Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/365

 L A U L A U 347 much ill-feeling by insisting that the powerful and the wealthy should submit to punishment as well as the poor. As a privy councillor he took part in affairs of state, and upon the death of Portland in 1635 he became a commissioner of the treasury till he procured for Bishop Juxon the appointment of lord treasurer in 1637. The advice which he gave to the king with respect to the introduction of a new prayer book into Scotland proved ultimately fatal to him. Of this prayer book, in the amendment of which he had had a considerable share, he was not unnaturally regarded as the author; and, when in 1640 the Scots triumphantly occupied the northern counties, and sent commissioners to London to negotiate a peace, they called for the punishment of the archbishop as the great incendiary. One of the first acts of the Commons after the meeting of the Long Parliament was to impeach him. For some time he remained in prison, apparently overlooked. But in 1643 there was fresh need of concili ating the Scots, and his impeachment was proceeded with. He made an able and in many respects a satisfactory defence, but his condemnation was a foregone conclusion, and he was executed on January 10, 1644, at the age of seventy-two. The best source of the biography of Laud is to be found in his own JForks, edited by Dr Bliss, in the Anglo-Catholic Library. The adverse view of his character will be found in Prynne s Canterbury s Doom. (S. R. G.) LAUDANUM. See OPIUM. LAUDER, SIR THOMAS DICK, BART. (1784-1848), was the only sou of Sir Andrew Lauder, the sixth baronet, and was born at Edinburgh in 1784. He succeeded to the baronetcy in 1820. In early life he published two romances, Lochandhu and the Wolf of Badenoch ; and such were the merits of his style that his first contribution to Blackwood s Magazine in 1817, entitled &quot;Simon Roy, Gardener at Dunphail,&quot; was by some ascribed to the author of Waverley. He was afterwards a frequent contributor to Blackwood and also to Tail s Magazine, and in 1830 he published the book by which his name is now best known, An Account of the Great Floods of August 1829 in the Province of Moray and adjoining Districts. Subsequent works were Highland Rambles, with Long Tales to shorten the Way (2 vols. 8vo, 1837), Legendary Tales of the Highlands (3 vols. 12mo, 1841), Tour Round the Coasts of Scotland, and Memorial of the Royal Progress in Scotland (1843). Lauder s paper on &quot; The Parallel Roads of Glenroy,&quot; printed in vol. ix. of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, first drew attention to the phenomenon in question. Vol. i. of a Miscellany of Xatural History, published in 1833, was also partly prepared by Lauder. He died on May 29, 1848. An unfinished series of papers, written for Tait s Magazine shortly before his death, was published under the title Scottish Rivers, with a preface by John Brown, M.D., in 1874. LA.UENBURQ, formerly a duchy belonging with Holstein to Denmark, but from 1865 to Prussia, was in July 1876 incorporated as a circle in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein. It lies on the right bank of the Elbe, between 53 21 and 53 48 N. lat., 10 13 and 11 3 E. long, is bounded by the territories of Hamburg, Liibeck, and Mecklenburg, the province of Hanover, and the circle of Oldesloe, and comprises an area of 453 square miles. The surface of the country is a slightly undulating plain. The soil, chiefly alluvial, though in some places arenaceous, is generally fertile and well cultivated, but a great portion is covered with forests, and interspersed with lakes. By means of the Stecknitz Canal, the Elbe, the principal river, is connected with the Trave. The chief agricultural products of the circle are timber, fruit, grain, hemp, flax, and vegetables. Cattle breeding affords employment for many of the inhabitants. The railroad from Hamburg to Berlin traverses the country. The judicial administration is divided among five courts of law, over which is a superior court for the whole circle, the supreme court of appeal being at Berlin. The capital is Ratzeburg, and there are two other towns, Molln and Lauenburg. In 1880 the population amounted to 49,185, Low Saxons by descent, and with few exceptions Lutherans by confession. The earlier inhabitants of Lauenburg were a Slavic tribe known by the name of Polabes (i.e., dwellers on the Elbe; Slavic, Leba). They were gradually replaced by colonists from Lower Saxony, and about the middle of the 12th century the country was conquered by Henry the Lion, and thus came under the yoke of the dukes of Saxony. Lauenburg subsequently passed into the hands of Valde- niar II. of Denmark, but, having in 1227 reverted to the Saxons, it remained in their possession for over four hundred years, from 1260, however, in the separate line of Saxe-Lauenburg. After the death of Duke Julius Francis in 1689, the line of succession having become extinct, the emperor ordered the sequestration of the duchy, but Duke George William of Brunswick-Luneburg-Celle forcibly occupied it, paid a money indemnity to Saxony, and was recognized^ by the inhabitants (15th September 1702). Upon his death in 1705, Lauenburg fell to his nephew, George L, elector of Hanover, and afterwards king of England, whose claim was eventually recognized in 1728 by imperial decree. In 1806 Lauen burg was occupied by the French, and in 1810 it was incorporated with the department of Bouches de 1 Elbe. After the battle of Leipsic in 1813 it reverted to Hanover, and on the 29th May 1815 was ceded to Prussia, which on the 4th June transferred it to Denmark. After the death of Frederick VII. of Denmark (1863) there were various claimants to the duchy, but at the peace of Vienna (30th October 1864) it was ceded by Christian IX. of Denmark to Austria and Prussia. By the convention of Gastein (14th August 1865) Austria surrendered her claims to Prussia upon the payment of 2,500,000 Danish thalers (about 280,000). On the 15th September William I. of Prussia took formal pos session of the duchy, but it still retained its constitution and special privileges, and was not consolidated and incorporated with the kingdom of Prussia until the 1st of July 1876. LAUNCESTON, a municipal and parliamentary borough and market-town of England, in the eastern division of the county of Cornwall, is situated on a branch railway line from Plymouth, on an eminence near the Kinsey, an affluent of the Tamar, 213 miles west-south-west from London. The streets are narrow and irregular, but of late years have been considerably improved. The parish church, dedicated to St Mary Magdalene, and built of curiously carved blocks of granite, was erected in the beginning of the 16th century, but possesses a detached tower of the date 1380. There are important remains of the old castle, which was the ancient seat of the earls of Cornwall, and was frequently besieged during the wars of Charles I. For the grammar school originally established in the reign of Edward VI. a new building was erected in 1862. The trade of the town is chiefly in agricultural produce. The population of the municipal borough (area 1504 acres) increased between 1871 and 1881 from 2935 to 3217, and that of the parliamentary borough (area 14,707 acres) from 5468 to 5675. The ancient name of Launceston was Dunneheved, the swelling hill. The name Launceston, originally Lansttphen, is derived from an old monastery dedicated to St Stephen. From the time of the Conqueror the place has belonged to the earls of Cornwall. It was made a free borough in the reign of Henry III., and received a charter of incorporation from Queen Mary in 1555. From 1294 it returned two members to parliament until 1832, when it was deprived of one of its members, and the disfranchised borough of Newport, comprising the parish of St Stephens, was included in its boundaries. The assizes of the county were transferred to Bodmin in 1838. LAUNCESTON, the second town of Tasmania, is situated in the north of the island, at the point where the North and South Esk unite to form the river Tamar. It is the northern terminus of the railway from Hobart Town (120 miles distant), and has regular communication by steamer with Melbourne. Among the places of note are