Royal Tunbridge Wells
Royal Tunbridge Wells just Tunbridge Wells, is a town in western Kent, England, 30 miles south-east of central London, close to the border with East Sussex upon the northern edge of the High Weald, whose sandstone geology is exemplified by the rock formations at the Wellington Rocks and High Rocks. The town came into being as a spa in the Restoration and enjoyed its heyday as a fashionable resort in the mid-1700s under Beau Nash when the Pantiles, its chalybeate spring, attracted significant numbers of visitors who wished to take the waters. Though its popularity as a spa town waned with the advent of sea bathing, the town remains popular and derives some 30 per cent of its income from the tourist industry; the town has a population of around 56,500, is the administrative centre of Tunbridge Wells Borough and the parliamentary constituency of Tunbridge Wells. Evidence suggests that Iron Age people farmed the fields and mined the iron-rich rocks in the Tunbridge Wells area, excavations in 1940 and 1957–61 by James Money at High Rocks uncovered the remains of a defensive hill-fort.
It is thought that the site was occupied into the era of Roman Britain, the area continued to be part of the Wealden iron industry until its demise in the late eighteenth century. An iron forge remains in the grounds of Bayham Abbey, in use until 1575 and documented until 1714; the area, now Tunbridge Wells was part of the parish of Speldhurst for hundreds of years. The origin of the town today came in the seventeenth century. In 1606 Dudley, Lord North, a courtier to James I, staying at a hunting lodge in Eridge in the hope that the country air might improve his ailing constitution, discovered a chalybeate spring, he drank from the spring and, when his health improved, he became convinced that it had healing properties. He persuaded his rich friends in London to try it, by the time Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of King Charles I, visited in 1630 it had established itself as a spa retreat. By 1636 it had become so popular that two houses were built next to the spring to cater for the visitors, one for the ladies and one for the gentlemen, in 1664 Lord Muskerry, Lord of the Manor, enclosed it with a triangular stone wall, built a hall "to shelter the dippers in wet weather."Until 1676 little permanent building took place—visitors were obliged either to camp on the downs or to find lodgings at Southborough,—but at this time houses and shops were erected on the walks, every "convenient situation near the springs" was built upon.
In 1676 a subscription for a "chapel of ease" was opened, in 1684 the Church of King Charles the Martyr was duly built and the town began to develop around it. In 1787 Edward Hasted described the new town as consisting of four small districts, "named after the hills on which they stand, Mount Ephraim, Mount Pleasant and Mount Sion; the 1680s saw a building boom in the town: planned shops were built beside the 175 yards long Pantiles promenade, the Mount Sion road, on which lodging house keepers were to build, was laid out in small plots. Tradesmen in the town dealt in the luxury goods demanded by their patrons, which would have included Tunbridge ware, a kind of decoratively inlaid woodwork. "They have made the wells commodious by the many good building all about it and two or three miles around which are lodgings for the company that drink the waters. All the people buy their own provisions at the market, just by the wells and is furnished with great plenty of all sorts of fish and fowl; the walk, between high trees on the market side which are shops full of all sorts of toys, china and all sorts of curious wooden ware besides which there are two large coffee houses for tea, chocolate etc. and two rooms for the lottery and hazard board."
—Celia Fiennes, 1697 Following Richard Russell's 1750 treatise advocating sea water as a treatment for diseases of the glands, fashions in leisure changed and sea bathing became more popular than visiting the spas, which resulted in fewer visitors coming to the town. The advent of turnpike roads gave Tunbridge Wells better communications—on weekdays a public coach made nine return journeys between Tunbridge Wells and London, postal services operated every morning except Monday and every evening except Saturday. During the eighteenth century the growth of the town continued, as did its patronage by the wealthy leisured classes—it received celebrity cachet from visits by figures such as Cibber, Garrick and the successful bookseller Andrew Millar and his wife—and in 1735 Richard Nash appointed himself as master of ceremonies for all the entertainments that Tunbridge Wells had to offer, he remained in this position until his death in 1762, under his patronage the town reached the height of its popularity as a fashionable resort.
