Page:EB1911 - Volume 01.djvu/473

 and from 1767 to 1800 was a member of the Drury Lane Company and for some years a deputy manager. He quarrelled with John Philip Kemble, with whom, in 1792, he fought a bloodless duel.

AIDAN (d. 606), king of the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada, was the son of Gabran, king of Dalriada, and became king after the death of his kinsman King Conall, when he was crowned at Iona by St Columba. He refused to allow his kingdom to remain in dependence on the Irish Dalriada, but coming into collision with his southern neighbours he led a large force against Æthelfrith, king of the Northumbrians, and was defeated at a place called Daegsanstane, probably in Liddesdale.

AIDAN, or, first bishop of Lindisfarne, a monk of Hii (Iona), was sent by the abbot Senegi to Northumbria, at the request of King Oswald, 634–635. He restored Christianity, and in accordance with the traditions of Irish episcopacy chose the island of Lindisfarne, close to the royal city of Bamborough, as his see. Although he retained the Irish Easter, his character and energy in missionary work won him the respect of Honorius and Felix. He survived Oswald, and died shortly after the murder of his friend Oswine of Deira, on the 31st of August 651, in the 17th year of his episcopate.

AIDE-DE-CAMP (Fr. for camp-assistant or, perhaps, field assistant), an officer of the personal staff of a general, who acts as his confidential secretary in routine matters. In Great Britain the office of aide-de-camp to the king is given as a reward or an honorary distinction. In many foreign armies the word adjutant is used for an aide-de-camp, and adjutant general for a royal aide-de-camp. The common abbreviation for aide-de-camp in the British service is “,” and in the United States “aid.” Civil governors, such as the lord lieutenant of Ireland, have also, as a rule, officers on their staffs with the title and functions of aides-de-camp.

AIDIN. (1) A vilayet in the S.W. of Asia Minor including the ancient Lydia, Ionia, Caria and western Lycia. It derives its name from the Seljuk emir who took Tralles, and is the richest and most productive province of Asiatic Turkey. The seat of government is Smyrna. (2) The principal town of the valley of the Menderes or Maeander, about 70 m. E.S.E. of Smyrna. It is called also Güzel Hissar from the beauty of its situation on the lower slopes of Mons Messogis and along the course of the ancient Eudon. It is the capital of a sanjak. It was taken by the Seljuks, Aidin and Mentesh, late in the 13th century, and about 1390, when ruled by Isa Bey, a descendant of the first-named, acknowledged Ottoman suzerainty. In the Seljuk period it was a secondary city under the provincial capital, (q.v.) In the 17th century it came under the power of the Karasmans of Manisa and remained so till about 1820. Aidin is on the Smyrna-Dineir railway, has large tanneries and sweetmeat manufactories, and exports figs, cotton and raisins. It was greatly damaged by an earthquake in 1899. On a neighbouring height are to be seen the ruins of the ancient  (q.v.), the site to which the name Güzel Hissar was particularly given by the Seljuks. Aidin is the seat of a British consular agent. As there are considerable numbers of Greeks, Armenians and Jews among the inhabitants, there are a Greek cathedral, several churches and synagogues in addition to the fine Turkish mosques.

AIDONE, a town of Sicily, in the province of Caltanisetta. From the town of Caltanisetta it is 22 m. E.S.E. direct (18 m. S.S.W. of the railway station of Raddusa, which is 41 m. W. of Catania). Pop. (1901) 8548. There are some interesting churches of the 14th century (see E. Mauceri in L’Arte, 1906, 17). On the Serra Orlando, a mountain not far off, are the extensive remains of an unknown city, the finest in eastern Sicily, but rapidly suffering destruction from the spread of cultivation and unauthorized excavations.

AIDS, a term of medieval finance, were part of the service due to a lord from his men, and appear to have been based upon the principle that they ought to assist him in special emergency or need. The occasions for demanding them and the amount to be demanded would thus be matters of dispute, while the loose use of the term to denote many different payments increases the difficulty of the subject.

Both in Normandy and in England, in the 12th century, the two recognized occasions on which, by custom, the lord could demand “aid,” were (1) the knighting of his eldest son, (2) the marriage of his eldest daughter; but while in England the third occasion was, according to Glanvill, as in Normandy, his payment of “relief” on his succession, it was, according to the Great Charter (1215), the lord’s ransom from captivity. By its provisions, the king covenanted to exact an “aid” from his barons on these three occasions alone—and then only a “reasonable” one—except by “the common counsel” of his realm. Enormous importance has been attached to this provision, as establishing the principle of taxation by consent, but its scope was limited to the barons (and the city of London), and the word “aids” was omitted from subsequent issues of the charter. The barons, on their part, covenanted to claim from their feudal tenants only the above three customary aids. The last levy by the crown was that of James I. on the knighting of his eldest son (1609) and the marriage of his daughter (1613).

From at least the days of Henry I. the term “aid” was also applied (1) to the special contributions of boroughs to the king’s revenue, (2) to a payment in lieu of the military service due from the crown’s knights. Both these occur on the pipe roll of 1130, the latter as auxilium militum (and possibly as auxilium comitatus.) The borough “aids” were alternatively known as “gifts” (dona), resembling in this the “benevolences” of later days. When first met with, under Henry I., they are fixed round sums, but under Henry II. (as the Dialogue on the Exchequer explains) they were either assessed on a population basis by crown officers or were sums offered by the towns and accepted by them as sufficient. In the latter case the townsfolk were collectively responsible for the amount. The Great Charter, as stated above, extended specially to London the limitation on baronial “aids,” but left untouched its liability to tallage, a lower and more arbitrary form of taxation, which the towns shared with the crown’s demesne manors, and which London. resisted in vain. The two exactions, although distinct, have to be studied together, and when in 1296–1297 Edward I. was forced to his great surrender, he was formerly supposed by historians to have pledged himself, under De tallagio non concedendo, to levy no tallage or aid except by common consent of his people. It is now held, however, that he limited this concession to “aides, mises,” and “prises,” retaining the right to tallage. Eventually, by a statute of 1340, it was provided that the nation should not be called upon “to make any common aid or sustain charge” except by consent of parliament. The aids spoken of at this period are of yet another character, namely, the grant of a certain proportion of all “movables” (i.e. personal property), a form of taxation introduced about 1188 and now rapidly increasing in importance. These subsidies were conveniently classed under the vague term “aids,” as were also the grants made by the clergy in convocation, the term covering both feudal and non-feudal levies from the higher clergy and proportions not only of “movables” but of ecclesiastical revenues as well.

The “knight’s aid” of 1130 spoken of above is probably identical with auxilium exercitus spoken of in the oldest custumals of Normandy, where the phrase appears to represent what was known in England as “scutage.” Even in England the phrase “quando Rex accipit auxilium de militibus” occurs in 1166 and appears to be loosely used for scutage.

The same loose use enabled the early barons to demand “aid” from their tenants on various grounds, such as their indebtedness to the Jews, as is well seen in the Norfolk fragments of returns to the Inquest of Sheriffs (1170).

Sheriff’s aid was a local payment of a fixed nature paid in early days to the sheriff for his service. It was the subject of a hot dispute between Henry II. and Becket in 1163.