[1] J. W. Hales, in the _Athenaeum_ for the 1st of August 1891,
suggests that in writing King's elegy Milton had in his mind, besides
the idylls of Theocritus, a Latin eclogue of Giovanni Baptista
Amalteo entitled _Lycidas_, in which Lycidas bids farewell to the
land he loves and prays for gentle breezes on his voyage. He was
familiar with the Italian Latin poets of the Renaissance, and he may
also have been influenced in his choice of the name by the shepherd
Lycidas in Sannazaro's eclogue _Phillis_.
KING, EDWARD (1829-1910), English bishop, was the second son of the Rev.
Walter King, archdeacon of Rochester and rector of Stone, Kent.
Graduating from Oriel College, Oxford, he was ordained in 1854, and four
years later became chaplain and lecturer at Cuddesdon Theological
College. He was principal at Cuddesdon from 1863 to 1873, when he became
regius professor of pastoral theology at Oxford and canon of Christ
Church. To the world outside he was only known at this time as one of Dr
Pusey's most intimate friends and as a leading member of the English
Church Union. But in Oxford, and especially among the younger men, he
exercised an exceptional influence, due, not to special profundity of
intellect, but to his remarkable charm in personal intercourse, and his
abounding sincerity and goodness. In 1885 Dr King was made bishop of
Lincoln. The most eventful episode of his episcopate was his prosecution
(1888-1890) for ritualistic practices before the archbishop of
Canterbury, Dr Benson, and, on appeal, before the judicial committee of
the Privy Council (see LINCOLN JUDGMENT). Dr King, who loyally conformed
his practices to the archbishop's judgment, devoted himself unsparingly
to the work of his diocese; and, irrespective of his High Church views,
he won the affection and reverence of all classes by his real
saintliness of character. The bishop, who never married, died at Lincoln
on the 8th of March 1910.
See the obituary notice in _The Times_, March 9, 1910.
KING, HENRY (1591-1669), English bishop and poet, eldest son of John
King, afterwards bishop of London, was baptized on the 16th of January
1591. With his younger brother John he proceeded from Westminster School
to Christ Church, Oxford, where both matriculated on the 20th of January
1609. Henry King entered the church, and after receiving various
ecclesiastical preferments he was made bishop of Chichester in 1642,
receiving at the same time the rich living of Petworth, Sussex. On the
29th of December of that year Chichester surrendered to the
Parliamentary army, and King was among the prisoners. After his release
he found an asylum with his brother-in-law, Sir Richard Hobart of
Langley, Buckinghamshire, and afterwards at Richkings near by, with Lady
Salter, said to have been a sister of Dr Brian Duppa (1588-1662). King
was a close friend of Duppa and personally acquainted with Charles I. In
one of his poems dated 1649 he speaks of the _Eikon Basilike_ as the
king's own work. Restored to his benefice at the Restoration, King died
at Chichester on the 30th of September 1669. His works include _Poems,
Elegies, Paradoxes and Sonets_ (1657), _The Psalmes of David from the
New Translation of the Bible, turned into Meter_ (1651), and several
sermons. He was one of the executors of John Donne, and prefixed an
elegy to the 1663 edition of his friend's poems.
King's Poems and Psalms were edited, with a biographical sketch, by
the Rev. J. Hannah (1843).
KING, RUFUS (1755-1827), American political leader, was born on the 24th
of March 1755 at Scarborough, Maine, then a part of Massachusetts. He
graduated at Harvard in 1777, read law at Newburyport, Mass., with
Theophilus Parsons, and was admitted to the bar in 1780. He served in
the Massachusetts General Court in 1783-1784 and in the Confederation
Congress in 1784-1787. During these critical years he adopted the
"states' rights" attitude. It was largely through his efforts that the
General Court in 1784 rejected the amendment to the Articles of
Confederation authorizing Congress to levy a 5% impost. He was one of
the three Massachusetts delegates in Congress in 1785 who refused to
present the resolution of the General Court proposing a convention to
amend the articles. He was also out of sympathy with the meeting at
Annapolis in 1786. He did good service, however, in opposing the
extension of slavery. Early in 1787 King was moved by the Shays
Rebellion and by the influence of Alexander Hamilton to take a broader
view of the general situation, and it was he who introduced the
resolution in Congress, on the 21st of February 1787, sanctioning the
call for the Philadelphia constitutional convention. In the convention
he supported the large-state party, favoured a strong executive,
advocated the suppression of the slave trade, and opposed the counting
of slaves in determining the apportionment of representatives. In 1788
he was one of the most influential members of the Massachusetts
convention which ratified the Federal Constitution. He married Mary
Alsop (1769-1819) of New York in 1786 and removed to that city in 1788.
