Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/72

 and Calder. Pegolotti’s interest in England and Scotland is chiefly connected with the wool trade.

There is only one MS. of the Pratica, viz. No. 2441 in the Riccardian Library at Florence (241 fols., occupying the whole volume), written in 1471; and one edition of the text, in vol iii. of Gian Francesco Pagnini’s Della Decima e delle altre gravezze imposte dal commune di Firenze (Lisbon and Lucca—really Florence—1766); Sir Henry Yule, Cathay, ii. 279–308, translated into English the most interesting sections of Pegolotti, with valuable commentary (London, Hakluyt Society, 1866). See also W. Heyd, Commerce du Levant, ii, 12, 50, 58, 78–79, 85–86, 112–119 (Leipzig, 1886); H. Kiepert, in ''Sitzungsberichte der philos.-hist. Cl. der berliner Akad.'', p. 901, &c. (Berlin, 1881); C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, iii. 324–332, 550, 555 (Oxford, 1906).

PEGU, a town and former capital of Lower Burma, giving its name to a district and a division. The town is situated on a river of the same name, 47 m. N.E. of Rangoon by rail; pop. (1901), 14,132. It is still surrounded by the old walls, about 40 ft. wide, on which have been built the residences of the British officials. The most conspicuous object is the Shwemaw-daw pagoda, 324 ft. high, considerably larger and even more holy than the Shwe-dagon pagoda at Rangoon. Pegu is said to have been founded in 573, as the first capital of# the Talaings; but it was as the capital of the Toungoo dynasty that it became known to Europeans in the 16th century. About the middle of the 18th century it was destroyed by Alompra; but it rose again, and was important enough to be the scene of fighting in both the first and second Burmese Wars. It gave its name to the province (including Rangoon) which was annexed by the British in 1852.

The district, which was formed in 1883, consists of an alluvial tract between the Pegu Yoma range and the Sittang river: area, 4276 sq m.; pop. (1901), 339,572, showing an increase of 43% in the decade. Christians numbered nearly 9000, mostly Karens. Almost the only crop grown is rice, which is exported in large quantities to Rangoon. The district is traversed by the railway, and also crossed by the Pegu-Sittang canal, navigable for 85 m., with locks.

The division of Pegu comprises the five districts of Rangoon city, Hanthawaddy, Tharrawaddy, Pegu and Prome, lying east of the Irrawaddy: area 13,084 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 1,820,638.

Pegu has also given its name to the Pegu Yoma, a range of hills running north and south for about 200 m., between the Irrawaddy and Sittang rivers. The height nowhere exceeds 2000 ft. but the slopes are steep and rugged. The forests yield teak and other valuable timber. The Pegu river, which rises in this range, falls into the Rangoon river just below Rangoon city, after a course of about 180 m.

PEILE, JOHN (1838–1910), English philologist, was born at Whitehaven on the 24th of April 1838 He was educated at Repton and Christ’s College, Cambridge. After a distinguished career (Craven scholar, senior classic and chancellor’s medallist), he became fellow and tutor of his college, reader of comparative philology in the university (1884–1891), and in 1887 was elected master of Christ’s. He took a great interest in the higher education of women and became president of Newnham College He was the first to introduce the great philological works of George Curtius and Wilhelm Corssen to the English student in his Introduction to Greek and Latin Etymology (1869). He died at Cambridge on the 9th of October 1910, leaving practically completed his exhaustive history of Christ’s College.

PEINE, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, 16 m. by rail N.W. of Brunswick, on the railway to Hanover and Hamburg. Pop. (1905), 15,421. The town has a Roman Catholic and a Protestant church and several schools. Its industries include iron and steel works, breweries, distilleries and brickyards, and the manufacture of starch, sugar, malt, machinery and artificial manure. There are also large horse and cattle markets held here Peine was at one time a strongly fortified place, and until 1803 belonged to the bishopric of Hildesheim.

