Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/360

330   CONWAY, or, a town of Carnarvonshire, in North Wales, at the mouth of the Conway, four miles south of Llandudno and forty-five miles west of Chester by railway. It is situated on the western bank of the river, and is inclosed by a lofty wall, which approaches the form of a triangle, and is a .mile in circumference. The style of this ancient and highly interesting wall is Saracenic; it is fenced with twenty-one round towers, now somewhat dilapidated, and entered by three principal gateways with two strong towers. The south-eastern angle is occupied by the castle, one of the noblest of the old fortresses in England. It was built in 1284 by Edward I. to secure his possession of North Wales, and was the residence of Richard II. in 1389. During the war of the Commonwealth it was held for Charles I. by Archbishop Williams, but was taken by General Mytton in 1G46. In the following reign it was dismantled by its new proprietor Earl Conway, and remains a ruin. The building is oblong in form ; it is strengthened with eight massive drum towers ; and part of the interior is occupied by a great hall, known as Llewelyn s, 1 30 feet long. The town contains some curious old houses of the Elizabethan period, a town-hall where the petty sessions are held, and St Mary s Church. The Parliamentary borough of Conway (which with Carnarvon and four others returns in conjunc tion a member to Parliament) extends beyond the walls of the town, and over to the right bank of the river, occupy ing a total area of 3312 acres. Population of town, 1862 ; of borough, 2620.  CONYBEARE, (1692-1755), a learned English divine, was born at Pinhoe, near Exeter, January 31, 1692. At the age of sixteen he entered Exeter College, Oxford, of wlich he was elected in 1710 probationary fellow. He graduated B.A. in 1713, and M.A. in 1716, and in the latter year was ordained priest. After holding a country curacy for about a year he returned to Oxford, and becanle tutor in his college. Ere long he made himself favourably known by the publication of two well-reasoned sermons, on &quot; Miracles,&quot; and on the &quot; Mysteries of the Christian Religion,&quot; and was appointed one of the preachers to the king at Whitehall. He took his degree of D.D. in January 1729, and in 1730 he was chosen rector of Exeter College. By this time he had increased his reputation by several additional sermons, and in 1732 he published his great work, A Defence of Revealed Religion. This was written in reply to Matthew Tindal s Christianity as Old as the Creation, which had appeared two years before. It became very popular, and reached a third edition in 1733. It was characterized by Bishop Warburton as one of the best reasoned books in the world. Soon after its publication Conybeare was appointed dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and this post he held till 1750, when he succeeded Dr Butler in the see of Bristol. He died at Bath, July 13, 1755. A selection of his sermons, in two volumes, was published after his death.  CONYBEARE, (1787-1857), dean of Llandaff, an eminent geologist, born in London, June 7, 1787, was a grandson of Bishop Conybeare. He received his early education at Westminster School, and in 1805 went to Christ Church College, Oxford, where in 1808 he took his degree of B.A., as first-class in classics and second in mathematics, and that of M.A. three years later. Early attracted to the study of geology, he became one of the first members of the Geological Society, of which he was afterwards fellow, and to whose Transactions he contributed many important memoirs. His first paper was com municated in 1814. In his researches he was often associated with Backland and Phillips. In 1821 he distin guished himself greatly by the first discovery and descrip tion of a skeleton of the plesiosaurus, his account (partly conjectural reconstruction) being minutely confirmed by subsequent discoveries. Among his most important memoirs is that on the south-western coal district of England, written in conjunction with Dr Buckland, and published in 1824. His principal work, however, is the Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales, written in co-operation with W. Philips, and forming at the time of its appearance (1822) the best manual on the subject. Conybeare was a fellow of the Royal Society and a corres ponding member of the Institute of France. He was appointed Bampton Lecturer in 1839, and was instituted to the deanery of Llandaff in 1845. The loss of his eldest son, W. J. Conybeare, joint author with Mr Howson of the Life and Letters of St Paid, preyed on his mind and hastened his end. He died at Itcheustoke, near Portsmouth, a few months after his son, August 12, 1857.  COOK, (1728-1779), the celebrated navigator, was born on October 28, 1728, at the village of Marton, Yorkshire, where his father was first an agricul tural labourer and then a farm bailiff. At thirteen years of age he was apprenticed to a haberdasher at Straiths, near Whitby, but having quarrelled with his master, he went as an apprentice on board a collier belonging to the port, and was soon afterwards appointed mate. Early in the year 1755 Cook joined the royal navy. Having distinguished himself, he was, on the recommen dation of Sir Hugh Palliser, his commander, appointed master successively of the sloop &quot; Grampus,&quot; of the &quot; Garland,&quot; and the &quot; Mercury,&quot; in the last of which he served in the St Lawrence, and was present at the capture of Quebec. He was. employed also in sounding and surveying the river, and he published a chart of the channel from Quebec to the sea. In 1762 he was present at the recapture of Newfoundland ; early in the following year he was employed in surveying the coasts of Newfoundland ; and in 1764 he was appointed marine surveyor of New foundland and Labrador. While in this capacity, Cook published in the Philosophical Transactions an observation of a solar eclipse made at one of the Burgeo Islands, near Cape Ray, which added considerably to his reputation. About this time the spirit for geographical discovery, which had gradually declined since the beginning of the 17th century, began to revive; and Cook was appointed to conduct an expedition which was then projected for the purpose of making observations on the impending transit of Venus, and prosecuting geographical researches in the South Pacific Ocean. For this purpose he received a com mission as lieutenant, and set sail in the &quot; Endeavour,&quot; a vessel of 370 tons, accompanied by several men of science, including Sir Joseph Banks. On the 13th April 1769 he reached Otaheite or Tahiti, where he erected an observatory, and succeeded in making the necessary astronomical observations. From Otaheite Cook sailed in quest of the great continent then supposed to exist in the South Pacific, and reached the islands of New Zealand, which had remained a terra incognita since the time of their first dis covery. His attempts to penetrate to the interior, however. 