By the early nineteenth century Tunbridge Wells experienced growth as a place for the well-to-do to visit and make their homes. It became a fashionable resort town again following visits by the Duchess of Kent, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, benefited from a new estate on Mount Pleasant and the building of the Trinity church in 1827, improvements made to the town and the provision of facilities such as gas lighting and a police service meant that by 1837 the town population had swelled to 9,100. In 1842 an omnibus service was set up that ran from Tonbridge to Tunbridge Wells, enabling visitors to arrive from London within two hours, in 1845 the town was linked to the railway network via a branch from South Eastern Railway's London-Hastings Hastings Line at Tonbridge. During this time Decimus Burton developed John Ward's Calverley Park estate. In
Westminster
Westminster is an area in central London within the City of Westminster, part of the West End, on the north bank of the River Thames. Westminster's concentration of visitor attractions and historic landmarks, one of the highest in London, includes the Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral; the area lay within St Margaret's parish, City & Liberty of Westminster, Middlesex. The name Westminster originated from the informal description of the abbey church and royal peculiar of St Peter's West of the City of London; the abbey was part of the royal palace, created here by Edward the Confessor. It has been the home of the permanent institutions of England's government continuously since about 1200, from 1707 the British Government — formally titled Her Majesty's Government. In a government context, Westminster refers to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, located in the UNESCO World Heritage Palace of Westminster — also known as the Houses of Parliament.
The closest tube stations are Westminster and St James's Park, on the Jubilee and District lines. The area is the centre of Her Majesty's Government, with Parliament in the Palace of Westminster and most of the major Government ministries known as Whitehall, itself the site of the royal palace that replaced that at Westminster. Within the area is Westminster School, a major public school which grew out of the Abbey, the University of Westminster, attended by over 20,000 students. Bounding Westminster to the north is Green Park, a Royal Park of London; the area has a substantial residential population. By the 20th Century Westminster has seen rising residential condominiums with wealthy inhabitants. Hotels, large Victorian homes and barracks exist near to Buckingham Palace. For a list of street name etymologies for Westminster see Street names of Westminster The name describes an area no more than 1 mile from Westminster Abbey and the Palace of Westminster to the west of the River Thames; the settlement grew up as a service area for them.
The need for a parish church, St Margaret's Westminster for the servants of the palace and of the abbey who could not worship there indicates that it had a population as large as that of a small village. It became larger and in the Georgian period became connected through urban ribbon development with the City along the Strand, it did not become a viable local government unit created as a civil parish. Henry VIII's Reformation in the early 16th century abolished the Abbey and established a Cathedral - thus the parish ranked as a "City", although it was only a fraction of the size of the City of London and the Borough of Southwark at that time. Indeed, the Cathedral and diocesan status of the church lasted only from 1539 to 1556, but the "city" status remained for a mere parish within Middlesex; as such it is first known to have had two Members of Parliament in 1545 as a new Parliamentary Borough, centuries after the City of London and Southwark were enfranchised. The former Thorney Island, the site of Westminster Abbey, formed the historic core of Westminster.
The abbey became the traditional venue of the coronations of the kings and queens of England from that of Harold Godwinson onwards. From about 1200 the Palace of Westminster, near the abbey, became the principal royal residence, a transition marked by the transfer of royal treasury and financial records to Westminster from Winchester; the palace housed the developing Parliament and England's law courts. Thus London developed two focal points: the City of Westminster; the monarchs moved their principal residence to the Palace of Whitehall to St James's Palace in 1698, to Buckingham Palace and other palaces after 1762. The main law courts moved to the Royal Courts of Justice in the late-19th century. Charles Booth's poverty map showing Westminster in 1889 recorded the full range of income and capital brackets living in adjacent streets within the area. Westminster has shed the abject poverty with the clearance of this slum and with drainage improvement, but there is a typical Central London property distinction within the area, acute, epitomised by grandiose 21st-century developments, architectural high-point listed buildings and nearby social housing buildings of the Peabody Trust founded by philanthropist George Peabody.
