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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wilson, Thomas (statesman)

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​WILSON, THOMAS, (c. 1525 -1581), English statesman and critic, the son of Thomas Wilson of Strubby, in Lincolnshire, was born about 1525. He was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, where he joined the school of Hellenists to which Cheke, Thomas Smith, Walter Haddon and others belonged. He graduated B.A. in 1546 and M.A. in 1549. In 1551 he produced, in conjunction with Walter Haddon, a Latin life of Henry and Charles Brandon, dukes of Suffolk. His earliest work of importance was The Rule of Reason, conteinynge the Arte of Logique set forth in Englishe (1551), which was frequently reprinted. It has been maintained that the book on which Wilson's fame mainly rests, The Arte of Rhetorique, was printed about the same time, but this is probably an error: the first edition extant is dated January 1553. It is the earliest systematic work of literary criticism existing in the English language. Wilson threw in his lot with the Dudley family, and when they fell, he fled to the Continent. He was with Sir John Cheke in Padua in 1555-1557, and afterwards at Rome, whither in 1558 Queen Mary wrote, ordering him to return to England to stand his trial as a heretic. He refused to come, but was arrested by the Roman Inquisition and tortured. He escaped, and fled to Ferrara, but in 1560 he was once more in London. Wilson became Master of St Katherine's Hospital in the Tower, and entered parliament in January 1563. In 1570 he published a translation, the first attempted in English, of the Olynthiacs and Philippics of Demosthenes, on which he had been engaged since 1556. His Discourse upon Usury appeared in 1572. From 1574 to 1577, Wilson, who had now become a prominent person in the diplomatic world, was principally engaged on embassies to the Low Countries, and on his return to England he was made a privy councillor and sworn secretary of state; Walsingham was his colleague. In 1580, although he was not in holy orders, Queen Elizabeth made Wilson dean of Durham. He died at St Katherine's Hospital on the 16th of June 1581, and was buried next day, "without charge or pomp," at his express wish. The Arte of Rhetorique gives Wilson a high place among the earliest artificers of English style; and it is interesting to see that he was opposed to pedantry of phrase, and above all to a revival of uncouth medieval forms of speech, and encouraged a simpler manner of prose writing than was generally appreciated in the middle of the 16th century.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wilson, James Harrison

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​WILSON, JAMES HARRISON (1837-), American cavalry soldier, was born at Shawneetown, Illinois, in 1837 and entered West Point military academy in 1855, graduating in 1860. He was appointed to the engineer branch of the United States army, served in the Port Royal and Fort Pulaski operations, being breveted major for his gallant conduct at Pulaski, was on M'Clellan's staff at Antietam as a lieutenant-colonel in 1862, and as a topographical engineer on the headquarters staff of the Army of the Tennessee during the Vicksburg and Chattanooga campaigns. His services in the intricate operations before Vicksburg were rewarded by promotion to brigadier-general U.S.V. In 1864 he was appointed to command a division in Sheridan's cavalry corps, and played a distinguished part in the cavalry operations of the 4th to 6th of May during the battle of the Wilderness (for which he was breveted colonel U.S.A.), the so-called Richmond Raid, the operations on the Totopotomoy, &c. Later in 1864 he commanded the cavalry of Thomas's army in Tennessee. During the closing operations of the war he led a cavalry expedition on a grand scale through the South-Western states, occupying Selma, Montgomery and Macon, and capturing at different times nearly 7000 prisoners, including President Davis. He was promoted major-general of volunteers and breveted major-general U.S.A. shortly before the end of the war. Returning to duty in the regular army as a lieutenant-colonel of infantry for some years, he resigned in 1870 and engaged in engineering and railway construction. In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, he was appointed a major-general in the new volunteer army, and took part in the operations in Porto Rico. He served in the China expedition of 1900 as a brigadier-general and in 1901 was placed on the retired list as a brigadier-general U.S.A.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wilson, John (playwright)

