ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE:

CHATELET CHEQUE

CHATELLERAULT CHER

CHATHAM, WILLIAM PITT CHERAT

CHATHAM (New Brunswick, Canada) CHERBOURG

CHATHAM (Kent county Canada) CHERBULIEZ, CHARLES VICTOR

CHATHAM (Kent, England) CHERCHEL

CHATHAM ISLANDS CHERCHEN

CHATILLON CHEREMISSES

CHATILLON-SUR-SEINE CHERIBON

CHATSWORTH CHERKASY

CHATTANOOGA CHERNIGOV (government of Russia)

CHATTEL CHERNIGOV (town of Russia)

CHATTERIS CHEROKEE

CHATTERJI, BANKIM CHANDRA CHEROOT

CHATTERTON, THOMAS CHERRAPUNJI

CHATTI CHERRY

CHAUCER, GEOFFREY CHERRYVALE

CHAUDESAIGUES CHERRY VALLEY

CHAUFFEUR CHERSIPHRON

CHAULIEU, GUILLAUME AMFRYE DE CHERSO

CHAUMETTE, PIERRE GASPARD CHERSONESE

CHAUMONT-EN-BASSIGNY CHERTSEY

CHAUNCEY, ISAAC CHERUBIM

CHAUNCY, CHARLES CHERUBINI, MARIA LUIGI

CHAUNY CHERUEL, PIERRE ADOLPHE

CHAUTAUQUA CHERUSCI

CHAUVELIN, BERNARD FRANCOIS CHESELDEN, WILLIAM

CHAUVIGNY CHESHAM

CHAUVIN, ETIENNE CHESHIRE

CHAUVINISM CHESHUNT

CHAUX DE FONDS, LA CHESIL BANK

CHAVES CHESNELONG, PIERRE CHARLES

CHAZELLES, JEAN MATHIEU DE CHESNEY, CHARLES CORNWALLIS

CHEADLE (Cheshire, England) CHESNEY, FRANCIS RAWDON

CHEADLE (Staffordshire, England) CHESNEY, SIR GEORGE TOMKYNS

CHEATING CHESS

CHEBICHEV, PAFNUTIY LVOVICH CHEST

CHEBOYGAN CHESTER, EARLS OF

CHECHENZES CHESTER (city of England)

CHECKERS CHESTER (city of U.S.A.)

CHEDDAR CHESTERFIELD, PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE

CHEDUBA CHESTERFIELD

CHEERING CHESTER-LE-STREET

CHEESE CHESTERTON, GILBERT KEITH

CHEESE CLOTH CHESTERTON (district of England)

CHEETA CHESTNUT

CHEFFONIER CHETTLE, HENRY

CHEH-KIANG CHEVALIER, ALBERT

CHEKE, SIR JOHN CHEVALIER, MICHEL

CHELLIAN CHEVALIER, ULYSSE

CHELMSFORD, FREDERIC THESIGER CHEVAUX-DE-FRISE

CHELMSFORD CHEVERUS, JEAN LOUIS DE

CHELSEA (borough of London) CHEVET

CHELSEA (Massachusetts, U.S.A) CHEVIOT HILLS

CHELTENHAM CHEVREUL, MICHEL EUGENE

CHELYABINSK CHEVRON

CHELYS CHEVROTAIN

CHEMICAL ACTION CHEYENNE (Indian Tribe)

CHEMISTRY CHEYENNE (city of U.S.A.)

CHEMNITZ (German theologian) CHEYNE, THOMAS KELLY

CHEMNITZ (town of Germany) CHEZY, ANTOINE LEONARD DE

CHEMOTAXIS CHHATARPUR

CHENAB CHHATTISGARH

CHENEDOLLE, CHARLES JULIEN DE CHHINDWARA

CHENERY, THOMAS CHIABRERA, GABRIELLO

CHENG CHIANA

CHEN-HAI CHIAPAS

CHENIER, ANDRE DE CHIAROSCURO

CHENIER, MARIE-JOSEPH BLAISE DE CHIAVARI

CHENILLE CHIAVENNA

CHENONCEAUX CHIBOUQUE

CHENOPODIUM CHIC

CHEOPS CHICACOLE

CHEPSTOW CHICAGO

CHATELET (from Med. Lat. _castella_), the word, sometimes also written

_castillet_, used in France for a building designed for the defence of

an outwork or gate, sometimes of great strength or size, but

distinguished from the _chateau_, or castle proper, in being purely

defensive and not residential. In Paris, before the Revolution, this

word was applied both to a particular building and to the jurisdiction

of which it was the seat. This building, the original Chatelet, had been

first a castle defending the approach to the Cite. Tradition traced its

existence back to Roman times, and in the 18th century one of the rooms

in the great tower was still called the _chambre de Cesar_. The

jurisdiction was that of the provostship (_prevote_) and viscountship of

Paris, which was certainly of feudal origin, probably going back to the

counts of Paris.