PEINE FORTE ET DURE (French for “hard and severe punishment”), the term for a barbarous torture inflicted on those who, arraigned of felony, refused to plead and stood silent, or challenged more than twenty jurors, which was deemed a contumacy equivalent to a refusal to plead. By early English law a prisoner, before he could be tried, must plead “guilty ” or “not guilty.” Before the 13th century it was usual to imprison and starve till submission, but in Henry IV.’s reign the peine was employed. The prisoner was stretched on his back, and stone or iron weights were placed on him till he either submitted or was pressed to death. Pressing to death was abolished in 1772; “standing mute” on an arraignment of felony being then made equivalent to conviction. By an act of 1828 a plea of “not guilty” was to be entered against any prisoner refusing to plead, and that is the rule to-day. An alternative to the peine was the tying of the thumbs tightly together with whipcord until pain forced the prisoner to speak. This was said to be a common practice at the Old Bailey up to the 19th century.

Among recorded instances of the infliction of the peine are: Juliana Quick (1442) for high treason in speaking derisively of Henry VI.; Margaret Clitherow, “the martyr of York” (1586); Walter Calverly, of Calverly, Yorks, for the murder of his children (1605); and Major Strangways at Newgate, charged with murder of his brother-in-law (1657). In this last case it is said that upon the weights being placed in position several cavalier friends of Strangways sprang on his body and put him out of his pain In 1721 one Nathaniel Hawes lay under a weight of 250 lb for seven minutes, finally submitting. The peine was last employed in 1741 at Cambridge assizes, when a prisoner was so put to death; the penalty of thumb-tying having first been tried. In 1692 at Salem, Massachusetts, Giles Corey, accused of witchcraft, refusing to plead, was pressed to death. This is believed to be the only instance of the infliction of the penalty in America.

PEIPUS, or, a lake of north-west Russia, between the governments of St Petersburg, Pskov, Livonia and Esthonia. Including its southern extension, sometimes known as Lake Pskov, it has an area of 1356 sq. m. Its shores are flat and sandy, and in part wooded; its waters deep, and they afford valuable fishing. The lake is fed by the Velikaya, which enters it at its southern extremity, and by the Embach, which flows in half way up its western shore; it drains into the Gulf of Finland by the Narova, which issues at its north-east corner.

 PEIRAEUS, or (Gr. ), the port town of Athens, with which its history is inseparably connected. Pop. (1907), 67,982. It consists of a rocky promontory, containing three natural harbours, a large one on the north-west which is still one of the chief commercial harbours of the Levant, and two smaller ones on the east, which were used chiefly for naval purposes. Themistocles was the first to urge the Athenians to take advantage of these harbours, instead of using the sandy bay of Phaleron; and the fortification of the Peiraeus was begun in 493 Later on it was connected with Athens by the Long Walls in 460 The town of Peiraeus was laid out by the architect Hippodamus of Miletus, probably in the time of Pericles. The promontory itself consisted of two parts—the hill of Munychia, and the projection of Acte; on the opposite side of the great harbour was the outwork of Eetioneia. The most stirring episode in the history of the Peiraeus is the seizure of Munychia by Thrasybulus and the exiles from Phyle, and the consequent destruction of the “30 tyrants” in 404 The three chief arsenals of the Peiraeus were named Munychia, Zea and Cantharus, and they contained galley slips for 82, 196 and 94 ships respectively in the 4th century

See under Also Angelopoulos,  (Athens, 1898).

PEIRCE, BENJAMIN (1809–1880), American mathematician and astronomer, was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on the 4th of April 1809. Graduating at Harvard College in 1829, he became mathematical tutor there in 1831 and professor in 1833 He had already assisted Nathaniel Bowditch in his translation of the Mécantque céleste, and now produced a series of mathematical textbooks characterized by the brevity and terseness which made his teaching unattractive to inapt pupils. Young men of talent, on the contrary, found his instruction most stimulating, and after Bowditch’s death in 1838 Peirce stood first among American mathematicians. His researches into the perturbations of Uranus and Neptune (Proc. Amer.