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​WILSON, JOHN (1627–1696), English playwright, son of Aaron Wilson, a royalist divine, was born in London in 1627. He matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford, in 1644, and entered Lincoln’s Inn two years later, being called to the bar in 1649. His unswerving support of the royal pretensions recommended him to James, duke of York, through whose influence he became Recorder of Londonderry about 1681. His Discourse of Monarchy (1684), a tract in favour of the succession of the duke of York, was followed (1685) by a “Pindarique” on his coronation. In 1688 he wrote Jus regium Coronae, a learned defence of James’s action in dispensing with the penal statutes. He died in obscurity, due perhaps to his political opinions, in 1696. Wilson was the author of four plays, showing a vigorous and learned wit, and a power of character-drawing that place him rather among the followers of Ben Jonson than with the Restoration dramatists.
The Cheats (written in 1662, printed 1664, 1671, &c.) was played with great success in 1663. John Lacy found one of his best parts in Scruple, a caricature of a Presbyterian minister of accommodating morality. Andronicus Comnenius (1664), a blank verse tragedy, is based on the story of Andronicus Comnenus as told by Peter Heylin in his Cosmography. It contains a scene between the usurper and the widow of his victim Alexius which follows very closely Shakespeare’s treatment of a parallel situation in Richard III. The Projectors (1665), a prose comedy of London life, is, like Molière’s L’Avare, founded on the Aulularia of Plautus, but there is no evidence that Wilson was acquainted with the French play. Belphegor, or the Marriage of the Devil; a Tragi-comedy (1690), treats of a theme familiar to Elizabethan drama, but Wilson took the subject from the Belphegor attributed to Machiavelli, and alludes also to Straparola’s version in the Notii. He also translated into English Erasmus’s Encomium Moriae (1668).
See The Dramatic Works of John Wilson, edited with introduction and notes by James Maidment and W. H. Logan in 1874 for the “Dramatists of the Restoration” series.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wilson, Sir William James Erasmus

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​WILSON, SIR WILLIAM JAMES ERASMUS, generally known as Sir Erasmus Wilson (1809-1884), British surgeon and philanthropist, was born in London on the 25th of November 1809, studied at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, and at Aberdeen, and early in life became known as a skilful operator and dissector. It was his sympathy with the poor of London and a suggestion from Thomas Wakley of the Lancet, of which Wilson acted for a time as sub-editor, which first led him to take ​up skin diseases as a special study. The horrible cases of scrofula, anaemia and blood-poisoning which he saw made him set to work to alleviate the sufferings of persons so afflicted, and he quickly established a reputation for treating this class of patient. It was said that he cured the rich by ordering them to give up luxuries; the poor, by prescribing for them proper nourishment, which was often provided out of his own pocket. In the opinion of one of his biographers, we owe to Wilson in great measure the habit of the daily bath, and he helped very much to bring the Turkish bath into use in Great Britain. He wrote much upon the diseases which specially occupied his attention, and his books, A Healthy Skin and Student's Book of Diseases of the Skin, though they were not received without criticism at the time of their appearance, long remained textbooks of their subject. He visited the East in order to study leprosy, Switzerland that he might investigate the causes of goitre, and Italy with the purpose of adding to his knowledge of the skin diseases affecting an ill-nourished peasantry. He made a large fortune by his successful practice and by skilful investments, and, since he had no family, he devoted a great deal of his money to charitable and educational purposes. He founded in 1869 the chair and museum of dermatology in the Royal College of Surgeons, of which he was chosen president in 1881, and which just before his death awarded him its honorary gold medal, founded in 1800 and only six times previously awarded. He also founded a professorship of pathology at Aberdeen University. After the death of his wife the bulk of his property, some £200,000, went to the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1878 he earned the thanks of the nation, upon different grounds, by defraying the expense of bringing the Egyptian obelisk called Cleopatra's Needle from Alexandria to London, where it was erected on the Thames Embankment. The British government had not thought it worth the expense of transportation. He was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1881, and died at Westgate-on-Sea on the 7th of August 1884.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Martin