It was not till the time of Saint Louis that, with the appointment of

Etienne Boileau, the provostship of Paris became a _prevote en garde_,

i.e. a public office no longer put up to sale. When the _baillis_ (see

BAILIFF AND BAILIE) were created, the provost of Paris naturally

discharged the duties and functions of a _bailli_, in which capacity he

heard appeals from the seigniorial and inferior judges of the city and

its neighbourhood, keeping, however, his title of provost. When under

Henry II. certain _bailliages_ became presidial jurisdictions

(_presidiaux_), i.e. received to a certain extent the right of judging

without appeal, the Chatelet, the court of the provost of Paris, was

made a presidial court, but without losing its former name. Finally,

various tribunals peculiar to the city of Paris, i.e. courts exercising

jurisdictions outside the common law or corresponding to certain _cours

d'exception_ which existed in the provinces, were united with the

Chatelet, of which they became divisions (_chambres_). Thus the

lieutenant-general of police made it the seat of his jurisdiction, and

the provost of the Ile de France, who had the same criminal jurisdiction

as the provosts of the marshals of France in other provinces, sat there

also. As to the _personnel_ of the Chatelet, it was originally the same

as in the _bailliages_, except that after the 14th century it had some

special officials, the auditors and the examiners of inquests. Like the

_baillis_, the provost had lieutenants who were deputies for him, and in

addition gradually acquired a considerable body of _ex officio_

councillors. This last staff, however, was not yet in existence at the

end of the 14th century, for it is not mentioned in the _Registre

criminel du Chatelet_ (1389-1392), published by the Societe des

Bibliophiles Francais. In 1674 the whole _personnel_ was doubled, at the

time when the new Chatelet was established side by side with the old,

the two being soon after amalgamated. On the eve of the Revolution it

comprised, beside the provost whose office had become practically

honorary, the _lieutenant civil_, who presided over the _chambre de

prevote au parc civil_ or court of first instance; the _lieutenant

criminel_, who presided over the criminal court; two _lieutenants

particuliers_, who presided in turn over the _chambre du presidial_ or

court of appeal from the inferior jurisdictions; a _juge auditeur_;

sixty-four councillors (_conseillers_); the _procureur du roi_, four

_avocats du roi_, and eight _substituts_, i.e. deputies of the

_procureur_ (see PROCURATOR), beside a host of minor officials. The

history of the Chatelet under the Revolution may be briefly told: the

Constituent Assembly empowered it to try cases of _lese-nation_, and it

was also before this court that was opened the inquiry following on the

events of the 5th and 6th of August 1789. It was suppressed by the law

of the 16th of August 1790, together with the other tribunals of the

_ancien regime_. (J. P. E.)

CHATELLERAULT, a town of western France, capital of an arrondissement in

the department of Vienne, 19 m. N.N.E. of Poitiers on the Orleans

railway between that town and Tours. Pop. (1906) 15,214. Chatellerault

is situated on the right and eastern bank of the Vienne; it is connected

with the suburb of Chateauneuf on the opposite side of the river by a

stone bridge of the 16th and 17th centuries, guarded at the western

extremity by massive towers. The manufacture of cutlery is carried on on

a large scale in villages on the banks of the Clain, south of the town.

Of the other industrial establishments the most important is the

national small-arms factory, which was established in 1815 in

Chateauneuf, and employs from 1500 to 5500 men. Chatellerault (or

Chatelherault: _Castellum Airaldi_) derives its name from a fortress

built in the 10th century by Airaud, viscount of its territory. In 1515

it was made a duchy in favour of Francois de Bourbon, but it was not

long after this date that it became reunited to the crown. In 1548 it

was bestowed on James Hamilton, 2nd earl of Arran (see HAMILTON).

