Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/635

GEO was considered a defeat, which rendered the passage through the commons hopeless. The abandonment of the measure was received with great popular rejoicing throughout the kingdom, and in some large towns with an illumination, not always countenanced by the authorities. The poor queen did not long survive her triumph, so far as it went. She died on the 7th of August, 1821. Meanwhile, to rescue the king from his unpopularity, it was thought judicious to revive the old practice of a royal progress through some of the provinces. With this view he was absent in Ireland when the queen died, and next year he went to Edinburgh, where he was received with wild enthusiasm, the visit being acknowledged not only by the capital but the nation, which poured multitudes thither to celebrate the occasion. There is little in which he was personally concerned in the subsequent history of his reign. He died on the 26th June, 1830, and was succeeded by his brother, William IV.—J. H. B—n.  , Duke of Clarence, was the second son of Richard duke of Yok, the head of the Yorkist party in the wars of the Roses, and brother of King Edward IV. After his brother's accession to the throne, and marriage with Elizabeth Woodville, Clarence, who is said to have disliked the match, became an object of suspicion to the queen, and was alienated from Edward. In 1464 he married Isabella, eldest daughter of the great earl of Warwick, the kingmaker; and when a quarrel broke out between King Edward and this powerful baron, Clarence fled with his father-in-law to France in 1470. A reconciliation soon after took place between Warwick and the Lancastrian party, which offended the duke, and made him willing to listen to overtures from his brother. He still, however, continued to act with his father-in-law, and accompanied him in his expedition into England, which terminated in the complete overthrow and flight of Edward, and the restoration of the imbecile Henry VI. to the throne. This step completed the dissatisfaction of Clarence, and when a few months later (1471) Edward returned from the continent for the purpose of recovering his crown, the duke suddenly deserted Warwick and went over to Edward, just as the hostile armies were about to join battle. This act of perfidy caused Warwick to retreat without fighting, leaving the capital open to his enemy. He soon recruited his forces, however, and advanced to Barnet, only twelve miles from London. In the bloody encounter which followed, Warwick was defeated and slain, and the greater part of his immense estates was bestowed upon Clarence. The Yorkists were now completely in the ascendant, but the royal brothers were jealous of each other, and fresh causes of alienation soon arose. In 1476 Clarence's wife Isabella died, it is alleged, by poison, and the widowed duke offered his hand to the only daughter of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, who had fallen at the battle of Nancy. Edward opposed his brother's suit, and caused it to fail. Clarence, indignant at this treatment, gave utterance to some unguarded expressions against Edward, which were eagerly laid hold of to bring about his destruction. He was tried before the parliament, 16th June, 1478, on the charge of having plotted to dethrone the king, and of having had recourse to magical devices to compass his ends. He vehemently denied the charges, which indeed appear highly improbable, but he was found guilty and condemned to death, 7th February. On the 18th of the same month he was found dead in the Tower, his brothers Edward and Richard having, according to popular belief, caused him to be drowned in a butt of malmsey wine. Clarence was a weak and unprincipled man.—J. T.  , Prince, husband of Anne, queen of Great Britain, and by this connection elevated into a sort of historical obscurity, was born on the 21st of April, 1653. He was as inconspicuous in Denmark, where his brother was king (though he had there approved himself a good soldier), as afterwards in England when his wife became queen; and it was perhaps this very mediocrity, or want of ambition, which, with his protestantism, induced Charles II. to select him for the consort of his younger niece. It was in the very throes of the discovery of the Rye-house Plot that George arrived in England, on the 19th day of July, 1683. The marriage itself took place in a week, the prince being shortly created Duke of Cumberland. A great merit of the bridegroom was, that he troubled himself but little with politics; his occupation consisted, indeed, mainly in listening to news, in hunting, and drinking. He had been well educated, especially in mathematics, and had