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​ST MARTIN, an island in the West Indies, about 5 m. S. of the British island of Anguilla in 18° N. and 63° W. It is 38 sq. m. in area and nearly triangular in form, composed of conical hills, culminating in Paradise Peak (1920 ft.). It is the only island in the Antilles owned by two European powers; 17 sq. m. in the N., belonging to France, form a dependency of Guadeloupe, while the rest of the island, belonging to Holland, is a dependency of Curaçao. Sugar, formerly its staple, has been succeeded by salt. The chief town of the French area is Marigot, a free port on the W. coast; of the Dutch, Philipsburg, on the S. St Martin was first occupied by French freebooters in 1638, but ten years later the division between France and Holland was peaceably made. The inhabitants, mostly English-speaking negroes, number about 3000 in the French part, and in the Dutch the population in 1908 was 3817.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Maur-des-Fossés

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​ST MAUR-DES-FOSSÉS, a south-eastern suburb of Paris, on the right bank of the Marne, 7 m. from the centre of the city. Pop. (1906), 28,016. St Maur and the residential district surrounding it cover a peninsula formed by a loop in the Marne, the neck of which is crossed by the canal of St Maur. In the reign of Clovis II. the monastery of Les Fossés was founded; the amplification of the name came when the body of St Maurus was brought there by the monks of St Maur-sur-Loire. About the same time was inaugurated the pilgrimage of Notre-Dame des Miracles, which still takes place annually. In 1465 a treaty of peace, putting an end to the “War of the Public Weal," was concluded between Louis XI. and his revolted barons at St Maur.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Maur-sur-Loire

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​ST MAUR-SUR-LOIRE, a village of western France in the department of Maine-et-Loire on the Loire about 15 m. below Saumur. Here St Maurus towards the middle of the 6th century founded the first Benedictine monastery in Gaul. About the middle of the 9th century it was reduced to ruins by the Normans; in anticipation of the disaster the relics of the saint were transferred to the abbey of Fossés (afterwards St Maur-des-Fossés: see above). St Maur-sur-Loire was afterwards restored and fortified; the extant remains consist of a part of the church (12th and 17th centuries) and buildings of the 17th and 18th centuries.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Mawes

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​ST MAWES, a small seaport in the St Austell parliamentary division of Cornwall, England, beautifully situated on an arm of Falmouth Harbour. Pop. (1901), 1178. The inlet admits only small vessels to the little harbour, but there is a considerable fishing industry. A large circular castle, vis-à-vis with that, of Pendennis near Falmouth, and dating from the same period (Henry VIII.), guards the entrance. Near the shore of the inlet opposite St Mawes is the small church of St Anthony in Roseland, an excellent example of Early English work, retaining a good Norman doorway.
The history of St Mawes is simple. The saint of that name is said to have made the creek of the Fal a halting-place in the 5th century. The chapel of St Mawes, pulled down in 1812, was licensed by the bishop in 1381, and both chapel and village were' situated within the manor of Bogullos, which in the 16th century belonged to the family of Wydeslade. In the 16th century John Leland speaks of the castle as lately begun and describes St Mawes as “a quarter of a mile from the castle, a pretty village or fishertown with a pier called St Mawes and there is a chapel of the saint and his chair of stone and hard by his well.” The number of houses half a century later did not exceed twenty, and John Wydeslade, as lord of the manor of Bogullos, owned the village. For the part which he took in the rebellion of 1549 Wydeslade was hanged and his lands forfeited, and in 1562 the manor was granted by Queen Elizabeth to Sir Reginald Mohun of Hall. In the same year St Mawes was incorporated and invested with the right of returning two members to the House of Commons, a privilege which it enjoyed until 1832. In 1607 the portion of the manor of Bogullos which embraced St Mawes was sold by Sir Thomas Arundell, who had married a daughter of Sir William Mohun, to Thomas Walker, and by the latter it was resold to Sir George Parry, who represented the borough in parliament from 1640 to 1642, Sir George Parry sold St Mawes to John Tredenham, whose sons, Sir William and Sir Joseph, and Sir Joseph’s son, John Tredenham, became successively its parliamentary representatives. On the death of the last named St Mawes passed by sale to John Knight, whose widow married Robert Nugent, afterwards Earl Nugent, and until the Reform Act of 1832 the Nugents controlled the elections at St Mawes. The corporation, founded in 1562, which consisted of a mayor, or port reeve, and other officers elected by about twenty free tenants, was dissolved under the Municipal Corporations Act in 1835. Its silver mace now belongs to the corporation of Wolverhampton, to whom it passed after the great sale of the effects of the duke of Buckingham at Stowe in 1848, the duke having obtained it as the heir of the Earls Nugent.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Mary