He was elected a member of the New York Assembly in the spring of 1789,
and at a special session of the legislature held in July of that year
was chosen one of the first representatives of New York in the United
States Senate. In this body he served in 1789-1796, supported Hamilton's
financial measures, Washington's neutrality proclamation and the Jay
Treaty, and became one of the recognized leaders of the Federalist
party. He was minister to Great Britain in 1796-1803 and again in
1825-1826, and was the Federalist candidate for vice-president in 1804
and 1808, and for president in 1816, when he received 34 electoral
votes to 183 cast for Monroe. He was again returned to the Senate in
1813, and was re-elected in 1819 as the result of a struggle between the
Van Buren and Clinton factions of the Democratic-Republican party. In
the Missouri Compromise debates he supported the anti-slavery programme
in the main, but for constitutional reasons voted against the second
clause of the Tallmadge Amendment providing that all slaves born in the
state after its admission into the Union should be free at the age of
twenty-five years. He died at Jamaica, Long Island, on the 29th of April
1827.
_The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King_, begun about 1850 by his
son, Charles King, was completed by his grandson, Charles R. King, and
published in six volumes (New York, 1894-1900).
Rufus King's son, JOHN ALSOP KING (1788-1867), was educated at Harrow
and in Paris, served in the war of 1812 as a lieutenant of a cavalry
company, and was a member of the New York Assembly in 1819-1821 and of
the New York Senate in 1823. When his father was sent as minister to
Great Britain in 1825 he accompanied him as secretary of the American
legation, and when his father returned home on account of ill health he
remained as chargé d'affaires until August 1826. He was a member of the
New York Assembly again in 1832 and in 1840, was a Whig representative
in Congress in 1849-1851, and in 1857-1859 was governor of New York
State. He was a prominent member of the Republican party, and in 1861
was a delegate to the Peace Conference in Washington.
Another son, CHARLES KING (1789-1867), was also educated abroad, was
captain of a volunteer regiment in the early part of the war of 1812,
and served in 1814 in the New York Assembly, and after working for some
years as a journalist was president of Columbia College in 1849-1864.
A third son, JAMES GORE KING (1791-1853), was an assistant
adjutant-general in the war of 1812, was a banker in Liverpool and
afterwards in New York, and was president of the New York & Erie
railroad until 1837, when by his visit to London he secured the loan to
American bankers of £1,000,000 from the governors of the Bank of
England. In 1849-1851 he was a representative in Congress from New
Jersey.
Charles King's son, RUFUS KING (1814-1876), graduated at the U.S.
Military Academy in 1833, served for three years in the engineer corps,
and, after resigning from the army, became assistant engineer of the New
York & Erie railroad. He was adjutant-general of New York state in
1839-1843, and became a brigadier-general of volunteers in the Union
army in 1861, commanded a division in Virginia in 1862-1863, and, being
compelled by ill health to resign from the army, was U.S. minister to
the Papal States in 1863-1867.
His son, CHARLES KING (b. 1844), served in the artillery until 1870 and
in the cavalry until 1879; he was appointed brigadier-general U.S.
Volunteers in the Spanish War in 1898, and served in the Philippines. He
wrote _Famous and Decisive Battles_ (1884), _Campaigning with Crook_
(1890), and many popular romances of military life.
KING, THOMAS (1730-1805), English actor and dramatist, was born in
London on the 20th of August 1730. Garrick saw him when appearing as a
strolling player in a booth at Windsor, and engaged him for Drury Lane.
He made his first appearance there in 1748 as the Herald in _King Lear_.
