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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Norton, Thomas

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​NORTON, THOMAS (1532–1584), English lawyer, politician and writer of verse, was born in London in 1532. He was educated at Cambridge, and early became a secretary to the Protector Somerset. In 1555 he was admitted a student at the Inner Temple, and married Margery Cranmer, the daughter of the archbishop. From his eighteenth year Norton had begun to compose verse. We find him connected with Jasper Heywood; as a writer of “sonnets” he contributed to Tottel’s Miscellany, and in 1560 he composed, in company with Sackville, the earliest English tragedy, Gorboduc, which was performed before Queen Elizabeth in the Inner Temple on the 18th of January 1561. In 1562 Norton, who had served in an earlier parliament as the representative of Gatton, became M.P. for Berwick, and entered with great activity into politics. In religion he was inspired by the sentiments of his father-in-law, and was in possession of Cranmer’s MS. code of ecclesiastical law; this he permitted John Foxe to publish in 1571. He went to Rome on legal business in 1579, and from 1580 to 1583 frequently visited the Channel Islands as a commissioner to inquire into the status of these possessions. Norton’s Calvinism grew with years, and towards the end of his career he became a rabid fanatic. His punishment of the Catholics, as their official censor from 1581 onwards, led to his being nicknamed “Rackmaster-General.” At last his turbulent puritanism made him an object of fear even to the English bishops; he was deprived of his office and thrown into the Tower. Walsingham presently released him, but Norton’s health was undermined, and on the 10th of March 1584 he died in his house at Sharpenhoe, Bedfordshire.
The Tragedie of Gorboduc was first published very corruptly in 1565, and, in better form, as The Tragedie of Feerex and Porrex, in 1570. Norton’s early lyrics have in the main disappeared. The most interesting of his numerous anti-Catholic pamphlets are those on the rebellion of Northumberland and on the projected marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to the duke of Norfolk. Norton also translated Calvin’s Institutes (1561) and Alexander Nowell’s Catechism (1570).
Gorboduc appears in various dramatic collections, and was separately edited by W. D. Cooper (Shakespeare Soc. 1847), and by Miss Toulmin Smith in Volkmöller’s Englische Sprach- und Literatur-denkmale (1883). The best account of Norton, and his place in literary history, is that of Sidney Lee in his Dictionary of National Biography. (E. G.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Northumberland, John Neville, Earl of

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​NORTHUMBERLAND, JOHN NEVILLE, Earl of (c. 1430–1471), English soldier, was the third son of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, and a brother of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, the “king-maker.” At the battle of Blore Heath in 1459 John Neville was taken prisoner by the Lancastrians, although the Yorkists under his father had won the victory; he was among those who were attainted in the parliament of Coventry, and he was not released until 1460 when his own party had gained the upper hand. Just afterwards he was created Lord Montagu and was made chamberlain of the royal household. He was not present at the battle of Wakefield, when his father was taken prisoner, but he was again a captive after the second battle of St Albans in 1461. He was speedily released by Edward IV., whom he served in the north of England, being rewarded with lands and honours. In 1463 he became warden of the east marches towards Scotland, and he was responsible for the Yorkist victories at Hedgeley Moor and at Hexham in April and May 1464; after the latter battle he secured the execution of Henry Beaufort, duke of Somerset, and other captives of high station. In this year (1464) he was created earl of Northumberland, the ​Percies being now crushed, and their head, Henry Percy, being in prison. Northumberland did not at first join his brother Warwick and the other Nevilles when they revolted against Edward IV., but neither did he help the king. Edward, doubtless suspecting him, restored the earldom of Northumberland and its vast estates to Henry Percy, while John Neville’s only recompense was the barren title of marquess of Montagu. At Pontefract in 1470 he and his men declared for Henry VI., a proceeding which compelled Edward IV. to fly from England, and under the restored king he regained his position as warden, but not the earldom of Northumberland. He did not attempt to resist Edward IV. when this king landed in Yorkshire in March 1471, but he fought under Warwick at Barnet, where he was slain on the 14th of April 1471. His son George (d. 1483) was betrothed to Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., and was created duke of Bedford in 1470, but the marriage did not take place and he was deprived of his dukedom in 1477.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Norton, Caroline Elizabeth Sarah