CHATHAM, WILLIAM PITT, 1st EARL OF (1708-1778), English statesman, was

born at Westminster on the 15th of November 1708. He was the younger son

of Robert Pitt of Boconnoc, Cornwall, and grandson of Thomas Pitt

(1653-1726), governor of Madras, who was known as "Diamond" Pitt, from

the fact of his having sold a diamond of extraordinary size to the

regent Orleans for something like L135,000. It was mainly by this

fortunate transaction that the governor was enabled to raise his family,

which was one of old standing, to a position of wealth and political

influence. The latter he acquired by purchasing the burgage tenures of

Old Sarum.

William Pitt was educated at Eton, and in January 1727 was entered as a

gentleman commoner at Trinity College, Oxford. There is evidence that he

was an extensively read, if not a minutely accurate classical scholar;

and it is interesting to know that Demosthenes was his favourite author,

and that he diligently cultivated the faculty of expression by the

practice of translation and re-translation. An hereditary gout, from

which he had suffered even during his school-days, compelled him to

leave the university without taking his degree, in order to travel

abroad. He spent some time in France and Italy; but the disease proved

intractable, and he continued subject to attacks of growing intensity at

frequent intervals till the close of his life. In 1727 his father had

died, and on his return home it was necessary for him, as the younger

son, to choose a profession. Having chosen the army, he obtained through

the interest of his friends a cornet's commission in the dragoons. But

his military career was destined to be short. His elder brother Thomas

having been returned at the general election of 1734 both for Oakhampton

and for Old Sarum, and having preferred to sit for the former, the

family borough fell to the younger brother by the sort of natural right

usually recognized in such cases. Accordingly, in February 1735, William

Pitt entered parliament as member for Old Sarum. Attaching himself at

once to the formidable band of discontented Whigs known as the Patriots,

whom Walpole's love of exclusive power had forced into opposition under

Pulteney, he became in a very short time one of its most prominent

members. His maiden speech was delivered in April 1736, in the debate on

the congratulatory address to the king on the marriage of the prince of

Wales. The occasion was one of compliment, and there is nothing striking

in the speech as reported; but it served to gain for him the attention

of the house when he presented himself, as he soon afterwards did, in

debates of a party character. So obnoxious did he become as a critic of

the government, that Walpole thought fit to punish him by procuring his

dismissal from the army. Some years later he had occasion vigorously to

denounce the system of cashiering officers for political differences,

but with characteristic loftiness of spirit he disdained to make any

reference to his own case. The loss of his commission was soon made up

to him. The heir to the throne, as was usually the case in the house of

Hanover, if not in reigning families generally, was the patron of the

opposition, and the ex-cornet became groom of the bed-chamber to the

prince of Wales. In this new position his hostility to the government

did not, as may be supposed, in any degree relax. He had all the natural

gifts an orator could desire--a commanding presence, a graceful though

somewhat theatrical bearing, an eye of piercing brightness, and a voice

of the utmost flexibility. His style, if occasionally somewhat turgid,

was elevated and passionate, and it always bore the impress of that

intensity of conviction which is the most powerful instrument a speaker

can have to sway the convictions of an audience. It was natural,

therefore, that in the series of stormy debates, protracted through

several years, that ended in the downfall of Walpole, his eloquence

should have been one of the strongest of the forces that combined to

bring about the final result. Specially effective, according to

contemporary testimony, were his speeches against the Hanoverian

subsidies, against the Spanish convention in 1739, and in favour of the

motion in 1742 for an investigation into the last ten years of Walpole's

administration. It must be borne in mind that the reports of these

speeches which have come down to us were made from hearsay, or at best

from recollection, and are necessarily therefore most imperfect. The

best-known specimen of Pitt's eloquence, his reply to the sneers of

Horatio Walpole at his youth and declamatory manner, which has found a

place in so many handbooks of elocution, is evidently, in form at least,

the work, not of Pitt, but of Dr Johnson, who furnished the report to

the _Gentleman's Magazine_. Probably Pitt did say something of the kind

attributed to him, though even this is by no means certain in view of

Johnson's repentant admission that he had often invented not merely the

form, but the substance of entire debates.

