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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berkeley (England)

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​BERKELEY, a market town of Gloucestershire, England, near the river Severn, in that portion of its valley known as the Vale of Berkeley, on a branch from the Midland railway. Pop. (1901) 774. It is pleasantly situated on a gentle eminence, in a rich pastoral vale to which it gives name, celebrated for its dairies, producing the famous cheese known as “double Gloucester.” The town has a handsome church (Early English and Decorated), a grammar school, and some trade in coal, timber, malt and cheese. Berkeley was the birthplace of Dr Edward Jenner (1749), who is buried in the church. Berkeley Castle, on an eminence south-east of the town, is one of the noblest baronial castles existing in England, and one of the few inhabited. The Berkeley Ship Canal connects Gloucester with docks at Sharpness, avoiding the difficult navigation of the upper part of the Severn estuary.
The manor of Berkeley gives its name to the noble family of Berkeley (q.v.). According to tradition, a nunnery to which the manor belonged existed here before the Conquest, and Earl Godwin, by bringing about its dissolution, obtained the manor. All that is certainly known, however, is that in Domesday the manor is assigned to one Roger, who took his surname from it. His descendants seem to have been ousted from their possessions during the 12th century by Robert fitz Harding, an Angevin partisan, who already held the castle when, in 1153, Henry, duke of Normandy (who became King Henry II. in the following year), granted him the manor. Under an agreement made in the same year, Maurice, son of Robert fitz Harding, married a daughter ​of Roger of Berkeley. Their descendants styled themselves of Berkeley, and in 1200 the town was confirmed to Robert of Berkeley with toll, soc, sac, &c., and a market on whatever day of the week he chose to hold it. This charter was confirmed to Thomas, Lord Berkeley, in 1330, and in 1395–1396 Lord Berkeley received a grant of another fair on the vigil and day of Holyrood. The descendants of the Berkeley family still hold the manor and town. Berkeley Castle was the scene of the death of Edward II. The king was at first entrusted to the care of Lord Berkeley, who, being considered too lenient, was obliged to give up his prisoner and castle to Sir John Mautravers and Thomas Gournay. The town has no charter, but is mentioned as a borough in 1284–1285. It was governed by a mayor and twelve aldermen, but by 1864 their privileges had become merely nominal, and the corporation was dissolved in 1885 under the Municipal Corporations Act. Berkeley was formerly noted for the manufacture of clothing, but the trade had decreased by the 16th century, for Leland, writing about 1520, says “the town of Berkeley is no great thing. . . . It hath very much occupied and yet somewhat doth clothing.”
See John Fisher, History of Berkeley (1864).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berkhampstead

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​BERKHAMPSTEAD (Great Berkhampstead), a market town in the Watford parliamentary division of Hertfordshire, England, 28 m. N.W. from London by the London & North-Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 5140. It lies pleasantly in the narrow well-wooded valley of the Bulbourne, and is close to the Grand Junction canal. The church of St Peter, a large cruciform structure, exhibits all the Gothic styles, and earlier fragments are traceable. There are several brasses of interest. The poet William Cowper was born in the rectory in 1731. The large grammar school is a foundation of 1541. Straw-plaiting and the manufacture of small wooden wares are the principal industries, and there are large chemical works. Of the castle earthworks and fragments of walls remain. The name of the town is Great Berkhampstead (or Berkhamsted), in distinction from Little Berkhampstead near Hatfield in this county.
Berkhampstead (Beorhhamstede, Berchehamstede) was undoubtedly of some importance in Saxon times since there were fifty-two burgesses there at the time of the Conquest. In 1156 Henry II. granted the men and merchants of the town the same laws and customs as they had in the time of Edward the Confessor, and that they should be quit of toll throughout England, Normandy, Aquitaine and Anjou. Berkhampstead rose to importance with its castle, which is said to have been built by Robert, count of Mortain, and when the castle fell into ruin after 1496 the town also began to decay. In 1618, however, the burgesses received an incorporation charter; but after the civil wars the corporate body began to fail through poverty, and in the 18th century had ceased to exist. The burgesses returned two members to parliament in 1320 and again in 1338 and 1341, but were never represented again. Before the 13th century the burgesses held a weekly market on Sunday and a yearly fair on St James’s day, but in 1218 Henry III. altered the market day to Monday. Roofing tiles were manufactured in Berkhampstead as early as the 13th century, and in Elizabeth’s reign the making of malt was the chief industry.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berkeley (California)

