Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/502

Rh 47G W E D W E D the leading place among the commissioners. For some time after its fall he was considered as the leader of the Whig party in the House of Lords, and, had the illness of the king brought about the return of the Whigs to power, the great seal would have been placed in his hands. The king s restoration to health secured Pitt s continuance in office, and disappointed the expectations of the Whigs. In 1792, during the period of the French Revolution, Lord Loughborough seceded from Fox, and on the 28th January 1793 he received the great seal in the Tory cabinet of Pitt. In legal knowledge he was exceeded by many of his predecessors, but his judgments were always remarkable for their perspicuity, and in the appeal cases to the House of Lords, where it was his function to criticize and elucidate the opinions of others, he shone pre eminent. All the political acts of the administration in which he served met with his zealous support, and he re mained faithful to his leader until the question of Catholic emancipation became of urgent importance, when he is supposed to have influenced by unfair means the mind of his sovereign. It was probably through his advice that George III. refused his assent to Pitt s proposals, and that the removal of the disabilities under which the Catholics groaned was delayed for another quarter of a century. When the prime minister found that he could not carry out his compact with his Catholic fellow-subjects he re signed, and Addington succeeded to his place. Much to Lord Loughborough s surprise, no place was found for him in Addington s cabinet, and he was obliged to resign his post of lord chancellor (14th April 1801). His first wife died 15th February 1781 without leaving issue, and he married in the following year (12th September) Charlotte, youngest daughter of William, Viscount Courtenay, but her only son died in childhood. Lord Loughborough accordingly obtained in 1795 a re-grant of his barony with remainder to his nephew, Sir James St Glair Erskine. His fall in 1801 was softened by the grant of an earldom (he was created earl of Fiosslyn 21st April 1801, with remainder to his nephew), and by a pension of -1000 per annum. After this date he rarely appeared in public, but he was a constant figure at all the royal festivities. He attended one of those gatherings at Frogmore, 31st December 1804. On the following day he was seized with an attack of gout in the stomach, and on 2d January 1805 he died at his seat, Baylis, near Salt Hill, Windsor. His remains were buried in St Paul s Cathedral on the llth January. At the bar Wedderburn was the most elegant speaker of his time, but in legal erudition he was excelled by many of his contempor aries, and he is said to have been markedly afraid of Cunning s forensic powers. For cool and sustained declamation he stood un rivalled in parliament, and his readiness in debate was universally acknowledged. In social life, in the company of the wits and writers of his day, his faculties seemed to desert him. He was not only dull but the cause of dulness in others, and even Alexander Carlyle confesses that in conversation his illustrious countryman was &quot;stiff and pompous.&quot; In Wedderburn s character ambition banished all rectitude of principle, but the love of money for money s sake was not among his faults. (W. P. (J.) WEDGWOOD, JOSIAH (1730-1795), the most distin guished of English manufacturers of pottery. Many members of the Wedgwood family had been established as potters in Staffordshire throughout the 17th century, but their productions were in no way remarkable. Josiah, born in 1 730, was the youngest child of Thomas Wedgwood, who owned a thriving pottery in Burslem. At a very early age he distinguished himself by keen powers of observation and love for all that was curious and beautiful. Soon after the death of his father in 1739, Josiah, then scarcely ten years of age, was taken away from school and set to learn the art of moulding or &quot;throwing&quot; clay pottery, at which he soon became extraordinarily skilful. In 1744 he was apprenticed to his eldest brother, who had succeeded to the management of his father s pottery ; and in 1751, when the term of his apprenticeship had expired, Josiah Wedgwood became manager of the neighbouring Alder pottery, with a very moderate salary. In 1759 he started as an independent potter at the Ivy-House works in Burslem, and soon introduced many improvements among the simple classes of pottery which were then made in Staffordshire. Soon, however, Wedgwood s tastes were turned in an archa3ological direction by the increasing interest then taken in Greek or (as they were then called) Etruscan vases. His enthusiasm was specially aroused by the illustrations in Comte de Caylus s Recueil d Antiqiiites (1752-67); aided by this work he began to attempt to copy Greek designs, and in later years he was further assisted by loans of vases from the fine collection of Greek pottery possessed by Sir William Hamilton. In 17G9 Wedgwood opened new potteries on a larger scale at Etruria in Staffordshire, having entered into partner ship with Thomas Bentley of Liverpool, a man of great taste and culture, and in all respects a kindred spirit. Many able artists, and among them the young Flaxrnan, were engaged to design and model reliefs, busts, and other designs for the Wedgwood and Bentley pottery ; and in a short time the productions of their kilns were widely sold and highly esteemed in all the chief countries of Europe. After Beutley s death, in 1780, Wedgwood became sole owner of the Etruria pottery till 1790, when he took some of his sons into partnership. - His chief artistic feat was perhaps the production of an accurate copy in clay of the celebrated glass Portland vase ; reproductions of this were sold at 50 a piece, and about 50 copies not all of equal merit were produced during Wedgwood s lifetime. In 1764 Josiah married his cousin Sarah Wedgwood. He died on January 3, 1795, in the 65th year of his age, leaving to his children a well-earned fortune of more than half a million. Josiah Wedgwood was a man of the highest moral worth, and skilled in many branches of knowledge. He was the intimate friend of Dr Erasmus Darwin and other distinguished men of science. For the chief characteristics of the Wedgwood pottery the reader is referred to the article POTTEKY, vol. xix. p. 632. See also Jewitt, Life of Wedgwood, 1865 ; and Eliza Meteyard, Life of Wedgwood, 1st ed., 1865-66. WEDNESBURY, a market-town and parliamentary borough of Staffordshire, England, is situated near the source of the Tame, on the Great Western and London and North-Wester n railway lines, 8 miles north-west of Birmingham, and 136^- miles north-west of London. The church of St Bartholomew, a fine building in the Perpen dicular style, is supposed to occupy the site of a heathen temple to Woden, and some remains of the ancient castle adjoin it. The church was erected probably in the llth century, and from 1301 theadvowson, tithes, ifec., belonged to the abbot of Halesowen until 1535. It was partially re built towards the close of the 15th century, and restored in 1766, in 1827, in 1878, and in 1885. Among other public buildings are the town-hall (1871-72), the free library in the Gothic style (1878), containing about 9000 volumes, the Liberal club (1875), the assembly rooms, the public baths, and the temperance hall. The neighbourhood of Wednesbury has been long celebrated for its iron and coal mines, the coal being unequalled as fuel for the smith s forge. A special kind of iron ore is obtained which is manufactured into axes and other edge-tools. The town possesses large steel and iron works, the more important manufactures being those of the large kind of iron work used by railway companies (such as bridges, cranes, switches, roofs, wheels, axletrees, boiler-plates, and rails), water, steam, and gas pipes, and various kinds of wrought- iron work. The population of the urban sanitary district