In 1742 Walpole was at last forced to succumb to the long-continued

attacks of opposition, and was succeeded as prime minister by the earl

of Wilmington, though the real power in the new government was divided

between Carteret and the Pelhams. Pitt's conduct on the change of

administration was open to grave censure. The relentless vindictiveness

with which he insisted on the prosecution of Walpole, and supported the

bill of indemnity to witnesses against the fallen minister, was in

itself not magnanimous; but it appears positively unworthy when it is

known that a short time before Pitt had offered, on certain conditions,

to use all his influence in the other direction. Possibly he was

embittered at the time by the fact that, owing to the strong personal

dislike of the king, caused chiefly by the contemptuous tone in which he

had spoken of Hanover, he did not by obtaining a place in the new

ministry reap the fruits of the victory to which he had so largely

contributed. The so-called "broad-bottom" administration formed by the

Pelhams in 1744, after the dismissal of Carteret, though it included

several of those with whom he had been accustomed to act, did not at

first include Pitt himself even in a subordinate office. Before the

obstacle to his admission was overcome, he had received a remarkable

accession to his private fortune. The eccentric duchess of Marlborough,

dying in 1744, at the age of ninety, left him a legacy of L10,000 as an

"acknowledgment of the noble defence he had made for the support of the

laws of England and to prevent the ruin of his country." As her hatred

was known to be at least as strong as her love, the legacy was probably

as much a mark of her detestation of Walpole as of her admiration of

Pitt. It may be mentioned here, though it does not come in chronological

order, that Pitt was a second time the object of a form of

acknowledgment of public virtue which few statesmen have had the fortune

to receive even once. About twenty years after the Marlborough legacy,

Sir William Pynsent, a Somersetshire baronet to whom he was personally

quite unknown, left him his entire estate, worth about three thousand a

year, in testimony of approval of his political career.

It was with no very good grace that the king at length consented to give

Pitt a place in the government, although the latter did all he could to

ingratiate himself at court, by changing his tone on the questions on

which he had made himself offensive. To force the matter, the Pelhams

had to resign expressly on the question whether he should be admitted or

not, and it was only after all other arrangements had proved

impracticable, that they were reinstated with the obnoxious politician

as vice-treasurer of Ireland. This was in February 1746. In May of the

same year he was promoted to the more important and lucrative office of

paymaster-general, which gave him a place in the privy council, though

not in the cabinet. Here he had an opportunity of displaying his public

spirit and integrity in a way that deeply impressed both the king and

the country. It had been the usual practice of previous paymasters to

appropriate to themselves the interest of all money lying in their hands

by way of advance, and also to accept a commission of 1/2% on all

foreign subsidies. Although there was no strong public sentiment against

the practice, Pitt altogether refused to profit by it. All advances were

lodged by him in the Bank of England until required, and all subsidies

were paid over without deduction, even though it was pressed upon him,

so that he did not draw a shilling from his office beyond the salary

legally attaching to it. Conduct like this, though obviously

disinterested, did not go without immediate and ample reward, in the

public confidence which it created, and which formed the mainspring of

Pitt's power as a statesman.

The administration formed in 1746 lasted without material change till

1754. It would appear from his published correspondence that Pitt had a

greater influence in shaping its policy than his comparatively

subordinate position would in itself have entitled him to. His conduct

in supporting measures, such as the Spanish treaty and the continental

subsidies, which he had violently denounced when in opposition, had been

much criticized; but within certain limits, not indeed very well

defined, inconsistency has never been counted a vice in an English

statesman. The times change, and he is not blamed for changing with the

times. Pitt in office, looking back on the commencement of his public

life, might have used the plea "A good deal has happened since then," at

least as justly as some others have done. Allowance must always be made

for the restraints and responsibilities of office. In Pitt's case, too,

it is to be borne in mind that the opposition with which he had acted

gradually dwindled away, and that it ceased to have any organized

existence after the death of the prince of Wales in 1751. Then in regard

to the important question with Spain as to the right of search, Pitt

has disarmed criticism by acknowledging that the course he followed

during Wapole's administration was indefensible. All due weight being

given to these various considerations, it must be admitted,

nevertheless, that Pitt did overstep the limits within which

inconsistency is usually regarded as venial. His one great object was

first to gain office, and then to make his tenure of office secure by

conciliating the favour of the king. The entire revolution which much of

his policy underwent in order to effect this object bears too close a

resemblance to the sudden and inexplicable changes of front habitual to

placemen of the Tadpole stamp to be altogether pleasant to contemplate

in a politician of pure aims and lofty ambition. Humiliating is not too

strong a term to apply to a letter in which he expresses his desire to

"efface the past by every action of his life," in order that he may

stand well with the king.

