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Rh 

 THIRSK, a market-town in the Thirsk and Malton parliamentary division of the North Riding of Yorkshire, England, 22 m. N.W. by N. from York by the North-Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 3093. It lies in a fertile plain W. of the Hambleton Hills, on the Codbeck, a small tributary of the Swale. The church of St Mary, entirely Perpendicular, with parvise, chancel, nave, aisles, porch, and tower 80 ft. in height, is one of the most beautiful churches in the Riding. The original work of oak is especially noteworthy. The moat of the ancient castle built by the Mowbrays about 980 remains. The principal modern buildings are the assembly rooms, mechanics' institute, and court-house. Standing in the fertile district of the Vale of Mowbray, the town has an extensive agricultural trade. Agricultural implements are largely manufactured. Iron-founding, engineering, tanning and brick-making are carried on, and there are large flour-mills.

At the time of the Domesday Survey, Thirsk (Treske) was a manor of little importance belonging partly to the king and partly to Hugh, son of Baldric. Soon afterwards it was granted to Robert de Mowbray, who often resided there, and is said to have raised the castle round which the borough grew up. His estates, being forfeited for treason against William Rufus, were restored by Henry I. to Nigel de Albini, Robert's cousin, who took the name of Mowbray. Roger, son of Nigel, took part in the rebellion against Henry II. in 1174, and although he was allowed to retain his estates, his castle at Thirsk was destroyed. The manor remained in his family until the death of John de Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, without issue male in 1475, and after passing through several families was finally sold in 1723 to Ralph Bell, whose descendants thereafter held the manor. Thirsk is first mentioned as a borough in a charter granted by Roger de Mowbray to Newburgh Priory in the reign of Henry II. It was governed by a bailiff elected by the burgesses at the court leet of the lord of the manor, and never received a charter of incorporation. The burgesses were represented in parliament by two members in 1295 and again from 1552–53 to 1832, when by the Municipal Reform Act the number was reduced to one. In 1885 the town was disfranchised. Roger de Mowbray held a market by prescription in Thirsk in the 13th century, and by Camden's time (c. 1586) it had become one of the best markets in the North Riding. It is still held by the lord of the manor.

 THIRTY YEARS' WAR (1618–1648), the general name of a series of wars in Germany which began formally with the claim of Frederick the elector palatine to the throne of Bohemia and ended with the treaty of Westphalia. It was primarily a

religious war and was waged with the bitterness characteristic of such wars, but at the same time political and feudal quarrels were interwoven with the religious question, with the consequence that the armies, considering themselves as their masters' retainers rather than champions of a cause, plundered and burned everywhere, military violence being in no way restrained by expediency. In a war based on the principle cujus regio ejus religio it was vain to expect either the professional or the national type of army to display its virtues.

Fifty years before the outbreak of the war the Convention of Passau had compromised the burning questions of the Reformation, but had left other equally important points as to the secularization of church lands and the consecration of Protestant bishops to the future. Each such case, then, came

before the normal government machine &mdash; a Diet so constituted that even though at least half of the secular princes and nine-tenths of their subjects were Protestants, the voting majority was Catholic in beliefs and in vested interests. Moreover, the Jesuits had rallied and disciplined the forces of Catholicism, while Protestantism, however firm its hold on the peoples, had at the courts of princes dissipated itself in doctrinal wrangles. Thus, as it was the princes and the free cities, and by no means

the mass of the people, that settled religious questions, the strongest side was that which represented conservatism, peace and Catholicism. Realizing this from the preliminary mutterings of the storm, the Protestant princes formed a union, which was promptly answered by the Catholic League. This group was headed by the wise and able Maximilian of Bavaria and supported by his army, which he placed under a soldier of long experience and conspicuous ability, Count Tilly.

The war arose in Bohemia, where the magnates, roused by the systematic evasion of the guarantees to Protestants, refused

to elect the archduke Ferdinand to the vacant throne, offering it instead to Frederick, the elector palatine. But the aggrandizement of this elector's power was entirely unacceptable to most of the Protestant princes &mdash; to John George of Saxony above all. They declared themselves neutral, and Frederick found himself an isolated rebel against the emperor Ferdinand, and little more than the nominal head of an incoherent nobility in his new kingdom.

Even thus early the struggle showed itself in the double aspect of a religious and a political war. Just as the Protestants and their nominee found themselves looked upon askance by the other Protestants, so the emperor himself was unable to call upon Maximilian's Army of the League without promising to aggrandize Bavaria. Indeed the emperor was at first &mdash; before Frederick intervened &mdash; almost a mere archduke of Austria waging a private war against his neighbours. Only the incoherence of his enemies saved him. They ordered taxes and levies of soldiers, but the taxes were not collected, and the soldiers, unpaid and unfed, either dispersed to their homes or plundered the country-side. The only coherent force was the mercenary corps of Ernst von Mansfeld, which, thrown out of employment by the termination of a war in Italy, had entered the service of the Union. Nevertheless, the Bohemians were conspicuously successful at the outset. Under Count Thurn they won several engagements, and Ferdinand's army under Carl Bonaventura de Longueval, Count Buquoi (1571-1621), was driven back. Thurn appeared before Vienna itself. Moravia and Silesia supported the Bohemians, and the Austrian nobles attempted, in a stormy conference, to wrest from Ferdinand not only religious liberty but also political rights that would have made Austria and Bohemia a loose confederation of powerful nobles. Ferdinand firmly refused, though the deputation threatened him to his face, and the tide ebbed as rapidly as it had flowed. One or two small military failures, and the enormous political blunder of bringing in the elector palatine, sealed the fate of the Bohemian movement, for no sooner had Frederick accepted the crown than Maximilian let loose the Army of the League. Spanish aid arrived. Spinola with 20,000 men from the Low Countries and Franche Comté invaded the Palatinate, and Tilly, with no fears for the safety of Bavaria, was able to combine with Buquoi against

the Bohemians, whose resistance was crushed at the battle of the Weisser Berg near Prague (8/18 November 1620). With this the Bohemian war ended. Some of the nobles were executed, and Frederick, the &ldquo;Winter King,&rdquo; was put to the ban of the Empire.

The menace of Spinola's invasion broke up the feeble Protestant Union. But the emperor's revenge alarmed the Union princes. They too had, more or less latent, the tendency to separatism and they were Protestants, and neither in religion nor in politics could they suffer an all-powerful Catholic emperor. Moreover, the alternative to a powerful emperor was a powerful Bavaria, and this they liked almost as little. 