Page:EB1911 - Volume 25.djvu/137

 1782 he married Elizabeth Posthuma, only child of Colonel Thomas Gwillim of Old Court, Herefordshire. In 1790 he was elected member of parliament for St Mawes in Cornwall, and at the close of his first session was appointed lieutenant-governor of the new province of Upper Canada created under the Constitutional Act of 1791. He reached Kingston, Upper Canada, on the 1st of July 1792. There the first council was assembled, the government of the new province proclaimed, and the oaths of office taken. Immediately afterwards preparations were made for the election of the first house of assembly, which opened at Newark near the mouth of the Niagara river, on the 17th of September 1792. Simcoe’s ideas of colonial government were dominated by military and aristocratic conceptions quite unsuited to the pioneer conditions of Upper Canada. Thus, while his administration was characterized by the most dis-interested devotion to what he conceived to be for the best interests of the province, it was rendered ineffective by the impracticable character of his projects and the friction which developed between himself and Lord Dorchester, the governor-general. He left Canada in September 1796, and was immediately afterwards sent on a mission to San Domingo, from which, however, he returned in a few months on account of ill-health. In October 1798 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant- general, and appointed colonel of the 22nd foot. During 1800–1801 he was in command at Plymouth. Desiring more active service, he was designated commander-in-chief for India to succeed Lord Lake, but before taking the appointment his health broke and he died at Exeter on the 26th of October 1806.

SIMEON, in the Old Testament, the name of a tribe of Israel, named after the second son of Jacob by Leah (Gen. xxix. 33). According to Gen. xxxiv., the brothers Simeon and Levi massacred the males of Shechem to avenge the -violation of their sister Dinah (" judgment ") by. Shechem the son of Hamor. Jacob disavowed the act, and on his deathbed solemnly cursed their ferocity, condemning the two to be divided in Jacob and scattered in Israel (xlix. 5-7). Subsequently the priestly Levites are found distributed throughout Israel without portion or inheritance (Deut. xviii. 1, Josh. xiii. 14). The career of Simeon, on the other hand, raises numerous questions. Simeon is reckoned among the N. tribes in 2 Chron. xv. 9, xxxiv. 6, but is elsewhere assigned a district in S. Palestine, the cities of which are otherwise ascribed to Judah (cf. Josh. xix. 1-9 with xv. 26-32). A gloss in 1 Chron. iv. 31 (which breaks the connexion) states that the latter was their seat in David’s time, but there is no support for this in other records (see 1 Sam. xxvii., xxx.). In fact, Simeon is not mentioned in the “blessing of Moses” (Deut. xxxiii.," see S. R. Driver, Deut. p. 397 seq.), or in the stories of the “judges”; and notwithstanding references to it in the chronicler’s history of the monarchy, it is not named in the earlier books of Samuel and Kings. But is Gen. xxxiv. to be taken literally? Shechem is the famous holy city, Hamor a well-known native family, Jacob talks of himself as being “few in number,” and the deeds of Simeon and Levi are those of communities, not of individuals. What historical facts are thus represented, and how they are to be brought into line with the early history of Israel, are problems which have defied solution (see J. Skinner, Genesis, p. 421 seq.). It is conjectured that Dinah represents a clan or group (cf. Dan) which settled in Shechem and was exposed to danger (e.g. oppression or absorption); the tribes Simeon and Levi intervened on its behalf, the ensuing massacre was avenged by the Canaanites, and the two were broken up. These events would belong to an early stage in the invasion of Palestine by the Israelites (15th-13th century ), perhaps to a preliminary settlement by the “sons” of Leah (Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah), previous to the entrance of the “son” of Rachel, Joseph, the “father” of Ephraim and Manasseh. The internal biblical evidence has forced all independent investigators to adopt some reconstruction, but the above theory is in many respects precarious. It may explain the disappearance of a secular tribe of Levi, but not the rise of the sacred Levites. Even in Judges ix. 28 Shechem is still held by the family of Hamor (cf. Gen. xxxiii. 19), and if Simeon was scattered and divided at any early date, its appearance in tradition many centuries later is inexplicable. On the other hand, the latter feature is significant for its vitality in post-exilic traditions. Gen. xxxiv. and the narratives upon which the above reconstruction depends are preserved by compilers of the 6th century and later, and the correlation of Simeon and Levi points to a time when the latter had at length become the recognized eponym of the well-known ecclesiastical body.