Part 665

"There is reason to believe that, in 1685, London had been, during about half a century, the most populous capital in Europe. The inhabitants, who are now [1848] at least 1,900,000, were then probably little more than half a million. London had in the world only one commercial rival, now long ago outstripped, the mighty and opulent Amsterdam. … There is, indeed, no doubt that the trade of the metropolis then bore a far greater proportion than at present to the whole trade of the country; yet to our generation the honest vaunting of our ancestors must appear almost ludicrous. The shipping which they thought incredibly great appears not to have exceeded 70,000 tons. This was, indeed, then more than a third of the whole tonnage of the kingdom. … It ought to be noticed that, in the last year of the reign of Charles II. [1685], began a great change in the police of London, a change which has perhaps added as much to the happiness of the body of the people as revolutions of much greater fame. An ingenious projector, named Edward Heming, obtained letters patent conveying to him, for a term of years, the exclusive right of lighting up London. He undertook, for a moderate consideration, to place a light before every tenth door, on moonless nights, from Michaelmas to Lady Day, and from six to twelve of the clock."

_Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 3 (volume 1)._

LONDON: A. D. 1688. The Irish Night.

The ignominious flight of James II. from his capital, on the morning of December 11, 1688, was followed by a wild outbreak of riot in London, which no effective authority existed to promptly repress. To the cry of "No Popery," Roman Catholic chapels and the residences of ambassadors of Roman Catholic States, were sacked and burned. "The morning of the 12th of December rose on a ghastly sight. The capital in many places presented the aspect of a city taken by storm. The Lords met at Whitehall, and exerted themselves to restore tranquillity. … In spite, however, of the well-meant efforts of the provisional government, the agitation grew hourly more formidable. … Another day of agitation and terror closed, and was followed by a night the strangest and most terrible that England had ever seen." Just before his flight, King James had sent an order for the disbanding of Ins army, which had been composed for the most part of troops brought over from Ireland. A terrifying rumor that this disbanded Irish soldiery was marching on London, and massacring men, women and children on the road, now spread through the city. "At one in the morning the drums of the militia beat to arms. Everywhere terrified women were weeping and wringing their hands, while their fathers and husbands were equipping themselves for fight. Before two the capital wore a face of stern preparedness which might well have daunted a real enemy, if such an enemy had been approaching. Candles were blazing at all the windows. The public places were as bright as at noonday. All the great avenues were barricaded. More than 20,000 pikes and muskets lined the streets. The late daybreak of the winter solstice found the whole City still in arms. During many years the Londoners retained a vivid recollection of what they called the Irish Night. … The panic had not been confined to London. The cry that disbanded Irish soldiers were coming to murder the Protestants had, with malignant ingenuity, been raised at once in many places widely distant from each other."

_Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 10._

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LONDON: A. D. 1780. The Gordon No-Popery Riots.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1778-1780.

LONDON: A. D. 1848. The last Chartist demonstration.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1848.

LONDON: A. D. 1851. The great Exhibition.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1851.

LONDON: End----------

LONDON COMPANY FOR VIRGINIA, A. D. 1606-1625. Charter and undertakings in Virginia.

See VIRGINIA: A. D. 1606-1607, and after.

LONDON COMPANY FOR VIRGINIA. D. 1619. The unused patent granted to the Pilgrims at Leyden.

See INDEPENDENTS OR SEPARATISTS: A. D. 1617-1620; and, also, MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1620, and 1621.

LONDONDERRY: Start--------

LONDONDERRY: Origin and Name.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1607-1611.

LONDONDERRY: A. D. 1688. The shutting of the gates by the Prentice Boys.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1685-1688.

LONDONDERRY: A. D. 1689. The Siege.

