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Rh intervals from the reign of Stephen, if not before. The royal palace was demolished by order of Cromwell. The tower is under the governorship of a constable. The attendant staff, called Yeomen of the Guard or familiarly “Beefeaters,” still wear their picturesque Tudor costume.

TOWN, in its most general sense, a collection or aggregation of inhabited houses larger than a village. The Old Eng. tun (M. Eng. toun) meant originally a fence or enclosure, cf. Ger. zaun, hedge, hence an enclosed place. The Scottish and Northern English use of the word for a farmhouse and its buildings, a farmstead, preserves this original meaning, and is paralleled by the Icel. tun, homestead, dwelling-house. A cognate Celtic form meaning a fastness, a strong place, appears in Gael. and Irish dun, Welsh din, fortress, hill-fort (cf. Welsh dinas, town). This is familiar from the many Latinized names of places, e.g. Lugdunum, Augustodunum, &c. In English law “town” is not a word defined by statute. For purposes of local government there are boroughs, urban districts and rural districts, but many urban districts are rural in character and the distinction is purely an administrative one (see ; ; ; ; : Local Government, and the sections on local administration under various country headings). The meaning attached to the term “township” in the local administration of the United States is treated under : Local Government.

TOWNELEY (or ), CHARLES (1737–1805), English archaeologist and collector of marbles, was born at Towneley, the family seat, near Burnley in Lancashire, on the 1st of October 1737. He was educated at the college of Douai, and subsequently under John Turberville Needham, the physiologist and divine. In 1758 he took up his residence at Towneley, where he lived the ordinary life of a country gentleman until about 1765, when he left England to study ancient art, chiefly at Rome. He also made several excursions to the south of Italy and Sicily. In conjunction with Gavin Hamilton, the artist, and Thomas Jenkins, a banker in Rome, he got together a splendid collection of antiquities, which was deposited in two houses bought by him for the purpose in Park Street, Westminster, where he died on the 3rd of January 1805. His solitary publication was an account of an ancient helmet found at Ribchester. His marbles, bronzes, coins, and gems were purchased by the British Museum for about £28,000, and form part of Graeco-Roman collection.

TOWNLEY, JAMES (1714–1778), English dramatist, second son of Charles Townley, merchant, was born in London on the 6th of May 1714. Educated at Merchant Taylors' School and at St John’s College, Oxford, he took holy orders, being ordained priest on the 28th of May 1738. He was lecturer at St Dunstan’s in the East, chaplain to the lord mayor, then under-master at Merchant Taylors’ School until 1753, when he became grammar master at Christ’s Hospital. In 1760 he became head master of Merchant Taylors' School, where in 1762 and 1763 he revived the custom of dramatic performances. He retained his headmastership until his death on the 5th of July 1778. He took a keen interest in the theatre, and it has been asserted that many of David Garrick’s best productions and revivals owed much to his assistance. He was the author, although the fact was long concealed, of High Life below Stairs, a two-act farce presented at Drury Lane on the 31st of October 1759; also of False Concord (Covent Garden, March 20, 1764) and The Tutor (Drury Lane, Feb. 4, 1765).

TOWNSHEND, CHARLES (1725–1767), English politician, was the second son of Charles, 3rd Viscount Townshend, who married Audrey (d. 1788), daughter and heiress of Edward Harrison of Ball’s Park, near Hertford, a lady who rivalled her son in brilliancy of wit and frankness of expression. Charles was born on the 29th of August 1725, and was sent for his education to Leiden and Oxford. At the Dutch university, where he matriculated on the 27th of October 1745, he associated with a small knot of English youths, afterwards well known in various circles of life, among whom were Dowdeswell, his subsequent rival in politics, Wilkes, the witty and unprincipled reformer, and Alexander Carlyle, the genial Scotchman, who devotes some of the pages of his Autobiography to chronicling their sayings and their doings. He represented Great Yarmouth in parliament from 1747 to 1 761, when he found a seat for the treasury borough of Harwich. Public attention was first drawn to his abilities in 1753, when he delivered a lively attack, as a younger son who might hope to promote his advancement by allying himself in marriage to a wealthy heiress, against Lord Hardwicke’s marriage bill. Although this measure passed into law, he attained this object in August 1755 by marrying Caroline (d.&nbsp.1794), the eldest daughter of the 2nd duke of Argyll and the widow of Francis, Lord Dalkeith, the eldest son of the 2nd duke of Buccleuch. In April 1754 Townshend was transformed from the position of a member of the board of trade, which he had held from 1749, to that of a lord of the admiralty, but at the close of 1755 his passionate attack against the policy of the ministry, an attack which shared in popular estimation with the scathing denunciations of Pitt, the supreme success of Single-Speech Hamilton, and the hopeless failure of Lord Chesterfield’s illegitimate son, caused his resignation. In the administration which was formed in November 1756, and which was ruled by Pitt, the lucrative office of treasurer of the chamber was given to Townshend, and in the following spring he was summoned to the privy council.

With the accession of the new monarch in 1760 this volatile politician transferred his attentions from Pitt to the young king’s favourite, Bute, and when in 1761, at the latter’s instance, several changes were made in the ministry, Townshend was promoted to the post of secretary-at-war. In this place he remained after the great commoner had withdrawn from the cabinet, but in December 1762 he threw it up. Bute, alarmed at the growth in numbers and in influence of his enemies, tried to buy back Townshend’s co-operation by sundry tempting promises, and at last secured his object in March 1763 with the presidency of the board of trade. When Bute retired and George Grenville accepted the cares of official life, the higher post of first lord of the admiralty fell to Townshend’s lot, but with his usual impetuosity he presumed to designate one of his satellites, Sir William Burrell (1732–1796), to a place under him at the board, and the refusal to accept the nomination led to his exclusion from the new administration. While in opposition his mind was swayed to and fro with conflicting emotions of dislike to the head of the ministry and of desire to share in the spoils of office. The latter feeling ultimately triumphed; he condescended to accept in the dying days of Grenville’s cabinet, and to retain through the “lutestring” administration of Lord Rockingham —“pretty summer wear,” as Townshend styled it, “but it will never stand the winter”—the highly paid position of paymaster-general, refusing to identify himself more closely with its fortunes as chancellor of the exchequer. The position which he refused from the hands of Lord Rockingham he accepted from Pitt in August 1766, and a few weeks later his urgent appeals to the great minister for increased power were favourably answered, and he was admitted to the inner circle of the cabinet. The new chancellor proposed the continuance of the land tax at four shillings in the pound, while he held out hopes that it might be reduced next year to three shillings, whereupon his predecessor, William Dowdeswell, by the aid of the landed gentlemen, carried a motion that the reduction should take effect at once. This defeat proved a great mortification to Lord Chatham, and in his irritation against Townshend for this blow, as well as for some acts of insubordination, he meditated the removal of his showy colleague. Before this could be accomplished Chatham’s mind became impaired, and Townshend, who was the most determined and influential of his colleagues, swayed the ministry as he liked, pledging himself to find a revenue in America with which to meet