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​NORTON, CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH (1808–1877), afterwards Lady Stirling-Maxwell, English writer, was born in London in 1808. One of the three beautiful granddaughters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, daughters of his son Thomas, the “three Graces” of London society in the reign of George IV., she began to write before she was out of her teens. Her two sisters Helen and Georgina became respectively Lady Dufferin and duchess of Somerset. Lady Dufferin described the sisters to Disraeli with characteristic modesty. “Georgey’s the beauty,” she said, “and Carry’s the wit, and I ought to be the good one, but I am not.” At the age of seventeen, Caroline published a merry satire, The Dandies’ Rout, illustrated by herself, and full of girlish high spirits and wit. Her first essay in serious verse was made in 1829 with The Sorrows of Rosalie, the next in 1830 with The Undying One, a version of the legend of the Wandering Jew. She made an unfortunate marriage in 1827 with the Hon. George Norton, brother of Lord Grantley. After three years of protests on her part and good promises on his, she had left his house for her sister’s, had “condoned” on further good promises, and had returned, to find matters worse. The husband’s persecutions culminated in 1836 in an action brought against Lord Melbourne for seduction of his wife, which the jury decided against Mr Norton without leaving the box. The case against Lord Melbourne was so weak that it was suggested that Norton was urged to make the accusation by Melbourne’s political enemies, in the hope that the scandal would prevent him from being premier when the princess Victoria should succeed William IV. In 1853 legal proceedings between Mrs Norton and her husband were again entered on, because he not only failed to pay her allowance, but demanded the proceeds of her books. Mrs Norton made her own experience a plea for addressing to the queen in 1855 an eloquent letter on the divorce laws, and her writings did much to ripen opinion for changes in the legal status of married women. George Meredith, in Diana of the Crossways, used her as the model for his “Diana.” Mrs Norton was not a mere writer of elegant trifles, but was one of the priestesses of the “reforming” spirit; her Voice from the Factories (1836) was a most eloquent and rousing condemnation of child labour. The Dream, and other Poems appeared in 1840. Aunt Carry’s Ballads (1847), dedicated to her nephews and nieces, are written with charming tenderness and grace. Later in life she produced three novels, Stuart of Dunleath (1851), Lost and Saved (1863), and Old Sir Douglas (1868). Mrs Norton’s last poem was the Lady of La Garaye (1862), her last publication the half-humorous, half-heroic story of The Rose of Jericho in 1870. She died on the 15th of June 1877. Mr Norton died in 1875; and Mrs Norton in the last year of her life married Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell.
See The Life of Mrs Norton, by Jane G. Perkins (1909).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Limaçon

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​LIMAÇON (from the Lat. limax, a slug), a curve invented by Blaise Pascal and further investigated and named by Gilles Personne de Roberval. It is generated by the extremities of a rod which is constrained to move so that its middle point traces out a circle, the rod always passing through a fixed point on the circumference. The polar equation is r = a+b cos θ, where 2a = length of the rod, and b = diameter of the circle. The curve may be regarded as an epitrochoid (see Epicycloid) in which the rolling and fixed circles have equal radii. It is the inverse of a ​ central conic for the focus, and the first positive pedal of a circle for any point. The form of the limaçon depends on the ratio of the two constants; if a be greater than b, the curve lies entirely outside the circle; if a equals b, it is known as a cardioid (q.v.); if a is less than b, the curve has a node within the circle; the particular case when b＝2a is known as the trisectrix (q.v.). In the figure (1) is a limaçon, (2) the cardioid, (3) the trisectrix.
Properties of the limaçon may be deduced from its mechanical construction; thus the length of a focal chord is constant and the normals at the extremities of a focal chord intersect on a fixed circle. The area is (b$^2$+a$^2$/2)π, and the length is expressible as an elliptic integral.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Limbach