He played the part of Allworth in the first presentation of Massinger's
_New Way to Pay Old Debts_ (1748), and during the summer he played Romeo
and other leading parts in Bristol. For eight years he was the leading
comedy actor at the Smock Alley theatre in Dublin, but in 1759 he
returned to Drury Lane and took leading parts until 1802. One of his
earliest successes was as Lord Ogleby in _The Clandestine Marriage_
(1766), which was compared to Garrick's Hamlet and Kemble's Coriolanus,
but he reached the climax of his reputation when he created the part of
Sir Peter Teazle at the first representation of _The School for Scandal_
(1777). He was the author of a number of farces, and part-owner and
manager of several theatres, but his fondness for gambling brought him
to poverty. He died on the 11th of December 1805.
KING, WILLIAM (1650-1729), Anglican divine, the son of James King, an
Aberdeen man who migrated to Antrim, was born in May 1650. He was
educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and after being presented to the
parish of St Werburgh, Dublin, in 1679, became dean of St Patrick's in
1689, bishop of Derry in 1691, and archbishop of Dublin in 1702. In 1718
he founded the divinity lectureship in Trinity College, Dublin, which
bears his name. He died in May 1729. King was the author of _The State
of the Protestants in Ireland under King James's Government_ (1691), but
is best known by his _De Origine Mali_ (1702; Eng. trans., 1731), an
essay deemed worthy of a reply by Bayle and Leibnitz. King was a strong
supporter of the Revolution, and his voluminous correspondence is a
valuable help to our knowledge of the Ireland of his day.
See _A Great Archbishop of Dublin, William King, D.D._, edited by Sir
C. S. King, Bart. (1908).
KING, WILLIAM (1663-1712), English poet and miscellaneous writer, son of
Ezekiel King, was born in 1663. From his father he inherited a small
estate and he was connected with the Hyde family. He was educated at
Westminster School under Dr Busby, and at Christ Church, Oxford (B.A.
1685; D.C.L. 1692). His first literary enterprise was a defence of
Wycliffe, written in conjunction with Sir Edward Hannes (d. 1710) and
entitled _Reflections upon Mons. Varillas's History of Heresy ..._
(1688). He became known as a humorous writer on the Tory and High Church
side. He took part in the controversy aroused by the conversion of the
once stubborn non-juror William Sherlock, one of his contributions being
an entertaining ballad, "The Battle Royal," in which the disputants are
Sherlock and South. In 1694 he gained the favour of Princess Anne by a
defence of her husband's country entitled _Animadversions on the
Pretended Account of Denmark_, in answer to a depreciatory pamphlet by
Robert (afterwards Viscount) Molesworth. For this service he was made
secretary to the princess. He supported Charles Boyle in his controversy
with Richard Bentley over the genuineness of the _Epistles of Phalaris_,
by a letter (printed in _Dr Bentley's Dissertations ..._ (1698), more
commonly known as _Boyle against Bentley_), in which he gave an account
of the circumstances of Bentley's interview with the bookseller Bennet.
Bentley attacked Dr King in his _Dissertation_ in answer (1699) to this
book, and King replied with a second letter to his friend Boyle. He
further satirized Bentley in ten _Dialogues of the Dead relating to ...
the Epistles of Phalaris_ (1699). In 1700 he published _The
Transactioneer, with some of his Philosophical Fancies, in two
Dialogues_, ridiculing the credulity of Hans Sloane, who was then the
secretary of the Royal Society. This was followed up later with some
burlesque _Useful Transactions in Philosophy_ (1709). By an able defence
of his friend, James Annesley, 5th earl of Anglesey, in a suit brought
against him by his wife before the House of Lords in 1701, he gained a
legal reputation which he did nothing further to advance. He was sent to
Ireland in 1701 to be judge of the high court of admiralty, and later
became sole commissioner of the prizes, keeper of the records in the
Bermingham Tower of Dublin Castle, and vicar-general to the primate.
About 1708 he returned to London. He served the Tory cause by writing
for _The Examiner_ before it was taken up by Swift. He wrote four
pamphlets in support of Sacheverell, in the most considerable of which,
"A Vindication of the Rev. Dr Henry Sacheverell ... in a Dialogue
between a Tory and a Whig" (1711), he had the assistance of Charles
Lambe of Christ Church and of Sacheverell himself. In December 1711
Swift obtained for King the office of gazetteer, worth from £200 to
£250. King was now very poor, but he had no taste for work, and he
resigned his office on the 1st of July 1712. He died on the 25th of
December in the same year.
