Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 Part 9 (1/2)
The last naval operations took place in the West Indies, where the Spaniards, who had for a time been treated as a negligible quant.i.ty, were attacked on the coast of Cuba by a British [v.03 p.0045] squadron under Sir Charles Knowles. They had a naval force under Admiral Regio at Havana. Each side was at once anxious to cover its own trade, and to intercept that of the other. Capture was rendered particularly desirable to the British by the fact that the Spanish homeward-bound convoy would be laden with the bullion sent from the American mines. In the course of the movement of each to protect its trade, the two squadrons met on the 1st of October 1748 in the Bahama Channel. The action was indecisive when compared with the successes of British fleets in later days, but the advantage lay with Sir Charles Knowles. He was prevented from following it up by the speedy receipt of the news that peace had been made in Europe by the powers, who were all in various degrees exhausted. That it was arranged on the terms of a mutual restoration of conquests shows that none of the combatants could claim to have established a final superiority. The conquests of the French in the Bay of Bengal, and their military successes in Flanders, enabled them to treat on equal terms, and nothing had been taken from Spain.
The war was remarkable for the prominence of privateering on both sides. It was carried on by the Spaniards in the West Indies with great success, and actively at home. The French were no less active in all seas. Mahe de la Bourdonnais's attack on Madras partook largely of the nature of a privateering venture. The British retaliated with vigour. The total number of captures by French and Spanish corsairs was in all probability larger than the list of British--partly for the reason given by Voltaire, namely, that more British merchants were taken because there were many more British merchant s.h.i.+ps to take, but partly also because the British government had not yet begun to enforce the use of convoy so strictly as it did in later times.
See Beatson's _Naval and Military Memoirs_ (London, 1804); _La Marine militaire de la France sous le regne de Louis XV_, by G. Lacour-Gayet (Paris, 1902); _The Royal Navy_, by Sir W. L. Clowes and others (London, 1891, &c.).
(D. H.)
AUTHENTIC (from Gr. [Greek: authentes], one who does a thing himself), genuine, as opposed to counterfeit, true or original. In music it is one of the terms used for the ecclesiastical modes. The t.i.tle of _Authentics_ was also used for Justinian's _Novells_.
AUTOCEPHALOUS (from Gr. [Greek: autos], self, and [Greek: kephale] head), of independent heads.h.i.+p, a term used of certain ecclesiastical functionaries and organizations.
AUTOCHTHONES (Gr. [Greek: autos], and [Greek: chthon], earth, _i.e._ people sprung from earth itself; Lat. _terrigenae_; see also under ABORIGINES), the original inhabitants of a country as opposed to settlers, and those of their descendants who kept themselves free from an admixture of foreign peoples. The practice in ancient Greece of describing legendary heroes and men of ancient lineage as ”earthborn” greatly strengthened the doctrine of autochthony; for instance, the Athenians wore golden gra.s.shoppers in their hair in token that they were born from the soil and had always lived in Attica (Thucydides i. 6; Plato, _Menexenus_, 245). In Thebes, the race of Sparti were believed to have sprung from a field sown with dragons' teeth.
The Phrygian Corybantes had been forced out of the hill-side like trees by Rhea, the great mother, and hence were called [Greek: dendrophueis]. It is clear from Aeschylus (_Prometheus_, 447) that primitive men were supposed to have at first lived like animals in caves and woods, till by the help of the G.o.ds and heroes they were raised to a stage of civilization.
AUTOCLAVE, a strong closed vessel of metal in which liquids can be heated above their boiling points under pressure. Etymologically the word indicates a self-closing vessel ([Greek: autos], self, and _clavis_, key, or _clavus_, nail), in which the tightness of the joints is maintained by the internal pressure, but this characteristic is frequently wanting in the actual apparatus to which the name is applied. The prototype of the autoclave was the digester of Denis Papin, invented in 1681, which is still used in cooking, but the appliance finds a much wider range of employment in chemical industry, where it is utilized in various forms in the manufacture of candles, coal-tar colours, &c. Frequently an agitator, pa.s.sing through a stuffing-box, is fitted so that the contents may be stirred, and renewable linings are provided in cases where the substances under treatment exert a corrosive action on metal.
AUTOCRACY (Gr. [Greek: autokrateia], absolute power), a term applied to that form of government which is absolute or irresponsible, and vested in one single person. It is a type of government usually found amongst eastern peoples; amongst more civilized nations the only example is that of Russia, where the sovereign a.s.sumes as a t.i.tle ”the autocrat of all the Russias.”