The Westminster area formed part of the Liberty of Westminster in Middlesex. The ancient parish was St Margaret; the area around Westminster Abbey formed the extra-parochial Close of the Collegiate Church of St Peter surrounded by — but not part of — either parish. Until 1900 the local authority was the combined vestry of St Margaret and St John, based at Westminster City Hall in Caxton Street from 1883; the Liberty of Westminster, governed by the Westminster Court of Burgesses included St Martin in the Fields and several other parishes and places. Westminster had its own quarter sessions, but the Middlesex sessions had jurisdiction
St Edmund Hall, Oxford
St Edmund Hall is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. The college has a claim to be "the oldest academical society for the education of undergraduates in any university" and is the last surviving medieval hall at the University; the college is located just off Queen's Lane, near the High Street, in central Oxford. After more than seven centuries as a men-only college, it has been coeducational since 1979; as of 2018, the college had a financial endowment of £58 million. Similar to the University of Oxford itself, the precise date of establishment of St Edmund Hall is not certain; the name St Edmund Hall first appears in a 1317 rental agreement. St Edmund Hall began life as one of Oxford's ancient Aularian houses, the medieval halls that laid the foundation of the University, preceding the creation of the first colleges; as the only surviving medieval hall, its members are known as "Aularians". The college has a history of independent thought, which brought it into frequent conflict with both Church and State.
During the late 14th and early 15th centuries it was a bastion of John Wycliffe's supporters, for which college principal William Taylor was burnt at the stake, principal Peter Payne fled the country. In the late 17th century, St Edmund Hall incurred the wrath of the Crown for fostering non-jurors, men who remained loyal to the Scottish House of Stuart and who refused to take the oath to the German House of Hanover, whom they regarded as having usurped the British throne. Queen Elizabeth II approved St Edmund Hall's charter of incorporation as a full college of the University of Oxford in 1957, although it deliberately retained its ancient title of "Hall"; the Duke of Edinburgh presented the royal charter to the college in June 1958. In 1978, women were first admitted as members of the Hall, with the first matriculations of women in 1979 and in 2015 the college celebrated the matriculation of its 3000th female student with events and exhibitions, including the display of portraits of notable women who had taught, studied or worked at the Hall in the Dining Hall, a noticeable change from the styles of portraits in most colleges.
St Edmund Hall is located on the north side of the High Street, off Queen's Lane. It borders the Carrodus Quad of The Queen's College to the south; the front quadrangle houses the porters' lodge, the Old Dining Hall, built in the 1650s, the college bar, the chapel, the Old Library and accommodation for students and Fellows. An engraving of the college coat of arms is found above the entrance to the college on Queen’s Lane; as seen in this image, the coat of arms sits above the following Latin dedication "sanctus edmundus huius aulae lux", or "St Edmund, light of this Hall". It is a common practice within the University to use chronograms for dedications; when transcribed into Latin, they are written in such a way that an important date that of a foundation or the dedication itself, is embedded in the text in Roman numerals. In the above dedication, the text is rendered as sanCtVs edMVndVs hVIVs aVLae LVX and, in this case, adding the numerals gives: C + V + M + V + V + V + I + V + V + L + L + V + X = 1246, a popular, if conservative, estimate for the establishment of the Hall.
It is the date of the canonisation of St Edmund of Abingdon. In the centre of the quadrangle is a medieval well, uncovered in 1926 during the construction of a new lecture room and accommodation; this well is believed to be the original from water. A new wellhead was added, with the inscription "haurietis aquas in gaudio de fontibus salvatoris," Latin for "with joy, draw water from the wells of salvation." These words, from Isaiah 12:3, are believed to be those spoken by St Edmund on his deathbed at Salisbury. A metal grate was added to the well to prevent injuries, but water can still be seen in the well at a depth of about 9 feet. Plans to add a wooden frame and bucket were scrapped to maintain the overall appearance of the quad; the east side of the Front Quad contains the chapel. The chapel contains a stained glass window, one of the earliest works by the artists Sir Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, a painting above the altar named Supper at Emmaus, by Ceri Richards. Described as a'marmite painting' due to its anachronous style within the chapel, which dates to the late 17th century, the painting commemorates the granting of the college's Royal Charter.