The other works of William King include: _A Journey to London, in the
year 1698_. _After the Ingenious Method of that made by Dr Martin
Lister to Paris, in the same Year ..._ (1699), which was considered by
the author to be his best work; _Adversaria, or Occasional Remarks on
Men and Manners_, a selection from his critical note-book, which shows
wide and varied reading; _Rufinus, or An Historical Essay on the
Favourite Ministry_ (1712), a satire on the duke of Marlborough. His
chief poems are: _The Art of Cookery: in imitation of Horace's Art
of Poetry_. _With some Letters to Dr Lister and Others_ (1708), one of
his most amusing works; _The Art of Love; in imitation of Ovid ..._
(1709); "Mully of Mountoun," and a burlesque "Orpheus and Eurydice." A
volume of _Miscellanies in Prose and Verse_ appeared in 1705; his
_Remains ..._ were edited by J. Brown in 1732; and in 1776 John
Nichols produced an excellent edition of his _Original Works ... with
Historical Notes and Memoirs of the Author_. Dr Johnson included him
in his _Lives of the Poets_, and his works appear in subsequent
collections.
King is not to be confused with another WILLIAM KING (1685-1763),
author of a mock-heroic poem called _The Toast_ (1736) satirizing the
countess of Newburgh, and principal of St Mary Hall, Oxford.
KING [OF OCKHAM], PETER KING, 1ST BARON (1669-1734), lord chancellor of
England, was born at Exeter in 1669. In his youth he was interested in
early church history, and published anonymously in 1691 _An Enquiry into
the Constitution, Discipline, Unity and Worship of the Primitive Church
that flourished within the first Three Hundred Years after Christ_. This
treatise engaged the interest of his cousin, John Locke, the
philosopher, by whose advice his father sent him to the university of
Leiden, where he stayed for nearly three years. He entered the Middle
Temple in 1694 and was called to the bar in 1698. In 1700 he was
returned to parliament for Beer Alston in Devonshire; he was appointed
recorder of Glastonbury in 1705 and recorder of London in 1708. He was
chief justice of the common pleas from 1714 to 1725, when he was
appointed speaker of the House of Lords and was raised to the peerage.
In June of the same year he was made lord chancellor, holding office
until compelled by a paralytic stroke to resign in 1733. He died at
Ockham, Surrey, on the 22nd of July 1734. Lord King as chancellor failed
to sustain the reputation which he had acquired at the common law bar.
Nevertheless he left his mark on English law by establishing the
principles that a will of immovable property is governed by the _lex
loci rei sitae_, and that where a husband had a legal right to the
personal estate of his wife, which must be asserted by a suit in equity,
the court would not help him unless he made a provision out of the
property for the wife, if she required it. He was also the author of the
Act (4 Geo. II. c. 26) by virtue of which English superseded Latin as
the language of the courts. Lord King published in 1702 a _History of
the Apostles' Creed_ (Leipzig, 1706; Basel, 1750) which went through
several editions and was also translated into Latin.
His great-great-grandson, WILLIAM (1805-1893), married in 1835 the only
daughter of Lord Byron the poet, and was created earl of Lovelace in
1838. Another descendant, PETER JOHN LOCKE KING (1811-1885), who was
member of parliament for East Surrey from 1847 to 1874, won some fame as
an advocate of reform, being responsible for the passing of the Real
Estate Charges Act of 1854, and for the repeal of a large number of
obsolete laws.
KING (O. Eng. _cyning_, abbreviated into _cyng_, _cing_; cf. O. H. G.
_chun- kuning_, _chun- kunig_, M.H.G. _künic_, _künec_, _künc_, Mod.