James II. fled in December, 1688, to France, from the Revolution in England which gave his throne to his daughter Mary, and her husband, William of Orange. He received aid from the French king and was landed in Ireland the following March, to attempt the maintenance of his sovereignty in that kingdom, if no more. Almost immediately upon his arrival he led his forces against Londonderry, where a great part of the Protestants of Ulster had taken refuge, and William and Mary had been proclaimed. "The city in 1689 was contained within the walls; and it rose by a gentle ascent from the base to the summit of a hill. The whole city was thus exposed to the fire of an enemy. There was no moat nor counterscarp. A ferry crossed the river Foyle from the east gate, and the north gate opened upon a quay. At the entrance of the Foyle was the strong fort of Culmore, with a smaller fort on the opposite bank. About two miles below the city were two forts—Charles Fort and Grange Fort. The trumpeter sent by the king with a summons to the obstinate city found the inhabitants 'in very great disorder, having turned out their governor Lundy, upon suspicion.' The cause of this unexpected reception was the presence of 'one Walker, a minister.' He was opposed to Lundy, who thought the place untenable, and counselled the townsmen to make conditions; 'but the fierce minister of the Gospel, being of the true Cromwellian or Cameronian stamp, inspired them with bolder resolutions.' The reverend George Walker and Major Baker were appointed governors during the siege. They mustered 7,020 soldiers, dividing them into regiments under eight colonels. In the town there were about 30,000 souls; but they were reduced to a less burdensome number, by 10,000 accepting an offer of the besieging commander to restore them to their dwellings. There were, according to Lundy's estimation, only provisions for ten days. The number of cannon possessed by the besieged was only twenty. On the 20th of April the city was invested, and the bombardment was begun. … No impression was made during nine days upon the determination to hold out; and on the 29th King James retraced his steps to Dublin, in considerable ill humour. The siege went on for six weeks with little change. Hamilton was now the commander of James's forces. The garrison of Londonderry and the inhabitants were gradually perishing from fatigue and insufficient food. But they bravely repelled an assault, in which 400 of the assailants fell. … Across the narrow part of the river, from Charles Fort to Grange Fort, the enemy stretched a great boom of fir-timber, joined by iron chains, and fastened on either shore by cables of a foot thick. On the 15th of June an English fleet of thirty sail was descried in the Lough. Signals were given and answered; but the ships lay at anchor for weeks. At the end of June, Baker, one of the heroic governors, died. Hamilton had been superseded in his command by Rosen, who issued a savage proclamation, declaring that unless the place were surrendered by the 1st of July, he would collect all the Protestants from the neighbouring districts, and drive them under the walls of the city to starve with those within the walls. A famished troop came thus beneath the walls of Londonderry, where they lay starving for three days. The besieged immediately threatened to hang all the prisoners within the city. This threat had its effect, and the famished crowd wended back their way to their solitary villages. It is but justice to James to say that he expressed his displeasure at this proceeding."

_C. Knight, Crown History of England, chapter 34._

"The state of the city was, hour by hour, becoming more frightful. The number of the inhabitants had been thinned more by famine and disease than by the fire of the enemy. Yet that fire was sharper and more constant than ever. … Every attack was still repelled. But the fighting men of the garrison were so much exhausted that they could scarcely keep their legs. Several of them, in the act of striking at the enemy, fell down from mere weakness. A very small quantity of grain remained, and was doled out by mouthfuls. The stock of salted hides was considerable, and by gnawing them the garrison appeased the rage of hunger. Dogs, fattened on the blood of the slain who lay unburied round the town, were luxuries which few could afford to purchase. The price of a whelp's paw was five shillings and sixpence. Nine horses were still alive, and but barely alive. They were so lean that little meat was likely to be found upon them. It was, however, determined to slaughter them for food. … The whole city was poisoned by the stench exhaled from the bodies of the dead and of the half dead. … It was no slight aggravation of the sufferings of the garrison that all this time the English ships were seen far off in Lough Foyle." At length, positive orders from England compelled Kirke, the commander of the relieving expedition "to make an attempt which, as far as appears, he might have made, with at least an equally fair prospect of success, six weeks earlier." Two merchant ships, the Mountjoy and the Phœnix, loaded with provisions, and the Dartmouth, a frigate of thirty-six guns, made a bold dash up the river, broke the great boom, ran the gauntlet of forts and batteries, and reached the city at ten o'clock in the evening of the 28th of July. {2040} The captain of the Mountjoy was killed in the heroic undertaking, but Londonderry, his native town, was saved. The enemy continued their bombardment for three days more. "But, on the third night, flames were seen arising from the camp; and, when the first of August dawned, a line of smoking ruins marked the site lately occupied by the huts of the besiegers. … So ended this great siege, the most memorable in the annals of the British isles. It had lasted 105 days. The garrison had been reduced from about 7,000 effective men to about 3,000. The loss of the besiegers cannot be precisely ascertained. Walker estimated it at 8,000 men."

_Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 12._

ALSO in: _W. H. Torriano, William the Third, chapter 21._

See, also, IRELAND: A. D. 1689-1691.

LONDONDERRY: End--------

LONE JACK, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (JULY-SEPTEMBER: MISSOURI-ARKANSAS).

LONE STAR, Order of the.

See CUBA: A. D. 1845-1860.

LONE STAR FLAG. LONE STAR STATE.

On assuming independence, in 1836, the republic of Texas adopted a flag bearing a single star, which was known as 'the flag of the lone Star.' With reference to this emblem, Texas is often called the Lone Star State.

LONG ISLAND: Start--------

LONG ISLAND: A. D. 1614. Explored by the Dutch.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1610-1614.

LONG ISLAND: A. D. 1624. Settlement of Brooklyn.

See BROOKLYN.

LONG ISLAND: A. D. 1634. Embraced in the Palatine grant of New Albion.

See NEW ALBION.