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​BERKELEY, a city of Alameda county, California, U.S.A., on the E. shore of San Francisco Bay, named after Bishop Berkeley on account of his line “Westward the course of empire takes its way.” Pop. (1890) 5101; (1900) 13,214, of whom 3216 were foreign-born; (1910) 40,434. It is served by the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fé railway systems, both transcontinental; and is connected by electric lines (and ferry) with San Francisco, and by five electric lines with Oakland. Its attractive situation and pleasant outlooks have made it a favourite residential suburb of San Francisco, which lies at a distance of 7 m. across the bay. Berkeley is the seat of the California state university (see California, University of), opened in 1873; the inter-related Berkeley Bible Seminary (1896, Disciples of Christ); Pacific Theological Seminary (established in 1866 at Oakland, in 1901 at Berkeley, Congregational); Seminary of the Pacific Coast Baptist Theological Union, and Unitarian Theological School—all associated with the University of California; and the state institution for the deaf, dumb and blind. The site of Berkeley was a farming region until its selection for the home of the university. Berkeley was incorporated as a town in 1878.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berkeley, Sir William

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​BERKELEY, SIR WILLIAM (c. 1608–1677), British colonial governor in America, was born in or near London, England, about 1608, the youngest son of Sir Maurice Berkeley, an original member of the London Company of 1606, and brother of John, first Lord Berkeley of Stratton, one of the proprietors of the Carolinas. He graduated at Oxford in 1629, and in 1632 was appointed one of the royal commissioners for Canada, in which office he won the personal favour of Charles I., who appointed him a gentleman of the privy chamber. During this period he tried his hand at literary work, producing among other things a tragi-comedy entitled The Lost Lady (1638). In August 1641 he was appointed governor of Virginia, but did not take up his duties until the following year. His first term as governor, during which he seems to have been extremely popular with the majority of the colonists, was notable principally for his religious intolerance and his expulsion of the Puritans, who were in a great minority. During the Civil War in England he remained loyal to the king, and offered an asylum in Virginia to Charles II. and the loyalists. On the arrival of a parliamentary fleet in 1652, however, he retired from office and spent the following years quietly on his plantation. On the death, in 1660, of Samuel Matthews, the last parliamentary governor, he was chosen governor by the Virginia assembly, and was soon recommissioned by Charles II. His natural arrogance and tyranny seems to have increased with years, and the second period of his governorship was a stormy one. Serious frontier warfare with the Indians was followed (1676) by Bacon’s Rebellion (see Virginia), brought on by Berkeley’s misrule, and during its course all his worst traits became evident. His cruelty and barbarity in punishing the rebels did not meet with the approval of Charles II., who is said to have remarked that “the old fool has put to death more people in that naked country than I did here for the murder of my father.” Berkeley was called to England in 1677 ostensibly to report on the condition of affairs in the colony, and a lieutenant-governor (Herbert Jeffreys) was put in his place. Berkeley sailed in May, but died soon after his arrival, at Twickenham, and was buried there on the 13th of July 1677. In addition to the play mentioned he wrote A Discourse and View of Virginia (London, 1663).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Berkshire, Thomas Howard