Ger. _König_, O. Norse _konungr_, _kongr_, Swed. _konung_, _kung_), a
title, in its actual use generally implying sovereignty of the most
exalted rank. Any inclusive definition of the word "king" is, however,
impossible. It always implies sovereignty, but in no special degree or
sense; e.g. the sovereigns of the British Empire and of Servia are both
kings, and so too, at least in popular parlance, are the chiefs of many
barbarous peoples, e.g. the Zulus. The use of the title is, in fact,
involved in considerable confusion, largely the result of historic
causes. Freeman, indeed, in his _Comparative Politics_ (p. 138) says:
"There is a common idea of kingship which is at once recognized however
hard it may be to define it. This is shown among other things by the
fact that no difficulty is ever felt as to translating the word king and
the words which answer to it in other languages." This, however, is
subject to considerable modification. "King," for instance, is used to
translate the Homeric [Greek: anax] equally with the Athenian [Greek:
Basileus] or the Roman _rex_. Yet the Homeric "kings" were but tribal
chiefs; while the Athenian and Roman kings were kings in something more
than the modern sense, as supreme priests as well as supreme rulers and
lawgivers (see ARCHON; and ROME: _History_). In the English Bible, too,
the title of king is given indiscriminately to the great king of Persia
and to potentates who were little more than Oriental sheiks. A more
practical difficulty, moreover, presented itself in international
intercourse, before diplomatic conventions became, in the 19th century,
more or less stereotyped. Originally the title of king was superior to
that of emperor, and it was to avoid the assumption of the superior
title of rex that the chief magistrates of Rome adopted the names of
_Caesar_, _imperator_ and _princeps_ to signalize their authority. But
with the development of the Roman imperial idea the title emperor came
to mean more than had been involved in that of _rex_; very early in the
history of the Empire there were subject kings; while with the
Hellenizing of the East Roman Empire its rulers assumed the style of
[Greek: basileus], no longer to be translated "king" but "emperor." From
this Roman conception of the supremacy of the emperor the medieval
Empire of the West inherited its traditions. With the barbarian
invasions the Teutonic idea of kingship had come into touch with the
Roman idea of empire and with the theocratic conceptions which this had
absorbed from the old Roman and Oriental views of kingship. With these
the Teutonic kingship had in its origin but little in common.
Etymologically the Romance and Teutonic words for king have quite
distinct origins. The Latin _rex_ corresponds to the Sanskrit _rajah_,
and meant originally steersman. The Teutonic king on the contrary
corresponds to the Sanskrit _ganaka_, and "simply meant father, the
father of a family, the king of his own kin, the father of a clan, the
father of a people."[1] The Teutonic kingship, in short, was national;
the king was the supreme representative of the people, "hedged with
divinity" in so far as he was the reputed descendant of the national
gods, but with none of that absolute theocratic authority associated
with the titles of _rex_ or [Greek: basileus]. This, however, was
modified by contact with Rome and Christianity. The early Teutonic
conquerors had never lost their reverence for the Roman emperor, and
were from time to time proud to acknowledge their inferiority by
accepting titles, such as "patrician," by which this was implied. But by
the coronation of Charles, king of the Franks, as emperor of the West,
the German kingship was absorbed into the Roman imperial idea, a process
which exercised a profound effect on the evolution of the Teutonic
kingship generally. In the symmetrical political theory of medieval
Europe pope and emperor were sun and moon, kings but lesser satellites;
though the theory only partially and occasionally corresponded with the
facts. But the elevation of Charlemagne had had a profound effect in
modifying the _status_ of kingship in nations that never came under his
sceptre nor under that of his successors. The shadowy claim of the
emperors to universal dominion was in theory everywhere acknowledged;
but independent kings hastened to assert their own dignity by
surrounding themselves with the ceremonial forms of the Empire and
occasionally, as in the case of the Saxon _bretwaldas_ in England, by
assuming the imperial style. The mere fact of this usurpation showed
that the title of king was regarded as inferior to that of emperor; and
so it continued, as a matter of sentiment at least, down to the end of
the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and the cheapening of the imperial title
by its multiplication in the 19th century. To the last, moreover, the
emperor retained the prerogative of creating kings, as in the case of
the king of Prussia in 1701, a right borrowed and freely used by the
emperor Napoleon. Since 1814 the title of king has been assumed or
bestowed by a consensus of the Powers; e.g. the elector of Hanover was
made king by the congress of Vienna (1814), and _per contra_ the title
of king was refused to the elector of Hesse by the congress of
Aix-la-Chapelle (1818). In general the title of king is now taken to
imply a sovereign and independent international position. This was
implied in the recognition of the title of king in the rulers of Greece,
Rumania, Servia and Bulgaria when these countries were declared
absolutely independent of Turkey. The fiction of this independent
sovereignty is preserved even in the case of the kings of Bavaria,
Saxony and Württemberg, who are technically members of a free
confederation of sovereign states, but are not independent, since their
relations with foreign Powers are practically controlled by the king of
Prussia as German emperor.