In 1754 Henry Pelham died, and was succeeded at the head of affairs by

his brother, the duke of Newcastle. To Pitt the change brought no

advancement, and he had thus an opportunity of testing the truth of the

description of his chief given by Sir Robert Walpole, "His name is

treason." But there was for a time no open breach. Pitt continued at his

post; and at the general election which took place during the year he

even accepted a nomination for the duke's pocket borough of Aldborough.

He had sat for Seaford since 1747. When parliament met, however, he was

not long in showing the state of his feelings. Ignoring Sir Thomas

Robinson, the political nobody to whom Newcastle had entrusted the

management of the Commons, he made frequent and vehement attacks on

Newcastle himself, though still continuing to serve under him. In this

strange state matters continued for about a year. At length, just after

the meeting of parliament in November 1751, Pitt was dismissed from

office, having on the debate on the address spoken at great length

against a new system of continental subsidies, proposed by the

government of which he was a member. Fox, who had just before been

appointed secretary of state, retained his place, and though the two men

continued to be of the same party, and afterwards served again in the

same government, there was henceforward a rivalry between them, which

makes the celebrated opposition of their illustrious sons seem like an

inherited quarrel.

Another year had scarcely passed when Pitt was again in power. The

inherent weakness of the government, the vigour and eloquence of his

opposition, and a series of military disasters abroad combined to rouse

a public feeling of indignation which could not be withstood, and in

December 1756 Pitt, who now sat for Okehampton, became secretary of

state, and leader of the Commons under the premiership of the duke of

Devonshire. He had made it a condition of his joining any administration

that Newcastle should be excluded from it, thus showing a resentment

which, though natural enough, proved fatal to the lengthened existence

of his government. With the king unfriendly, and Newcastle, whose

corrupt influence was still dominant in the Commons, estranged, it was

impossible to carry on a government by the aid of public opinion alone,

however emphatically that might have declared itself on his side. In

April 1757, accordingly, he found himself again dismissed from office on

account of his opposition to the king's favourite continental policy.

But the power that was insufficient to keep him in office was strong

enough to make any arrangement that excluded him impracticable. The

public voice spoke in a way that was not to be mistaken. Probably no

English minister ever received in so short a time so many proofs of the

confidence and admiration of the public, the capital and all the chief

towns voting him addresses and the freedom of their corporations. From

the political deadlock that ensued relief could only be had by an

arrangement between Newcastle and Pitt. After some weeks' negotiation,

in the course of which the firmness and moderation of "the Great

Commoner," as he had come to be called, contrasted favourably with the

characteristic tortuosities of the crafty peer, matters were settled on

such a basis that, while Newcastle was the nominal, Pitt was the virtual

head of the government. On his acceptance of office he was chosen member

for Bath.

This celebrated administration was formed in June 1757, and continued

in power till 1761. During the four years of its existence it has been

usual to say that the biography of Pitt is the history of England, so

thoroughly was he identified with the great events which make this

period, in so far as the external relations of the country are

concerned, one of the most glorious in her annals. A detailed account of

these events belongs to history; all that is needed in a biography is to

point out the extent to which Pitt's personal influence may really be

traced in them. It is scarcely too much to say that, in the general

opinion of his contemporaries, the whole glory of these years was due to

his single genius; his alone was the mind that planned, and his the

spirit that animated the brilliant achievements of the British arms in

all the four quarters of the globe. Posterity, indeed, has been able to

recognize more fully the independent genius of those who carried out his

purposes. The heroism of Wolfe would have been irrepressible, Clive

would have proved himself "a heaven-born general," and Frederick the

Great would have written his name in history as one of the most skilful

strategists the world has known, whoever had held the seals of office in

England. But Pitt's relation to all three was such as to entitle him to

a large share in the credit of their deeds. It was his discernment that

selected Wolfe to lead the attack on Quebec, and gave him the

opportunity of dying a victor on the heights of Abraham. He had

personally less to do with the successes in India than with the other

great enterprises that shed an undying lustre on his administration; but

his generous praise in parliament stimulated the genius of Clive, and

the forces that acted at the close of the struggle were animated by his

indomitable spirit. Pitt, the first real Imperialist in modern English

history, was the directing mind in the expansion of his country, and

with him the beginning of empire is rightly associated. The Seven Years'

War might well, moreover, have been another Thirty Years' War if Pitt

had not furnished Frederick with an annual subsidy of L700,000, and in

addition relieved him of the task of defending western Germany against

France.