The organ was built by Wood of Huddersfield in the 1980s. The St Edmund Hall Chapel Choir consists of eight choral scholars, two organ scholars and many other non-auditioning singers; the choir goes on two annual tours, including trips to Wells Cathedral in 2017, France, the burial place of St Edmund, in 2016 and Warsaw, Poland in 2015. Above the chapel is the Old Library, it was the last among Oxford colleges to chain its valuable books, but the first to have shelves against the walls. The Old Library is used for events and for research; the college library, the deconsecrated 12th century church of St Peter-in-the-East, was converted in the 1970s, includes the 14th century tower, which houses a tutor’s room at the top. The oldest part of the library still standing is the crypt below the church, which dates from the 1
Finsbury
Finsbury is a district of Central London, England and is in the London Borough of Islington Finsbury was a manor which give its name to two much larger administrative areas: Finsbury Division of the Ossulstone Hundred of Middlesex, from the 17th century until 1900 and its successor until 1965 in a small part of its southern area, the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury. In 1862 Finsbury gave its name to a volunteer infantry unit — the Finsbury Rifles which saw distinguished service in several conflicts; the area should not be confused with Finsbury Park, a public space three miles to the north and which gives its name to its surrounding residential area. The area has never been formally defined except in as far as it is part, as a manor, of the Ancient Parish of Clerkenwell, it lies north of the City of London and north of central Clerkenwell, west of St Luke's, south of Islington and City Road. The Finsbury Estate is in the western part of the district; the name is first recorded as Vinisbir and means "manor of a man called Finn".
For a list of street name etymologies in the Finsbury area see Street names of Clerkenwell and Finsbury. In the Middle Ages Finsbury was part of the great fen which lay outside the walls of the City of London, it gave its name to the Finsbury division of the Ossulstone hundred of Middlesex. In the early 17th century trees were planted and gravel walks made, the area became a place for recreation. In 1641 the Honourable Artillery Company moved to Finsbury, where it still remains, in 1665 the Bunhill Fields burial ground was opened in the area. Building on Finsbury Fields began in the late 17th century; the parish church of St Luke's was built in 1732–33, at the end of the 18th century a residential suburb was built with its centre at Finsbury Square. In 1832 the parliamentary borough of Finsbury was created, covering a wider area. In 1857 Finsbury Park was opened some three miles north, for the enjoyment of the residents of this parliamentary borough; the City of London Yeomanry, founded at the time of the Second Boer War, made its headquarters in Finsbury Square.
The Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury in the County of London was created in 1900, covering the area of Finsbury and Clerkenwell, with Finsbury Town Hall located on Rosebery Avenue. In 1938, Dr. Chuni Lal Katial was elected mayor of Finsbury, making him the first Asian mayor in the United Kingdom. In 1942 the borough council erected a controversial bust of Vladimir Lenin at the site of a new block of flats in Holford Square; the borough was absorbed into the borough of Islington. George Cruikshank, the Victorian illustrator, lived on Amwell Street Violet Kray, mother of the gangster Kray brothers. Twins Ronnie and Reggie were arrested at her flat in Braithwaite House, Finsbury, in connection with gangland crimes including murder and fraud on 8 May 1968. Eric Maxon and early film actor, died in Finsbury Arthur Mullard, comic actor Dadabhai Naoroji, Indian politician Susanna Moodie, nee Strickland, renowned Canadian writer, early feminist, lived the life of a ‘bluestocking’ in Middleton Square, Finsbury district, London for 3 exhilarating months in 1832.
That same year Susanna with her husband John Moodie and firstborn baby daughter emigrated to what was known as Upper Canada in British North America, travelling through regions along the St. Lawrence, today known as the Greater Toronto Area, Port Hope) settling in the Peterborough area north of what was known as York The name Finsbury is now most used of the western part of the district, around the old parish of St James, the home of the former Finsbury Town Hall, Finsbury Estate, Exmouth Market, the Sadler's Wells Theatre, Islington Local History Centre, Islington Museum and City University. Nearest places: Clerkenwell Pentonville Islington City of LondonNearest London Underground stations: Angel Barbican Finsbury Circus "Finsbury". Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911
Clerkenwell
Clerkenwell is an area of central London, England. The area includes the sub-district of Finsbury. Clerkenwell was an ancient parish from the mediaeval period onwards, becoming part of the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury from 1900 to 1965, an authority which in turn merged into the modern London Borough of Islington; the well after which it was named was rediscovered in 1924. The watchmaking and watch repairing trades were once of great importance. For a list of street name etymologies in the Clerkenwell area see Street names of Clerkenwell and Finsbury. Clerkenwell took its name from the Clerks' Well in Farringdon Lane. In the Middle Ages, the London Parish clerks performed annual mystery plays there, based on biblical themes. Part of the well remains visible, incorporated into a 1980s building called Well Court, it is visible through a window of that building on Farringdon Lane. Access to the well is managed by Islington Local History Centre and visits can be arranged by appointment; the Monastic Order of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem had its English headquarters at the Priory of Clerkenwell.
