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WLA excommunicated by the pope; and being driven from his states, he is said to have died an exile in 1233.

IV. was one of the competitors for the throne of Poland in 1290, when it became vacant by the death of his brother, Lesko the Black. For a time he was successful over rivals and against external foes, but he was obliged to yield to the unanimity with which Prezemislas was elected king in 1295. The latter being murdered, Wladislaus was again advanced to the throne, but his severity caused the clergy and nobles to combine in deposing him in favour of Wenceslaus, king of Bohemia and Hungary. Wladislaus penitently sought the pope's assistance by a journey to Rome, and on his return ingratiated himself with his fellow-countrymen, who were tired of Bohemian rule. On the death of Wenceslaus in 1306, Wladislaus was acknowledged king (the regal title having been resumed) by Little Poland and Pomerania, and four years later, on the death of the prince of Great Poland, he was unanimously proclaimed king of all Poland. His long reign was one continued struggle with the Teutonic knights, who had been located in Culm by his brother and predecessor, Lesko. The king had requested them to relieve Dantzic, which was besieged by the Brandenburghers. The knights obeyed, occupied the city, disarmed the Polish garrison, and declared the city a possession of their order. Wladislaus in revenge made cruel inroads into their territories, and committed great barbarities, but was unable to subdue the knights. By the treachery of an offended noble, Samatulski, the king was brought near to ruin, when by a second act of bad faith Samatulski gave the king a great victory over the knights. Wladislaus was fortunate in forming an alliance with Gedymin, duke of Lithuania whose daughter was married to Casimir, the king's son. Two religious sects—the Dulceans and the Fratricelli— flourished in this reign, and provoked the establishment of the inquisition in Poland. Wladislaus died in 1333.

V. was the name assumed by Jagello, the son of Olgerd, duke of Lithuania, when in 1386 he was baptized, and became the husband of Hedwig, the grand-daughter of Casimir the Great, and the elected queen of Poland. Faithful to his engagements, this founder of the Jagello dynasty assisted the Polish priests to convert his Lithuanian subjects to Christianity. Generous, sincere, just, and honourable, this prince suffered many injuries from his own brothers, to whom he confided in succession the government of Lithuania. The natives and nobles of that country supported Witold against his brother. King Wladislaus. On Witold's death they upheld Swidrigal, another brother, in a similar course; and when they had expelled Swidrigal, they elected his nephew, Starodubski, in the hope that he would make them independent of Poland. In his transactions with the Teutonic knights, Wladislaus was not fortunate; and he found in the Emperor Sigismund a watchful and jealous neighbour, of whom he generously declined to take advantage when the Hungarians and Bohemians were desirous of transferring their crown from Sigismund to Wladislaus. He was married four times, and vexed the souls of his wives by his jealousy. He died in 1434, and was succeeded by his son—

VI., then eleven years old. Before he was killed, at the age of twenty, he had made Europe resound with the fame of his military prowess. On the death of Albert, king of Bohemia and Hungary, the Hungarians, dreading the aggressions of the Turks, invited Wladislaus to be their king. Acceding to the request, and appointing a regency in Poland, he accompanied the deputation to Buda, and was acknowledged king by the greater part of the nation. In 1442 he defeated the Turks, overran Bulgaria, and procured from the sultan, Amurath II., a most advantageous treaty of peace for ten years, which was ratified by both parties with solemn oaths. The pope and other western princes were dissatisfied, believing that the Turks might be totally expelled from Europe. Wladislaus was unfortunately persuaded by Cardinal Cesarini that he might break his oath and join a crusade against the infidels. With his famous general, Huniades, he encountered Amurath near Varna. A terrific conflict ensued. Wladislaus, with true Polish ardour, cut his way to the enemy's camp, but was surrounded, and fell amid a heap of slain that he had killed with his own hand. This event occurred in 1444.

