiachar, which is not a Persian name. Esther, moreover, ought to be parallel to Judith; fancy likening the representative of Israel to the goddess Ishtar!

Next, as to the preliminary literary phases of Esther. Such phases are probable, considering the later phases represented in the Septuagint. There may have once existed in Hebrew a story of the deadly feud between Mordecai (if that be the original name) and Haman, with elements suggested by the story of the battle between the Supreme God and the dragon (see Cosmogony). As the legend stands, Mordecai and Esther seem to be in each other’s way. In a passage (i. 5 in LXX.) only found in the Septuagint, but which may have belonged to the original Esther, reference is made to a dream of Mordecai respecting two great dragons, i.e. Mordecai and Haman (x. 7). This seems to confirm the view here mentioned. If so, however, there must also have been an Esther-legend, which was afterwards worked up with that of Mordecai. This is, in fact, the view of Erbt. Winckler takes a different line. Linguistic facts and certain points in the contents seem to him to show that our Esther is a work of the age of the Seleucidae; more precisely he thinks of the time of the revolt of Molon under Antiochus III. Of course there was a Book of Esther before this, and even in its redacted form our Esther reflects the period of three Persian kings, viz. Cyrus, Cambyses and Darius. Lastly, Cheyne (Ency. Bib. “Purim,” § 7), while agreeing with Winckler that the book is based on an earlier narrative, holds that that earlier text differed more widely from the present in its geographical and historical setting than Winckler seems to suppose. The problem of the origin of the name Purim, however, can hardly be said to have received a final solution.

Bibliography.—Kuenen, History of Israel, iii. (1875), 148-153; Lagarde, Purim (1887); Zimmern in Stade’s Zeitschrift, xi. (1891), pp. 157-169, and Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament(3), 485, 515-520, Jensen in Wildeboer’s Esther (in Marti’s series, 1898), pp. 173-175; Winckler, Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament(3), p. 288, Altorientalische Forschungen, 3rd ser. i. 1-64; Erbt, Die Purimsage (1900); Ency. Biblica, articles “Esther” and “Purim” (a composite article).

(T. K. C.)

Additions to Book of Esther. These “additions” were written originally in Greek and subsequently interpolated in the Greek translation of the Book of Esther. Here the principle of interpolation has reached its maximum. Of 270 verses, 107 are not to be found in the Hebrew text. These additions are distributed throughout the book in the Greek, but in the Latin Bible they were relegated to the end of the canonical book by Jerome—an action that has rendered them meaningless. In the Greek the additions form with the canonical text a consecutive history. They were made probably in the time of the Maccabees, and their aim was to supply the religious element which is so completely lacking in the canonical work. The first, which gives the dream of Mordecai and the events which led to his advancement at the court of Artaxerxes, precedes chap. i. of the canonical text: the second and fifth, which follow iii. 13 and viii. 12, furnish copies of the letters of Artaxerxes referred to in these verses; the third and fourth, which are inserted after chap. iv., consist of the prayers of Mordecai and Esther, with an account of Esther’s approach to the king. The last, which closes the book, tells of the institution of the feast of Purim. The Greek text appears in two widely-differing recensions. The one is supported by ABא, and the other—a revision of the first—by codices 19, 93a, 108b. The latter is believed to have been the work of Lucian. Swete, Old Test. in Greek, ii. 755, has given the former, while Lagarde has published both texts with critical annotations in his Librorum Veteris Testamenti Canonicorum, i. 504-541 (1883), and Scholz in his Kommentar über das Buch Esther (1892).

For an account of the Latin and Syriac versions, the Targums, and the later Rabbinic literature connected with this subject, and other questions relating to these additions, see Fritzsche, Exeget. Handbuch zu den Apok. (1851), i. 67-108; Schürer(3), iii. 330-332; Fuller in Speaker’s Apocr. i. 360-402; Ryssel in Kautzsch’s Apok. u. Pseud. i. 193-212; Siegfried in Jewish Encyc. v. 237 sqq.; Swete, Introd. to the Old Test. in Greek, 257 seq.; L.B. Paton, “A Text-Critical Apparatus to the Book of Esther” in O.T. and Semitic Studies in Memory of W.R. Harper (Chicago, 1908).

(R. H. C.)

Kautzsch, Old Testament Literature (1898), p. 130.

So Morier, the English minister to the Persian court, quoted by Dean Stanley.

See Zimmern, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Test.(3), p. 438.

Ibid. p. 396.

Johns, Assyrian Deeds, iii. 198-199; Amer. Journ. of Sem. Languages (April 1902), p. 158.

So too Zimmern, in Gunkel’s Schöpfung und Chaos, p. 313, note 2.

ESTHONIA (Ger. Ehstland and Esthland, Esthonian Eestimaa and Meie-maa, also Viroma and Rahvama; Lettish Iggaun Senna), a Baltic province of Russia, stretching along the south coast of the Gulf of Finland, and having Lake Peipus and Livonia on the S. and the government of St Petersburg on the E. An archipelago of islands, of which Dagö is the largest, belongs to this government (Oesel belongs to Livonia). The area is 7818 sq. m., 503 sq. m. of this being insular. The surface is low, not exceeding 100 ft. in altitude along the coast and alongside Lake Peipus, while in the interior the average elevation ranges from 200 to 300 ft., and nowhere exceeds 450 ft. It was entirely covered with the bottom moraine of the great ice-sheet of the Glacial Epoch, resting upon Silurian sandstones and limestones. In places sands and clays overlie the glacial deposits. The principal stream is the Narova, which issues from Lake Peipus, flows along the eastern border, and empties into the Gulf of Finland. The other drainage arteries are all small, but many in number; while lakes and marshes aggregate fully 22½% of the total surface. The climate is severe, great cold being experienced in winter, though moist west winds exercise a moderating influence. Nevertheless the annual mean temperature ranges between 39° and 43° Fahr. In 1878 the nobility, mostly of German descent, owned and farmed 52% of the land; 42% was farmed, but not owned, by the peasants, mostly Esths or Ehsts, and only 3% was owned by persons outside the ranks of the nobility. Since then one-fourth of the peasantry have been enabled to purchase their holdings, more than half a million acres having passed into their possession. Agriculture is the chief occupation, and it is, on all the larger holdings, carried on with greater scientific knowledge than in any other part of Russia. Of the total area about 16.6% is under cultivation; meadows and grass-lands amount to 41.7%; and forests cover 19%. The principal crops are rye, oats, barley and potatoes, with large quantities of vegetables. Cattle-breeding flourishes, and meat and butter are constantly increasing items of export. The manufactories consist chiefly of distilleries (over 13,500,000 gallons annually), cotton (at Kränholm falls on the Narova), woollen, flour, paper and saw mills, iron and machinery works, and match factories. Fishing is active along the coast, especially for anchovies. The province is intersected by a railway running from St Petersburg to Reval, with branches from the latter city westwards to Baltic Port and southwards into Livonia, and from Taps south to Yuryev (Dorpat). The chief seaports are Reval, Baltic Port, Hapsal, Kunda and Dagö. Esthonia is divided into four districts, the chief towns of which are Reval (pop. in 1897, 66,292), the capital of the province; Hapsal, a lively watering-place (3238); Weissenstein (2509); and Wesenberg (5560). The population, which consists chiefly of Ehstes (365,959 in 1897), Russians (18,000), Germans (16,000), Swedes (5800), and some Jews, is growing fairly fast: in 1870 it numbered 323,960, and in 1897 413,747, of whom 210,199 were women and 76,315 lived in towns; in 1906 it was estimated at 451,700. Ninety-six per cent. of the whole belong to the Lutheran Church. Education is, for Russia, relatively high.

The Esths, Ehsts or Esthonians, who call themselves Tallopoeg and Maamees, are known to the Russians as Chukhni or Chukhontsi, to the Letts as Iggauni, and to the Finns as Virolaiset. They belong to the Finnish family, and consequently to the Ural-Altaic division of the human race. Altogether they number close upon one million, and are thus distributed: 365,959 in Esthonia (in 1897), 518,594 in Livonia, 64,116 in the government of St Petersburg, 25,458 in that of Pskov, and 12,855 in other parts of Russia. As a race they exhibit manifest evidences of their Ural-Altaic or Mongolic descent in their short stature, absence of beard, oblique eyes, broad face, low forehead and small mouth. In addition to that they are an under-sized, ill-thriven people, with long arms and thin, short legs. They cling tenaciously to their native language, which is closely allied to the Finnish, and divisible into two, or according to some authorities into three, principal dialects—Dorpat Esthonian and Reval Esthonian, with Pernau Esthonian. Reval Esthonian, which preserves more carefully the full inflectional forms and pays greater attention to the laws of euphony, is recognized as the literary language. Since 1873 the cultivation of their mother-tongue has been sedulously promoted by an Esthonian Literary Society (Eesti Korjameeste Selts), which publishes Toimetused, or “Instructions” in all sorts of subjects. They have a decided love of poetry, and exhibit great facility in improvising verses and poems on all occasions, and they sing, everywhere, from morning to night. Like the Finns they possess rich stores of national songs. These, which bear an unmistakable family likeness to those of the great Finnish epic of the Kalevala, were collected as the Kalevi Poëg, and edited by Kreutswald (1857), and translated into German by Reinthal (1857-1859) and Bertram (1861) and by Löwe (1900). Other collections of Esthnische Volkslieder have been published by Neuss (1850-1852) and Kreutzwald and Neuss (1854); while Kreutzwald (1866) and Jannsen (1888) have published collections of legends and national tales. The earliest publication in Esthonian was a Lutheran catechism in the 16th century. An Esthonian translation of the New Testament was printed at Reval in 1715. Between 1813 and 1832 there appeared at Pernau twenty volumes of Beiträge zur genauern Kenntniss der esthnischen Sprache, by Rosenplänter, and from 1840 onwards many valuable papers on Esthonian subjects were contributed to the Verhandlungen der gelehrten esthnischen Gesellschaft zu Dorpat. F.J. Wiedemann, who laboured indefatigably in the registration and preservation of matters connected with Esthonian language and lore, published an Esthnisch-deutsches Wörterbuch (1865; 2nd ed. by Hurt, 1891, &c.), and in 1903 there appeared at Reval a Deutsch-esthnisches Wörterbuch, by Ploompun and Kann.

