In 705 Wessex was divided by a new see at Sherborne, and in 709 a mission see for the South Saxons was set up at Selsey. In 909 King Edward the Elder divided the see of Sherborne, and gave the men of Somerset a bishop at Wells, and the men of Devon a bishop at Crediton. The troubles of Northumbria affected its episcopal arrangements; after 814 no Bishop of Hexham was appointed, and through the ravages of the Picts the bishopric of Whithern ceased about 810. In 875 the monks of Lindisfarne were driven to quit their monastery, carrying with them the body of St. Cuthbert. In 882 they settled at Chester-le-Street, whence they were again driven in 990, and finally settled at Durham in 995.

At the time of the Norman Conquest episcopal sees were transferred from villages to cities, as being more convenient. Already in 1050 the see of Crediton had been changed to Exeter. In 1075 the see of Sherborne was removed to Old Sarum, that of Selsey to Chichester, and that of Lichfield to Coventry. The see of Dorchester was removed to Lincoln in 1085. In 1088 the see of Wells was transferred to Bath; that of Elmham, which had been transferred to Thetford in 1078, was finally established in Norwich in 1101. With the gradual conquest of South Wales the British Church lost its independence, and received Norman bishops. The Archbishop of St. David's (who had never perhaps exercised any practical authority over the other Welsh bishops) became a suffragan of the province of Canterbury in 1115; Bangor and Llandaff soon afterwards; and the see of St. Asaph was established (or possibly only re-established) in 1143. Moreover, Henry I. cared for the interests of the Church in England by subdividing the huge diocese of Lincoln in 1109, and setting a bishop over the great minster of Ely. In like manner the allegiance of the new English possession of Cumberland was strengthened by the appointment of a Bishop of Carlisle in 1133.

From this time till the Reformation no new sees were created. After the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII. made some show of restoring the goods of the Church by the creation of six new bishoprics-Westminster in 1540, Gloucester, Chester, Peterborough, and Oxford in 1541, Bristol in 1542. The see of Westminster did not long continue. Its first occupant, Thomas Thirlby, wasted its possessions; he was translated to Norwich in 1550, and the see was dissolved. In 1542 the ancient see of Sodor and Man, which was founded by Pope Gregory IV., was annexed to the province of York; but as the island of Man did not come into the possession of the crown till 1825, its bishop was never a peer of Parliament. No further creations were made till the increase of population in the present century led to the formation of the see of Ripon in 1836, and of Manchester in

Bishopric, THE. A special title given to the patrimony of St. Cuthbert, which was ruled by the Bishops of Durham. On Cuthbert's consecration as Bishop of Lindisfarne in 683, Egfrith, the Northumbrian king, made him large grants of land round Lindisfarne, as well as the vill of Craik near York, and the town of Carlisle. In 883 the monks of Lindisfarne were fleeing with the body of their patron saint before the Danish invaders. The Danish king was dead,

and his host was without a leader. St. Cuthbert appeared in a vision to Abbot Eadred, and bade him tell the Danes to take as their king a young captive who was a slave. The Danes obeyed the admonition, and their new king Guthred, aided by the advice of Alfred the Great, showed his gratitude by conferring on St. Cuthbert the land between the Tyne and the Tees. Over this new grant, and the old lands of the church of Lindisfarne, the bishop was given the rights and dignities of the king. Bishop Cutheard (900-915) purchased the ancient parish of Bedlington north of the Tyne, with an area of thirty square miles, and received a grant of similar jurisdiction over it. It is probable that William the Conqueror, finding this state of things, considered it desirable to leave it unchanged, and recognised the lands of the church of Durham as a county palatine. [PALATINE COUNTIES.] The Bishopric was not co-extensive with the diocese of Durham. It consisted of the modern county of Durham, and the districts known as Bedlingtonshire, Islandshire, and Norhamshire. Within this the bishop held his own courts and appointed his own officers; writs ran in his name, and he had his own mint. The men of the bishopric were similarly privileged, and went by the name of Haliwerefole, men for the defence of St. Cuthbert and his patrimony. This exceptional position continued till the Ecclesiastical Commissioners recommended its abolition in 1833, and with the death of Bishop van Mildert, in 1836, the bishopric came to an end.

Surtees, History of Durham; Raine, History of North Durham Symeonis Monachi, Historia Ecclesia Dunelmensis, in Twysden, Decem Scrip[M. C.]

tores.