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​ST MARY (Santa Maria), an island in the Atlantic Ocean, belonging to Portugal and forming part of the Azores (q.v.). Pop. (1000), 6383; area, 40 sq. m. St Mary is the southernmost and easternmost of the Azores, lying south of the larger island of St Michael’s, through the medium of which its trade is conducted, as it has no good harbours of its own. It produces wheat in abundance, of which a considerable quantity is exported. Various volcanic rocks are the predominant formations, but beds of limestone also occur, giving rise to numerous stalactite grottoes all over the island. The chief town is Villa do Porto (2506).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Mary's Loch

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​ST MARY’S LOCH, a fresh-water lake of Selkirkshire, Scotland. It lies in the high land towards the western border, and is visited from Selkirk (16 m. E. by N.) or Moffat (15 m. S.W.). It is 814 ft. above the sea, is from 80 to 90 ft. deep, 3 m. long, about 1 m. wide at its widest, and has a shore-line of 71/2 m. A narrow isthmus divides its head from the small Loch of the Lowes (about 1 m. long), which is believed to have been once part of it, the difference of level being only 15 in. St Mary’s is emptied by the Yarrow, and its principal feeder is Megget Water, a noted angling stream. It takes its name from St Mary’s Kirk, the ruins of which lie near the northern shore. From the 13th century, when the church is first mentioned, till its destruction in 1557, it was variously known as the Forest Kirk (in which William Wallace was elected Warden of Scotland), St Mary’s of Farmainishope, an old name of the adjoining lands of Kirkstead, St Mary of the Lowes, and the Kirk of Yarrow. It had been partly restored, but gradually fell into decay, its place being taken by the church of Yarrow farther down the vale. In the graveyard was buried John Grieve (1781–1836), the Edinburgh hatter, a poet of some capacity, patron of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. At the head of the lake is the celebrated inn opened by Tibbie Shiel (Mrs Richardson, d. 1878), which was visited by many distinguished men of letters.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/St Michael's Mount

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​ST MICHAEL'S MOUNT, a lofty pyramidal island, exhibiting a curious combination of slate and granite, rising 400 yds. from the shore of Mount's Bay, in Cornwall, England. It is united with Marazion by a natural causeway cast up by the sea, and passable only at low tide. If its identity with the Mictis of Timaeus and the Ictis of Diodorus Siculus be allowed, St Michael's Mount is one of the most historic spots in the west of England. It was possibly held by a body of religious in the Confessor's time and given by Robert, count of Mortain, to Mount St Michael, of which Norman abbey it continued to be a priory until the dissolution of the alien houses by Henry V., when it was given to the abbess and Convent of Syon. It was a resort of pilgrims, whose devotions were encouraged by an indulgence granted by Popc Gregory in the 11th century. The Mount was captured on behalf of Prince John by Henry Pomeroy in the reign of Richard I. John de Vere, earl of Oxford, seized it and held it during a siege of twenty-three weeks against 6000 of the king's troops in 1473. Perkin Warbeck occupied the Mount in 1497. Humphry Arundell, governor of St Michael's Mount, led the rebellion of 1549. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth it was given to Robert, earl of Salisbury, by whose son it was sold to Sir Francis Basset. Sir Arthur Basset, brother of Sir Francis, held the Mount against the parliament until July 1646. It was sold in 1659 to Colonel John St Aubyn and is now the property of his descendant Lord Levan. The chapel is extra-diocesan and the castle is the residence of Lord St Levan.
Many relics, chiefly armour and antique furniture, are preserved in the castle. The chapel of St Michael, a beautiful 15th-century building, has an embattled tower, in one angle of which is a small turret, which served for the guidance of ships. Chapel rock, on the beach, marks the site of a shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary, where pilgrims paused to 'worship before ascending the Mount. A few houses are built on the hillside facing Marazion, and a spring supplies them with water. The harbour, widened in 1823 to allow vessels of 500 tons to enter, has a pier dating from the 15th century, and subsequently enlarged and restored. Pop. (1901), 111.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Norfolk Island