The Esthonians first appear in history as a warlike and predatory race, the terror of the Baltic seamen in consequence of their piracies. More than one of the Danish kings made serious attempts to subdue them. Canute VI. invaded their country (1194-1196) and forced baptism upon many of them, but no sooner did his war-ships disappear than they reverted to their former heathenism. In 1219 Waldemar II. undertook a more formidable crusade against them, in the course of which he founded the town and episcopal see of Reval. By his efforts the northern portion of the race were made submissive to the Danish crown; but, though conquered, they were by no means subdued, and were incessantly in revolt, until, after a great rebellion in 1343, Waldemar IV. Atterdag sold for 19,000 marks his portion of Esthonia in 1346, to the order of the Knights of the Sword. These German crusaders had already, after a quarter of a century’s fighting, in 1224 gained possession of the regions inhabited by the southern portion of the race, that is those now included in Livonia. From that time for nearly six hundred years or more the Esthonians were practically reduced to a state of serfdom to the German landowners. In 1521 the nobles and cities of Esthonia voluntarily placed themselves under the protection of the crown of Sweden; but after the wars of Charles XII., Esthonia was formally ceded to his victorious rival, Peter the Great, by the peace of Nystad (1721). Serfdom was abolished in 1817 by Tsar Alexander I.; but the condition of the peasants was so little improved that they rose in open revolt in 1859. Since 1878, however, a vast change for the better has been effected in their economic position (see above). The determining feature of their recent history has been the attempt made by the Russian government (since 1881) and the Orthodox Greek Church (since 1883) to russify and convert the inhabitants of the province, Germans and Esths alike, by enforcing the use of Russian in the schools and by harsh and repressive measures aimed at their native language.

See Merkel, Die freien Letten und Esthen (1820); Parrot, Versuch einer Entwickelung der Sprache, Abstammung, &c., der Liwen, Lätten, Eesten (1839); F. Kruse, Urgeschichte des esthnischen Volksstammes (1846); Wiedemann, Grammatik der esthnischen Sprache (1875), and Aus dem innern und äussern Leben der Esthen (1876); Köppen, Die Bewohner Esthlands (1847); F. Müller, Beiträge zur Orographie und Hydrographie von Esthland (1869-1871); Bunge, Das Herzogthum Esthland unter den Königen von Dänemark (1877); and Seraphim, Geschichte Liv-, Est-, und Kurlands (2nd ed., 1897) and various papers in the Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen.

(P. A. K.; J. T. Be.; C. El.)

ESTIENNE (or Étienne; the French form of the name; anglicized to Stephens, and latinized to Stephanus), a French family of scholars and printers.

The founder of the race was Henri Estienne (d. 1520), the scion of a noble family of Provence, who came to Paris in 1502, and soon afterwards set up a printing establishment at the top of the rue Saint-Jean de Beauvais, on the hill of Saint-Geneviève opposite the law school. He died in 1520, and, his three sons being minors, the business was carried on by his foreman Simon de Colines, who in 1521 married his widow.

Robert Estienne (1503-1559) was Henri’s second son. After his father’s death he acted as assistant to his stepfather, and in this capacity superintended the printing of a Latin edition of the New Testament in 16mo (1523). Some slight alterations which he had introduced into the text brought upon him the censures of the faculty of theology. It was the first of a long series of disputes between him and that body. It appears that he had intimate relations with the new Evangelical preachers almost from the beginning of the movement, and that soon after this time he definitely joined the Reformed Church. In 1526 he entered into possession of his father’s printing establishment, and adopted as his device the celebrated olive-tree (a reminiscence doubtless of his grandmother’s family of Montolivet), with the motto from the epistle to the Romans (xi. 20), Noli altum sapere, sometimes with the addition sed time. In 1528 he married Perrette, a daughter of the scholar and printer Josse Bade (Jodocus Badius), and in the same year he published his first Latin Bible, an edition in folio, upon which he had been at work for the last four years. In 1532 appeared his Thesaurus linguae Latinae, a dictionary of Latin words and phrases, upon which for two years he had toiled incessantly, with no other assistance than that of Thierry of Beauvais. A second edition, greatly enlarged and improved, appeared in 1536, and a third, still further improved, in 3 vols. folio, in 1543. Though the Thesaurus is now superseded, its merits must not be forgotten. It was vastly superior to anything of the kind that had appeared before; it formed the basis of future labours, and even as late as 1734 was considered worthy of being re-edited. In 1539 Robert was appointed king’s printer for Hebrew and Latin, an office to which, after the death of Conrad Neobar in 1540, he united that of king’s printer for Greek. In 1541 he was entrusted by Francis I. with the task of procuring from Claude Garamond, the engraver and type-founder, three sets of Greek type for the royal press. The middle size were the first ready, and with these Robert printed the editio princeps of the Ecclesiasticae Historiae of Eusebius and others (1544). The smallest size were first used for the 16mo edition of the New Testament known as the O mirificam (1546), while with the largest size was printed the magnificent folio of 1550. This edition involved the printer in fresh disputes with the faculty of theology, and towards the end of the following year he left his native town for ever, and took refuge at Geneva, where he published in 1552 a caustic and effective answer to his persecutors under the title Ad censuras theologorum Parisiensium, quibus Biblia a R. Stephano, Typographo Regio, ex usa calumniose notarunt, eiusdem R. S. responsio. A French translation, which is remarkable for the excellence of its style, was published by him in the same year (printed in Rénouard’s Annales de l’imprimerie des Estienne). At Geneva Robert proved himself an ardent partisan of Calvin, several of whose works he published. He died there on the 7th of September 1559.

It is by his work in connexion with the Bible, and especially as an editor of the New Testament, that he is on the whole best known. The text of his New Testament of 1550, either in its original form or in such slightly modified form as it assumed in the Elzevir text of 1634, remains to this day the traditional text. But this is due rather to its typographical beauty than to any critical merit. The readings of the fifteen MSS. which Robert’s son Henri had collated for the purpose were merely introduced into the margin. The text was still almost exactly that of Erasmus. It was, however, the first edition ever published with a critical apparatus of any sort. Of the whole Bible Robert printed eleven editions—eight in Latin, two in Hebrew and one in French; while of the New Testament alone he printed twelve—five in Greek, five in Latin and two in French. In the Greek New Testament of 1551 (printed at Geneva) the present division into verses was introduced for the first time. The editiones principes which issued from Robert’s press were eight in number, viz. Eusebius, including the Praeparatio evangelica and the Demonstratio evangelica as well as the Historia ecclesiastica already mentioned (1544-1546), Moschopulus (1545), Dionysius of Halicarnassus (February 1547), Alexander Trallianus (January 1548), Dio Cassius (January 1548), Justin Martyr (1551), Xiphilinus (1551), Appian (1551), the last being completed, after Robert’s departure from Paris, by his brother Charles, and appearing under his name. These editions, all in folio, except the Moschopulus, which is in 4to, are unrivalled for beauty. Robert also printed numerous editions of Latin classics, of which perhaps the folio Virgil of 1532 is the most noteworthy, and a large quantity of Latin grammars and other educational works, many of which were written by Maturin Cordier, his friend and co-worker in the cause of humanism.

Charles Estienne (1504 or 1505-1564), the third son of Henri, was, like his brother Robert, a man of considerable learning. After the usual humanistic training he studied medicine, and took his doctor’s degree at Paris. He was for a time tutor to Jean Antoine de Baïf, the future poet. In 1551, when Robert Estienne left Paris for Geneva, Charles, who had remained a Catholic, took charge of his printing establishment, and in the same year was appointed king’s printer. In 1561 he became bankrupt, and he is said to have died in a debtors’ prison.

His principal works are Praedium Rusticum (1554), a collection of tracts which he had compiled from ancient writers on various branches of agriculture, and which continued to be a favourite book down to the end of the 17th century; Dictionarium historicum ac poëticum (1553), the first French encyclopaedia; Thesaurus Ciceronianus (1557), and De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, with well-drawn woodcuts (1548). He also published a translation of an Italian comedy, Gli Ingannati, under the title of Le Sacrifice (1543; republished as Les Abusez, 1549), which had some influence on the development of French comedy; and Paradoxes (1553), an imitation of the Paradossi of Ortensio Landi.