Bishops, THE SEVEN, is the appellation usually given to the prelates who were tried for their resistance to James II.'s

Declaration of Indulgence (q.v.). On April 25th, 1688, the king issued his second Declaration of Indulgence, and on May 4th an Order in Council enjoined that it should be read in all churches on two successive Sundays, the bishops being required to distribute copies of it in their dioceses. The Primate Sancroft and six bishops (Ken of Bath and Wells, White of Peterborough, Lloyd of St. Asaph, Trelawny of Bristol, Lake of Chichester, and Turner of Ely) drew up and presented a petition, declaring the loyalty of the Church, but begging to be excused from reading in Divine service an illegal declaration, since Parliament had declared that the sovereign had no power to dispense with statutes. "This is the standard of rebellion," James said as he read it; and, when only four churches in London obeyed the order, he determined to take his revenge by trying the bishops for publishing a seditious libel. The bishops, after having at the king's command acknowledged their writing, were committed to the Tower, where they were visited by many Whig peers and a deputation of Nonconformist sympathisers. When the trial came on, the handwriting was proved by the evidence of the clerk, who had heard the bishops' confession; and Sunderland, whom they had begged to present it, proved the publishing. Among the counsel for the defence was Somers, afterwards Chancellor, whose speech on this occasion created his reputation. After some hours' disputing, the king's brewer, who was on the jury, was persuaded to risk the loss of royal patronage, and a verdict of Not Guilty was returned (June 30th). The action of the king in this matter lost him the active support of the Church, and disposed it to at least acquiesce in the measures of William of Orange.

Macaulay, Hist., ch. vii.; Ranke, Hist. of Eng., bk. xvii., ch. vii.

Black Act, THE (1722), was the name given to an Act passed to check the outrages committed by persons with their faces blackened or otherwise disguised, who appeared in Epping Forest, near Waltham, and destroyed the deer. The penalty of death was imposed on all such transgressions of the law. The Act was made perpetual in 1758, but was repealed in 1827.

Black Assize. [ASSIZE.]

Blackburn Riots, THE (1826), were a demonstration by the weavers of Lancashire against the use of machinery. In April a large number of persons assembled at Henfield and proceeded to Accrington, where they demolished the machinery in several mills. The mob then proceeded to Blackburn, and, though a party of dragoons arrived there as soon as the rioters, they could not prevent them from breaking into the factory of Messrs. Bannister, Eccles and Co. A collision

occurred; stones and firearms were freely used by the mob; and the Riot Act was read. A great deal of Messrs. Eccles' machinery was destroyed, and much damage done all through the town; and the excitement became so dangerous that the dragoons were ordered to clear the streets. The following day a great deal of destruction was completed, and another collision occurred between the rioters and the military, in which the former were finally routed by a discharge of musketry, nine persons being killed and several wounded. Similar riots broke out next day in Manchester. Troops, however, quickly poured into the disturbed districts, and the riotous assemblages were at an end.

Black Death, THE. This name has been given to an epidemic disease of fearful destructiveness which devastated England, in common with the rest of Europe, in 1348-9, and, burst forth anew in 1361—2, and again in 1369. In contemporary and later literature it is usually called the "Pestilence," or the "Great Pestilence," under the former of which expressions it is mentioned by both Chaucer and Langland. It is regarded as having been merely an aggravated outburst of the ordinary plague, which had been smouldering among the population since 1342, and was suddenly kindled into fatal activity by the working of special causes, due to natural phenomena of rare concurrence and exceptional power. The forces of nature, we are told, had been let loose; for several years mighty earthquakes, furious tornadoes of wind and rain, violent floods, clouds of locusts darkening the air or poisoning it with their corrupting bodies, and other abnormal' manifestations of elemental strife, had been, from China to Europe, destroying men and their works, blighting vegetation, turning fruitful lands into noxious swamps, and polluting the atmosphere. Whether these disturbances of nature were answerable for the visitation may be questioned; but there is abundance of evidence to prove their actual occurrence, and the ablest scientific writer on the subject-Hecker-has no doubt of the connection between the adulteration of the air that followed them and the virulence of the pestilence. "This disease," he says, was a consequence of violent commotions in the earth's organism-if any disease of cosmical origin can be so considered." would be safe at least to suspect that the lingering traces of the epidemic of 1342, and the general physical demoralisation produced by the disturbance of the conditions of life, left men's bodies an easier prey to the malignant agency. The quickening power, however, came from the East. Carried by commerce across the Black Sea from Western Asia to Constantinople, the disease spread widely and swiftly from that centre, and