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​LIMBACH, a town in the kingdom of Saxony, in the manufacturing district of Chemnitz, 6 m. N.W. of that city. Pop. (1905) 13,723. It has a public park and a monument to the composer Pache. Its industries include the making of worsteds, cloth, silk and sewing-machines, and dyeing and bleaching.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Limb

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​LIMB. (1) (In O. Eng. lim, cognate with the O. Nor. and Icel. limr, Swed. and Dan. lem; probably the word is to be referred to a root li- seen in an obsolete English word “lith,” a limb, and in the Ger. Glied), originally any portion or member of the body, but now restricted in meaning to the external members of the body of an animal apart from the head and trunk, the legs and arms, or, in a bird, the wings. It is sometimes used of the lower limbs only, and is synonymous with “leg.” The word is also used of the main branches of a tree, of the projecting spurs of a range of mountains, of the arms of a cross, &c. As a translation of the Lat. membrum, and with special reference to the church as the “body of Christ,” “limb” was frequently used by ecclesiastical writers of the 16th and 17th centuries of a person as being a component part of the church; cf. such expressions as “limb of Satan,” “limb of the law,” &c. From the use of membrum in medieval Latin for an estate dependent on another, the name “limb” is given to an outlying portion of another, or to the subordinate members of the Cinque Ports, attached to one of the principal towns; Pevensey was thus a “limb” of Hastings. (2) An edge or border, frequently used in scientific language for the boundary of a surface. It is thus used of the edge of the disk of the sun or moon, of the expanded part of a petal or sepal in botany, &c. This word is a shortened form of “limbo” or “limbus,” Lat. for an edge, for the theological use of which see Limbus.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Limber

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​LIMBER, an homonymous word, having three meanings. (1) A two-wheeled carriage forming a detachable part of the equipment of all guns on travelling carriages and having on it a framework to contain ammunition boxes, and, in most cases, seats for two or three gunners. The French equivalent is avant-train, the Ger. Protz (see Artillery and Ordnance). (2) An adjective meaning pliant or flexible and so used with reference to a person’s mental or bodily qualities, quick, nimble, adroit. (3) A nautical term for the holes cut in the flooring in a ship above the keelson, to allow water to drain to the pumps.
The etymology of these words is obscure. According to the New English Dictionary the origin of (1) is to be found in the Fr. limonière, a derivative of limon, the shaft of a vehicle, a meaning which appears in English from the 15th century but is now obsolete, except apparently among the miners of the north of England. The earlier English forms of the word are lymor or limmer. Skeat suggests that (2) is connected with “limp,” which he refers to a Teutonic base lap-, meaning to hang down. The New English Dictionary points out that while “limp” does not occur till the beginning of the 18th century, “limber” in this sense is found as early as the 16th. In Thomas Cooper’s (1517?–1594) Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae (1565), it appears as the English equivalent of the Latin lentus. A possible derivation connects it with “limb.”
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Limborch, Philipp van