Henri Estienne (1531-1598), sometimes called Henri II., was the eldest son of Robert. In the preface to his edition of Aulus Gellius (1585), addressed to his son Paul, he gives an interesting account of his father’s household, in which, owing to the various nationalities of those who were employed on the press, Latin was used as a common language. Henri thus picked up Latin as a child, but by his own request he was allowed to learn Greek as a serious study before Latin. At the age of fifteen he become a pupil of Pierre Danès, at that time the first Greek scholar in France. Two years later he began to attend the lectures of Jacques Toussain, one of the royal professors of Greek, and in the same year (1545) was employed by his father to collate a MS. of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. In 1547 he went to Italy, where he spent three years in hunting for and collating MSS. and in intercourse with learned men. In 1550 he visited England, where he was favourably received by Edward VI., and then Flanders, where he learnt Spanish. In 1551 he joined his father at Geneva, which henceforth became his home. In 1554 he gave to the world, as the first fruits of his researches, two first editions, viz. a tract of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the so-called “Anacreon.” In 1556 he discovered at Rome ten new books (xi.-xx.) of Diodorus Siculus. In 1557 he issued from the press which in the previous year he had set up at Geneva three first editions, viz. Athenagoras, Maximus Tyrius, and some fragments of Greek historians, including Appian’s Ἀννιβαλική, and Ἰβηρική and an edition of Aeschylus, in which for the first time the Agamemnon was printed in entirety and as a separate play. In 1559 he printed a Latin translation from his own pen of Sextus Empiricus, and an edition of Diodorus Siculus with the new books. His father dying in the same year, he became under his will owner of his press, subject, however, to the condition of keeping it at Geneva. In 1566 he published his best-known French work, the Apologie pour Hérodote, or, as he himself called it, L’Introduction au traité de la conformité des merveilles anciennes avec les modernes ou Traité préparatif à l’Apologie pour Hérodote. Some passages being considered objectionable by the Geneva consistory, he was compelled to cancel the pages containing them. The book became highly popular, and within sixteen years twelve editions were printed. In 1572 he published the great work upon which he had been labouring for many years, the Thesaurus Graecae linguae, in 5 vols. fol. The publication in 1578 of his Deux Dialogues du nouveau françois ilalianizé brought him into a fresh dispute with the consistory. To avoid their censure he went to Paris, and resided at the French court for a year. On his return to Geneva he was summoned before the consistory, and, proving contumacious, was imprisoned for a week. From this time his life became more and more of a nomad one. He is to be found at Basel, Heidelberg, Vienna, Pest, everywhere but at Geneva, these journeys being undertaken partly in the hope of procuring patrons and purchasers, for the large sums which he had spent on such publications as the Thesaurus and the Plato of 1578 had almost ruined him. His press stood nearly at a standstill. A few editions of classical authors were brought out, but each successive one showed a falling off. Such value as the later ones had was chiefly due to the notes furnished by Casaubon, who in 1586 had married his daughter Florence. His last years were marked by ever-increasing infirmity of mind and temper. In 1597 he left Geneva for the last time. After visiting Montpellier, where Casaubon was now professor, he started for Paris, but was seized with sudden illness at Lyons, and died there at the end of January 1598.

Few men have ever served the cause of learning more devotedly. For over thirty years the amount which he produced, whether as printer, editor or original writer, was enormous. The productions of his press, though printed with the same beautiful type as his father’s books, are, owing to the poorness of the paper and ink, inferior to them in general beauty. The best, perhaps, from a typographical point of view, are the Poëtae Graeci principes (folio, 1566), the Plutarch (13 vols. 8vo, 1572), and the Plato (3 vols. folio, 1578). It was rather his scholarship which gave value to his editions. He was not only his own press-corrector but his own editor. Though by the latter half of the 16th century nearly all the important Greek and Latin authors that we now possess had been published, his untiring activity still found some gleanings. Eighteen first editions of Greek authors and one of a Latin author are due to his press. The most important have been already mentioned. Henri’s reputation as a scholar and editor has increased of late years. His familiarity with the Greek language has always been admitted to have been quite exceptional; but he has been accused of want of taste and judgment, of carelessness and rashness. Special censure has been passed on his Plutarch, in which he is said to have introduced conjectures of his own into the text, while pretending to have derived them from MS. authority. But a late editor, Sintenis, has shown that, though like all the other editors of his day he did not give references to his authorities, every one of his supposed conjectures can be traced to some MS. Whatever may be said as to his taste or his judgment, it seems that he was both careful and scrupulous, and that he only resorted to conjecture when authority failed him. And, whatever the merit of his conjectures, he was at any rate the first to show what conjecture could do towards restoring a hopelessly corrupt passage. The work, however, on which his fame as a scholar is most surely based is the Thesaurus Graecae linguae. After making due allowance for the fact that considerable materials for the work had been already collected by his father, and that he received considerable assistance from the German scholar Sylburg, he is still entitled to the very highest praise as the producer of a work which was of the greatest service to scholarship and which in those early days of Greek learning could have been produced by no one but a giant. Two editions of the Thesaurus were published in the 19th century—at London by Valpy (1815-1825) and at Paris by Didot (1831-1863).

It was one of Henri Estienne’s great merits that, unlike nearly all the French scholars who preceded him, he did not neglect his own language. In the Traité de la conformité du langage françois avec le Grec (published in 1565, but without date; ed. L. Feugère, 1850), French is asserted to have, among modern languages, the most affinity with Greek, the first of all languages. Deux Dialogues du nouveau françois italianizé (Geneva, 1578; ed. P. Ristelhuber, 2 vols., 1885) was directed against the fashion prevailing in the court of Catherine de’ Medici of using Italian words and forms. The Project du livre intitulé de la Précellence du langage françois (Paris, 1579; ed. E. Huguet, 1896) treats of the superiority of French to Italian. An interesting feature of the Précellence is the account of French proverbs, and, Henry III. having expressed some doubts as to the genuineness of some of them, Henri Estienne published, in 1594, Les Premices ou le I. livre des Proverbes epigrammatizez (never reprinted and very rare).

Finally, there remains the Apologie pour Hérodote, his most famous work. The ostensible object of the book is to show that the strange stories in Herodotus may be paralleled by equally strange ones of modern times. Virtually it is a bitter satire on the writer’s age, especially on the Roman Church. Put together without any method, its extreme desultoriness makes it difficult to read continuously, but the numerous stories, collected partly from various literary sources, notably from the preachers Menot and Maillard, partly from the writer’s own multifarious experience, with which it is packed, make it an interesting commentary on the manners and fashions of the time. But satire, to be effective, should be either humorous or righteously indignant, and, while such humour as there is in the Apologie is decidedly heavy, the writer’s indignation is generally forgotten in his evident relish for scandal. The style is, after all, its chief merit. Though it bears evident traces of hurry, it is, like that of all Henri Estienne’s French writings, clear, easy and vigorous, uniting the directness and sensuousness of the older writers with a suppleness and logical precision which at this time were almost new elements in French prose. An edition of the Apologie has recently been published by Liseux (ed. Ristelhuber, 2 vols., 1879), after one of the only two copies of the original uncancelled edition that are known to exist. The very remarkable political pamphlet entitled Dìscours merveilleux de la vie et actions et déportemens de Catherine de Medicis, which appeared in 1574, has been ascribed to Henri Estienne, but the evidence both internal and external is conclusive against his being the author of it. Of his Latin writings the most worthy of notice are the De Latinitate falso suspecta (1576), the Pseudo-Cicero (1577) and the Nizoliodidascalus (1578), all three written against the Ciceronians, and the Francofordiense Emporium (1574), a panegyric on the Frankfort fair (reprinted with a French translation by Liseux, 1875). He also wrote a large quantity of indifferent Latin verses, including a long poem entitled Musa monitrix Principum (Basel, 1590).

The primary authorities for an account of the Estiennes are their own works. In the garrulous and egotistical prefaces which Henri was in the habit of prefixing to his editions will be found many scattered biographical details. Twenty-seven letters from Henri to John Crato of Crafftheim (ed. F. Passow, 1830) have been printed, and there is one of Robert’s in Herminjard’s Correspondence des Réformateurs dans de pays de langue française (9 vols. published 1866-1897), while a few other contemporary references to him will be found in the same work. The secondary authorities are Janssen van Almeloveen, De vitis Stephanorum (Amsterdam, 1683); Maittaire, Stephanorum historia (London, 1709); A.A. Rénouard, Annales de l’imprimerie des Estienne (2nd ed., Paris, 1843); the article on Estienne by A.F. Didot in the Nouv. Biog. gén.; Mark Pattison, Essays, i. 67 ff. (1889); L. Clément, Henri Estienne et son œuvre française (Paris, 1899). There is a good account of Henri’s Thesaurus in the Quart. Rev. for January 1820, written by Bishop Bromfield.

(A. A. T.)

ESTON, an urban district in the Cleveland parliamentary division of the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, 4 m. S.E. of Middlesbrough, on a branch of the North Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 11,199. This is one of the principal centres from which the great ironstone deposits of the Cleveland Hills are worked, and there are extensive blast-furnaces, iron-foundries and steam sawing-mills in the district. Immediately W. of Eston lies the urban district of Ormesby (pop. 9482), and the whole district is densely populated (see Middlesbrough). Marton, west of Ormesby, was the birthplace of Captain Cook (1728). Numerous early earthworks fringe the hills to the south.