Contemporary opinion was, of course, incompetent to estimate the

permanent results gained for the country by the brilliant foreign policy

of Pitt. It has long been generally agreed that by several of his most

costly expeditions nothing was really won but glory. It has even been

said that the only permanent acquisition that England owed directly to

him was her Canadian dominion; and, strictly speaking, this is true, it

being admitted that the campaign by which the Indian empire was

virtually won was not planned by him, though brought to a successful

issue during his ministry. But material aggrandizement, though the only

tangible, is not the only real or lasting effect of a war policy. More

may be gained by crushing a formidable rival than by conquering a

province. The loss of her Canadian possessions was only one of a series

of disasters suffered by France, which radically affected the future of

Europe and the world. Deprived of her most valuable colonies both in the

East and in the West, and thoroughly defeated on the continent, her

humiliation was the beginning of a new epoch in history. The victorious

policy of Pitt destroyed the military prestige which repeated experience

has shown to be in France as in no other country the very life of

monarchy, and thus was not the least considerable of the many influences

that slowly brought about the French Revolution. It effectually deprived

her of the lead in the councils of Europe which she had hitherto

arrogated to herself, and so affected the whole course of continental

politics. It is such far-reaching results as these, and not the mere

acquisition of a single colony, however valuable, that constitute Pitt's

claim to be considered as on the whole the most powerful minister that

ever guided the foreign policy of England.

The first and most important of a series of changes which ultimately led

to the dissolution of the ministry was the death of George II. on the

25th of October 1760, and the accession of his grandson, George III. The

new king had, as was natural, new counsellors of his own, the chief of

whom, Lord Bute, was at once admitted to the cabinet as a secretary of

state. Between Bute and Pitt there speedily arose an occasion of serious

difference. The existence of the so-called family compact by which the

Bourbons of France and Spain bound themselves in an offensive alliance

against England having been brought to light, Pitt urged that it should

be met by an immediate declaration of war with Spain. To this course

Bute would not consent, and as his refusal was endorsed by all his

colleagues save Temple, Pitt had no choice but to leave a cabinet in

which his advice on a vital question had been rejected. On his

resignation, which took place in October 1761, the king urged him to

accept some signal mark of royal favour in the form most agreeable to

himself. Accordingly he obtained a pension of L3000 a year for three

lives, and his wife, Lady Hester Grenville, whom he had married in 1754,

was created Baroness Chatham in her own right. In connexion with the

latter gracefully bestowed honour it may be mentioned that Pitt's

domestic life was a singularly happy one.

Pitt's spirit was too lofty to admit of his entering on any merely

factious opposition to the government he had quitted. On the contrary,

his conduct after his retirement was distinguished by a moderation and

disinterestedness which, as Burke has remarked, "set a seal upon his

character." The war with Spain, in which he had urged the cabinet to

take the initiative, proved inevitable; but he scorned to use the

occasion for "altercation and recrimination," and spoke in support of

the government measures for carrying on the war. To the preliminaries of

the peace concluded in February 1763 he offered an indignant resistance,

considering the terms quite inadequate to the successes that had been

gained by the country. When the treaty was discussed in parliament in

December of the preceding year, though suffering from a severe attack of

gout, he was carried down to the House, and in a speech of three hours'

duration, interrupted more than once by paroxysms of pain, he strongly

protested against its various conditions. The physical cause which

rendered this effort so painful probably accounts for the infrequency of

his appearances in parliament, as well as for much that is otherwise

inexplicable in his subsequent conduct. In 1763 he spoke against the

obnoxious tax on cider, imposed by his brother-in-law, George Grenville,

and his opposition, though unsuccessful in the House, helped to keep

alive his popularity with the country, which cordially hated the excise

and all connected with it. When next year the question of general

warrants was raised in connexion with the case of Wilkes, Pitt

vigorously maintained their illegality, thus defending at once the

privileges of Parliament and the freedom of the press. During 1765 he

seems to have been totally incapacitated for public business. In the

following year he supported with great power the proposal of the

Rockingham administration for the repeal of the American Stamp Act,

arguing that it was unconstitutional to impose taxes upon the colonies.

