Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/922

Rh 856 R M O E his office and name. He now lived much in retirement at Cornbury (Oxfordshire), signalizing, however, his loyalty to Protestantism and the Church of England by opposing the attempts of James to assume the dispensing power, in spite of which James to his credit refused to take away his offices, and continued to hold him in respect and favour to the last. On Saturday, 21st July 1688, he died quietly of decay, not having, as he rejoiced to know, &quot; outlived his intellectuals.&quot; He was buried in Westminster Abbey on the 1st of August. The principal authorities for Ormonde s life are Carte s Life and the Carte papers in the Bodleian, the article &quot;Butler&quot; in the Biographia Britannica, Cox s and Leland s Histories of Ireland, and the diaries and memoirs of the period. (0. A. ) ORMSKIRK, a market-town of Lancashire, is situated on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, 1 1 miles north east of Liverpool. It consists principally of four streets, diverging at right angles from the market-place. The church of St Peter and St Paul is a spacious edifice in various styles of architecture, with a square embattled tower and steeple, and a Saxon window. To the south-east of the church, and divided from it by a screen, is the Derby chapel, the exclusive property of the earls of Derby, whose vault is contained within. A free grammar school was founded about 1614. Among the other public buildings are the sessions-house and police offices, the working-men s institute, the public library, the dispensary, and the union workhouse. Rope and twine making, iron-founding, and brewing are carried on, and the town has long been famous for its gingerbread. The population of the town and urban sanitary district (area 573 acres) was 6651 in 1881 (6127 in 1871). Ormskirk is not found in Domesday ; but the parish according to tradition belonged to Orm, the Saxon proprietor of Halton. The name and church existed in the time of Richard I., when the priory of Burscough was founded. The prior and convent obtained from Edward I. a royal charter for a market at the manor of Ormskirk. On the dissolution of the monasteries the manor was granted to the earl of Derby. ORMUS. This is the European form of the name Hor- muz or Hurmuz, applied to a famous city on the shores of the Persian Gulf, which occupied more than one position in the course of history, and which has now long practi cally ceased to exist. The earliest mention of the name occurs in the voyage of Nearchus (325 B.C.). When that admiral beached his fleet at the mouth of the river Anamis on the shore of Harmozia, a coast district of Karmania, he found the country to be a kindly one, rich in every product except the olive. The Anamis appears to be the river now known as the Minab, discharging into the Persian Gulf near the entrance of the latter. The name Hormuz is derived by some from that of the Persian god Hormuzd, but it is not unlikely that the original etymology was connected with khurma, &quot;a date &quot; ; for the meaning of MoghistAn, the modern name of the territory Harmozia, is &quot;the region of date-palms.&quot; The founda tion of the city of Hormuz in this territory is ascribed by one Persian writer to the Sasanian Ardashir Babegdn (c. 230 A.D.). But it must have existed at an earlier date, for Ptolemy takes note of &quot;Appovfa vroAis (vi. 8). Hormuz is mentioned by Edrisi, who wrote c. 1150, under the title of Hormuz-al-sahiliah, &quot;Hormuz of the shore &quot; (to distinguish it from inland cities of the same name then existing), as a large and well-built city, the chief mart of Kirman. Siraf and Kish (Kais), farther up the gulf, had preceded it as ports of trade with India, but in the 13th century Hormuz had become the chief seat of this traffic. It was at this time the seat also of a petty dynasty of kings, of which there is a history by one of their number (Tiirdn Shah) ; an abstract of it is given by the Jesuit Teixeira. According to this history the founder of the dynasty was Shah Mohammed Dirhem-Ku (&quot;the Drachma-coiner&quot;), an Arab chief who crossed the gulf and established himself here. The date is not given, but it must have been before 1100 A.D., as Ruknuddin Mahmiid, who succeeded in 1246, .was the twelfth of the line. These princes appear to have been at times in dependence necessarily on the atabegs of Fars, and on the princes of Kirman. About the year 1300 Hormuz was so severely and repeatedly harassed by raids of Tartar horsemen that the king and his people abandoned their city on the mainland and transferred themselves to the island of Jeriin (Organa of Nearchus), about 12 miles westward, and 4 miles from the nearest shore. The site of the continental or ancient Hormuz was first traced in modern times by Colonel (Sir Lewis) Pelly when resident at Bushire. It stands in the present district of Minao, several miles from the sea, and on a creek which communicates with the Minao river, 1 but which is partially silted up and not now accessible for vessels. There remain the traces of a Ions: wharf and of extensive ruins. Map of the Strait of Ormus. The island adopted for the new site is of a pear-shape, with the stalk to the north, about 13| miles in circum ference and 4 miles in longest axis. The rounded southern portion is entirely composed of rugged serrated hills ris ing some 300 feet above the sea, and of an extraordinary variety of vivid colours, a few white peaks, like snow- covered hills, rising high above the general mass, one to a height of 690 feet. The hills, with the remarkable ex ception (according to the Persian Gulf Pilot) of the white peaks, and also of a range on the south and south-east, are all of salt. There is also sulphur. The island was devoid of fresh water except in one small well which exists, or formerly existed, at Turan Bagh, all the other water in use being collected in cisterns from rainfall ; and of vegetation, with the exception of a very little scrub among the hills and of what was produced in the time of the kings by laborious gardening and irrigation at the spot above mentioned. The new city occupied a triangular plain forming the northern part of the island, the southern wall, as its remains still show, being about 2 miles in extent from east to west. A suburb with a wharf or pier, called Tiiran Bagh (garden of Turan) after one of the kings, a name now corrupted to Trumpak, stood about three miles from the town to the south-east. ODORIC (q.v.~) gives the earliest notice we have of the new city (c. 1320). He calls it Ormes, a city strongly fortified and abounding in costly wares, situated on an island 5 miles distant from the main, having no trees and 1 .It is alleged, however, in the Persian Gulf Pilot, 1864, that this creek, called Khor Minab, &quot; is in no way connected with &quot; the river flowing past the town and fort of Minao or Minab.