AUTO-DA-Fe, more correctly AUTO-DE-Fe (act of faith), the name of the ceremony during the course of which the sentences of the Spanish inquisition were read and executed. The auto-da-fe was almost identical with the _sermo generalis_ of the medieval inquisition. It never took place on a feast day of the church, but on some famous anniversary: the accession of a Spanish monarch, his marriage, the birth of an infant, &c. It was public: the king, the royal family, the grand councils of the kingdom, the court and the people being present. The ceremony comprised a procession in which the members of the Holy Office, with its familiars and agents, the condemned persons and the penitents took part; a solemn ma.s.s; an oath of obedience to the inquisition, taken by the king and all the lay functionaries; a sermon by the Grand Inquisitor; and the reading of the sentences, either of condemnation or acquittal, delivered by the Holy Office. The handing over of impenitent persons, and those who had relapsed, to the secular power, and their punishment, did not usually take place on the occasion of an auto-da-fe, properly so called. Sometimes those who were condemned to the flames were burned on the night following the ceremony.
The first great auto-da-fes were celebrated when Thomas de Torquemada, was at the head of the Spanish inquisition (Seville 1482, Toledo 1486, &c.).
The last, subsequent to the time of Charles III., were held in secret; moreover, they dealt with only a very small number of sentences, of which hardly any were capital. The isolated cases of the torturing of a revolutionary priest in Mexico in 1816, and of a relapsed Jew and of a Quaker in Spain during 1826, cannot really be considered as auto-da-fes.
(P. A.)
AUTOGAMY (from Gr. [Greek: autos], self, and [Greek: gamia], marriage), a botanical term for self-fertilization. (See ANGIOSPERMS.)
AUTOGENY, AUTOGENOUS (Gr. [Greek: autogenes]), spontaneous generation, self-produced. Haeckel distinguished _autogeny_ and _plasmogeny_, applying the former term when the formative fluid in which the first living matter was supposed to arise was inorganic and the latter when it was organic, _i.e._ contained the requisite fundamental substances dissolved in the form of complicated and fluid combinations of carbon. In ”autogenous soldering”
two pieces of metal are united by the melting of the opposing surfaces, without the use of a separate fusible alloy or solder as a cementing material.
AUTOGRAPHS. Autograph (Gr. [Greek: autos], self, [Greek: graphein], to write) is a term applied by common usage either to a doc.u.ment signed by the person from whom it emanates, or to one written entirely by the hand of such person (which, however, is also more technically described as _holograph_, from [Greek: holos], entire, [Greek: graphein], to write), or simply to an independent signature.
The existence of autographs must necessarily have been coeval with the invention of letters. Doc.u.ments in the handwriting of their composers may possibly exist among the early papyri of Egypt and the clay tablets of Babylonia and a.s.syria, and among the early examples of writing in the East.
But the oriental practice of employing professional scribes in writing the body of doc.u.ments and of using seals for the purpose of ”signing” (the ”signum” originally meaning the impression of the seal) almost precludes the idea. When we are told (1 Kings xxi. 8) that Jezebel wrote letters in Ahab's name and sealed them with his seal, we are, of course, to understand that the letters were written by the professional scribes and that the impression of the king's seal was the authentication, equivalent to the signature of western nations; and again, when King Darius ”signed” the writing and the decree (Dan. vi. 9), he did so with his seal. To find doc.u.ments which we can [v.03 p.0046] recognize with certainty to be autographs, we must descend to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods of Egyptian history, which are represented by an abundance of papyrus doc.u.ments of all kinds, chiefly in Greek. Among them are not a few original letters and personal doc.u.ments, in which we may see the handwriting of many lettered and unlettered individuals who lived during the 3rd century B.C. and in succeeding times, and which prove how very widespread was the practice of writing in those days. We owe it to the dry and even atmosphere of Egypt that these written doc.u.ments have been preserved in such numbers. On the other hand, in Italy and Greece ancient writings have perished, save the few charred papyrus rolls and waxen tablets which have been recovered from the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. These tablets, however, have a special value, for many of them contain autograph signatures of princ.i.p.als and witnesses to legal deeds to which they were attached, together with impressions of seals, in compliance with the Roman law which required the actual subscriptions, or attested marks, of the persons concerned.