ESTOPPEL (from O. Fr. estopper, to stop, bar; estoupe, mod. étoupe, a plug of tow; Lat. stuppa), a rule in the law of evidence by which a party in litigation is prohibited from asserting or denying something, when such assertion or denial would be inconsistent with his own previous statements or conduct. Estoppel is said to arise in three ways—(1) by record or judgment, (2) by deed, and (3) by matter in pais or conduct. (1) Where a cause of action has been tried and final judgment has been pronounced, the judgment is conclusive—either party attempting to renew the litigation by a new action would be estopped by the judgment. “Every judgment is conclusive proof as against parties and privies, of facts directly in issue in the case, actually decided by the court, and appearing from the judgment itself to be the ground on which it was based.”—Stephen’s Digest of the Law of Evidence, Art. 41. (2) It is one of the privileges of deeds as distinguished from simple contracts that they operate by way of estoppel. “A man shall always be estopped by his own deed, or not permitted to aver or prove anything in contradiction to what he has once so solemnly and deliberately avowed” (Blackstone, 2 Com. 295); e.g. where a bond recited that the defendants were authorized by acts of parliament to borrow money, and that under such authority they had borrowed money from a certain person, they were estopped from setting up as a defence that they did not in fact so borrow money, as stated by their deed. (3) Estoppel by conduct, or, as it is still sometimes called, estoppel by matter in pais, is the most important head. The rule practically comes to this that, when a person in his dealings with others has acted so as to induce them to believe a thing to be true and to act on such belief, he may not in any proceeding between himself and them deny the thing to be true: e.g. a partner retiring from a firm without giving notice to the customers, cannot, as against a customer having no knowledge of his retirement, deny that he is a partner. As between landlord and tenant the principle operates to prevent the denial by the tenant of the landlord’s title. So if a person comes upon land by the licence of the person in possession, he cannot deny that the licenser had a title to the possession at the time the licence was given. Again, if a man accepts a bill of exchange he may not deny the signature or the capacity of the drawer. So a person receiving goods as baillee from another cannot deny the title of that other to the goods at the time they were entrusted to him.

Estoppel of whatever kind is subject to one general rule, that it cannot override the law of the land; for example, a corporation would not be estopped as to acts which are ultra vires.

See L.F. Everest and E. Strode, The Law of Estoppel; M. Cababé, Principles of Estoppel.

ESTOUTEVILLE, GUILLAUME D’ (1403-1483), French ecclesiastic, was bishop of Angers, of Digne, of Porto and Santa Rufina, of Ostia and Velletri, archbishop of Rouen, prior of Saint Martin des Champs, abbot of Mont St Michel, of St Ouen at Rouen, and of Montebourg. He was sent to France as legate by Pope Nicholas V. to make peace between Charles VII. and England (1451), and undertook, ex officio, the revision of the trial of Joan of Arc; he afterwards reformed the statutes of the university of Paris. He then went to preside over the assembly of clergy which met at Bourges to discuss the observation of the Pragmatic Sanction (see Basel, Council of), finally returning to Rome, where he passed almost all the rest of his life. He was a great builder, Rouen, Mont St Michel, Pontoise and Gaillon owing many noble buildings to his initiative.

ESTOVERS (from the O. Fr. estover, estovoir, a verb used as a substantive in the sense of that which is necessary; the word is of disputed origin; it has been referred to the Lat. stare, to stand, or studere, to desire), a term, in English law, for the wood which a tenant for life or years may take from the land he holds for repair of his house, the implements of husbandry, and the hedges and fences, and for firewood. The O. Eng. word for estover was bote or boot (literally meaning “good,” “profit,” the same word as seen in “better”). The various kinds of estovers were thus known as house-bote, cart or plough-bote, hedge or hay-bote, and fire-bote respectively. These rights may, of course, be restricted by express covenants. Copyholders have similar rights over the land they occupy and over the waste of the manor, in which case the rights are known as “Commons of estovers.” (See Commons.)

ESTRADA, LA, a town of north-western Spain, in the province of Pontevedra, 15 m. S. by E. of Santiago de Compostela. Pop. (1900) 23,916. La Estrada is the chief town of a densely-populated mountainous district; its industries are agriculture, stock-breeding, and the manufacture of linen and woollen cloth. Timber from the mountain forests is conveyed from La Estrada to the river Ulla, 4 m. N., and thence floated down to the seaports on Arosa Bay. The nearest railway-station is Requeijo, 7 m. W., on the Pontevedra-Santiago railway. There are mineral springs at La Estrada and at Caldas de Reyes, 11 m. W.S.W.

ESTRADE, a French architectural term for a raised platform (see Dais). In the Levant the estrade of a divan is called Sopha (Blondel), from which comes our “sofa.”

ESTRADES, GODEFROI, Comte d’ (1607-1686), French diplomatist and marshal, was born at Agen. He was the son of François d’Estrades (d. 1653), a partisan of Henry IV., and brother of Jean d’Estrades, bishop of Condom. He became a page to Louis XIII., and at the age of nineteen was sent on a mission to Maurice of Holland. In 1646 he was named ambassador extraordinary to Holland, and took part in the conferences at Münster. Sent in 1661 to England, he obtained in 1662 the restitution of Dunkirk. In 1667 he negotiated the treaty of Breda with the king of Denmark, and in 1678 the treaty of Nijmwegen, which ended the war with Holland. Independently of these diplomatic missions, he took part in the principal campaigns of Louis XIV., in Italy (1648), in Catalonia (1655), in Holland (1672); and was created marshal of France in 1675. He left Lettres, mémoires et négociations en qualité d’ambassadeur en Hollande depuis 1663 jusqu’ en 1668, of which the first edition in 1700 was followed by a nine-volume edition (London (the Hague), 1743).

Of the sons of Godefroi d’Estrades, Jean François d’Estrades was ambassador to Venice and Piedmont; Louis, marquis d’Estrades (d. 1711), succeeded his father as governor of Dunkirk, and was the father of Godefroi Louis, comte d’Estrades, lieutenant-general, who was killed at the siege of Belgrade, 1717.

See Felix Salomon, Frankreichs Beziehungen zu dem Scottischen Aufstand (1637-1640), containing an excursus on the falsification of the letters of the comte d’Estrades; Philippe Lauzun, Le Maréchal d’Estrades (Agen, 1896).

ESTREAT (O. Fr. estrait, Lat. extracta), originally, a true copy or duplicate of some original writing or record; now used only with reference to the enforcement of a forfeited recognizance. At one time it was the practice to extract and certify into the exchequer copies of entries in court roils which contained provisions or orders in favour of the treasury, hence the estreating of a recognizance was the taking out from among the other records of the court in which it was filed and sending it to the exchequer to be enforced, or sending it to the sheriff to be levied by him, and then returned by the clerk of the peace to the lords of the treasury. (See Recognizance.)

ESTRÉES, GABRIELLE D’ (1573-1599), mistress of Henry IV. of France, was the daughter of Antoine d’Estrées, marquis of Cœuvres, and Françoise Babou de la Bourdaisière. Henry IV., who in November 1590 stayed at the castle of Cœuvres, became violently enamoured of her. Her father, anxious to save his daughter from so perilous an entanglement, married her to Nicholas d’Amerval, seigneur de Liancourt, but the union proved unhappy, and in December 1592, Gabrielle, whose affection for the king was sincere, became his mistress. She lived with him from December 1592 onwards, and bore him several children, who were recognized and legitimized by him. She possessed the king’s entire confidence; he willingly listened to her advice, and created her marchioness of Monceaux, duchess of Beaufort (1597) and Étampes (1598), a peeress of France. The king even proposed to marry her in the event of the success of his suit for the nullification by the Holy See of his marriage with Margaret of Valois; but before the question was settled Gabrielle died, on the 10th of April 1599. Poison was of course suspected; but her death was really caused by puerperal convulsions (eclampsia).

See Adrien Desclozeaux, Gabrielle d’Estrées, Marquise de Monceaux, &c. (Paris, 1889).

ESTREMADURA, or Extremadura, an ancient territorial division of central and western Portugal, and of western Spain; comprising the modern districts of Leiria, Santarem and Lisbon, in Portugal, and the modern provinces of Badajoz and Cáceres in Spain. Pop. (1900) 2,095,818; area, 23,055 sq. m. The name of Estremadura appears to be of early Romance or Late Latin origin, and probably was applied to all the far western lands (extrema ora) bordering upon the lower Tagus, as far as the Atlantic Ocean. It is thus equivalent to Land’s End, or Finistère. In popular speech it is more commonly used than the names of the modern divisions mentioned above, which were created in the 19th century. As, however, there are many racial, economic and historic differences between Portuguese and Spanish Estremadura, the two provinces are separately described below.

