Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/527

Rh W E N W E II 501 incly plotted against him, and in Jobst of Moravia, to whom Brandenburg had been given in pledge by Sigismund, the brother of &quot;Wenceslaus, they found a powerful friend and leader. Wenceslaus was taken prisoner in 1394, and kept for some months in close confinement, and he was set free only when the German princes threatened that if he were detained the conspirators would be treated as enemies of the empire. He was unable to recover more than the appearance of power, and in 1395 he made himself an object of general contempt by selling to John Galeazzo Visconti, of Milan, the dignity of a duke of Lombarcly. After the defeat of his brother Sigismund, king of Hungary, at Nicopolis, Wenceslaus came to an under standing with Jobst, to whom he gave Brandenburg in fief ; and he afterwards tried to assert authority in Germany by summoning a diet at Frankfort, where, early in 1398, public peace was once more proclaimed. But Wenceslaus could not now undo the results of his indolence and incapacity, and when, in association with the king of France, he supported a plan for the deposition of Popes Boniface IX. and Benedict XIII., and for the assembling of a general council, the spiritual electors and Rupert, elector of the Palatinate, resolved that he himself should be deposed. These electors met at Oberlahnstein, and on the 20th August 1400 a decree depriving Wences laus of the German crown was read by the elector of Mainz as chancellor of the empire. The decree was informal, but Wenceslaus was not in a position to set it aside, and Rupert of the Palatinate was elected king in his stead. Fresh troubles had overtaken him in Bohemia, and in 1402 he was made prisoner by his brother Sigismund, who kept him in confinement for nineteen months. After his release he was not less arbitrary than before, and he caused much discontent by encouraging the disciples of Huss, whom he supported, not apparently because he cared for their doctrines, but because he found it convenient to use them as an instrument against the clergy. On the death of Rupert in 1410 Wenceslaus, while retaining the title of king of the Romans, resigned his claims to the imperial dignity in favour of Sigismund, who was elected to the German throne. Wenceslaus died of a stroke of apoplexy on the 16th August 1419. See Pclzcl, Lebensgeschichte des romischen und bohmischen Konigs Wcn~cl (1788-90) ; Weizsacker, Deutschr. Jlcichstagsactcn untcr Konig Wenzcl (1868-74) ; Lindner, Geschichte dcs Deutschen Reichs untcr Konig Wenzcl (1875). WENDS. See SAXONY, vol. xxi. p. 353, and SLAVS. WENLOCK, or MUCH WENLOCK, a market-town and municipal borough of Shropshire, England, is situated on a branch of the Great Western Railway, 163^- miles north west of London, 11 south of Wellington, and 12 south-east of Shrewsbury. There are some beautiful remains of the old priory church, including the southern half of the west front, three bays of the south aisle, and three sides of the south transept. The priory was originally founded as a nunnery by St Milburg, granddaughter of Penda, about 680, and after being destroyed by the Danes was refounded by Leofric in 1017. Afterwards it was remodelled by Roger de Montgomery as a house for Cluniac monks, and rose to great magnificence. The church of Holy Trinity is Norman and Early English, with portions of Decorated and Perpendicular. The other principal public buildings are the guild-hall, a quaint old timbered structure, the market-hall adjoining (erected in 1879 to harmonize with the old building), the corn exchange (1852), and the museum, occupying the site of the hospital of St John. The town is chiefly dependent on its agricultural trade. There are limestone quarries in the neigbourhood. The population of the municipal borough (the area of which is about 33,000 acres and embraces 17 parishes) in 1871 was 19,401 and in 1881 it was 18,442. In addition to the municipal authority the town itself is under the government of a local board. The population of the urban sanitary district (area 9737 acres) in 1871 was 2531 and in 1881 it was 2321. Wenlock is said to date from the pre-Roman period, but owed its rise to importance to the religious foundation of St Milburg. Jt received the grant of a market from Henry III. in 1224. It was incorporated by Edward IV. in 1448, when it also received the privilege of returning members to parliament, but in 1885 it ceased to have separate representation. WENTWORTH, THOMAS. See STRAFFORD. WENZEL, KARL FRIEDRICH (1740-1793), German metallurgist, was born at Dresden in 1740. His father was a bookbinder, and Wenzel began to learn the same trade ; but finding it monotonous he quietly left home and went to Holland at the age of fifteen. In Amsterdam he took lessons in surgery and chemistry, and then entered the Dutch navy as a surgeon. After some years a sea life lost its charm for him, and he resigned, returning to his native land in 1766 to complete his chemical studies at Leipsic. Wenzel now devoted his attention to metallurgy and assaying, working for a time with great success in the town of his birth. He received a prize for the best solution of a problem in working metals from the Copenhagen Society of Sciences. He also made some very careful chemical experiments, particularly on the mixture of solutions of various salts, and wrote several books on chemical subjects ; his claim for remem brance rests on one of these, Vorlesungen iiber die chemisc/n 1 Vericandtscliaft der K urper. It was published in 1777 ; a second edition appeared in 1782, and a third with addi tions in 1800. In 1780 Wenzel received the appointment of director of mines at Freiberg from the elector of Saxony, and in 1786 that of chemist in the porcelain works at Meissen. He died at Freiberg on February 26, 1793. The discovery of the law of reciprocal proportions in chemistry (see CHEMISTRY, vol. v. p. 463) has been claimed for Wenzel as the result of his researches on the affinities of bodies; and, on the ground of his work being prior to that of Richter, and much more accurate than the earlier experiments of Bergmann on the same subject, he has been regarded as Dalton s precursor in laying the foundation of the atomic theory. It was pointed out by Hess in 1840 that this was a mistake, since Wenzel s researches led him to no definite conclusions as to invariable and reciprocal proportions in the combination of acids and bases, but rather pointed in the opposite direction. Kopp overlooked this criticism in writing his great Geschichte der Chemie, (1844-1847), which has deservedly taken the highest place as an authority on chemical history ; and, although in the supplementary work published in 1873 he acknowledges his mistake as to Wenzel and confirms Hess s statement, the writers of text-books continue in many cases to give currency to the erroneous view. WERDAU, a manufacturing town of Saxony, is situated on the Pleisse, in the industrial district of Zwickau, about 40 miles south of Leipsic. Its chief industries are cotton and wool-spinning and the weaving of cloth; but machinery of various kinds, paper, and a few other articles are also manufactured. In addition to the usual schools, Werdau contains a weaving-school. The town is mentioned as early as 1304, and in 1398 it was purchased by the margrave of Meissen, who afterwards became elector of Saxony. The population, 4994 in 1834, was 14,638 in 1885. The adjoining village of Leubnitz, with 2400 inhabitants, is now practically a part of Werdau. WEREWOLF. See LYCANTHROPY. WERGELAND, HEXRIK ARNOLD (1 808-1845), Nor wegian poet and prose writer. See vol. xvii. p. 590.