But, when we now speak of autographs and autograph collections, we use such terms in a restricted sense and imply doc.u.ments or signatures written by persons of some degree of eminence or notoriety in the various ranks and professions of life; and naturally the only early autographs in this sense which could be expected to survive are the subscriptions and signatures of royal personages and great officials attached to important public deeds, which from their nature have been more jealously cared for than mere private doc.u.ments.
Following the Roman practice, subscriptions and signatures were required in legal doc.u.ments in the early centuries of our era. Hence we find them in the few Latin deeds on papyrus which have come to light in Egypt; we find them on the well-known Dacian waxen tablets of the 2nd century; and we find them in the series of papyrus deeds from Ravenna and other places in Italy between the 5th and 10th centuries. The same practice obtained in the Frankish empire. The Merovingian kings, or at least those of them who knew how to write, subscribed their diplomas and great charters with their own hands; and their great officers of state, chancellors and others, countersigned in autograph. The unlettered Merovingian kings made use of monograms composed of the letters of their names; and, curiously, the illiterate monogram was destined to supersede the literate subscriptions.
For the monogram was adopted by Charlemagne and his successors as a recognized symbol of their subscription. It was their _signum manuale_, their sign manual. In courtly imitation of the royal practice, monograms and other marks were adopted by official personages, even though they could write. The notarial marks of modern times are a survival of the practice.
By the illiterate other signs, besides the monogram, came to be employed, such as the cross, &c., as signs manual. The monogram was used by French monarchs from the reign of Charlemagne to that of Philip the Fair, who died in 1314. It is very doubtful, however, whether in any instance this sign manual was actually traced by the monarch's own hand. At the most, the earlier sovereigns appear to have drawn one or two strokes in their monograms, which, so far, may be called their autographs. But in the later period not even this was done; the monogram was entirely the work of the scribe. (See DIPLOMATIC.)
The employment of marks or signs manual went out of general use after the 12th century, in the course of which the affixing or appending of seals became the common method of executing deeds. But, as education became more general and the practice of writing more widely diffused, the usage grew up in the course of the 14th century of signing the name-signature as well as of affixing the seal; and by the 15th century it had become established, and it remains to the present time. Thus the _signum manuale_ had disappeared, except among notaries; but the term survived, and by a natural process it was transferred to the signature. In the present day it is used to designate the ”sign manual” or autograph signature of the sovereign.
The Anglo-Saxon kings of England did not sign their charters, their names being invariably written by the official scribes. After the Norman conquest, the sign manual, usually a cross, which sometimes accompanied the name of the sovereign, may in some instances be autograph; but no royal signature is to be found earlier than the reign of Richard II. Of the signatures of this king there are two examples, of the years 1386 and 1389, in the Public Record Office; and there is one, of 1397, in the British Museum. Of his father, the Black Prince, there is in the Record Office a motto-signature, _De par h.o.m.ont_ (high courage), _Ich dene_, subscribed to a writ of privy seal of 1370. The kings of the Lancastrian line were apparently ready writers. Of the handwriting of both Henry IV. and Henry V.
there are specimens both in the Record Office and in the British Museum.
But by their time writing had become an ordinary accomplishment.
Apart from the autographs of sovereigns, those of famous men of the early middle ages can hardly be said to exist, or, if they do exist, they are difficult to identify. For example, there is a charter at Canterbury bearing the statement that it was written by Dunstan; but, as there is a duplicate in the British Museum with the same statement, it is probable that both the one and the other are copies. The autograph MSS. of the chronicles of Ordericus Vitalis, of Robert de Monte, and of Sigebert of Gembloux are in existence; and among the Cottonian MSS. there are undoubtedly autograph writings of Matthew of Paris, the English chronicler of Henry III.'s reign. There are certain doc.u.ments in the British Museum in the hand of William of Wykeham; and among French archives there are autograph writings of the historian Joinville. These are a few instances.
When we come to such a collection as the famous Paston Letters, the correspondence of the Norfolk family of Paston of the 15th century, we find therein numerous autographs of historical personages of the time.
From the 16th century onward, we enter the period of modern history, and autograph doc.u.ments of all kinds become plentiful. And yet in the midst of this plenty, by a perverse fate, there is in certain instances a remarkable dearth. The instance of Shakespeare is the most famous. But for three signatures to the three sheets of his will, and two signatures to the conveyances of property in Blackfriars, we should be without a vestige of his handwriting. For certain other signatures, professing to be his, inscribed in books, may be dismissed as imitations. Such forgeries come up from time to time, as might be expected, and are placed upon the market.