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Rh WOODSTOCK, a market town and municipal borough in the Woodstock parliamentary division of Oxfordshire, England, 72 m. W.N.W. of London, the terminus (Blenheim and Woodstock) of a branch of the Great Western railway. Pop. (1901) 1684. The little river Glyme, in a steep and picturesque valley, divides the town into New and Old Woodstock. The church of St Mary Magdalene, in New Woodstock, is of Norman date, but has additions in the later styles, and a west tower built in 1785. The town-hall was erected in 1766 after the designs of Sir William Chambers. The picturesque almshouses were erected in 1798 by Caroline, duchess of Marlborough. The town is dependent chiefly on agriculture, but a manufacture of leather gloves (dating from the 16th century) is carried on. Woodstock is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen, and 12 councillors. Area, 156 acres.

After the battle of Blenheim the manor of Woodstock was by Act 3 and 4 of Queen Anne, chap. 4, bestowed in perpetuity on John, duke of Marlborough. In 1723 it was destroyed, being already ruinous, and the site levelled after the erection of Blenheim House, a princely mansion erected by Parliament for the duke of Marlborough in consideration of his military services, and especially his decisive victory at Blenheim. The sum of £500,000 was voted for the purchase of the manor and the erection of the building, a huge pile built by (q.v.), in a heavy Italo-Corinthian style. The greater part of the art treasures and curios were sold in 1886, and the great library collected by Charles Spencer, earl of Sunderland, the son-in-law of the first duke of Marlborough, in 1881. The magnificent park contains Fair Rosamund's well, near which stood her bower. On the summit of a hill stands a column commemorating the duke. Blenheim Park forms a separate parish.

Domesday describes Woodstock (Wodestock, Wodestok’, Wodestok) as a royal forest; it was a royal seat from early times and Æthelred is said to have held a council there, and Henry I. to have kept a menagerie in the park. Woodstock was the scene of Henry II.'s courtship of Rosamund Clifford (“Fair Rosamund”). It was a favourite royal residence until the Civil War, when the manor house was “almost totally destroyed.”

In the Hundred Rolls of 1279 Woodstock is described as a vill, but a burgess is alluded to in the same document, and it returned two members to parliament as a borough in 1302 and 1305. A mayor of Woodstock was witness to a deed in 1398, but the earliest known charter of incorporation was that from Henry VI. in 1453, establishing the vill of New Woodstock a free borough, with a merchant gild and the same liberties and customs as New Windsor, and incorporating the burgesses under the title of the “Mayor and Commonalty of the Vill of New Woodstock.” The mayor and a serjeant-at-mace were to be elected by the commonalty, and an independent borough court was established for the trial of all civil actions and criminal offences. The borough was also exempted from the burden of sending representatives to parliament, but it again returned two members in 1553 and then regularly from 1570 until 1881, when the representation was reduced to one member. In 1885 the borough was disfranchised. The charter of Henry VI. was confirmed by Henry VII., Edward VI. and Elizabeth, but before 1580, when an ordinance was drawn up for the government of the borough, the corporation had considerably developed, including a high steward, recorder, mayor, 6 aldermen, 20 common councillors, a town clerk and a crier of the court, and the new charter granted by Charles II. in 1665 did little more than confirm this corporation. The hamlet of Old Woodstock is said to have been founded by Henry I., and was never included within the borough. The existing Tuesday market is stated in the Hundred Rolls of 1279 to have been granted by Henry II. and the St Matthew's fair by John. The latter was confirmed in 1453, with the addition of a fair at the feast of St Mary Magdalen. Queen Elizabeth in 1565 granted to the mayor and commonalty a market on Friday, and two fairs of four days each at the feast of St Nicholas and Lady Day.

See Rev. E. Marshall, Early History of Woodstock Manor (Oxford, 1873); Adolphus Ballard, Chronicles of Royal Borough of Woodstock; Victoria County History, Oxfordshire.

 WOODWARD, JOHN (1665–1728), English naturalist and geologist, was born in Derbyshire on the 1st of May 1665. At the age of sixteen he went to London, where studied with Dr Peter Barwick, physician to Charles II. In 1692 he was appointed professor of physic in Gresham college. In 1693 he was elected F.R.S., in 1695 was made M.D. by Archbishop Tenison and also by Cambridge, and in 1702 became F.R.C.P.

While still a student he became interested in botany and natural history, and during visits to Gloucestershire his attention was attracted by the fossils that are abundant in many parts of that county; and he began to form the great collection with which his name is associated. His views were set forth in An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth and Terrestrial Bodies, especially Minerals, &c. (1695; 2nd ed. 1702, 3rd ed. 1723). This was followed by Brief Instructions for making Observations in all Parts of the World (1696). He was author also of An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Fossils of England (2 vols., 1728 and 1729). In these works he showed that the stony surface of the earth was divided into strata, and that the enclosed shells were originally generated at sea; but his views of the method of formation of the rocks were entirely erroneous. In his elaborate Catalogue he described his rocks, minerals and fossils in a manner far in advance of the age. He died on the 25th of April 1728, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

By his will he directed that his personal estate and effects were to be sold, and that land of the yearly value of one hundred and fifty pounds was to be purchased and conveyed to the University of Cambridge. A lecturer was to be chosen, and paid £100 a year to read at least four lectures every year, on some one or other of the subjects treated of in his Natural History of the Earth. Hence arose the Woodwardian professorship of geology. To the same university he bequeathed his collection of English fossils, to be under the care of the lecturer, and these formed the nucleus of the Woodwardian museum at Cambridge. The specimens have since been removed to the new Sedgwick museum.

 WOODWARD, SAMUEL (1790–1838), English geologist and antiquary, was born at Norwich on the 3rd of October 1790. He was for the most part self-educated. Apprenticed in 1804 to a manufacturer of camlets and bombazines, a taste for serious study was stimulated by his master, Alderman John Herring and by Joseph John Gurney. Becoming interested in geology and archaeology, he began to form the collection which after his death was purchased for the Norwich museum. In 1820 he obtained a clerkship in Gurney's (afterwards Barclay's) bank at Norwich, and Hudson Gurney and Dawson Turner (of Yarmouth), both fellows of the Royal Society, encouraged his scientific work. He communicated to the Archaeologia articles on the round church towers of Norfolk, the Roman remains of the country, &c., and other papers on natural history and geology to the ''Mag. Nat.'' Hist. and ''Phil. Mag.'' He died at Norwich on the 14th of January 1838. He was author of A Synoptical Table of British Organic Remains (1830), the first work of its kind in Britain; An Outline of the Geology of Norfolk (1833); and of two works issued posthumously, The Norfolk Topographer's Manual (1842) and The History and Antiquities of Norwich Castle (1847).

His eldest son, Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward (1816–1869), was librarian and keeper of the prints and drawings at Windsor Castle from 1860 until his death. The second son, Samuel Pickworth Woodward (1821–1865), became in 1845 professor of geology and natural history in the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, and in 1848 was appointed assistant in the department of geology and mineralogy in the British Museum. He was author of A Manual of the Mollusca (in three parts, 1851, 1853 and 1856).

S. P. Woodward's son, Horace Bolingbroke Woodward (b. 1848), became in 1863 an assistant in the library of the Geological Society, and joined the Geological Survey in 1867, rising to be assistant-director. In 1893–1894 he was president of the Geologists' Association, and he published many important works on geology. Samuel Woodward's youngest son, Henry Woodward