Page:EB1911 - Volume 25.djvu/1023

 side which has to traverse the mountains (marsh or forest) will always be at a disadvantage for the actual attack, but at an advantage in regard to the secrecy with which he can fall upon the point of his own choice, and the more secure his telegraph lines, the greater will this advantage be.

STRATFORD, JOHN DE (d. 1348), archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Stratford-on-Avon and educated at Merton College, Oxford, afterwards entering the service of Edward II. He served as archdeacon of Lincoln, canon of York and dean of the court of arches before 1323, when he became bishop of Winchester, an appointment which was made during his visit to Pope John XXII. at Avignon and which was very much disliked by Edward II. In 1327 the bishop joined Queen Isabella’s partisans; he drew up the six articles against Edward II., and was one of those who visited the captive king at Kenilworth to urge him to abdicate in favour of his son. Under Edward III. he became a member of the royal council, but his high political importance dates from the autumn of 1330, the time when Roger Mortimer lost his power. In November of this year Stratford became chancellor, and for the next ten years he was actively engaged in public business, being the king’s most prominent adviser and being politically, says Stubbs, the “head of the Lancastrian or constitutional party.” In 1333 he was appointed archbishop of Canterbury and he resigned the chancellorship in the following year; however, he held this office again from 1335 to 1337 and for about two months in 1340. In November 1340 Edward III., humiliated, impecunious and angry, returned suddenly to England from Flanders and vented his wrath upon the archbishop’s brother, the chancellor, Robert de Stratford. Fearing arrest John de Stratford fled to Canterbury, and entered upon a violent war of words with the king, and by his firm conduct led to the establishment of the principle that peers were only to be tried in full parliament before their own order (en pleyn parlement et devant les piers). But good relations were soon restored between the two, and the archbishop acted as president of the council during Edward’s absence from England in 1345 and 1346, although he never regained his former position of influence. His concluding years were mainly spent in the discharge of his spiritual duties, and he died at Mayfield in Sussex on the 23rd of August 1348.

John’s brother, Robert de Stratford, was also one of Edward III.’s principal ministers. He served for a time as deputy to his brother, and in 1337 became chancellor and bishop of Chichester; he lost the former office in 1340 and died on the 9th of April 1362.

Ralph de Stratford, bishop of London from 1340 until his death at Stepney on the 7th of April 1354, was a member of the same family. All three prelates were benefactors to Stratford-on-Avon.

STRATFORD, a city and port of entry of Ontario, Canada, and capital of Perth county, situated 83 m. W.S.W. of Toronto by the Grand Trunk railway, on the Avon river. Pop. (1901), 9959. The repair and engineering shops of the railway, flour-, saw- and woollen-mills, engine and agricultural implement works are the principal industries. A large export trade in cheese and other dairy and farm produce is carried on.

STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE, STRATFORD CANNING, (1786–1880), British diplomatist, was born in Clement’s Lane in the city of London, on the 4th of November 1786. His father, Stratford Canning, uncle of (q.v.), had been disinherited for his marriage with Mehetabel Patrick. He settled in London as a merchant. On his death, six months after the birth of his son, his widow took a house at Wanstead near Epping Forest. Stratford Canning was educated first at a dame’s school at Wanstead, then at Hackney, and after 1794 at Eton. In 1805 he was elected a scholar of King’s College, Cambridge, but he only kept two terms, and in 1807 was appointed precis writer to the foreign office by his cousin George Canning. He received his degree in 1812, residence having been dispensed with on the ground that he was absent on the king’s service. In 1807 he went as secretary to Mr Merry on a diplomatic mission to Copenhagen. In 1808 he was appointed first secretary to Mr (afterwards Sir Robert) Adair, who was sent as ambassador to Constantinople. When Mr Adair was transferred to Vienna in 1810, Canning remained at Constantinople as chargé d’affaires. The British government was then in the very crisis of its struggle with Napoleon, and it left Canning entirely to his own discretion. His principal task was to persuade the Turkish government not to show undue favour to the French privateers which swarmed in the Levant. In May 1812 he was able to play the part of “honest broker” in arranging the peace of Bucharest between Turkey and Russia, which left a powerful Russian army free to take part in repelling Napoleon’s invasion. Canning was able to hasten the decision of the Turks, by making judicious use of Napoleon’s plan for the partition of their empire. A copy of it had been left in his hands by Mr Adair to be used at the proper moment. In July he left Constantinople with the sincere desire never to return, for he was tired of the corrupt and stiff-necked Turkish officials. His ambition was to lead an active career at home. But his success in arranging the treaty of Bucharest had marked him out for diplomatic employment. His absence from home in early youth and the independent position he had held much before the usual age, had in fact disqualified him for the career of a parliamentary party man. By the friendly intervention of Castlereagh, his cousin’s old opponent, he received a pension, or rather a retaining fee, of £1200 a year, on the “usual conditions”—which were that he should bind himself to accept the next diplomatic post offered, and should not attempt to enter parliament. Canning spent his leisure in travelling about England, and he wrote some poetry which gained him the praise of Byron, whom he had known in boyhood, and had met in Constantinople. In 1814 he was appointed minister plenipotentiary to Switzerland. In this capacity he had a share in reorganizing the confederacy after the fall of the Napoleonic settlement, and he attended the congress at Vienna. He was an eye-witness of the dramatic change produced at Vienna by Napoleon’s return from Elba. Canning retained his post in Switzerland till 1818. In 1816 he married Miss Harriet Raikes, daughter of a governor of the Bank of England. Her death in child-birth in 1818, had a strong influence in inducing him to resign his post, of which he was thoroughly tired. The British minister to Switzerland had merely formal duties to perform in normal times, and the place was wearisome to a man of Canning’s capacity and desire for work. In 1819 he was appointed minister at Washington, a station of great difficulty owing to the ill-feeling created by the war of 1812 and the many delicate questions outstanding between the British and the American governments. Canning, whose naturally quick temper had been developed by early independence, came into occasional collision with John Quincy Adams, the American secretary of state, who was, on his. own showing, by no means of a patient disposition. Yet the American statesman recognized that the “arrogance” of the British minister was combined with absolute candour and that he was above all petty diplomatic trickery. They parted with mutual respect. Canning returned to England in 1823 on leave and did not go back to Washington. The general treaty he had arranged with Mr Adams was rejected by the United States Senate.

In 1824 Canning was selected as ambassador to Turkey, and proceeded to Constantinople after a preliminary visit to Vienna and St Petersburg. In the Russian capital he was engaged in discussing the arrangement of the Alaska boundary, and partly in sounding the Russian government as to the course to be taken with the Greek revolt against Turkey. He left for Constantinople in October 1825, accompanied by his second wife, the daughter of Mr Alexander of Somerhill near Tonbridge. At Constantinople he was engaged with the ambassadors of France and Russia in an enterprise which he afterwards recognized as having been hopeless from the beginning—namely in endeavouring to induce Sultan Mahmud II. to make concessions to the Greeks, without applying to him the pressure of armed force. After the (q.v.) on the 20th of October 1827, the ambassadors were compelled to retire to Corfu. Here Canning learned that his conduct so far had been approved, but as he desired to know what view was taken of the final rupture with the Porte he came home. He was sent out again on the 8th of July 1828. Canning did not agree on all points with his superior, Lord Aberdeen, and in 1829 he, for the time being, turned from diplomatic to