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​NORFOLK ISLAND, an island in the Pacific Ocean, about 800 m. E. of the nearest point of New South Wales, in 29° S., 167° 56′ E. It stands on a submarine tableland extending about 18 m. to the N. and 25 m. to the S., and has itself an area of 8528 acres or 13·3 sq. m. The islets of Nepean and Philip lie near it. Its high cliff-bound coast is difficult of access. With a general elevation of 400 ft. above the sea the island rises in the N.W. to 1050 ft. in the double summit of Mount Pitt. The soil, of decomposed basalt, is wonderfully fertile. The rich undulating pasture-land with clumps of trees and copses resembles a park. Oranges, lemons, grapes, passion fruit, figs, pine-apples, guavas and other fruits grow abundantly; while potatoes, onions, maize and arrowroot can be cultivated. The Norfolk Island pine (Araucaria excelsa) is a magnificent tree, with a height sometimes exceeding 200 ft. and a girth of 30. A small species of palm is known as the Norfolk Island cabbage. Tree-ferns are abundant. The flora is most closely associated with that of New Zealand, and the avifauna indicates the same connexion rather than one with Australia, as those birds which belong to Australian genera are apparently immigrants, while those which occur on the island in common with New Zealand would be incapable of such distant migration. The climate is healthy, the thermometer rarely sinking below 65° F. The island is a station of the British Pacific cable. It was discovered in 1774 by Captain Cook, and was taken by Philip King of the Stirling and twenty-four convicts from New South Wales. This settlement was abandoned in 1805, but in 1826 the island was made a penal settlement from New South Wales. In 1856, 194 Pitcairn islanders took the place of the convicts. Forty of them soon returned to Pitcairn Island, and the remainder deteriorated owing to intermarriage. The administration of justice by an elected magistrate was unsatisfactory. Crime was rarely punished, and debts are rarely recoverable. A remedy was attempted in 1896 by an improvement in the government. The island was brought under the immediate administration of New South Wales; a chief magistrate, appointed by the governor of New South Wales, took the place of the elected magistrate, and an elected council of twelve elders superseded the general gathering of the adult population. In 1867 a Melanesian mission station was established at St Barnabas, and in 1882 a church was erected to the memory of Bishop Patteson, with windows designed by Burne-Jones and executed by William Morris.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nordfjord

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​NORDFJORD, an inlet of the west coast of Norway, penetrating the land for 50 m. in an easterly direction, its mouth being 115 m. by sea N. of Bergen (61° 50′ N.). No part of Norway affords finer scenery than the inner ramifications of this fjord among the snowy mountains of the northern Jostedalsbrae. Driving-roads penetrate the mountains from Visnaes eastward to the Gudbrandsdal, from Utvik southward to Vadheim on the Sogne Fjord, and from Faleide northward to Hellesylt (Geiranger Fjord) and Öje (Jorundsfjord). Nordfjordeid is a large village on the outer fjord, at the mouth of Hornindalen. Olden and Loen are other favourite centres on the inner part of the fjord. A small but powerful breed of horses is peculiar to the Nordfjord district.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Nore, The

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​NORE, THE, a sandbank at the mouth of the river Thames, England, marked by various buoys and by a lightship, with revolving light. This ship lies 3 m. from the nearest point on the Kent coast, about the same distance from the Essex coast, and 47 3/4 m. below London Bridge. The first light was placed here as an experiment by Mr Hamblin, its patentee, in 1731. In 1797 the neighbouring anchorage was the scene of a mutiny in the British fleet then lying here, well known in history as the Mutiny of the Nore.