1. Portuguese Estremadura is bounded on the N. by Beira, E. and S. by Alemtejo, and W. by the Atlantic Ocean. Pop. (1900) 1,221,418; area, 6937 sq. m. The greatest length of the province, from N. to S., is 165 m.; its greatest breadth, from E. to W., is 72 m. The general uniformity of the coast-line is broken by the broad and deep estuaries of the Tagus and the Sado, and by the four conspicuous promontories of Cape Carvoeiro, Cape da Roca, Cape Espichel and Cape de Sines. The Tagus is the great navigable waterway of Portuguese Estremadura, flowing from north-east to south-west, and fed by many minor tributaries, notably the Zezere on the right and the Zatas on the left. It divides the country into two nearly equal portions, wholly dissimilar in surface and character. South of the Tagus the land is almost everywhere low, flat and monotonous, while in several places it is rendered unhealthy by undrained marshes. The Sado, which issues into Setubal Bay, is the only important river of this region. North of the Tagus, and parallel with its right bank, extends the mountain chain which is known at its northern extremity as the Serra do Aire and, where it terminates above Cape da Roca, as the Serra da Cintra. This ridge, which is buttressed on all sides by lesser groups of hills, and includes part of the famous lines of Torres Vedras (q.v.), exceeds 2200 ft. in height, and constitutes the watershed between the right-hand tributaries of the Tagus and the Liz, Sizandro and other small rivers which flow into the Atlantic. On its seaward side, except for the line of sheer and lofty cliffs between Cape Carvoeiro and Cape da Roca, the country is mostly flat and sandy, with extensive heaths and pine forests; but along the fertile and well-cultivated right bank of the Tagus the river scenery, with its terraced hills of vines, olives and fruit trees, often resembles that of the Rhine in Germany. The natural resources of Portuguese Estremadura, with its inhabitants, industries, commerce, communications, &c., are described under Portugal; for on such matters there is little to be said of this central and most characteristic province which does not apply to the whole kingdom. Separate articles are also devoted to Lisbon, the capital, and Abrantes, Cintra, Leiria, Mafra, Santarem, Setubal, Thomar, Torres Novas and Torres Vedras, the other chief towns. The women of Peniche, a small fishing village on the promontory of Cape Carvoeiro, have long been celebrated throughout Portugal for their skill in the manufacture of fine laces.

2. Spanish Estremadura is bounded on the N. by Leon and Old Castile, E. by New Castile, S. by Andalusia, and W. by the Portuguese province of Beira and Alemtejo, which separate it from Portuguese Estremadura. Pop. (1900) 882,410; area, 16,118 sq. m. Spanish Estremadura consists of a tableland separated from Leon and Old Castile by the lofty Sierra de Gredos, the plateau of Béjar and the Sierra de Gata, which form an almost continuous barrier along the northern frontier, with its summits ranging from 6000 to more than 8500 ft. in altitude. On the south the comparatively low range of the Sierra Morena constitutes the frontier of Andalusia; on the east and west there is a still more gradual transition to the plateau of New Castile and the central plains of Portugal. The tableland of Spanish Estremadura is itself bisected from east to west by a line of mountains, the Sierras of San Pedro, Montanchez and Guadalupe (4000-6000 ft.), which separate its northern half, drained by the river Tagus, from its southern half, drained by the Guadiana. These two halves are respectively known as Alta or Upper Estremadura (the modern Cáceres), and Baja or Lower Estremadura (the modern Badajoz). The Tagus and Guadiana flow from east to west through a monotonous country, level or slightly undulating, often almost uninhabited, and covered with a thin growth of shrubs and grass. Perhaps the most characteristic feature of this tableland is the vast heaths of gum-cistus, which in spring colour the whole landscape with leagues of yellow blossom, and in summer change to a brown and arid wilderness.

The climate in summer is hot but not unhealthy, except in the swamps which occur along the Guadiana. The rainfall is scanty; dew, however, is abundant and the nights are cool. Although the high mountains are covered with snow in November, the winters are not usually severe. The soil is naturally fertile, but drought, floods and locusts render agriculture difficult, and sheep-farming is the most important of Estremaduran industries. (See Spain: Agriculture.) In the 19th century, however, this industry lost much of its former importance owing to foreign competition.

Immense herds of swine are bred and constitute a great source of support to the inhabitants, not only supplying them with food, but also forming a great article of export to other provinces—the pork, bacon and hams being in high esteem. The beech, oak and chestnut woods afford an abundance of food for swine, and there are numerous plantations of olive, cork and fruit trees, but a far greater area of forest has been destroyed. For an account of commerce, mining, communications, &c., in Spanish Estremadura, with a list of the chief towns, see Cáceres and Badajoz. In character and physical type, the people of this region are less easily classified than those of other Spanish provinces. They lack the endurance and energy of the Galicians, the independent and enterprising spirit of the Asturians, Basques and Catalans, the culture of the Castilians and Andalusians. Their failure to develop a distinctive local type of character and civilization is perhaps due to the adverse economic history of their country. The two great waterways which form the natural outlet for Estremaduran commerce flow to the Atlantic through a foreign and, for centuries, a hostile territory. Like other parts of Spain, Estremadura suffered severely from the expulsion of the Jews and Moors (1492-1610), while the compensating treasure, derived during the same period from Spanish America, never reached a province so remote at once from the sea and from the chief centres of national life. Although Cortes (1485-1547), the conqueror of Mexico and Pizarro (c. 1471-1541), the conqueror of Peru, were both born in Estremadura, their exploits, far from bringing prosperity to their native province, only encouraged the emigration of its best inhabitants. Heavy taxation and harsh land-laws prevented any recovery, while the felling of the forests reduced many fertile areas to waste land, and rendered worse a climate already unfavourable to agriculture. Few countries leave upon the mind of the traveller a deeper impression of hopeless poverty.

ESTREMOZ, a town of Portugal, in the district of Evora, formerly included in the province of Alemtejo; 104 m. by rail E. of Lisbon, on the Casa Branca-Evora-Elvas railway. Pop. (1900) 7920. Estremoz is built at the base of a hill crowned by a large dismantled citadel; its fortifications, which in the 17th century accommodated 20,000 troops and rendered the town one of the principal defences of the frontier, are now obsolete. There are marble quarries in the neighbourhood, and the Estremoz bilhas, red earthenware jars, are used throughout Portugal as water-holders and exported to Spain. At Ameixial (1188) and Monies Claros, near Estremoz, the Spanish were severely defeated by the Portuguese in 1663 and 1665. Villa Viçosa (3841), 10 m. S.E., is a town of pre-Roman origin, containing a royal palace. The altars with Latin inscriptions to the Iberian god Endovellicus, found at Villa Viçosa, are preserved in the museum of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Lisbon.

ESTUARY (from the Lat. aestuarium, a place reached by aestus, the tide), an arm of the sea narrowing inwards at the mouth of a river where sea and fresh water meet and are mixed, i.e. the tidal portion of a river’s mouth. Structurally the estuary may represent the long-continued action of river erosion and tidal erosion confined to a narrow channel, most effective where most concentrated, or an estuary may be the drowned portion of the lower part of a river-valley. In a map of Britain showing sea-depths it will be observed that under the Severn estuary the sea deepens in a number of steps descending by concentric V’s that become blunter towards deep water until the last is a mere indentation pointing towards the long narrow termination of the present estuary. In this and in similar cases the progress of the estuary is indicated upon what is now the continental shelf. The chief interest in estuarine conditions is the mingling of sea and fresh water. Where, as in the Severn and the Thames, the fresh water meets the sea gradually the water is mixed, and there is very little change in salinity at high tide. The fresh water flows over the salt water and there is a continuous rapid change, in salinity towards the sea, for the currents sweeping in and out mix the water constantly. Where the river brings down a great quantity of fresh water in a narrow channel, the change of salinity at high and low water is very marked. “When, however, the inlet is very large compared with the river, and there is no bar at the opening, the estuarine character is only shown at the upper end. In the Firth of Forth, for example, the landward half is an estuary, but in the seaward half the water has become more thoroughly mixed, the salinity is almost uniform from surface to bottom, and increases very gradually towards the sea. The river-water meets the sea diffused uniformly through a deep mass of water scarcely fresher than the sea itself, so that the two mix uniformly, and the sea becomes slightly freshened throughout its whole depth for many miles from land” (H.R. Mill, Realm of Nature, 1897).

ESZTERGOM (Ger. Gran; Lat. Strigonium), a town of Hungary, capital of the county of the same name, 36 m. N.W. of Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900) 16,948, mostly Magyars and Roman Catholics. It is situated on the right bank of the Danube, nearly opposite the confluence of the Gran, and is divided into the town proper and three suburbs. The town is the residence of the primate of Hungary, and its cathedral, built in 1821-1870, after the model of St Peter’s at Rome, is one of the finest and largest in the country. It is picturesquely built on an elevated and commanding position, 215 ft. above the Danube, and its dome, visible from a long distance, is 260 ft. high, and has a diameter of 52 ft. The interior is very richly decorated, notably with fine frescoes, and its treasury and fine library of over 60,000 volumes are famous. Besides several other churches and two monastic houses, the principal buildings include the handsome palace of the primate, erected in 1883; the archiepiscopal library, with valuable incunabula and old MSS.; the seminary for the education of Roman Catholic priests; the residences of the chapter; and the town-hall. The population is chiefly employed in cloth-weaving, wine-making and agricultural pursuits. An iron bridge, 1664 ft. long, connects Esztergom with the market town of Párkány (pop. 2836) on the opposite bank of the Danube.

Esztergom is one of the oldest towns of Hungary, and is famous as the birthplace of St Stephen, the first prince crowned “apostolic king” of Hungary. During the early times of the Hungarian monarchy it was the most important mercantile centre in the country, and it was the meeting-place of the diets of 1016, 1111, 1114 and 1256. It was almost completely destroyed by Tatar hordes in 1241, but was rebuilt and fortified by King Béla IV. In 1543 it fell into the hands of the Turks, from whom it was recovered, in 1595, by Carl von Mansfeld. In 1604 it reverted to the Turks, who held it till 1683, when it was regained by the united forces of John Sobieski, king of Poland, and Prince Charles of Lorraine. It was created an archbishopric in 1001. During the Turkish occupation of the town the archbishopric was removed to Tyrnau, while the archbishop himself had his residence in Pressburg. Both returned to Esztergom in 1820. In 1708 it was declared a free city by Joseph I. On the 13th of April 1818 it was partly destroyed by fire.