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​LIMBORCH, PHILIPP VAN (1633–1712), Dutch Remonstrant theologian, was born on the 19th of June 1633, at Amsterdam, where his father was a lawyer. He received his education at Utrecht, at Leiden, in his native city, and finally at Utrecht University, which he entered in 1652. In 1657 he became a Remonstrant pastor at Gouda, and in 1667 he was transferred to Amsterdam, where, in the following year, the office of professor of theology in the Remonstrant seminary was added to his pastoral charge. He was a friend of John Locke. He died at Amsterdam on the 30th of April 1712.
His most important work, Institutiones theologiae christianae, ad praxin pietatis et promotionem pacis christianae unice directae (Amsterdam, 1686, 5th ed., 1735), is a full and clear exposition of the system of Simon Episcopius and Stephan Curcellaeus. The fourth edition (1715) included a posthumous “Relatio historica de origine et progressu controversiarum in foederato Belgio de praedestinatione.” Limborch also wrote De veritate religionis Christianae amica collatio cum erudito Judaeo (Gouda, 1687); Historia Inquisitionis (1692), in four books prefixed to the “Liber Sententiarum Inquisitionis Tolosanae” (1307–1323); and Commentarius in Acta Apostolorum et in Epistolas ad Romanos et ad Hebraeos (Rotterdam, 1711). His editorial labours included the publication of various works of his predecessors, and of Epistolae ecclesiasticae praestantium ac eruditorum virorum (Amsterdam, 1684), chiefly by Jakobus Arminius, Joannes Uytenbogardus, Konrad Vorstius (1569–1622), Gerhard Vossius (1577–1649), Hugo Grotius, Simon Episcopius (his grand-uncle) and Gaspar Barlaeus; they are of great value for the history of Arminianism. An English translation of the Theologia was published in 1702 by William Jones (A Complete System or Body of Divinity, both Speculative and Practical, founded on Scripture and Reason, London, 1702); and a translation of the Historia Inquisitionis, by Samuel Chandler, with “a large introduction concerning the rise and progress of persecution and the real and pretended causes of it” prefixed, appeared in 1731. See Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Limasol

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​LIMASOL, a seaport of Cyprus, on Akrotiri Bay of the south coast. Pop. (1901) 8298. Excepting a fort attributed to the close of the 12th century the town is without antiquities of interest, but in the neighbourhood are the ancient sites of Amathus and Curium. Limasol has a considerable trade in wine and carobs. The town was the scene of the marriage of Richard I., king of England, with Berengaria, in 1191.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Limburg (Holland)

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​LIMBURG, the south-easternmost and smallest province of Holland, bounded N. by Gelderland, N.W. by North Brabant, S.W. by the Belgian province of Limburg, and S. by that of Liége, and E. by Germany. Its area is 850 sq. m., and its population in 1900 was 281,934. It is watered by the Meuse (Maas) which forms part of its south-western boundary (with Belgium) and then flows through its northern portion, and by such tributaries as the Geul and Roer (Ruhr). Its capital is Maastricht, which gives name to one of the two administrative districts into which it is divided, the other being Roermond.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Limburg (Prussia)

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​LIMBURG, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, on the Lahn, here crossed by a bridge dating from 1315, and on the main line of railway from Coblenz to Lollar and Cassel, with a branch to Frankfort-on-Main. Pop. (1905) 9917. It is the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop. The small seven-towered cathedral, dedicated to St George the martyr, is picturesquely situated on a rocky site overhanging the river. This was founded by Conrad Kurzbold, count of Niederlahngau, early in the 10th century, and was consecrated in 1235. It was restored in 1872–1878. Limburg has a castle, a new town hall and a seminary for the education of priests; its industries include the manufacture of cloth, tobacco, soap, machinery, pottery and leather. Limburg, which was a flourishing place during the middle ages, had its own line of counts until 1414, when it was purchased by the elector of Trier. It passed to Nassau in 1803. In September 1796 it was the scene of a victory gained by the Austrians under the archduke Charles over the French.
See Hillebrand, Limburg an der Lahn unter Pfandherrschaft 1344–1624 (Wiesbaden, 1899).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Limburg (Belgium)