66

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early in 1347 fell upon Sicily, Marseilles, and several towns on the coast of Italy. After a brief pause at these places, it broke out with unsparing fury at Avignon in January, 1348; advanced thence to Southern France, to Spain, to Northern Italy, and early in April appeared at Florence, where it came under the observation of Boccaccio, who has left a detailed account of its action. Passing through France and visiting, but not as yet ravaging, Germany, it made its way to England. This country it entered at some point in Dorset, where it cut down its first English victims in August, 1348. Thence it travelled-by way of Devon and Somerset, of Bristol, Gloucester, and Oxford -to London, but so slowly that winter had begun before it reached the capital. Soon it embraced the whole kingdom; no spot, however isolated, escaped its rage; England became a mere pest-house. Its chief symptoms in this country were spitting, in some cases actual vomiting, of blood, the breaking out of inflammatory boils in parts, or over the whole, of the body, and the appearance of those dark blotches upon the skin which suggested its most startling name. Some of its victims died almost on the first attack, some in twelve hours, some in two days, almost all within the first three. Before it medical skill was powerless; few recovered, until, as the plague drew towards its close, men bethought them of opening the hard, dry boils -a treatment that relieved the system of the venom and saved many lives. Contagion bore it everywhere; the clothes, the breath, everything the patient touched, the very air that surrounded him, were poisoned with it; even a glance of his eye, men fancied, might strike down the onlooker. Its career in England on this visitation lasted for about a year; but its destructive energy would seem to have been at its height between May, 1349, and the following Michaelmas, the summer heats doubtless stimulating its fury. The havoc it made in the population far exceeded that made by any similar scourge recorded in history; the exaggerations of a contemporary annalist, gross as they are, help us to realise its extent. "Towns, once close packed with men, were stripped of their inhabitants; and to so pernicious a power did the plague rise that the living were scarce able to bury the dead. In certain religious houses, out of twenty inmates there hardly survived two. By several it was reckoned that barely a tenth part of the population had been left alive." It is stated that it slew 100,000 human beings in London-50,000 of whom were buried in a plot of ground which Sir Walter Manny had bought for the purpose, a space now covered by Smithfield-nearly 60,000 in Norwich, and proportionate numbers in Bristol and other leading cities. These numbers are thought incredible; but one

scrupulously careful living writer has found evidence which satisfies him that at least half the population died by this outbreak, whilst another, of equal industry, admits that the full sum of the victims cannot have been less than a third. And the leaning of historians is generally towards the higher reckoning, by which the actual carnage would amount, at highest, to 2,500,000, at lowest, to 1,500,000, for the estimates of the population at the time range from 3,000,000 to 5,000,000. For obvious reasons, the mortality was greatest among the clergy and the humbler classes; yet the contagion reached even the highest. A newly-elected Primate, Bradwardine, and Edward III's. daughter, Joan, caught it and perished. For a time its progress seemed arrested by the Scottish border, and "the foul death of the English" is said to have been a favourite oath with the Scots, who felt a malicious pleasure in their enemies' misfortunes; but the scoffers soon involved themselves in the same disasters by making a foolish raid into England, and the work of death went forward in Scotland also. The disease passed over to Ireland, where, if report can be trusted, it discriminated between the intruding English and the natives; the former were taken and the latter left. Its immediate effects on society were of the kind usual in such frightful calamities. Humanity showed itself at its worst and its best: there was much reckless profligacy and revolting selfishness, but not a few examples of selfsacrificing devotion. The terror-stricken rushed to religion for comfort and help; many gave up lands and goods, and sought a haven in monasteries; an earlier and fierce fanaticism-that of the Flagellants-was reorganised, and fascinated or horrified men by its ghastly ritual. The permanent impression that the Black Death made on the human memory is shown in several ways-in this conspicuously, that it was set up as a fixed mark to reckon time from; it was long a practice to date charters and legal instruments from it. Far more important were its economic and remoter historical consequences. The great social movement of the fourteenth century gained by it an impetus, if not an originating force, and found in it the most favourable conditions of success; it led, by regular stages, to the rising of the commons under Wat Tyler; and the whole system of farming was revolutionised by it. It has even been surmised that England owes to it the picturesque hedge-rows that divide her fields. It is certain that the wages of labour at once more than doubled through the scarcity of labourers; that proclamations were issued and statutes were passed fixing the price of labour at its former rate, and imposing penalties on all who demanded or gave more; that, these proving ineffective, others, and again others, were passed with the same aim