Divine Right of Kings.
The theory of the "divine right" of kings, as at present understood, is
of comparatively modern growth. The principle that the kingship is
"descendible in one sacred family," as George Canning put it, is not
only still that of the British constitution, as that of all monarchical
states, but is practically that of kingship from the beginning. This is,
however, quite a different thing from asserting with the modern
upholders of the doctrine of "divine right" not only that "legitimate"
monarchs derive their authority from, and are responsible to, God alone,
but that this authority is by divine ordinance hereditary in a certain
order of succession. The power of popular election remained, even though
popular choice was by custom or by religious sentiment confined within
the limits of a single family. The custom of primogeniture grew up owing
to the obvious convenience of a simple rule that should avoid ruinous
contests; the so-called "Salic Law" went further, and by excluding
females, removed another possible source of weakness. Neither did the
Teutonic kingship imply absolute power. The idea of kingship as a
theocratic function which played so great a part in the political
controversies of the 17th century, is due ultimately to Oriental
influences brought to bear through Christianity. The crowning and
anointing of the emperors, borrowed from Byzantium and traceable to the
influence of the Old Testament, was imitated by lesser potentates; and
this "sacring" by ecclesiastical authority gave to the king a character
of special sanctity. The Christian king thus became, in a sense, like
the Roman _rex_, both king and priest. Shakespeare makes Richard II.
say, "Not all the water in the rough rude sea can wash the balm off from
an anointed king" (act iii. sc. 2); and this conception of the kingship
tended to gather strength with the weakening of the prestige of the
papacy and of the clergy generally. Before the Reformation the anointed
king was, within his realm, the accredited vicar of God for secular
purposes; after the Reformation he became this in Protestant states for
religious purposes also. In England it is not without significance that
the sacerdotal vestments, generally discarded by the clergy--dalmatic,
alb and stole--continued to be among the insignia of the sovereign (see
CORONATION). Moreover, this sacrosanct character he acquired not by
virtue of his "sacring," but by hereditary right; the coronation,
anointing and vesting were but the outward and visible symbol of a
divine grace adherent in the sovereign by virtue of his title. Even
Roman Catholic monarchs, like Louis XIV., would never have admitted that
their coronation by the archbishop constituted any part of their title
to reign; it was no more than the consecration of their title. In
England the doctrine of the divine right of kings was developed to its
extremest logical conclusions during the political controversies of the
17th century. Of its exponents the most distinguished was Hobbes, the
most exaggerated Sir Robert Filmer. It was the main issue to be decided
by the Civil War, the royalists holding that "all Christian kings,
princes and governors" derive their authority direct from God, the
parliamentarians that this authority is the outcome of a contract,
actual or implied, between sovereign and people. In one case the king's
power would be unlimited, according to Louis XIV.'s famous saying:
"_L'état, c'est moi!_" or limitable only by his own free act; in the
other his actions would be governed by the advice and consent of the
people, to whom he would be ultimately responsible. The victory of this
latter principle was proclaimed to all the world by the execution of
Charles I. The doctrine of divine right, indeed, for a while drew
nourishment from the blood of the royal "martyr"; it was the guiding
principle of the Anglican Church of the Restoration; but it suffered a
rude blow when James II. made it impossible for the clergy to obey both
their conscience and their king; and the revolution of 1688 made an end
of it as a great political force. These events had effects far beyond
England. They served as precedents for the crusade of republican France
against kings, and later for the substitution of the democratic kingship
of Louis Philippe, "king of the French by the grace of God and the will
of the people," for the "legitimate" kingship of Charles X., "king of
France by the grace of God."
The theory of the crown in Britain, as held by descent modified and
modifiable by parliamentary action, and yet also "by the grace of God,"
is in strict accordance with the earliest traditions of the English
kingship; but the rival theory of inalienable divine right is not dead.
It is strong in Germany and especially in Prussia; it survives as a
militant force among the Carlists in Spain and the Royalists in France
(see LEGITIMISTS); and even in England a remnant of enthusiasts still
maintain the claims of a remote descendant of Charles I. to the throne
(see JACOBITES).
See J. Neville Figgis, _Theory of the Divine Right of Kings_
(Cambridge, 1896). (W. A. P.)