St John's Gate survives in the rebuilt form of the Priory Gate. Its gateway, erected in 1504 in St John's Square, served various purposes after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. For example, it was the birthplace of the Gentleman's Magazine in 1731, the scene of Dr Johnson's work in connection with that journal. In modern times the gatehouse again became associated with the order and was in the early 20th century the headquarters of the St John Ambulance Association. An Early English crypt remains beneath the chapel of the order, otherwise rebuilt in the 1950s after wartime bombing; the notorious deception of the "Cock Lane Ghost", in which Johnson took great interest, was perpetrated nearby. Adjoining the priory was St Mary's nunnery of the Benedictine order, now disappeared, St James's Church, rebuilt in 1792 on the site of the original church, of Norman provenance; the Charterhouse, near the boundary with the City of London, was a Carthusian monastery. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries the Charterhouse became a private mansion and one owner, Thomas Sutton, subsequently left it with an endowment as a school and almshouse.
The almhouse remains but the school relocated to Surrey and its part of the site is now a campus of Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry. As it was a suburb beyond the confines of the London Wall, Clerkenwell was outside the jurisdiction of the somewhat puritanical City fathers. "base tenements and houses of unlawful and disorderly resort" sprang up, with a "great number of dissolute and insolent people harboured in such and the like noisome and disorderly houses, as namely poor cottages, habitations of beggars and people without trade, inns, taverns, garden-houses converted to dwellings, dicing houses, bowling alleys, brothel houses". During the Elizabethan era Clerkenwell contained a notorious brothel quarter. In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2, Falstaff complains about Justice Shallow boasting of "the wildness of his youth, the feats he has done about Turnbull Street". Known now as Turnmill Street and adjoining Farringdon station, it had an infamous reputation for brothel-keeping and was described in Sugden's Topographical Dictionary as "the most disreputable street in London, a haunt of thieves and loose women".
The Clerkenwell Bridewell, a prison and correctional institute for prostitutes and vagrants, was known for savage punishment and endemic sexual corruption. In the 17th century South Clerkenwell became a fashionable place of residence. Oliver Cromwell owned a house on Clerkenwell Close, just off the Green. Several aristocrats had houses there, most notably the Duke of Northumberland, as did people such as Erasmus Smith. Before Clerkenwell became a built-up area, it had a reputation as a resort a short walk out of the city, where Londoners could disport themselves at its spas, of which there were several, based on natural chalybeate springs, tea gardens and theatres; the present day Sadler's Wells has survived as heir to this tradition, after being rebuilt many times and many changes of use including pleasure gardens, aquatic display venue, music hall. Today it is modern dance venue. Clerkenwell was the location of three prisons: the Clerkenwell Bridewell, Coldbath Fields Prison and the New Prison the Clerkenwell House of Detention, notorious as the scene of the Clerkenwell Outrage in 1867, an attempted prison break by Fenians who killed many in the tenement houses on Corporation Row in trying to blow a hole in the prison wall.
The House of Detention was demolished in 1890 but the extensive vaults and cells beneath, now known as the Clerkenwell Catacombs, remained. They were reopened as air raid shelters during the Blitz, for a few years were open as a minor tourist attraction. Various film scenes have been shot in the catacombs; the Industrial Revolution changed the area greatly. It became a centre for breweries and the printing industry, it gained an especial reputation for the making of clocks, marine chronometers and watches, which activity once employed many people from around the area. Flourishing craft workshops still carry on some such as jewellery-making. Clerkenwell was home to Witherbys a printing company, it was during the Industrial Revolution that C
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke was an English politician, government official and political philosopher. He was a leader of the Tories, supported the Church of England politically despite his antireligious views and opposition to theology, he supported the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 which sought to overthrow the new king George I. Escaping to France he became foreign minister for the Pretender, he was attainted for treason, but reversed course and was allowed to return to England in 1723. According to Ruth Mack, "Bolingbroke is best known for his party politics, including the ideological history he disseminated in The Craftsman by adopting the Whig theory of the Ancient Constitution and giving it new life as an anti-Walpole Tory principle." Henry St John was most born at Lydiard Tregoze, the family seat in Wiltshire, christened in Battersea. St John was the son of Sir Henry St John, 4th Baronet 1st Viscount St John, Lady Mary Rich, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Warwick. Although it has been asserted that St John was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, his name does not appear on registers for either institution and there is no evidence to support either claim.