and a like result; that ill feeling arose between those who lived by and those who lived on manual labour, which at last drove the working classes into rebellion, And the difficulty of getting their lands tilled by the old method of villein services and hired labour forced the lords and religious houses to break up their estates, hitherto managed for them by bailiffs, into farms, which they let on leases to the actual tillers of the soil. But this was the issue of a long and compiicated process, the details of which are too abundant to be given here. The visitations of 1361-2 and 1369 were also formidable in the extent of their ravages, yet mild as compared with their terrible predecessor. They may be regarded as stages in the gradual settling down of the "great mortality" into the endemic state that it remained in for centuries.

Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages; J. E. T. Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices in England, vol. i.; Longman, Life of Edward III.; Papers in vol. ii. and vol. iii. of Fortnightly Review, by F. Seebohm and J. E. T. Rogers.

Black Dog of Arden, THE, was the nickname applied by Piers Gaveston to Guy, Earl of Warwick. "Does he call me dog?' said Warwick. "Let him beware lest I bite

him."

Walsingham, Hist. Anglic. (Rolls Series), vol. i. 115, 133.

Black Friday was the name given to the 11th of May, 1866, when a commercial panic was at its height.

Black Hole of Calcutta, THE (June 20, 1756). Suraj-ud-Dowlah, the Nawab of Bengal, a young man, cruel, effeminate, and debauched, who succeeded Aliverdi Khan early in 1756, was greatly enraged with the English at Calcutta for concealing a fugitive from him. He marched down on Calcutta on June 18 on the pretence that the English had erected some new fortifications without consulting him. The town was ill-prepared to resist an assault, and was moreover weakened by the disgraceful desertion of Mr. Drake, the governor, with the military commandant, who slipped off unperceived, and rowed down to the ships. Mr. Holwell was thereupon placed in command by common consent, and the fort was gallantly held for forty-eight hours, when it became necessary to surrender. The Nawab gave Mr. Holwell every assurance of protection, and retired about dusk to his encampment. In spite of this the prisoners, 146 in number, were thrust into a narrow chamber, some twenty feet square, which had been used as the prison of the garrison, and, however suited for the confinement of a few turbulent soldiers, meant simply death to the crowd thrust into it at the sword's point in one of the hottest nights of the most sultry season of the year.

mail was made a felony by 43 Eliz., c. 13 (1601). The name was also given to the payment made to the chiefs of some of the Highland clans by those who lived in their neighbourhood in return for the immunity of their cattle from capture. It did not entirely cease till 1745.

Black Mountain War, THE (1868). The Hussunzye tribe of Afghans, inhabiting the Agror Valley in the Black Mountain range, broke out into hostilities and attacked a police station. As they showed no disposition to submit, General Wylde was sent against them, Sept. 26th, and after various operations, which lasted till the 7th of Nov., reduced the insurgents, who submitted, and the force was withdrawn on the 10th. [LAWRENCE, LORD.]

Black Prince. [EDWARD, THE BLACK PRINCE.]

Black Sea Conference, THE. In 1871, in consequence of a declaration by Russia that she would no longer be bound by the Treaty of Paris of 1856 with regard to the navigation of the Black Sea, a Conference of the Powers was invited to meet at London to settle the questions. In assuming a right to abolish her own treaty engagements, there can be no doubt that Russia counted upon some general understanding she had arrived at with Prussia, to the effect that the latter power would assist her in effecting her wishes. Some delay arose in the assembling of the Conference owing to the anomalous position of France, but on Dec. 18th, Lord Granville received a formal intimation that a French plenipotentiary would present himself at the Conference. The emergency at Paris, however, prevented this, and the representatives

of the other powers proceeded to deliberate without France; but the Duke de Broglie, the French plenipotentiary, eventually appeared on March 13th. As the result of the Conference the Treaty of London was concluded. Its provisions were that articles XI., XIII., and XIV. of the Treaty of Paris, 1856, are abrogated; that the principle of closing the Dardanelles and Bosphorus is maintained with power to the Sultan to open the said straits to the fleets of friendly and allied powers, in the event that the execution of the stipulations of the Treaty of Paris should require it; that the commission for managing the navigation of the Danube should be continued in its present form for a further period of twelve years. The result of this treaty

was to open the Black Sea to Russian ships of war, and to allow the Sultan to open the Dardanelles to foreign ships of war if the defence of his throne required it.