He thus endorsed the contention of the colonists on the ground of

principle, while the majority of those who acted with him contented

themselves with resisting the disastrous taxation scheme on the ground

of expediency. The Repeal Act, indeed, was only passed _pari passu_ with

another censuring the American assemblies, and declaring the authority

of the British parliament over the colonies "in all cases whatsoever";

so that the House of Commons repudiated in the most formal manner the

principle Pitt laid down. His language in approval of the resistance of

the colonists was unusually bold, and perhaps no one but himself could

have employed it with impunity at a time when the freedom of debate was

only imperfectly conceded.

Pitt had not been long out of office when he was solicited to return to

it, and the solicitations were more than once renewed. Unsuccessful

overtures were made to him in 1763, and twice in 1765, in May and

June--the negotiator in May being the king's uncle, the duke of

Cumberland, who went down in person to Hayes, Pitt's seat in Kent. It is

known that he had the opportunity of joining the marquis of Rockingham's

short-lived administration at any time on his own terms, and his conduct

in declining an arrangement with that minister has been more generally

condemned than any other step in his public life. In July 1766

Rockingham was dismissed, and Pitt was entrusted by the king with the

task of forming a government entirely on his own conditions. The result

was a cabinet, strong much beyond the average in its individual members,

but weak to powerlessness in the diversity of its composition. Burke, in

a memorable passage of a memorable speech, has described this "chequered

and speckled" administration with great humour, speaking of it as

"indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to

stand on." Pitt chose for himself the office of lord privy seal, which

necessitated his removal to the House of Lords; and in August he became

earl of Chatham and Viscount Pitt.

By the acceptance of a peerage the great commoner lost at least as much

and as suddenly in popularity as he gained in dignity. One significant

indication of this may be mentioned. In view of his probable accession

to power, preparations were made in the city of London for a banquet and

a general illumination to celebrate the event. But the celebration was

at once countermanded when it was known that he had become earl of

Chatham. The instantaneous revulsion of public feeling was somewhat

unreasonable, for Pitt's health seems now to have been beyond doubt so

shattered by his hereditary malady, that he was already in old age

though only fifty-eight. It was natural, therefore, that he should

choose a sinecure office, and the ease of the Lords. But a popular idol

nearly always suffers by removal from immediate contact with the popular

sympathy, be the motives for removal what they may.

One of the earliest acts of the new ministry was to lay an embargo upon

corn, which was thought necessary in order to prevent a dearth resulting

from the unprecedentedly bad harvest of 1766. The measure was strongly

opposed, and Lord Chatham delivered his first speech in the House of

Lords in support of it. It proved to be almost the only measure

introduced by his government in which he personally interested himself.