VII., the last and worthiest of the name, was the son of Sigismund by the Archduchess Anne of Austria. He was elected by the diet in 1632 with the usual stringent conditions. By wisdom and valour he recovered from the Turks, the Russians, and the Swedes, ancient Polish conquests. The fatal difficulty of his reign was the government of the Cossacks of the Ukraine, who bitterly resented the oppressions of the haughty and rapacious Polish nobles. This wild people at length found one who was able to direct their vengeance with skill and courage, in the person of Bogdan Chmielnicki, the victim of a cruel outrage inflicted by a Polish steward. At the head of forty thousand Tartars, and hundreds of thousands of Cossacks, he swept into Poland, defeated two armies of the republic, and carried away seventy thousand captives. At this awful crisis Wladislaus died in 1648, leaving Poland in a condition of misery, brought on by the selfishness of his nobility, from which she never recovered.—R. H.  WODHULL,, an English poet, was born at Thenford in Northamptonshire, 1740, and educated at Winchester and Oxford. His principal work was a translation of Euripides into blank verse, published in 1782. A volume of his miscellaneous poems appeared in 1804. He died in 1816.—W. B.  WODROW,, a well-known Scottish ecclesiastical historian, was the second son of James Wodrow, professor of divinity, and was born at Glasgow in 1679. He was enrolled as a student in the university of his native city in 1691, and commenced the study of divinity under his father in 1698. About the same period he was chosen librarian to the university, an office which he held for four years. On completing his studies, he was for a short time tutor in the family of Sir John Maxwell of Pollok, one of the judges of the court of session. In March, 1703, he was licensed to preach the gospel by the presbytery of Paisley, and a few months later was ordained minister of the small parish of Eastwood, near Glasgow. In this quiet spot Wodrow spent the remainder of his retired yet active and useful life, diligently and faithfully discharging the duties of his office among his parishioners, to whom he was greatly endeared, and resisting repeated attempts to remove him to Glasgow and other important spheres of labour. Wodrow was naturally of an inquisitive turn of mind, having, as he quaintly terms it, an "Athenian or queristical temper," and in his quiet rural parish he had ample leisure for the prosecution of his favourite studies. It appears from his correspondence with Edward Lhuyd, the learned keeper of the Ashmolean museum at Oxford, that he was at one time fond of natural history, but he soon came to devote his energies with great zeal and untiring industry to antiquarian and historical pursuits. His father had shared in the sufferings of the Covenanters during the troublous times of Charles II. and his successor; and young Wodrow, who had often mingled in his early years with the aged ministers who had been ordained during the time of the Commonwealth, had gleaned from their conversation many interesting reminiscences of the renowned presbyterians who flourished during the "Second Reformation." He entered into correspondence with the survivors of the times of persecution in every part of the country, and spared no efforts or expense to obtain accurate accounts of the labours and sufferings both of the people and their pastors. The result of his arduous and painstaking researches was given to the world in 1721 in his well-known work, entitled "The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the Revolution," 2 vols. folio. He was encouraged in his labours both by the approbation of his literary friends, and by the patronage of the general assembly. The reception given to his work by the public was most gratifying, and the scurrilous attacks made upon it by some nonjuring episcopalians bore testimony of a different kind to its value. The "History" was dedicated to George I., and as a mark of his majesty's "esteem for the author and his works," the sum of £100 was ordered to be paid to Wodrow by the treasury. After the publication of his great work, the author proceeded to carry out his long-cherished plan to form a series of biographical memoirs of the more eminent ministers of the Church of Scotland. He commenced this task with a life of his father, which was completed in 1724, but was not published until 1728. This series of lives, chiefly compiled between 1726 and 1733, and forming ten folio volumes, with an appendix extending to four quarto volumes, are preserved in the library of the university of Glasgow, but a selection from them has been published by the Maitland Club. They are inferior, however, both in interest and value to his "History." Wodrow's studious habits and incessant labours appear to have injured his health, and after a protracted illness he died on the 21st March, 1734. By his wife, a grand-daughter of the celebrated William Guthrie, minister of Fenwick, he had a family 