LONG ISLAND: A. D. 1650. Division between the Dutch of New Netherland and the English of Connecticut.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1650.

LONG ISLAND: A. D. 1664. Title acquired for the Duke of York.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1664.

LONG ISLAND: A. D. 1673. The Dutch reconquest.

See NEW YORK: A. D. 1673.

LONG ISLAND: A. D. 1674. Annexed to New York.

See CONNECTICUT: A. D. 1674-1675.

LONG ISLAND: A. D. 1776. The defeat of the American army by Lord Howe.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776 (AUGUST).

LONG ISLAND: End--------

LONG KNIVES, The.

See YANKEE.

LONG PARLIAMENT.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1640-1641.

LONG WALLS OF ATHENS.

The walls which the Athenians built, B. C. 457, one, four miles long, to the harbor of Phalerum, and others, four and one half miles long, to the Piræus, to protect the communication of their city with its port, were called the Long Walls. The same name had been previously given to the walls built by the Athenians to protect the communication of Megara, then their ally, with its port of Nisæa; and Corinth had, also, its Long Walls, uniting it with the port Lechæum. The Long Walls of Athens were destroyed on the surrender of the city, at the termination of the Peloponnesian War, B. C. 404, and rebuilt, B. C. 393, by Conon, with Persian help.

See ATHENS: B. C. 466-454.

LONGJUMEAU, Peace of (1568).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1563-1570.

LONGSTREET, General James. Siege of Knoxville.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1863 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER: TENNESSEE).

LONGUEVILLE, The Duchess de, and the Fronde.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1649, to 1651-1653.

LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN, its position, and the battle on it.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1863 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER: TENNESSEE); and (OCTOBER-NOVEMBER: TENNESSEE).

LOOM, Cartwright's invention of the power.

See COTTON MANUFACTURE.

LOPEZ, The Tyranny of.

See PARAGUAY: A. D. 1608-1873.

LOPEZ FILIBUSTERING EXPEDITION (1851).

See CUBA: A. D. 1845-1860.

LORD.

"Every Teutonic King or other leader was surrounded by a band of chosen warriors, personally attached to him of their own free choice [see COMITATUS]. … The followers served their chief in peace and in war; they fought for him to the death, and rescued or avenged his life with their own. In return, they shared whatever gifts or honours the chief could distribute among them; and in our tongue at least it was his character of dispenser of gifts which gave the chief his official title. He was the 'Hlaford,' the 'Loaf-giver,' a name which, through a series of softenings and contractions, and with a complete forgetfulness of its primitive meaning, has settled down into the modern form of Lord."

_E. A. Freeman, History Norman Conquests, chapter 3, section 2 (volume 1)._

On the Latin equivalent, 'Dominus,'

See IMPERATOR: FINAL SIGNIFICATION.

LORD CHANCELLOR, The.

See CHANCELLOR.

LORD DUNMORE'S WAR.

See OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1774.

LORDS, British House of.

"The ancient National Assembly [of England] gradually ceased to be anything more than an assembly of the 'greater barons,' and ultimately developed into a hereditary House of Lords, the Upper House of the National Parliament. The hereditary character of the House of Lords—now long regarded as fixed and fundamental—accrued slowly and undesignedly, as a consequence of the hereditary descent of the baronial fiefs, practically inalienable, in right of which summonses to the national council were issued."

_T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, chapter 7._

"The English aristocracy is a typical example of the way in which a close corporation dies out. Its members are almost always wealthy in the first instance, and their estates have been constantly added to by favour from the Crown, by something like the monopoly of the best Government appointments, and by marriages with wealthy heiresses. They are able to command the field sports and open-air life that conduce to health, and the medical advice that combats disease. Nevertheless, they die out so rapidly that only five families out of nearly six hundred go back without a break, and in the male line, to the fifteenth century. … 155 peers were summoned to the first Parliament of James II. In 1825, only 140 years later, only forty-eight of these nobles were represented by lineal descendants in the male line. The family has in several instances been continued by collaterals begging the peerage, which they could not have claimed at law, and in this way the change may seem less than it has really been; but the broad result appears to be that left to itself from 1688, with new creations absolutely forbidden, the House of Lords would by this time have been practically extinguished. {2041} Of Charles II. 's six bastards, who were made dukes, only three have perpetuated the race. Three peerages have been lost to the Howard family, three to the Greys, two to the Mordaunts, two to the Hydes, two to the Gerards, and two to the Lucases. … It is in the lower strata of society that we have to seck for the springs of national life."