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​BERKSHIRE, THOMAS HOWARD, 1st Earl of (1587–1669), 2nd son of Thomas Howard, 1st earl of Suffolk and of Catherine, daughter of Sir Henry Knevet, Kt., widow of Richard Rich, was baptized on the 8th of October 1587. He succeeded to his mother’s estate of Charlton in Wiltshire, was created K.B. in 1605, became master of the horse to Prince Charles, and was created Lord Howard of Charlton and Viscount Andover in 1622, K.G. in 1625, and earl of Berkshire in 1626. In 1634 he was chosen high steward of the university of Oxford. He was a commissioner for negotiating the treaty of Ripon in 1640, and accompanied the king to York in 1642. While attempting to execute the king’s commission of array in Oxfordshire in August he was taken prisoner by Hampden at Watlington and imprisoned in the Tower, but after being censured by the Lords was liberated in September. In 1643 he was made governor of the prince of Wales, a post for which he was in no way fitted, and in which he showed himself factious and obstructive. He accompanied the prince to Scilly and to Jersey, but on the latter’s departure for France went to Holland. At the Restoration he was made a privy councillor and received rewards. He died on the 16th of July 1669, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. According to Clarendon “his affection for the crown was good; his interest and reputation less than anything but his understanding.” He married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heir of William, earl of Exeter, by whom he had nine sons and four daughters. Of these Charles succeeded him as 2nd earl of Berkshire; Thomas succeeded the latter; and Philip was ancestor of John, 15th earl of Suffolk and 8th earl of Berkshire, and so of the later earls of Suffolk and Berkshire.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cassiterides

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​CASSITERIDES (from the Gr. κασσίτερος, tin, i.e. “Tin-islands”), in ancient geography the name of islands regarded as being situated somewhere near the west coasts of Europe. Herodotus (430 B.C.) had dimly heard of them. Later writers, Posidonius, Diodorus, Strabo and others, call them smallish islands off (Strabo says, some way off) the north-west coast of Spain, which contained tin mines, or, as Strabo says, tin and lead mines—though a passage in Diodorus derives the name rather from their nearness to the tin districts of north-west Spain. While geographical knowledge of the west was still scanty and the secrets of the tin-trade were still successfully guarded by the seamen of Gades and others who dealt in the metal, the Greeks knew only that tin came to them by sea from the far west, and the idea of tin-producing islands easily arose. Later, when the west was better explored, it was found that tin actually came from two regions, north-west Spain and Cornwall. Neither of these could be called “small islands” or described as off the north-west coast of Spain, and so the Cassiterides were not identified with either by the Greek and Roman geographers. Instead, they became a third, ill-understood source of tin, conceived of as distinct from Spain or Britain. Modern writers have perpetuated the error that the Cassiterides were definite spots, and have made many attempts to identify them. Small islands off the coast of north-west Spain, the headlands of that same coast, the Scillies, Cornwall, the British Isles as a whole, have all in turn been suggested. But none suits the conditions. Neither the Spanish islands nor the Scillies contain tin, at least in serious quantities. Neither Britain nor Spain can be called “small islands off the north-west of Spain.” It seems most probable, therefore, that the name Cassiterides represents the first vague knowledge of the Greeks that tin was found overseas somewhere in or off western Europe.
Authorities.—Herodotus iii. 115; Diodorus v. 21, 22, 38; Strabo ii. 5, iii. 2, 5, v. 11; Pliny, Nat. Hist. iv. 119, vii. 197, xxxiv. 156-158, are the chief references in ancient literature. T. R. Holmes, Ancient Britain (1907), appendix, identifies the Cassiterides with the British Isles. (F. J. H.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cassius, Avidius

