Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/74

Rh P R U S Naseby. Rupert fled to Bristol, whence he counselled the king to come to terms with the parliament. In his con- duct of the defence of the town, this " boldest attaquer in the world for personal courage" showed how much he " wanted the patience and seasoned head to consult and advise for defence " (Pepys). His surrender of the town after only a three weeks' siege, though he had promised Charles to keep it four months, caused his disgrace with the king, who revoked all his commissions by an order dated September 14, and in a cold letter ordered him to seek his subsistence beyond seas, for which purpose a pass was sent him. Rupert, however, broke through the enemy, reached the king at Oxford, and was there reconciled to him. He challenged an investigation of his conduct, and was triumphantly acquitted by the council of war. He appears, too, to have remonstrated personally with Charles in terms of indecent violence. He then applied to the parliament for a pass. This, however, was offered only on unacceptable conditions. On June 24 Rupert was taken prisoner by Fairfax at Oxford, and on July 5, at the demand of the parliament, sailed from Dover for France. He was immediately made a marshal in the French service, with the command of the English there. He received a wound in the head at Armentieres during 1647. The greater part of the English fleet having adhered to Charles, and having sailed to Holland, Rupert went with the prince of Wales to The Hague, where the charge of it was put into his hand. He immediately set out in January 1649 upon an expedition of organized piracy. In February, after passing without molestation through the Parliamentary ships, he was at Kinsale, of which he took the fort. He relieved John Grenville at the Scilly Isles, and practically crippled the English trade. Attacked by Blake, he sailed to Portugal, and was received with kindness by the king ; Blake, however, blockaded him in the Tagus, and demanded his surrender. Rupert broke through the blockade and sailed to ihe Mediter- ranean, landing at Barbary, and refitting at Toulon ; thence he proceeded to Madeira, the Canaries (in 1652), the Azores, Cape de Verd, and the West Indies, sweeping the ocean between the latter places for a considerable time. Finding it impossible, however, to escape the indefatigable pursuit of Blake, he returned to France in 1653. He was now invited to Paris by Louis XIV., who made him master of the horse ; he had also an offer from the emperor to command his forces. He travelled for some while, and was again in Paris in 1655. His movements, however, at this time are very uncertain, but he appears to have devoted his enforced leisure to engraving, chemistry, the perfection of gunpowder, and other arts, especially those of military science. Whether he was the actual discoverer of mezzotinto engraving, in which he was skilful, is un- certain, but this seems probable. At the end of September 1660 Rupert returned to England; he was abroad during 1661, was placed on the privy council in April 1662, and in October was one of the commissioners for Tangiers ; in December he became a member of the Royal Society. In August 1664 he was appointed to command the Guinea fleet against the Dutch, and set sail in October. On June 5, 1665, he gained with Monk a great victory over the Dutch, and on his return had his portrait painted by Lely along with the other admirals present at the battle. He again put to sea in May 1666, to hinder the junction of the Dutch and French, and returned in the beginning of June after a heavy defeat, his ship having stuck on the Galloper Sands during the fight. He was obliged to justify himself before the council. In January 1667 he was very ill, but recovered after the operation of trepanning. At this time he is mentioned as one of the best tennis players in the nation. On October 22, 1667, he received with Monk the thanks of the House of Commons for his exertions against the Dutch at Chatham, and he was again at sea in April 1668. He was always staunch in his Pro- testant principles, and was carefully kept in ignorance of Charles's Catholic plot in 1670. In August of that year he was constable of Windsor, and busied himself with the fitting up of the Round Tower, a turret of which he converted into a workshop. He shared in the prevail- ing immorality of the time, his favourite mistress being the celebrated actress, Mrs Hughes. In 1673 he was appointed lord high admiral, and fought two battles with the Dutch Fleet on May 28 and August 11, but could do little through the backwardness of the French in coining to his assistance. This appears to have so annoyed him that he henceforward eagerly helped the anti-French party. He was an active member of the Board of Trade, and governor of the Hudson's Bay Company. Till his death, on November 29, 1682, he lived in complete retirement at Windsor. (o. A.) RUPERT'S LAND. See HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY and NORTH-WEST TERRITORY. RUPTURE. See HERNIA, RUSH. Under the name of rush or rushes, the stalks or fistular stem like leaves of several plants have minor industrial applications. The common rushes (species of Juncus) are used in many parts of the world for chair- bottoms, mats, and basket work, and the pith they contain serves as wicks in open oil-lamps and for tallow- candles, whence rushlight. The bulrush, Typha elephan- tina, is used in Sindh for mats and baskets. Under the name of rushes, species of Scirjms and other Cyperacex are used for chair-bottoms, mats, and thatch. The elegant rush mats of Madras are made from Papyrus jmngorei. The sweet rush, yielding essential oil, is Andropogon Schoenanthus, known also as lemon grass. Large quantities of the "horse tail," Equisetum hiemale, are used under the name of the Dutch or scouring rush, for scouring metal and other hard surfaces on account of the large proportion of silica the plant contains. RUSH, BENJAMIN (1745-1813), the Sydenham of America, was born near Bristol (12 miles from Phila- delphia), on a homestead founded by his grandfather, who had followed Penn from England in 1683, being of the Quaker persuasion, and a gunsmith by trade. After a careful education at school and college, and an appren- ticeship of six years with a doctor in Philadelphia, Rush went for two years to Edinburgh, where he attached himself chiefly to Cullen. He took his M.D. degree there in 1768, spent a year more in the hospitals of London and Paris, and began practice in Philadelphia at the age of twenty-four, undertaking at the same time the chemistry class at the new medical school. He at once became a leading spirit in the political and social movements of the day. He was a friend of Franklin's, a member of Congress for the State of Pennsylvania in 1776, and one of those who signed the Declaration of Independence the same year. He had already written on the Test Laws, "Sermons to the Rich," and on Negro Slavery, having taken up the last-named subject at the instance of Anthony Benezet, whose Historical Account of Guinea was the inspiration of Clarkson's celebrated college essay twelve years after. In 1774 he started along with James Pemberton the first anti-slavery society in America, and was its secretary for many years. When the political crisis ended in 1787 with the convention for drawing up a federal constitution, of which he was a member, he retired from public life, and gave himself up wholly to medical practice. In 1789 he exchanged his chemistry lectureship for that of the theory and practice of physic ;