_C. H. Pearson, National Life and Character, pages 70-73._

"The British peerage is something unique in the world. In England there is, strictly speaking, no nobility. This saying may indeed sound like a paradox. The English nobility, the British aristocracy, are phrases which are in everybody's mouth. Yet, in strictness, there is no such thing as an aristocracy or a nobility in England. There is undoubtedly an aristocratic element in the English constitution; the House of Lords is that aristocratic element. And there have been times in English history when there has been a strong tendency to aristocracy, when the lords have been stronger than either the king or the people. … But a real aristocracy, like that of Venice, an aristocracy not only stronger than either king or people, but which had driven out both king and people, an aristocracy from whose ranks no man can come down and into whose ranks no man can rise save by the act of the privileged body itself,—such an aristocracy as this England has never seen. Nor has England ever seen a nobility in the true sense, the sense which the word bears in every continental land, a body into which men may be raised by the king, but from which no man may come down, a body which hands on to all its members, to the latest generations, some kind of privilege or distinction, whether its privileges consist in substantial political power, or in bare titles and precedence. In England there is no nobility. The so-called noble family is not noble in the continental sense; privilege does not go on from generation to generation; titles and precedence are lost in the second or third generation; substantial privilege exists in only one member of the family at a time. The powers and privileges of the peer himself are many; but they belong to himself only; his children are legally commoners; his grandchildren are in most cases undistinguishable from other commoners. … A certain great position in the state is hereditary; but nobility in the strict sense there is none. The actual holder of the peerage has, as it were, drawn to his own person the whole nobility of the family."

_E. A. Freeman, Practical Bearings of European History (Lectures to American Audiences), pages 305-307._

"At the end of 1892 there were 545 members of the House of Lords, made up thus: Peers, 469; Lords of Appeal and Ex-Lords of Appeal, 5; Representative Peers of Scotland, 16; Representative Peers of Ireland, 28; Lords Spiritual, 27.

The Lords of Appeal are lawyers of great distinction who are appointed by the Queen and hold office during good behavior. Their number is always about the same. Their work is mainly judicial; but these Law Lords, as they are called, also speak and vote in the deliberative and legislative proceedings of the Upper House. The position of a Lord of Appeal differs from that of an ordinary peer in that his office is not hereditary. As regards the representative peers, those from Ireland, who number 28, are elected for life; those from Scotland, who number 16, are elected at a meeting of Scotch peers, held in Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, after each General Election, and hold office during the lifetime of a Parliament. The Lords Spiritual include (1) the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of London, Durham, and Winchester; and (2) twenty-two out of the other twenty-nine bishops of the Church of England. The prelates whose titles have been given take their seats in the House immediately on appointment; the other bishops take their seats by order of seniority of consecration. The prelates who are without seats in the House of Lords are known as junior bishops. The Bishop of Sodor and Man has a seat in the House of Lords, but no vote."

_E. Porritt, The Englishman at Home, chapter 6._

For an account of the transient abolition of the House of Lords in 1649,

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1649 (FEBRUARY).

See, also, PARLIAMENT, THE ENGLISH; and ESTATES, THE THREE.

LORDS OF ARTICLES.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1326-1603; and 1688-1690.

LORDS OF THE CONGREGATION.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1557; and 1558-1560.

LORDS OF THE ISLES.

See HEBRIDES: A. D. 1346-1504; and HARLAW, BATTLE OF.

LORDS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL, The.

See ESTATES, THE THREE.

LORENZO DE' MEDICI (called The Magnificent), The rule of.

See FLORENCE: A. D. 1469-1492.

LORRAINE: Start--------

LORRAINE: A. D. 843-870. Formation and dissolution of the kingdom.

In the division of the empire of Charlemagne among his three grandsons, made by the treaty of Verdun, A. D. 843, the elder, Lothaire, bearing the title of Emperor, received the kingdom of Italy, and, with it, another kingdom, named, after himself, Lotharingia—afterwards called Lorraine. This latter was so formed as to be an extension northwestwardly of his Italian kingdom, and to stretch in a long belt between the Germanic dominion of his brother Ludwig and the Francia Nova, or France, of his brother Charles. It extended "from the mouth of the Rhine to Provence, bounded by that river on one frontier, by France on the other."

_H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 1, part 1, note._

"Between these two states [of the Eastern and Western, or Germanic and Gallic Franks] the policy of the ninth century instinctively put a barrier, The Emperor Lothar, besides Italy, kept a long narrow strip of territory between the dominions of his Eastern and Western brothers. … This land, having … been the dominion of two Lothars, took the name of Lotharingia, Lothringen, or Lorraine, a name which part of it has kept to this day. This land, sometimes attached to the Eastern kingdom, sometimes to the Western, sometimes divided between the two, sometimes separated from both, always kept its character of a border-land. … Lotharingia took in the two duchies of the Ripuarian Lotharingia and Lotharingia on the Mosel. The former contains a large part of the modern Belgium and the neighboring lands on the Rhine, including the royal city of Aachen. Lotharingia on the Mosel answers roughly to the later duchy of that name, though its extent to the East is considerably larger."

_E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, chapter 6, section 1._

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