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​CASSIUS, AVIDIUS (d. A.D. 175), Roman general, a Syrian by birth, lived during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. He especially distinguished himself during the Parthian War (A.D. 162–165), at the conclusion of which he was apparently appointed military governor of Asia, though the actual extent of his jurisdiction is doubtful. In 172 he was sent to Egypt, where he put down a dangerous rising of the Bucolici, the robber herdsmen of the delta of the Nile, after which he returned to Syria. In 175 the emperor Aurelius fell ill, and his wife Faustina, to secure her position in case of his death, offered her hand and the throne to the successful general. A rumour of Aurelius’s death having reached Syria, Cassius, without waiting for confirmation, proclaimed himself emperor; when the report proved false, it was too late for him to draw back, and he accordingly prepared for war. The senate declared him a public enemy, although Aurelius even then expressed the hope that he might have the opportunity of pardoning him. Deploring the necessity for taking up arms against his trusted officer, Aurelius set out for the east. While in Illyria, he received the news that Cassius had been slain by his own officers. The murderers offered his head to Aurelius, who refused to admit them, and ordered its immediate burial.
See Dio Cassius lxxi. 2-4, 17, 22-28, 30, 31; Fronto, Letters, i. 6; Lives of Marcus Aurelius, Verus and Commodus in the Scriptores Historiae Augustae, and the special biography of Avidius Cassius in the same by Vulcacius Gallicanus. The various letters and documents in the last-named are generally considered spurious, and the portions of the narrative founded on them consequently untrustworthy. See also article in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie, ii. pt. 2 (1896).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cassone

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​CASSONE, in furniture, the Italian name for a marriage coffer. The ancient and once almost universal European custom of providing a bride with a chest or coffer to contain the household linen, which often formed the major part of her dowry, produced in Italy a special type of chest of monumental size and artistic magnificence. The cassoni of the people, although always large in size, were simple as regards ornament; but those of the nobles and the well-to-do mercantile classes were usually imposing as regards size, and adorned with extreme richness. The cassone was almost invariably much longer than the English chest, and even at a relatively early period it assumed an artistic finish such as was never reached by the chests of northern Europe, except in the case of a few of the royal corbeilles de mariage made by such artists as Boulle for members of the house of France. Many of the earlier examples were carved in panels of geometrical tracery, but their characteristic ornament was either intarsia or gesso, or a mixture of the two. Bold and massive feet, usually shaped as claws, lioncels, or other animals are also exceedingly characteristic of cassoni, most of which are of massive and sarcophagus-like proportions with moulded lids, while many of them are adorned at their corners with figures sculptured in high relief. The scroll-work inlay is commonly simple and graceful, consisting of floral or geometrical motives, or arabesques. The examples coated with gilded gesso or blazoned with paintings are, however, the most magnificent. They were often made of chestnut, and decorated with flowers and foliage in a relief which, low at first, became after the Renaissance very high and sharp. The panels of the painted cassoni frequently bore representations of scriptural and mythological subjects, or incidents derived from the legends of chivalry. Nor was heraldry forgotten, the arms of the family for which the chest was made being perhaps emblazoned upon the front. These chests rarely bear dates or initials, but it is often possible to determine their history from their armorial bearings.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cassowary

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​CASSOWARY (Casuarius), a genus of struthious birds, only inferior in size to the emeu and ostrich, and, according to Sir R. Owen, approximating more closely than any other living birds to the extinct moas of New Zealand. The species are all characterized by short rudimentary wings, bearing four or five barbless shafts, a few inches long, and apparently useless for purposes of flight, of running, or of defence; and by loosely webbed feathers, short on the neck, but of great length on the rump and back, whence they descend over the body forming a thick hair-like covering. They possess stout limbs, with which they kick in front, and have the inner toe armed with a long powerful claw. The common cassowary (Casuarius galeatus) stands 5 ft. high, and has a horny, helmet-like protuberance on the crown of its head; the front of the neck is naked and provided with two brightly-coloured wattles. It is a native of the Island of Ceram, where it is said to live in pairs, feeding on fruits and herbs, and occasionally on small animals. The mooruk, or Bennett’s cassowary (Casuarius Bennettii), is a shorter and more robust bird, approaching in the thickness of its legs to the moas. It differs further from the preceding species in having its head crowned with a horny plate instead of a helmet. It has only been found in New Britain, where the natives are said to regard it with some degree of veneration. When captured by them shortly after being hatched, and reared by the hand, it soon becomes tame and familiar; all the specimens which have reached Europe alive have been thus domesticated by the natives. The adult bird in the wild state is exceedingly shy and difficult of approach, and, owing to its great fleetness and strength, is rarely if ever caught. It eats voraciously, and, like the ostrich, will swallow whatever comes in its way. (See Emeu.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cassiopeia