For numerous authorities on the see and cathedral of Esztergom see V. Chevalier, Répertoire des sources. Topo-bibliogr. s.v. “Gran.” Of these may be mentioned especially F. Knauz, Monumenta Ecclesiae Strigoniensis (3 vols., Eszterg, 1874); Joseph Dankó, Geschichtliches ... aus dem Graner Domschatz (Gran, 1880).

ÉTAGÈRE, a piece of light furniture very similar to the English what-not, which was extensively made in France during the latter part of the 18th century. As the name implies, it consists of a series of stages or shelves for the reception of ornaments or other small articles. Like the what-not it was very often cornerwise in shape, and the best Louis XVI. examples in exotic woods are exceedingly graceful and elegant.

ETAH, a town and district of British India, in the Agra division of the United Provinces. The town is situated on the Grand Trunk road. Pop. (1901) 8796. The district has an area of 1737 sq. m. The district consists for the most part of an elevated alluvial plateau, dipping down on its eastern slope into the valley of the Ganges. The uplands are irrigated by the Ganges canal. Between the modern bed of the Ganges and its ancient channel lies a belt of fertile land, covered with a rich deposit of silt, and abundantly supplied with natural moisture. A long line of swamps and hollows still marks the former course of the river; and above it rises abruptly the original cliff which now forms the terrace of the upland plain. The Kali Nadi, a small stream flowing in a deep and narrow gorge, passes through the centre of the district, and affords an outlet for the surface drainage. Etah was at an early date the seat of a primitive Aryan civilization, and the surrounding country is mentioned by Hsüan Tsang, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim of the 7th century A.D., as rich in temples and monasteries. But after the bloody repression of Buddhism before the 8th century, the district seems to have fallen once more into the hands of aboriginal tribes, from whom it was wrested a second time by Rajputs during the course of their great migration eastward. With the rest of upper India it passed under the sway of Mahmud of Ghazni in 1017, and thenceforth followed the fortunes of the Mahommedan empire. At the end of the 18th century it formed part of the territory over which the wazir of Oudh had made himself ruler, and it came into the possession of the British government in 1801, under the treaty of Lucknow. During the mutiny of 1857 it was the scene of serious disturbances, coupled with the usual anarchic quarrels among the native princes. In 1901 the population was 863,948, showing an increase of 23% in the decade due to the extension of canal irrigation. It is traversed by a branch of the Rajputana railway from Agra to Cawnpore, with stations at Kasganj and Soron, which are the two largest towns. It has several printing presses, indigo factories, and factories for pressing cotton, and there is a considerable agricultural export trade.

ÉTAMPES, ANNE DE PISSELEU D’HEILLY, Duchesse d’ (1508-c. 1580), mistress of Francis I. of France, daughter of Guillaume de Pisseleu, sieur d’Heilly, a nobleman of Picardy. She came to court before 1522, and was one of the maids of honour of Louise of Savoy. Francis I. made her his mistress, probably on his return from his captivity at Madrid (1526), and soon gave up Madame de Châteaubriant for her. Anne was sprightly, pretty, witty and cultured, and succeeded in keeping the favour of the king till the end of the reign (1547). The liaison received some official recognition; when Queen Eleanor entered Paris (1530), the king and Anne occupied the same window. In 1533 Francis gave her in marriage to Jean de Brosse, whom he created duc d’Étampes. The influence of the duchesse d’Étampes, especially in the last years of the reign, was considerable. She upheld Admiral Chabot against the constable de Montmorency, who was supported by her rival, Diane de Poitiers, the dauphin’s mistress. She was a friend to new ideas, and co-operated with the king’s sister, Marguerite d’Angoulême. She used her influence to elevate and enrich her family, her uncle, Antoine Sanguin (d. 1559), being made bishop of Orleans in 1535 and a cardinal in 1539. The accusations made against her of having allowed herself to be won over by the emperor Charles V. and of playing the traitor in 1544 rest on no serious proof. After the death of Francis I. (1547) she was dismissed from the court by Diane de Poitiers, humiliated in every way, and died in obscurity much later, probably in the reign of Henry III.

See Paulin Paris, Études sur François Ier (Paris, 1885).

The château of Meudon, belonging to the Sanguin family, was handed over to the duchesse d’Étampes in 1539. Sanguin was translated to Limoges in 1546, and became archbishop of Toulouse in 1550.

ÉTAMPES, a town of northern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Seine-et-Oise, on the Orléans railway, 35 m. S. by W. of Paris. Pop. (1906) 8720. Étampes is a long straggling town hemmed in between the railway on the north and the Chalouette on the south; the latter is a tributary of the Juine which waters the eastern outskirts of the town. A fine view of Étampes is obtained from the Tour Guinette, a ruined keep built by Louis VI. in the 12th century on an eminence on the other side of the railway. Notre-Dame du Fort, the chief church, dates from the 11th and 12th centuries; irregular in plan, it is remarkable for a fine Romanesque tower and spire, and for the crenellated wall which partly surrounds it. The interior contains ancient paintings and other artistic works. St Basile (12th and 16th centuries), which preserves a Romanesque doorway, and St Martin (12th and 13th centuries), with a leaning tower of the 16th century, are of less importance. The civil buildings offer little interest, but two houses named after Anne de Pisseleu (see above), mistress of Francis I., and Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henry II., are graceful examples of Renaissance architecture. In the square there is a statue of the naturalist, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who was born in Étampes. The subprefecture, a tribunal of first instance, and a communal college are among the public institutions of Étampes. Flour-milling, metal-founding, leather-dressing, printing and the manufacture of boots and shoes and hosiery are carried on; there are quarries of paving-stone, nurseries and market gardens in the vicinity, and the town has important markets for cereals and sheep.

Étampes (Lat. Stampae) existed at the beginning of the 7th century and in the early middle ages belonged to the crown domain. During the middle ages it was the scene of several councils, the most notable of which took place in 1130 and resulted in the recognition of Innocent II. as the legitimate pope. In 1652, during the war of the Fronde it suffered severely at the hands of the royal troops under Turenne.

Lords, Counts and Dukes of Étampes.—The lordship of Étampes, in what is now the department of Seine et Oise in France, belonged to the royal domain, but was detached from it on several occasions in favour of princes, or kings’ favourites. St Louis gave it to his mother Blanche of Castile, and then to his wife Marguerite of Provence. Louis, the brother of Philip the Fair, became lord of Étampes in 1317 and count in 1327; he was succeeded by his son and his grandson. Francis I. raised the countship of Étampes to the rank of a duchy for his mistress Anne de Pisseleu D’Heilly. The new duchy passed to Diane de Poitiers (1553), to Catherine of Lorraine, duchess of Montpensier (1578), to Marguerite of Valois (1582) and to Gabrielle d’Estrées (1598). The latter transmitted it to her son, César of Vendôme, and his descendants held it till 1712. It then passed by inheritance to the families of Bourbon-Conti and of Orleans.

ÉTAPLES, a town of northern France, in the department of Pas-de-Calais, on the right bank of the estuary of the Canche, 3 m. from the Straits of Dover, 17 m. S. of Boulogne by rail. Pop. (1906) 5136. Étaples has a small fishing and commercial port which enjoyed a certain importance during the middle ages. Boat-building is carried on. There is an old church with a statue of the Virgin much revered by the sailors. The Canche is crossed by a bridge over 1600 ft. in length. Le Touquet, in the midst of pine woods, and the neighbouring watering-place of Paris-Plage, 3½ m. W. of Étaples at the mouth of the estuary, are much frequented by English and French visitors for golf, tennis and bathing, and Étaples itself is a centre for artists. Antiquarian discoveries in the vicinity of Étaples have led to the conjecture that it occupies the site of the Gallo-Roman port of Quentovicus. In 1492 a treaty was signed here between Henry VII., king of England, and Charles VIII., king of France.

ETAWAH, a town and district of British India, in the Agra division of the United Provinces. The town is situated on the left bank of the Jumna, and has a station on the East Indian railway, 206 m. from Allahabad. Pop. (1901) 42,570. Deep fissures intersect the various quarters of the town, over which broad roads connect the higher portions by bridges and embankments. The Jama Masjid (Great Mosque) is the chief architectural ornament of Etawah. It was originally a Hindu temple, and was adapted to its present use by the Mahommedan conquerors. Several fine Hindu temples also stand about the mound on which are the ruins of the ancient fort. Etawah is now only the civil headquarters of the district, the military cantonment having been abandoned in 1861. Considerable trade is carried on by rail and river. The manufactures include cotton cloth, skin-bottles, combs and horn-ware and sweetmeats.

The District of Etawah has an area of 1691 sq. m. It forms a purely artificial administrative division, stretching across the level plain of the Doab, and beyond the valley of the Jumna, to the gorges of the Chambal, and the last rocky outliers of the Vindhyan range. The district exhibits a striking variety of surface and scenery. The greater portion lies within the Doab or level alluvial plain between the Ganges and the Jumna. This part falls naturally into two sections, divided by the deep and fissured valley of the river Sengar. The tract to the north-east of that stream is rich and fertile, being watered by the Cawnpore and Etawah branches of the Ganges canal, and other important works. The south-western region has the same natural advantages, but possesses no great irrigation system, and is consequently less fruitful than the opposite slopes. Near the banks of the Jumna, the plain descends into the river valley by a series of wild ravines and terraces, inhabited only by a scattered race of hereditary herdsmen. Beyond the Jumna again a strip of British territory extends along the tangled gorges of the Chambal and the Kuari Nadi, far into the borders of the Gwalior state. This outlying tract embraces a series of rocky glens and mountain torrents, crowned by the ruins of native strongholds, and interspersed with narrow ledges of cultivable alluvium. The climate, once hot and sultry, has now become comparatively moist and equable under the influence of irrigation and the planting of trees.