It is possible. He travelled to France and Italy during 1698 and 1699 and acquired an exceptional knowledge of French. St John made friends with the Whigs James Stanhope and Edward Hopkins and corresponded with the Tory Sir William Trumball, who advised him: "There appears indeed amongst us a strong disposition to liberty, but neither honesty nor virtue enough to support it". Oliver Goldsmith reported that he had been seen to "run naked through the park in a state of intoxication". Swift, his intimate friend, said that he wanted to be thought the Alcibiades or Petronius of his age, to mix licentious orgies with the highest political responsibilities. In 1700, he married Frances, daughter of Sir Henry Winchcombe of Bucklebury, but this made little difference to his lifestyle, he became a Member of Parliament in 1701, representing the family borough of Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire, as a Tory. His seat was Lydiard Park at Lydiard Tregoze, now in the Borough of Swindon, he attached himself to Robert Harley speaker, distinguished himself by his eloquence in debate, eclipsing his schoolfellow, Robert Walpole, gaining an extraordinary ascendancy over the House of Commons.
In May, he had charge of the bill for securing the Protestant succession. In March 1702, he was chosen commissioner for taking the public accounts. After Queen Anne's accession, St John supported the bills in 1702 and 1704 against occasional conformity, took a leading part in the disputes which arose between the two Houses. In 1704, St John took office with Harley as secretary at war, thus being brought into intimate relations with John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, by whom he was treated with favour. In 1708, he left office with Harley on the failure of the latter's intrigue, retired to the country till 1710, when he became a privy counsellor and secretary of state in Harley's new ministry, representing Berkshire in parliament, he supported the bill for requiring a real property qualification for a seat in parliament. In 1711 he founded the Brothers' Club, a society of Tory politicians and men of letters, the same year witnessed the failure of the two expeditions to the West Indies and to Canada promoted by him.
In 1712, he was the author of the bill taxing newspapers. The refusal of the Whigs to make peace with France in 1706, again in 1709 when Louis XIV offered to yield every point for which the allies professed to be fighting, showed that the war was not being continued in the national interest, the queen and the people supported the ministry in its wish to terminate hostilities; because of the diversity of aims among the allies, St John was induced to enter into separate and secret negotiations with France for the security of English interests. In May 1712, he ordered the Duke of Ormonde, who had succeeded Marlborough in command, to refrain from any further engagement; these instructions were communicated to the French, though not to the allies, Louis putting Dunkirk as security into possession of England, the English troops deserted their allies on the battlefield. Subsequently, St John received the congratulations of the French foreign minister, de Torcy, on the French victory over Prince Eugene at Denain.
In June 1712, St John's commercial treaty with France, establishing free trade with that country, was rejected by the House of Commons. The treaty was presented in the Commons by Arthur Moore as St John had been created Viscount Bolingbroke earlier that year. A major campaign was waged against its approval under the slogan "No Peace Without Spain". At least 40 or so from the Tories voted to reject the treaty. In August 1712, Bolingbroke went to France and signed an armistice between England and France for four months; the Treaty of Utrecht was signed in March 1713 by all the allies except the emperor. The first production of Addison's Cato was made by the Whigs the occasion of a great demonstration of indignation against the peace, by Bolingbroke for presenting the actor Barton Booth with a purse of fifty guineas for "defending the cause of liberty against a perpetual dictator". Meanwhile, the friendship between Bolingbroke and Harley, the basis of the whole Tory administration, had been dissolved.
