Part 451 (1/2)
WELLESLEY, a small province, part of Penang Territory, in the Straits Settlements; of great fertility, and yields tropical products in immense quant.i.ties, such as spices, tea, coffee, sugar, cotton, and tobacco.
WELLESLEY, RICHARD COWLEY, MARQUIS OF, statesman and administrator, born in Dublin, eldest son of the Earl of Mornington, an Irish peer, and eldest brother of the Duke of Wellington, and his senior by nine years; educated at Eton and Cambridge, where he distinguished himself in cla.s.sics; in 1781 succeeded his father in the Irish House of Peers; entered Parliament in 1784; was a supporter of Pitt, and in 1797 appointed Governor-General of India in succession to Cornwallis, and raised to the English peerage as Baron Wellesley; in this capacity he proved himself a great administrator, and by clearing out the French and crus.h.i.+ng the power of Tippoo Saib, as well as increasing the revenue of the East India Company, laid the foundation of the British power in India, for which he was raised to the marquisate, and voted a pension of 5000; he afterwards became Foreign Secretary of State and Viceroy of Ireland (1760-1842).
WELLHAUSEN, JULIUS, Old Testament scholar, born at Hameln; held the post of professor of Theology at Greifswald, but resigned the post from conscientious scruples and became professor of Oriental Languages at Marburg in 1885; is best known among us as a biblical critic on the lines of the so-called higher criticism, the criticism which seeks to arrange the different parts of the Bible in their proper historical connection and order; _b_. 1844.
WELLINGBOROUGH (15), a market-town in Northamptons.h.i.+re, 10 m. NE. of Northampton; has some fine buildings; the manufacture of shoes a chief industry.
WELLINGTON (33), the capital of New Zealand, in the North Island, on Cook Strait; has a s.p.a.cious harbour, with excellent accommodation for s.h.i.+pping, a number of public buildings, including government offices, and two cathedrals, a Roman Catholic and an Anglican, and a considerable trade; in 1865 it superseded Auckland as the capital of the whole of New Zealand.
WELLINGTON, ARTHUR WELLESLEY (or WESLEY), DUKE OF, born probably in Dublin, third son of the Earl of Mornington, an Irish peer, educated first at Chelsea, then at Eton, and then at a military school at Angers, in France; entered the army in 1787 as an ensign in the 73rd, and stepped gradually upwards in connection with different regiments, till in 1793 he became lieutenant-colonel of the 33rd; sat for a time in the Irish Parliament as a member for Trim, and went in 1794 to the Netherlands, and served in a campaign there which had disastrous issues such as disgusted him with military life, and was about to leave the army when he was sent to India, where he distinguished himself in the storming of Seringapatam, and in the command of the war against the Mahrattas, which he brought to a successful issue in 1803, returning home in 1805; next year he entered the Imperial Parliament, and in 1807 was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland; in 1808 he left for Portugal, where he was successful against the French in several engagements, and in 1809 was appointed commander-in-chief of the Peninsular army; in this capacity his generals.h.i.+p became conspicuous in a succession of victories, in which he drove the French first out of Portugal and then out of Spain, defeating them finally at Toulouse on the 12th April 1814, and so ending the Peninsular War; on his return home he was loaded with honours, and had voted to him from the public treasury a grant of 400,000; on the return of Napoleon from Elba he was appointed general of the allies against him in the Netherlands and on 18th June 1815 defeated him in the ever-memorable battle of Waterloo; this was the crowning feat in Wellington's military life, and the nation showed its grat.i.tude to him for his services by presenting him with the estate of Strathfieldsaye, in Hamps.h.i.+re, worth 263,000, the price paid for it to Lord Rivers, the proprietor; in 1827 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the army, and in 1828 was Prime Minister of the State; as a statesman he was opposed to Parliamentary reform, but he voted for the emanc.i.p.ation of the Catholics and the abolition of the Corn Laws; he died in Walmer Castle on 1st September 1852, aged 84, and was buried beside Nelson in a crypt of St.
Paul's (1769-1852).
WELLINGTON COLLEGE, a college founded in 1853 at Wokingham, Berks, in memory of the Duke of Wellington, primarily for the education of the sons of deceased military officers; there is a cla.s.sical school to prepare for the university, and a modern side to prepare for the army, &c.
WELLS, a small episcopal city in Somersets.h.i.+re, 20 m. SW. of Bath; it derives its name from hot springs near it, and is possessed of a beautiful cruciform cathedral in the Early English style, adorned with some 600 statues of saints, 151 of which are life-size, and some of them colossal.
WELLS, CHARLES JEREMIAH, English poet, born in London; author of a dramatic poem ent.i.tled ”Joseph and his Brethren,” published in 1824, a poem which failed to attract attention at the time, and the singular merits of which were first recognised by Swinburne in 1875, the author having meantime given up literature for the law, to which he had been bred (1800-1879).
WELSH, DAVID, a Scottish divine, a gentlemanly scholarly man, professor of Church History in the University of Edinburgh; was Moderator of the General a.s.sembly on the occasion of the Disruption of the Scottish Church (1843), and headed the secession on the day of the exodus (1793-1845).
WELSH, or WELCH, JOHN, a Scottish divine, a Nithsdale man; became Presbyterian minister of Ayr, and was distinguished both as a preacher and for his st.u.r.dy opposition to the ecclesiastical tyranny of James VI., for which latter he suffered imprisonment and exile; he was an ancestor of Jane Welsh Carlyle, and was married to a daughter of John Knox, who, when the king thought to win her over by offering her husband a bishopric, held out her ap.r.o.n before sovereign majesty, and threatened she would rather kep (catch) his head there than that he should live and be a bishop; she figures in the chapter in ”Sartor” on Ap.r.o.ns, as one of Carlyle's ap.r.o.n-worthies (1570-1625).
WELSH CALVINISTIC METHODISTS, the largest Nonconformist body in Wales, of native growth, and that originated in the middle of the 18th century in connection with a great religious awakening; has an ecclesiastical const.i.tution on Presbyterian lines, and is in alliance with the Presbyterian Church of England; it consists of 1330 churches, and has a members.h.i.+p of over 150,000, that is, on their communion roll, and two theological seminaries, one at Trevecca and one at Bala.
WELSHPOOL (6), town in Montgomerys.h.i.+re, North Wales, on the left bank of the Severn, 19 m. W. of Shrewsbury, the manufacture of flannels and woollen goods being the chief industry.
WENDS, a horde of savage Slavs who, about the 6th century, invaded and took possession of vacant lands on the southern sh.o.r.es of the Baltic, and extended their inroads as far as Hamburg and the ocean, south also far over the Elbe in some quarters, and were a source of great trouble to the Germans in Henry the Fowler's time, and after; they burst in upon Brandenburg once, in ”never-imagined fury,” and stamped out, as they thought, the Christian religion there by wholesale butchery of its priests, setting up for wors.h.i.+p their own G.o.d ”Triglaph, ugliest and stupidest of all false G.o.ds,” described as ”something like three whales'
cubs combined by boiling, or a triple porpoise dead-drunk.” They were at length ”fairly beaten to powder” by Albert the Bear, ”and either swept away or else damped down into Christianity and keeping of the peace,”
though remnants of them, with their language and customs, exist in Lusatia to this day.
WENDT, HANS, German theologian, born in Hamburg, professor at Kiel and at Heidelberg; has written an excellent ”Leben Jesu” among other able works; _b_. 1853.
WENEGELD, among the old Saxons and other Teutonic races a fine, the price of homicide, of varying amount, paid in part to the relatives of the person killed and in part to the king or chief.