Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/532

Rh 506 S W E S Genius, 1816); and biographies of him occur in Cunningham s Lives of Eminent British Painters and Redgrave s Century of Painters of the English School. WESTALL, RICHARD (1765-1836), subject painter, was born in Hertford in 1765, of a Norwich family. In 1779 he went to London, and was apprenticed to an engraver on silver, and in 1785 he began to study in the schools of the Royal Academy. He painted Esau Seeking Jacob s Blessing, Mary Queen of Scots Going to Execution, and other historical subjects in water-colour, and some good portraits in the same medium, but he is mainly known as a book-illustrator. He produced five subjects for the Shakespeare Gallery, illustrated an edition of Milton, executed a very popular series of illustrations to the Bible and the prayer-book, and designed plates for numerous other works. In 1808 he published a poem, A Day in Spring, illustrated by his own pencil. His designs are rather tame, mannered, and effeminate. He became an associate of the Royal Academy in 1792, and a full member in 1794 ; and during his later years he was a pensioner of the Academy. His last employment was to give art instruction to the Princess A r ictoria. He died on December 4, 1836. His brother, William Westall, A.R.A. (1781-1850), landscape painter, is mainly known by his illustrations to works of travel. WEST BAY CITY, a city of Bay county, Michigan, United States, is situated on the Saginaw river, near its mouth, opposite Bay City. The city lies in one of the largest lumber districts of the United States, and its industries consist mainly in manufacturing and shipping lumber. It had a population of 9492 in 1885. WEST BROMWICH, a municipal and parliamentary borough of Staffordshire, England, is situated near the river Tame, and on the Great Western Railway, 6 miles north-west of Birmingham, and 133| miles from London. It consists chiefly of one main street, the High Street, upwards of 1| miles in length. The parish church (All Saints, formerly St Clement s) is of very early origin, and was given by Henry I. to the convent of Worcester, which subsequently gave it to the priory of Sandwell. The present church, a handsome structure in the Decorated style, was built in 1871-72. The principal other public buildings are the West Bromwich district hospital (erected in 1867 at a cost of 9000, and enlarged in 1882 at a cost of 4000), the town-hall and municipal offices (1875), the market-hall, the free library (1874), and the Liberal club (1884). There are two public charities the Stanley (1613) and the Whorwood (1614). Since 1880 the town has manufactured its own gas, but the water is supplied by the South Staffordshire Waterworks Company. There are several large foundries, smelting-furnaces, and forges, but the staple manufactures are the various kinds of implements of wrought-iron used for household, agri cultural, or mechanical purposes. The town also possesses brass foundries, maltings, limekilns, and brickyards. There are large collieries in the neighbourhood. The area of the municipal and parliamentary borough and urban sanitary district is 5719 acres, with a population in 1871 of 47,918 and in 1881 of 56,295. In 1230 the manor of West Bromwich was vested in the barons of Dudley, and in 1293 it descended to Walter do Evereus ; iu 1448 it passed to the Stanleys, from whom it was purchased by Sir Richard Skelton, solicitor-general to Charles I.; and in 1626 it came into the possession of Sir Samuel Clarke, by whose descendants, who subsequently assumed the name of Clarke-Jervoise, it was sold an 1823 to the earl of Dartmouth. West Bromwich was incor porated 13th September 1882. By the Act of 1885 its parliamen tary representation was separated from that of Wednesbury, and it was erected into a parliamentary borough retaining one member. WESTBURY, RICHARD BETHELL, BAHON (1800-1873), was the son of Dr Richard Beth ell, and was born at Bradfordj Wilts. He was placed in the first class in classics and the second in mathematics at Oxford in 1818, and was elected a fellow of Wadham College. In 1823 he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple. On attaining the dignity of queen s counsel in 1840 he rapidly took the foremost place at the Chancery bar, and was appointed vice-chancellor of the county palatine of Lancaster in 1851. His most important public service was the reform of the then existing mode of legal education, a reform which ensured that students before call to the bar should have at least some acquaintance with the elements of the subject which they were to profess. In 1851 he obtained a seat in the House of Commons, where he continued to sit, first as member for Aylesbury, then as member for Wolperhampton, until he was raised to the peerage. Attaching himself to the Liberals, lie became solicitor- general in 1852 and attorney-general in 1856 and again in 1859. On June 26, 1861, on the death of Lord Campbell, he was created lord high chancellor of Great Britain, with the title of Baron Westbury of Westbury, county Wilts. The object of his life was to set on foot the compilation of a digest of the whole law, but for various reasons this became impracticable. The conclu sion of his tenure of the chancellorship was unfortunately marked by events which, although they did not render personal corruption imputable to him, made it evident that he had acted with laxity of practice and want of caution. Owing to the reception by parliament of reports of com mittees nominated to consider the circumstances of the acceptance by him of the resignations of Mr Wilde, the bankruptcy registrar at Leeds, and Mr Leonard Edmunds, a clerk in the patent office, and clerk of the parliaments, the lord chancellor felt it incumbent upon him to resign his office, which he accordingly did on July 5, 1865, and was succeeded by Lord Cranworth. After his resignation he continued to take part in the judicial sittings of the House of Lords and the privy council until his death. In 1872 he was appointed arbitrator under the European Assurance Society Act, 1872, and his judgments in that capacity have been collected and published by Mr F. S. Reilly. As a writer on law he made no mark, and few of his decisions take the highest judicial rank. Perhaps the best known is the judgment delivering the opinion of the judicial committee of the privy council in 1863 against the heretical character of certain extracts from the well- known publication Essays and Reviews. His principal legislative achievements were the passing of the Divorce Act, 1857, and of the Land Registry Act, 1862 (generally known as Lord Westbury s Act), the latter of which in practice proved a failure. What chiefly distinguished Lord Westbury was the possession of a certain sarcastic humour ; and numerous are the stories, authentic and apocryphal, of its exercise. In fact, he and Mr Justice Maule fill a position analogous to that of Sydney Smith, convenient names to whom &quot;good things&quot; may be attri buted. Lord W T estbury died on July 20, 1873, within a day of the time of the death of Bishop Wilberforce, his special antagonist in debate. A Life of Lord Wetbury by T. A. Nash is now (1888) in the press. WEST CHESTER, a borough and the county seat of Chester county, Pennsylvania, United States, is situated 27 miles west of Philadelphia, in a thickly settled farming region, devoted principally to market gardening and the dairy industry. Its population in 1880 was 7046, of whom 1164 were coloured and 517 of foreign birth. WEST DERBY, a township in Lancashire, England, now virtually a suburb of Liverpool, about 4 miles north east of Liverpool Exchange. It is chiefly composed of houses inhabited by the wealthier merchants of Liverpool. The parish church of St Mary was re-erected iu 1856 in