In March 1711, when the Marquis de Guiscard made an attempt on Harley's life, Bolingbroke assume
Leicestershire
Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. The county borders Nottinghamshire to the north, Lincolnshire to the north-east, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire to the south-east, Warwickshire to the south-west, Staffordshire to the west, Derbyshire to the north-west; the border with most of Warwickshire is Watling Street. Leicestershire takes its name from the city of Leicester located at its centre and administered separately from the rest of the county; the ceremonial county has a total population of just over 1 million, more than half of which lives in'Greater Leicester'. Leicestershire was recorded in the Domesday Book in four wapentakes: Guthlaxton, Framland and Gartree; these became hundreds, with the division of Goscote into West Goscote and East Goscote, the addition of Sparkenhoe hundred. In 1087, the first recorded use of the name was as Laegrecastrescir. Leicestershire's external boundaries have changed little since the Domesday Survey; the Measham-Donisthorpe exclave of Derbyshire has been exchanged for the Netherseal area, the urban expansion of Market Harborough has caused Little Bowden in Northamptonshire to be annexed.
In 1974, the Local Government Act 1972 abolished the county borough status of Leicester city and the county status of neighbouring Rutland, converting both to administrative districts of Leicestershire. These actions were reversed on 1 April 1997, when Rutland and the City of Leicester became unitary authorities. Rutland became a distinct Ceremonial County once again, although it continues to be policed by Leicestershire Constabulary; the symbol of the county council, Leicestershire County Cricket Club and Leicester City FC, is the fox. Leicestershire is considered to be the birthplace of fox hunting. Hugo Meynell, who lived in Quorn, is known as the father of fox hunting. Melton Mowbray and Market Harborough have associations with fox hunting, as has neighbouring Rutland. Leicestershire and Herefordshire are the only three English counties lacking a registered flag. A design was proposed for Leicestershire in 2017 based on symbols associated with the county – a fox and a cinquefoil; the River Soar together with its tributaries and canalisations constitutes the principal river basin of the county, although the River Avon and River Welland through Harborough and along the county's southern boundaries are significant.
The Soar rises between Hinckley and Lutterworth, towards the south of the county near the Warwickshire border, flows northwards, bisecting the county along its north/south axis, through'Greater' Leicester and to the east of Loughborough where its course within the county comes to an end. It continues north marking the boundary with Nottinghamshire for some 10 kilometres before joining the River Trent at the point where Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire meet; the geographical centre of England is in Leicestershire, near Fenny Drayton in the southwest of the county. In 2013, the Ordnance Survey calculated. A large part of the north-west of the county, around Coalville, forms part of the new National Forest area extending into Derbyshire and Staffordshire; the highest point of the county is Bardon Hill at 278 metres, a Marilyn. 150–200 metres and above in nearby Charnwood Forest and to the east of the county around Launde Abbey. The lowest point, at an altitude of about 20 metres, is located at the county's northernmost tip close to Bottesford where the River Devon flowing through the Vale of Belvoir leaves Leicestershire and enters Nottinghamshire.
This results in an altitude differential of around 257.5 metres and a mean altitude of 148.75 metres. The population of Leicestershire is 609,578 people; the county covers an area of 2,084 km2. Its largest population centre is the city of Leicester, followed by the town of Loughborough. Other large towns include Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Hinckley, Market Harborough, Melton Mowbray, Oadby and Lutterworth; some of the larger of villages are:Burbage Birstall, Broughton Astley, Castle Donington, Kibworth Beauchamp, Great Glen, Ibstock and Kegworth. One of the most expanding villages is Anstey, which has seen a large number of development schemes; the United Kingdom Census 2001 showed a total resident population for Leicester of 279,921, a 0.5% decrease from the 1991 census. 62,000 were aged under 16, 199,000 were aged 16–74, 19,000 aged 75 and over. 76.9% of Leicester's population claim they have been born in the UK, according to the 2001 UK Census. Mid-year estimates for 2006 indicate that the population of the City of Leicester stood at 289,700 making Leicester the most populous city in East Midlands.
The population density is 3,814/km2 and for every 100 females, there were 92.9 males. Of those aged 16–74 in Leicester, 38.5% had no academic qualifications higher than 28.9% in all of England. 23.0% of Leicester's residents were born outside of the United Kingdom, more than double than the English average of 9.2%. Engineering has long been an important part of the economy of Leicestershire. John Taylor Bellfounders co
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Huntingdon, Selina Hastings, Countess of". Encyclopædia Britannica. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 950.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