Etawah was marked out by its physical features as a secure retreat for the turbulent tribes of the Upper Doab, and it was not till the 12th century that any of the existing castes settled on the soil. After the Mussulman conquests of Delhi and the surrounding country, the Hindus of Etawah appear to have held their own for many generations against the Mahommedan power; but in the 16th century Baber conquered the district, with the rest of the Doab, and it remained in the hands of the Moguls until the decay of their empire. After passing through the usual vicissitudes of Mahratta and Jat conquests during the long anarchy which preceded the British rule, Etawah was annexed by the wazir of Oudh in 1773. The wazir ceded it to the East India Company in 1801, but it still remained so largely in the hands of lawless native chiefs that some difficulty was experienced in reducing it to orderly government. During the mutiny of 1857 serious disturbances occurred in Etawah, and the district was occupied by the rebels from June to December; order was not completely restored till the end of 1858. In 1901 the population was 806,798, showing an increase of 11% in the decade. The district is partly watered by branches of the Ganges canal, and is traversed throughout by the main line of the East Indian railway from Cawnpore to Agra. Cotton, oilseeds and other agricultural produce are exported, and some indigo is made, but manufacturing industry is slight.

ETCHING (Dutch, etsen, to eat), a form of engraving (q.v.) in which, in contradistinction to line engraving (q.v.), where the furrow is produced by the ploughing of the burin, the copper is eaten away or corroded by acid.

To prepare a plate for etching it is first covered with etching-ground, a composition which resists acid. The qualities of a ground are to be so adhesive that it will not quit the copper when a small quantity is left isolated between lines, yet not so adhesive that the etching point cannot easily and entirely remove it; at the same time a good ground will be hard enough to bear the hand upon it, or a sheet of paper, yet not so hard as to be brittle. The ground used by Abraham Bosse, the French painter and engraver (1602-1676) was composed as follows:—Melt 2 oz. of white wax; then add to it 1 oz. of gum-mastic in powder, a little at a time, stirring till the wax and the mastic are well mingled; then add, in the same manner, 1 oz. of bitumen in powder. There are three different ways of applying an etching-ground to a plate. The old-fashioned way was to wrap a ball of the ground in silk, heat the plate, and then rub the ball upon the surface, enough of the ground to cover the plate melting through the silk. To equalize the ground a dabber was used, which was made of cotton-wool under horsehair, the whole inclosed in silk. This method is still used by many artists, from tradition and habit, but it is far inferior in perfection and convenience to that which we will now describe. When the etching-ground is melted, add to it half its volume of essential oil of lavender, mix well, and allow the mixture to cool. You have now a paste which can be spread upon a cold plate with a roller; these rollers are covered with leather and made (very carefully) for the purpose. You first spread a little paste on a sheet of glass (if too thick, add more oil of lavender and mix with a palette knife), and roll it till the roller is quite equally charged all over, when the paste is easily transferred to the copper, which is afterwards gently heated to expel the oil of lavender. In both these methods of grounding a plate, the work is not completed until the ground has been smoked, which is effected as follows. The plate is held by a hand-vice if a small one, or if large, is fixed at some height, with the covered side downwards. A smoking torch, composed of many thin bees-wax dips twisted together, is then lighted and passed repeatedly under the plate in every direction, till the ground has incorporated enough lampblack to blacken it. The third way of covering a plate for etching is to apply the ground in solution as collodion is applied by photographers. The ground may be dissolved in chloroform, or in oil of lavender. The plate being grounded, its back and edges are protected from the acid by Japan varnish, which soon dries, and then the drawing is traced upon it. The best way of tracing a drawing is to use sheet gelatine, which is employed as follows. The gelatine is laid upon the drawing, which its transparence allows you to see perfectly, and you trace the lines by scratching the smooth surface with a sharp point. You then fill these scratches with fine black-lead, in powder, rubbing it in with the finger, turn the tracing with its face to the plate, and rub the back of it with a burnisher. The black-lead from the scratches adheres to the etching ground and shows upon it as pale grey, much more visible than anything else you can use for tracing. Then comes the work of the etching-needle, which is merely a piece of steel sharpened more or less. J.M.W. Turner used a prong of an old steel fork which did as well as anything, but neater etching-needles are sold by artists’ colour-makers. The needle removes the ground or cover and lays the copper bare. Some artists sharpen their needles so as to present a cutting edge which, when used sideways, scrapes away a broad line; and many etchers use needles of various degrees of sharpness to get thicker or thinner lines. It may be well to observe, in connexion with this part of the subject, that whilst thick lines agree perfectly well with the nature of woodcut, they are very apt to give an unpleasant heaviness to plate engraving of all kinds, whilst thin lines have generally a clear and agreeable appearance in plate engraving. Nevertheless, lines of moderate thickness are used effectively in etching when covered with finer shading, and very thick lines indeed were employed with good results by Turner when he intended to cover them with mezzotint (q.v.), and to print in brown ink, because their thickness was essential to prevent them from being overwhelmed by the mezzotint, and the brown ink made them print less heavily than black. Etchers differ in opinion as to whether the needle ought to scratch the copper or simply to glide upon its surface. A gliding needle is much more free, and therefore communicates a greater appearance of freedom to the etching, but it has the inconvenience that the etching-ground may not always be entirely removed, and then the lines may be defective from insufficient biting. A scratching needle, on the other hand, is free from this serious inconvenience, but it must not scratch irregularly so as to engrave lines of various depth. The biting in former times was generally done with a mixture of nitric acid and water, in equal proportions; but in the present day a Dutch mordant is a good deal used, which is composed as follows: Hydrochloric acid, 100 grammes; chlorate of potash, 20 grammes; water, 880 grammes. To make it, heat the water, add the chlorate of potash, wait till it is entirely dissolved, and then add the acid. The nitrous mordant acts rapidly and causes ebullition; the Dutch mordant acts slowly and causes no ebullition. The nitrous mordant widens the lines; the Dutch mordant bites in depth, and does not widen the lines to any perceptible degree. The time required for both depends upon temperature. A mordant bites slowly when cold, and more and more rapidly when heated. To obviate irregularity caused by difference of temperature, it is a good plan to heat the Dutch mordant artificially to 95° Fahr. by lamps under the bath (for which a photographer’s porcelain tray is most convenient), and keep it steadily to that temperature; the results may then be counted upon; but whatever the temperature fixed upon, the results will be regular if it is regular. To get different degrees of biting on the same plate the lines which are to be pale are “stopped out” by being painted over with Japan varnish or with etching ground dissolved in oil of lavender, the darkest lines being reserved to the last, as they have to bite longest. When the acid has done its work properly the lines are bitten in such various degrees of depth that they will print with the degree of blackness required; but if some parts of the subject require to be made paler, they can be lowered by rubbing them with charcoal and olive oil, and if they have to be made deeper they can be rebitten, or covered with added shading. Rebiting is done with the roller above mentioned, which is now charged very lightly with paste and rolled over the copper with no pressure but its own weight, so as to cover the smooth surface but not fill up any of the lines. The oil of lavender is then expelled as before by gently heating the plate, but it is not smoked. The lines which require rebiting may now be rebitten, and the others preserved against the action of the acid by stopping out. These are a few of the most essential technical points in etching, but there are many matters of detail for which the reader is referred to the special works on the subject.

There are many varieties in the processes of etching, and it is only necessary here to indicate the essential facts. A brief analysis of different styles may be given.

(1) Pure Line. As there is line engraving, so there is line etching; but as the etching-needle is a freer instrument than the burin, the line has qualities which differ widely from those of the burin line. Each of the two has its own charm and beauty; the liberty of the one is charming, and the restraint of the other is admirable also in its right place. In line etching, as in line engraving, the great masters purposely exhibit the line and do not hide it under too much shading. (2) Line and Shade. This answers exactly in etching to Mantegna’s work in engraving. The most important lines are drawn first throughout, and the shade thrown over them like a wash with the brush over a pen sketch in indelible ink. (3) Shade and Texture. This is used chiefly to imitate oil-painting. Here the line (properly so called) is entirely abandoned, and the attention of the etcher is given to texture and chiaroscuro. He uses lines, of course, to express these, but does not exhibit them for their own beauty; on the contrary, he conceals them.

Of these three styles of etching the first is technically the easiest, and being also the most rapid, is adopted for sketching on the copper from nature; the second is the next in difficulty; and the third the most difficult, on account of the biting, which is never easy to manage when it becomes elaborate. The etcher has, however, many resources; he can make passages paler by burnishing them, or by using charcoal, or he can efface them entirely with the scraper and charcoal; he can darken them by rebiting or by regrounding the plate and adding fresh work; and he need not run the risk of biting the very palest passages of all, because these can be easily done with the dry point, which is simply a well-sharpened stylus used directly on the copper without the help of acid. It is often asserted that any one can etch who can draw, but this is a mistaken assertion likely to mislead. Without requiring so long an apprenticeship as the burin, etching is a very difficult art indeed, the two main causes of its difficulty being that the artist does not see his work properly as he proceeds, and that mistakes or misfortunes in the biting, which are of frequent occurrence to the inexperienced, may destroy all the relations of tone.

