Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/866

HAR Paris, Duke, and Peer of France, &c., was born at Paris in 1625. Harlay-Chanvallon was handsome, polite, fluent, and learned, but his life was rather that of a courtier than of a christian. He was sincere in his dislike of the protestants, and his gratification when the edict of Nantes was revoked. He died in 1695. The Synodicon Parisiense was edited by him.—B. H. C.  HARLAY-DE-SANCY,, was born in 1546, the son of Robert de Harlay, lord of Sancy, &c., head of the protestant branch of the Harlay family. Nicolas was employed in sundry important state offices, among which was his embassy to England. At the St. Bartholomew massacre he abjured his protestantism, but afterwards returned, and a second time abjured. He is admitted to have been a man of talent, but unprincipled. He died in 1629.—B. H. C.  HARLEM or HAARLEM,. See.  HARLESS,, a celebrated German humanist, was born at Culmbach, Bavaria, 21st June, 1740, and devoted himself to classical learning in the universities of Erlangen and Göttingen. He then began lecturing at Erlangen, and in 1765 was appointed professor in the academic gymnasium of Coburg. In 1770 he was called to the chair of eloquence and classical philology at Erlangen, where some years later he was also appointed principal librarian. For nearly half a century he was considered a most efficient teacher and an ornament of his alma mater, and especially by his foundation of a philological seminary in 1777, greatly promoted the study of the classical languages. At the same time he was a prolific writer, and published a great number of valuable editions and treatises. His most important works are—"Introductio in Historiam Linguæ Græcæ," 2 vols.; "Introductio in Notitiam Literaturæ Romanæ;" and his carefully-corrected edition of Fabricius' Bibliotheca Græca, 12 vols. 1790-1809, to which, in 1838, a comprehensive index was added. He died on the 2nd of November, 1815.—(See Life, by his son, 1818).—K. E.  * HARLESS,, a learned protestant theologian, born at Nuremberg in 1806, and studied at Erlangen and Halle. He has filled several important offices as professor, &c., and is well known both as a preacher and as a writer. His "Christian Ethics" enjoys deserved reputation, and his "Commentary on the Ephesians" and other works are considered to be of a superior order, and indicative of much erudition and ability.—B. H. C.  HARLEY,, Earl of Oxford, lord high-treasurer of England during the closing years of the reign of Queen Anne, was born in London on the 5th of December, 1661. His father, Sir Edward Harley, a Herefordshire squire, a conspicuous patriot of the presbyterian type in the Long parliament, became a zealous opponent of the court after the Restoration, and the son was brought up in the same principles. When William landed at Torbay, the future earl of Oxford joined his father in declaring for the prince of Orange and in raising a troop of horse, with which they took possession of Worcester. After the accession of William and Mary he was sent to the house of commons as member for the Cornish borough of Tregony, a seat which he seems to have exchanged subsequently for the town of Radnor, apparently continuing to represent the latter borough until he was raised to the peerage. On his entering the house of commons, a similarity, not of principles, but of objects, led Harley, though an avowed and determined whig, to vote and speak frequently with the tories. The tories, of course, endeavoured to thwart William, whose right to the throne they denied, and a whig jealousy of prerogative and kingly power made Harley coalesce with his natural enemies. In the sketch of the early career of Harley, in the fourth volume of his History of England, Lord Macaulay has ingeniously delineated him gradually becoming a tory from keeping company with tories, and ultimately ripening into an intolerant anti-dissenter. He was foremost among the clamorous protesters against King William's exercise of the royal prerogative in vetoing the place bill of 1693, and was generally one of the most zealous parliamentary opponents to the policy of the sovereign, whom he had welcomed as a deliverer. Of slender capacity, nothing of an orator, mean in his appearance, uncouth in his gesture, he acquired by degrees a singular ascendancy in parliament. The shortcomings of a moderate intellect were compensated for by great industry, much cunning, and some sagacity. His private character was irreproachable, and this helped to gain the middle classes, especially the dissenters. From his boyhood upwards a reader, and occasionally turning off some very poor rhymes, he was the patron of wits and poets, and their praises