Black Watch, THE, was the name originally given to the semi-independent bodies of Highlanders who were entrusted by the English government with the duty of keeping order in the Highlands. They were embodied as a regiment of the regular army (the 43rd, afterwards the 42nd) in 1740. Three years afterwards they were removed to London. In May, 1743, the greater part of the regiment mutinied, and set out northwards. They were pursued, surrounded, and compelled to surrender. Three ringleaders were put to death, and the remainder of the regiment sent to the West Indies and to Flanders. As a regiment of the regular army the Black Watch has since borne a distinguished part in nearly all the wars in which England has been engaged.

Blackheath, THE BATTLE OF (June 22, 1497), was fought between the troops of Henry VII. and the Cornish rebels. The rebels had taken up a strong position on a hill at Blackheath, within sight of London. The king had recalled the troops destined for service against Scotland, and had collected together at London a large army composed of all the fighting men in the neighbouring counties. He stationed one portion of his army (under his personal command) in St. George's Fields. A second detachment, under the command of the Earls of Oxford and Suffolk, was ordered to make a circuitous march round the hill occupied by the rebels, and take up as strong a position as possible in their rear. The remainder of his forces, under Lord Daubeny, he sent forward to attack the rebels in front. The Cornishmen fought bravely; but ill-armed, ill-led, without horse or artillery, they were unable to offer any long resistance to the disciplined, wellequipped troops who attacked them in front and rear simultaneously. Two thousand of their number were slain, and the remainder surrendered. Among the large

number of prisoners were the rebel leaders Lord Audley, Michael Joseph, and Thomas Flammock, who were put to death.

Blacklow Hill, an eminence between Warwick and Coventry, was the scene of the execution of Piers Gaveston by the revolted barons under the Earls of Lancaster and Warwick in 1312.

Blackstone, SIR WILLIAM (h. 1723, d. 1780), was the posthumous son of a Cheapside silk-mercer, and was educated at the Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Oxford. He obtained a fellowship at All Souls, and was called to the bar by the Middle Temple in 1746. His practice was never large, and after a few years he devoted his attention mainly to collegiate matters. As bursar of All Souls he showed administrative skill and zeal for reform; and the building of the Codrington Library was mainly due to his exertions. In 1757 he was elected to a fellowship at Queen's College, where his architectural activities again displayed themselves. A year later he was elected to the newly founded Vinerian Professorship of Law, and delivered from that chair the lectures which were subsequently (1765) embodied in the "Commentaries." The fame of his lectures caused him to return to a more active professional life. In 1761 he was appointed Principal of New Inn Hall, a post which he held for five years in the vain hope of establishing at Oxford a college for legal education. He also during this period sat in Parliament for Hendon and Westbury. From 1770 until his death he was one of the Judges of the Common Pleas. As a writer upon law his faults are mainly those of his age-an unscientific arrangement anu a loose terminology. Bentham has exposed these faults with great vehemence, but at the same time does full justice to Blackstone's merits as an expounder. "He it is," he says, "who, first of all institutional writers, has taught jurisprudence to speak the language of the scholar and the gentleman." This sentence accurately represents Blackstone's claim to be remembered, and will explain why laymen regard his work with reverence and lawyers with indifference.

Besides the Commentaries on the Laws of England, of which numerous editions have appeared, Blackstone wrote several tracts on questions of constitutional law, that on the Middlesex Election, and on the Extent of the Powers of Parliament, being the two best known. The Commentaries have been rearranged with doubtful advantage by R. M. Kerr and Mr. Serjeant Stephen. A Life by J. C. Clitherow is prefaced to Blackstone's Reports (folio, 1781). A biography and list of works published, and in manuscript, by a "Gentleman of Lincoln's Inn" (Dr. Douglass), appeared in 1782. See also Montague Burrows, Worthies of All Souls, and Junius, Letter xviii.

[B. R. W.]

Blackwater, THE BATTLE OF (1598), was fought near the fort of that name in Tyrone. Hugh O'Neil, called the "arch rebel," here