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​CASSIOPEIA, in Greek mythology, the wife of Cepheus, and mother of Andromeda; in astronomy, a constellation of the northern hemisphere, mentioned by Eudoxus (4th century B.C.) and Aratus (3rd century B.C.). Ptolemy catalogued 13 stars in this constellation, Tycho Brahe 46, and Hevelius 37. Its most interesting stars are:—Nova Cassiopeiae, a “new” star, which burst out with extraordinary brilliancy in 1572, when it was observed by Tycho Brahe, but gradually diminished in brightness, ultimately vanishing in about eighteen months; α-Cassiopeiae and R-Cassiopeiae are variable stars, the former irregular, the latter having a long period; η-Cassiopeiae, a binary star, having components of magnitudes 3 1/2 and 7 1/2; σ-Cassiopeiae, a double star, one being white and of magnitude 5, the other blue and of magnitude 7 1/2.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cassius, Gaius

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​CASSIUS, GAIUS, Latin poet, general and politician, called Parmensis from his birthplace Parma, was one of the murderers of Julius Caesar, and after his death joined the party of Brutus and his namesake Cassius the conspirator. In 43 B.C. he was in command of the fleet on the coast of Asia, but after the battle of Philippi joined Sextus Pompeius in Sicily. When Pompeius, having been defeated in a naval engagement at Naulochus by the fleet of Octavian under Agrippa, fled to Asia, Cassius went over to Antony, and took part in the battle of Actium (31). He afterwards fled to Athens, where he was soon put to death by Octavian, whom he had offended by writing an abusive letter (Suetonius, Augustus, 4). Cassius is credited with satires, elegies, epigrams and tragedies. Some hexameters with the title Cassii Orpheus are by Antonius Thylesius, an Italian of the 17th century. Horace appears to have thought well of Cassius as a poet, for he asks Tibullus whether he intends to compete with the opuscula (probably the elegies) of Cassius (Epistles, i. 4. 3). The story in the Horace scholia, that L. Varius Rufus published his famous tragedy Thyestes from an MS. which he found amongst the papers of Cassius after his death, is due to a confusion of Cassius’s murderer, Q. Attius Varus, with the tragedian (Appian, B.C. v. 2, 139; Cicero, ad Fam. xii. 13; Vell. Pat. ii. 87; Orosius, vi. 19; see also the diffuse treatise of A. Weichert, De L. Varii et Cassii Parmensis Vita et Carminibus, 1836). Cassius Parmensis must not be confused with Cassius Etruscus (Horace, Satires, i. 10. 60), an improviser, who is said to have used enough paper to furnish his funeral pyre.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cassivelaunus

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​CASSIVELAUNUS, or Cassivellaunus, a British chieftain, ruler of the country north of the Thames, who led the native tribes against Julius Caesar on his second expedition (54 B.C.) (see Britain). After several indecisive engagements, Caesar took the camp of Cassivelaunus, who was obliged to make peace on condition of paying tribute and giving hostages. But these promises were not meant to be kept, and it appears certain that the tribute was never paid. According to Bede (Hist. Eccles. i. 2), the remains of Cassivelaunus’s entrenchment were visible seven or eight centuries later.
See Caesar, B.G. v. 11-22; Dio Cassius xl. 2, 3; Orosius vi. 9. 6; Eutropius vi. 17; Polyaenus, Strategemata, viii. 23. For the etymology of the name (which is Celtic in origin, and appears later as Caswallon) see J. Rhys, Celtic Britain, pp. 289-290 (1904); C. I. Elton, Origins of English History (1890); and Stock’s edition of Caesar, De Bello Gallico(1898).