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​LIMBURG, or Limbourg, the smallest of the nine provinces of Belgium, occupying the north-east corner of the kingdom. It represents only a portion of the ancient duchy of Limburg (see above). The part east of the Meuse was transferred to Holland by the London conference, and a further portion was attached to the province of Liége including the old capital now called Dolhain. Much of the province is represented by the wild heath district called the Campine, recently discovered to form an extensive coal-field. The operations for working it were only begun in 1906. North-west of Hasselt is Beverloo, where all the Belgian troops go through a course of instruction annually. Among the towns are Hasselt, the capital, St Trond and Looz. From the last named is derived the title of the family known as the dukes of Looz, whose antiquity equals that of the extinct reigning family of Limburg itself. The title of duc de Looz is one of the four existing ducal titles in the Netherlands, the other three being d’Arenberg, Croy and d’Ursel. Limburg contains 603,085 acres or 942 sq. m. In 1904 the population was 255,359, giving an average of 271 per sq. m.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Manasseh, king of Judah

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​MANASSEH (7th cent. B.C.), son of Hezekiah, and king of Judah (2 Kings xxi. 1–18). His reign of fifty-five years was marked by a reaction against the reforming policy of his father, and his persistent idolatry and bloodshed were subsequently regarded as the cause of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the dispersion of the people (2 Kings xxiii. 26 seq.; Jer. xv. 4). As a vassal of Assyria he was contemporary with Sennacherib, Esar-haddon (681–668 B.C.) and Assur-bani-pal (668–626 B.C.), and his name (Me-na-si-e) appears among the tributaries of the two latter. Little is known of his history. The chronicler, however, relates that the Assyrian army took him in chains to Babylon, and that after his repentance he returned, and distinguished himself by his piety, by building operations in Jerusalem and by military organization (2 Chron. xxxiii. 10 sqq.). The story of his penitence referred to in xxxiii. 22, is untrustworthy, but the historical foundation may have been some share in the revolt of the Babylonian Samas-sum-ukin (648 B.C.), on which occasion he may have been summoned before Assur-bani-pal with other rebels and subsequently reinstated. See further Driver, in Hogarth, Authority and Archaeology, pp. 114 sqq. Manasseh was succeeded by his son Amon, who after a brief reign of two years perished in a conspiracy, his place being taken by Amon’s son (or brother) Josiah (q.v.). A lament formerly ascribed to Manasseh (cf. 2 Chron. xxxiii. 18) is preserved in the Apocrypha (see Manasses, Prayer of; and Apocryphal Literature). On Judg. xviii. 30 (marg.), see Jonathan.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Manasses, Prayer of

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​MANASSES, PRAYER OF, an apocryphal book of the Old Testament. This writing, which since the Council of Trent has been relegated by the Church of Rome to the position of an appendix to the Vulgate, was placed by Luther and the translators of the English Bible among the apocryphal books. In some MSS. of the Septuagint it is the eighth among the canticles appended to the Psalter, though in many Greek psalters, which include the canticles, it is not found at all. In Swete’s Old Testament in Greek, iii. 802 sqq., A is printed with the variants of T (Psalterium turicense). From the statements in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 12, 13, 18, 19, it follows that the Old Testament chronicler found a prayer attributed to Manasseh in his Hebrew sources, The History of the Kings of Israel and The History of the Seers. Naturally the question arose, had the existing Prayer of Manasses any direct connexion with the prayer referred to by the chronicler? Ewald was of opinion that the Greek was an actual translation of the lost Hebrew; but Ball more wisely takes it as a free rendering of a lost Haggadic narrative founded on the older document from which the chronicler drew his information. This view he supports by showing that there was once a considerable literature in circulation regarding Manasseh’s later history. On the other hand most scholars take the Prayer to have been written in Greek, e.g. Fritzsche, Schürer and Ryssel (Kautzsch, Apok. u. Pseud. i. 165–168).
This fine penitential prayer seems to have been modelled after the penitential psalms. It exhibits considerable unity of thought, and the style is, in the main, dignified and simple.
As regards the date, Fritzsche, Ball and Ryssel agree in assigning this psalm to the Maccabean period. Its eschatology and doctrine of “divine forgiveness” may point to an earlier date.
The best short account of the book is given by Ball (Speaker’s Apocrypha, ii. 361–371); see also Porter in Hastings’s Dict. Bible, iii. 232–233.  (R. H. C.)