advanced him in the opinion of the public. A favourite study of his was that of old records, giving him a rare knowledge of parliamentary precedent and procedure, and he came to be considered in the house of commons a prime authority on such matters. Rising thus in estimation within doors as "out of doors," he was chosen speaker to the house of commons in the February of 1702; the succeeding parliament of the same year, and the first parliament of Queen Anne, each reappointing him to the same office. In 1704, with his friend Henry St. John, he entered the ministry as secretary of state, retaining the office of speaker, an arrangement which appears singular now. His secretaryship he is supposed to have owed to the influence of his cousin, Abigail Hill, whom he aided to marry Mr. Masham, and who was destined to supplant the duchess of Marlborough in the good graces of the queen. The new favourite repaid her obligations by working on the mind of her royal mistress in the interest of Harley and his friends, and with great success. His influence, however, was shaken by the discovery, at the close of 1707, of a treasonable correspondence with France, carried on by one of his clerks, a certain William Gregg. Gregg was tried and executed, before death exculpating his master; but the Marlborough section of the ministry insisted on Harley's guilt, and ample proofs, indeed, have since been discovered of the existence, a few years later, of a correspondence between him and the Pretender. The conflict in the ministry came to a crisis in the February of 1708. Marlborough and Godolphin refused to sit in the council-room with Harley, and he and St. John were forced to resign. The triumph of his rival was short-lived. Through Masham, Harley and St. John, though out of office, not only retained but strengthened their hold on the weak mind of the queen. After an interval of two years and a half, Godolphin was dismissed; the queen broke finally with the duchess of Marlborough, and in the August of 1710 Harley was appointed chancellor of the exchequer, while St. John was made a secretary of state. In the following March an event occurred which excited the sympathy of the public on his behalf, and raised him to the pinnacle of popularity. A profligate French abbé, Guiscard, who after a changeful career had settled down in London as a spy of Louis XIV., was brought before the council on the 8th of March, 1711, to be examined on the charge of carrying on a treasonable correspondence with France. In the course of the examination Guiscard rushed upon Harley and stabbed him with a penknife. Harley's life was, or was said to be, for some time in danger, and on his recovery he was congratulated with the greatest enthusiasm on having escaped martyrdom at the hands of a Frenchman and a papist. In the course of the same year he was created earl of Oxford, &c., and was appointed in May lord high-treasurer of Great Britain, an office equivalent to that of first lord of the treasury in our own day. From this point onward Harley began to wane. "His slender and pliant intellect," says Lord Stanhope, "was well fitted to crawl up to the height of power through all the crooked mazes and dirty by-paths of intrigue; but having once attained the pinnacle, its smallness and meanness was exposed to all the world. From the moment of his triumph the expert party leader was turned into the most dilatory and helpless of ministers. His best friends were reduced to complain that no business could be done with him." So vacillating was his policy on the cardinal question of the succession, that it is doubtful to this day to which cause—the Hanoverian or the jacobite—he was really friendly, and he coquetted with both. The great event of his ministry was the peace of Utrecht, the fitting close to a series of shameful transactions, which included the disgrace of Marlborough, the betrayal of our allies, and the surrender of the fruits of a long series of victories. The guilt of the peace rests mainly perhaps on Bolingbroke; but Harley cannot escape from much of the blame which history attaches to its English negotiators. When it was signed his own fall was approaching. Bolingbroke, through Lady, no longer Mrs., Masham, was supplanting Harley, as Harley had supplanted Godolphin. Even the court of St. Germains, wearied of the contrast between his promises and performances, asked—it seems probable—the queen to remove her lord treasurer. On the 27th of July, 1714, he was dismissed after a personal altercation in the council-room. The queen explained to the other members of the council the grounds for her dismissal of the premier. They were, to quote his own confidant, Erasmus Lewis, writing to Swift, the 