Etching, like line engraving, owed much to the old masters, but whereas, with the exception of Albert Dürer, the painters were seldom practical line engravers, they advanced etching not only by advice given to others but by the work of their own hands. Rembrandt did as much for etching as either Raphael or Rubens for line engraving; and in landscape the etchings of Claude had an influence which still continues, both Rembrandt and Claude being practical workmen in etching, and very skilful workmen. Ostade, Ruysdael, Berghem, Paul Potter, Karl Dujardin, etched as they painted, and so did a greater than any of them, Vandyck. In the earlier part of the 19th century etching was almost a defunct art, except as it was employed by engravers as a help to get faster through their work, of which “engraving” got all the credit, the public being unable to distinguish between etched lines and lines cut with the burin. But from the middle of the century dates a great revival of etching as an independent art, a revival which has extended all over Europe.

Apart from the copying of pictures by etching—which was found commercially preferable to the use of line engraving—a number of artists and amateurs gradually practised original etching with increasing success, notably Sir Seymour Haden, J.M. Whistler, Samuel Palmer and others in England, Felix Bracquemond, C.F. Daubigny, Charles Jacque, Adolphe Appian, Maxime Lalanne, Jules Jacquemart and others on the continent, besides that singular and remarkable genius, Charles Méryon. Etching clubs, or associations of artists for the publication of original etchings, were gradually founded in England, France, Germany and Belgium. Méryon and Whistler are two of the greatest modern etchers. Among earlier names mention may be made of Andrew Geddes (1783-1844) and of Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841). Geddes was the finer artist with the needle; he it was whom Rembrandt best inspired; his work was in the grand manner. Of the rich and rare dry-points “At Peckham Rye” and “At Halliford-on-Thames,” the deepest and most brilliant master of landscape would have no need to be ashamed. David Wilkie’s prints were, naturally, not less dramatic than his pictures, but the etcher’s particular gift was possessed by him more intermittently: it is shown best in “The Receipt,” a strong and vivid, dexterous sketch, quite full of character. J.S. Cotman’s (1782-1842) etchings are also historically interesting though they were “soft ground” for the most part. They show all his qualities of elegance and freedom as a draughtsman, and much of his large dignity in the distribution of light and shade. T. Girtin (1775-1802), in the preparations for his views of Paris, was notably happy. The work of Sir Francis Seymour Haden (b. 1818) had a powerful influence on the art in England. Between 1858 and 1879 Seymour Haden—the first president of the Royal Society of Painter Etchers—produced the vast majority of his plates, which have always good draughtsmanship, unity of effect and a personal impression. They show a strong feeling for nature. If, amongst some two hundred subjects, it were necessary to select one or two for peculiar praise, they might be the “Breaking up of the Agamemnon,” the almost perfect “Water Meadow,” the masterly presentment of “Erith Marshes,” and the later dry-point of “Windmill Hill.” Another great etcher—Frenchman by birth, but English by long residence—is Alphonse Legros (q.v.). Great in expression and suggestive draughtsmanship, austere and economical in line, Legros’s work is the grave record of the observation and the fancy of an imaginative mind. In poetic portraiture nothing can well exceed his etched vision of G.F. Watts; “La Mort du Vagabond” is noticeable for terror and homely pathos; “Communion dans l’Église St Médard” is perhaps the best instance of the dignity, vigour and grave sympathy with which he addresses himself to ecclesiastical themes. Something of these latter qualities, in dealing with similar themes, Legros passed on to his pupil, Sir Charles Holroyd (b. 1861)—an etcher in the true vein; whilst an earlier pupil, prolific as himself, as imaginative, and sometimes more deliberately uncouth—William Strang, A.R.A. (b. 1859)—carried on in his own way the tradition of that part of Legros’s practice, the preoccupation with the humble, for which Legros himself found certain warrant in a portion of the great œuvre of Rembrandt. Frank Short, A.R.A. (b. 1857), as with the very touch of Turner, carried to completion great designs that Turner left unfinished for the Liber studiorum. The delicacy of “Sleeping till the Flood,” the curiously suggestive realism of “Wrought Nails”—a scene in the Black Country—entitle him to a lasting place in the list of the fine wielders of the etching-needle. D.Y. Cameron (b. 1865) betrays the influence of Rembrandt in a noble etching, “Border Towers,” and the influence of Méryon in such a print as that of “The Palace, Stirling.” His “London Set” is particularly fine. The individuality of C.J. Watson is less marked, but his skill, chiefly in architectural work, is noticeable. Admirers of the studiously accurate portraiture of a great monument may be able to set Watson’s print of “St Étienne du Mont” by the side of Méryon’s august and mysterious and ever-memorable vision. Paul Helleu (b. 1859) in his brilliant sketches, particularly of women, has used the art of etching in a peculiarly individual and delightful way. Among the numerous other modern etchers only a bare mention can be made of Oliver Hall, Minna Bolingbroke and Elizabeth Armstrong (Mrs Watson and Mrs Stanhope Forbes), Alfred East, Robert Macbeth, Walter Sickert, Robert Goff, Mortimer Menpes, Percy Thomas, Raven Hill, and Prof. H. von Herkomer, in England; in France, Roussel, J.F. Raffaëlli (b. 1850), Besnard and J.J.J. Tissot (1836-1902).

The oldest treatise on etching is that of Abraham Bosse (1645). See also P.G. Hamerton, Etching and Etchers (1868), and Etchers’ Handbook (1881); F. Wedmore, Etching in England (1895); Singer and Strang, Etching, Engraving, &c. (1897).

ETEOCLES, in Greek legend, king of Thebes, son of Oedipus and Jocasta (Iocaste). After their father had been driven out of the country, he and his brother Polyneices agreed to reign alternately for a year. Eteocles, however, refused to keep the agreement, and Polyneices fled to Adrastus, king of Argos, whom he persuaded to undertake the famous expedition against Thebes on his behalf. The two brothers met in single combat, and both were slain. The Theban rulers decreed that only Eteocles should receive the honour of burial, but the decree was set at naught by Antigone (q.v.), the sister of Polyneices. The fate of Eteocles and Polyneices forms the subject of the Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus and the Phoenissae of Euripides.

ETESIAN WIND (Lat. etesius, annual; Gr. ἔτος, year), a Mediterranean wind blowing from the north and west in summer for about six weeks annually.

ÉTEX, ANTOINE (1808-1888), French sculptor, painter and architect, was born in Paris on the 20th of March 1808. He first exhibited in the salon of 1833, his work including a reproduction in marble of his “Death of Hyacinthus,” and the plaster cast of his “Cain and his race cursed by God.” Thiers, who was at this time minister of public works, now commissioned him to execute the two groups of “Peace” and “War,” placed at each side of the Arc de Triomphe. This last, which established his reputation, he reproduced in marble in the salon of 1839. The French capital contains numerous examples of the sculptural works of Étex, which included mythological and religious subjects besides a great number of portraits. His paintings include the subjects of Eurydice and the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, and among the best known of his architectural productions are the tomb of Napoleon I. in the Invalides and a monument of the revolution of 1848. Étex wrote a number of essays on subjects connected with the arts. The last year of his life was spent at Nice, and he died at Chaville (Seine-et-Oise) on the 14th of July 1888.

See P.E. Mangeant, Antoine Étex, peintre, sculpteur et architecte, 1808-1888 (Paris, 1894).

ETHER, (C2H5)2O, the Aether of pharmacy, a colourless, volatile, highly inflammable liquid, of specific gravity 0.736 at 0°, boiling-point 35° C., and freezing-point −117°.4 C. (K. Olszewski). It has a strong and characteristic odour, and a hot sweetish taste, is soluble in ten parts of water, and in all proportions in alcohol, and dissolves bromine, iodine, and, in small quantities, sulphur and phosphorus, also the volatile oils, most fatty and resinous substances, guncotton, caoutchouc and certain of the vegetable alkaloids. The vapour mixed with oxygen or air is violently explosive. The making of ether by the action of sulphuric acid on alcohol was known in about the 13th century; and later Basil Valentine and Valerius Cordus described its preparation and properties. The name ether appears to have been applied to the drug only since the times of Frobenius, who in 1730 termed it spiritus aethereus or vini vitriolatus. It was considered to be a sulphur compound, hence its name sulphur ether; this idea was proved to be erroneous by Valentine Rose in about 1800. Ether is manufactured by the distillation of 5 parts of 90% alcohol with 9 parts of concentrated sulphuric acid at a temperature of 140°-145° C., a constant stream of alcohol being caused to flow into the mixture during the operation. The distillate is purified by treatment with lime and calcium chloride, and subsequent distillation. The mechanism of this reaction was explained by A. Williamson in 1850. For other methods of preparation see Ethers.

The presence of so small a quantity as 1% of alcohol may be detected in ether by the colour imparted to it by aniline violet; if water or acetic acid be present, the ether must be shaken with anhydrous potassium carbonate before the application of the test. When heated with zinc dust, it yields ethylene and water. Chromic acid oxidizes it to acetic acid and ozone oxidizes it to ethyl peroxide. In contact with hydriodic acid gas at 0° C., it forms ethyl iodide (R.D. Silva, Ber., 1875, 8, p. 903), and with water and a little sulphuric acid at 180° C., it yields alcohol (E. Erlenmeyer, Zeit. f. chemie, 1868, p. 343). It forms crystalline compounds with bromine and with many metallic salts.