picked up by travelling a clumsy knowledge of the French, Italian, and German languages; but his real merit was the possession of a mild, patient temper, and freedom from vice. Even his panegyrists allow that he was "an amiable rather than a shining character," and "of a good sound understanding, but modest in showing it." Sir James Macintosh goes so far as to declare him a cipher. Not even Monmouth's rebellion, which prejudiced his own interests in common with the king's, roused him. Throughout these unsettled times he was entirely subservient to Anne, who herself was but an instrument in the hands of the Churchills. When the landing at Torbay actually took place, and defections of courtiers were daily reported, he found it necessary to remain for a time at court, but prudently confined his remarks on the tales of treachery to James to an "Est il possible?" When the tidings came that he had ridden off to Sherburne to join William, immediately on leaving the royal supper at Andover, on the 24th of November, his father-in-law hardly expressed surprise; his only observation was—"So Est il possible is gone too." In the new reign he was soon dragged into opposition by the Churchills, and was not employed in any business of importance. On his wife's accession in 1702, he received the high title of "generalissimo of all the queen's forces by sea or land," Marlborough being captain-general under him; and also the posts of warden of the Cinque Ports and lord high-admiral, with a council to assist. The goodwill of the tory majority in the commons procured him, in addition to his actual income of £50,000, a like sum, in case of his surviving his wife. As high admiral he did nothing, though originally bred to the sea, except lend the weight of his name to screen dishonest subordinates. He anticipated a whig project for turning him out of the admiralty by dying on the 28th of October, 1708, of an asthma and dropsy, which had lately, after some severe attacks, been thought to have abated. The news was heard with indifference; even the queen, who had nursed him tenderly during his illness of several years, did not positively reject a request of the parliament that she would marry again (she had had seventeen children by Prince George—the last, the duke of Gloucester, dying in 1700); and her estranged friend, the duchess of Marlborough, malignantly reports that her grief did not, even on the day of her consort's death, interfere with her appetite.—(Bishop Burnet's History of his own Time; Knight's History of England; Mackay's Characters of the Court of Great Britain.)—W. S., L.   I., King of Georgia, of the family of the Bagratides, succeeded his father Bagrat III. in 1015. The most important feature of his reign was his revolt against Basil II., emperor of Constantinople. The contest was maintained for some years; but the Georgian prince was ultimately compelled to sue for peace. He died in 1027, and was succeeded by his son Bagrat IV.— II. , son and successor of Bagrat IV., ascended the throne in 1027. His dominions were attacked by Melek Shah, the sultan of Persia, to whom, after a spirited resistance, he made submission. Large bodies of the Tartars located themselves within his territories; but he was permitted to retain the throne as a tributary till his death in 1089.— III., son of Demetrius I., usurped the crown of his nephew Temna, son of David III., in 1156. In the fifth year of his reign, and again in 1174, he attacked the Persian power in Armenia; and a fluctuating struggle with the Seljook sultans was maintained by him till a revolt of his nobles compelled him to become a refugee. He died in 1180.— IV., surnamed, or , succeeded his mother Thamar, daughter of George III., in 1198; he was her son by her second marriage, with a Caucasian prince of the Bagratid family. He repelled an invasion by the Mussulmans of Kandjah, made a successful inroad into Aderbijan, and checked in 1220 the encroachments of the Mongols. His death occurred in 1223.— V., son of David V., succeeded his brother Vakhtang in 1304, being then a child under the guardianship of his relative, George son of Demetrius II., who succeeded him at his death in 1306.— VI., assuming the sovereignty in 1306, set himself to compose the feuds by which the strength of the kingdom was wasted. He took advantage also of the troubles under which the Mongol empire in Persia was crumbling, and threw off the yoke which they had imposed on Georgia. He died in 1336, having won by his services to his country the surname of the Illustrious.— VII. , son of Bagrat V., succeeded him in 1394. In the preceding reign the country had been invaded and subdued by the famous Timur Shah, commonly called Tamerlane. George 