His attention had been directed to the growing importance of the affairs

of India, and there is evidence in his correspondence that he was

meditating a comprehensive scheme for transferring much of the power of

the company to the crown, when he was withdrawn from public business in

a manner that has always been regarded as somewhat mysterious. It may be

questioned, indeed, whether even had his powers been unimpaired he could

have carried out any decided policy on any question with a cabinet

representing interests so various and conflicting; but, as it happened,

he was incapacitated physically and mentally during nearly the Whole

period of his tenure of office. He scarcely ever saw any of his

colleagues though they repeatedly and urgently pressed for interviews

with him, and even an offer from the king to visit him in person was

declined, though in the language of profound and almost abject respect

which always marked his communications with the court. It has been

insinuated both by contemporary and by later critics that being

disappointed at his loss of popularity, and convinced of the

impossibility of co-operating with his colleagues, he exaggerated his

malady as a pretext for the inaction that was forced upon him by

circumstances. But there is no sufficient reason to doubt that he was

really, as his friends represented, in a state that utterly unfitted him

for business. He seems to have been freed for a time from the pangs of

gout only to be afflicted with a species of mental alienation bordering

on insanity. This is the most satisfactory, as it is the most obvious,

explanation of his utter indifference in presence of one of the most

momentous problems that ever pressed for solution on an English

statesman. Those who are able to read the history in the light of what

occurred later may perhaps be convinced that no policy whatever

initiated, after 1766 could have prevented or even materially delayed

the declaration of American independence; but to the politicians of that

time the coming event had not yet cast so dark a shadow before as to

paralyse all action, and if any man could have allayed the growing

discontent of the colonists and prevented the ultimate dismemberment of

the empire, it would have been Lord Chatham. The fact that he not only

did nothing to remove existing difficulties, but remained passive while

his colleagues took the fatal step which led directly to separation, is

in itself clear proof of his entire incapacity. The imposition of the

import duty on tea and other commodities was the project of Charles

Townshend, and was carried into effect in 1767 without consultation with

Lord Chatham, if not in opposition to his wishes. It is probably the

most singular thing in connexion with this singular administration, that

its most pregnant measure should thus have been one directly opposed to

the well-known principles of its head.

For many months things remained in the curious position that he who was

understood to be the head of the cabinet had as little share in the

government of the country as an unenfranchised peasant. As the chief

could not or would not lead, the subordinates naturally chose their own

paths and not his. The lines of Chatham's policy were abandoned in other

cases besides the imposition of the import duty; his opponents were

taken into confidence; and friends, such' as Amherst and Shelburne, were

dismissed from their posts. When at length in October 1768 he tendered

his resignation on the ground of shattered health, he did not fail to

mention the dismissal of Amherst and Shelburne as a personal grievance.

Soon after his resignation a renewed attack of gout freed Chatham from

the mental disease under which he had so long suffered. He had been

nearly two years and a half in seclusion when, in July 1769, he again

appeared in public at a royal levee. It was not, however, until 1770

that he resumed his seat in the House of Lords. He had now almost no

personal following, mainly owing to the grave mistake he had made in not

forming an alliance with the Rockingham party. But his eloquence was as

powerful as ever, and all its power was directed against the government

policy in the contest with America, which had become the question of

all-absorbing interest. His last appearance in the House of Lords was on

the 7th of April 1778, on the occasion of the duke of Richmond's motion

for an address praying the king to conclude peace with America on any

terms. In view of the hostile demonstrations of France the various

parties had come generally to see the necessity of such a measure. But

Chatham could not brook the thought of a step which implied submission

to the "natural enemy" whom it had been the main object of his life to

humble, and he declaimed for a considerable time, though with sadly

diminished vigour, against the motion. After the duke of Richmond had

replied, he rose again excitedly as if to speak, pressed his hand upon

his breast, and fell down in a fit. He was removed to his seat at Hayes,

where he died on the 11th of May. With graceful unanimity all parties

combined to show their sense of the national loss. The Commons presented

an address to the king praying that the deceased statesman might be

buried with the honours of a public funeral, and voted a sum for a

public monument which was erected over his grave in Westminster Abbey.

Soon after the funeral a bill was passed bestowing a pension of L4000 a

year on his successors in the earldom. He had a family of three sons and

two daughters, of whom the second son, William, was destined to add

fresh lustre to a name which is one of the greatest in the history of

England.

Dr Johnson is reported to have said that "Walpole was a minister given

by the king to the people, but Pitt was a minister given by the people

to the king," and the remark correctly indicates Chatham's distinctive

place among English statesmen. He was the first minister whose main

strength lay in the support of the nation at large as distinct from its

representatives in the Commons, where his personal following was always

small. He was the first to discern that public opinion, though generally

slow to form and slow to act, is in the end the paramount power in the

state; and he was the first to use it not in an emergency merely, but

throughout a whole political career. He marks the commencement of that

vast change in the movement of English politics by which it has come

about that the sentiment of the great mass of the people now tells

effectively on the action of the government from day to day,--almost

from hour to hour. He was well fitted to secure the sympathy and

admiration of his countrymen, for his virtues and his failings were

alike English. He was often inconsistent, he was generally intractable

and overbearing, and he was always pompous and affected to a degree

which, Macaulay has remarked, seems scarcely compatible with true

greatness. Of the last quality evidence is furnished in the stilted

style of his letters, and in the fact recorded by Seward that he never

permitted his under-secretaries to sit in his presence. Burke speaks of

"some significant, pompous, creeping, explanatory, ambiguous matter, in

the true Chathamic style." But these defects were known only to the

inner circle of his associates. To the outside public he was endeared as

a statesman who could do or suffer "nothing base," and who had the rare

power of transfusing his own indomitable energy and courage into all who

served under him. "A spirited foreign policy" has always been popular in

England, and Pitt was the most popular of English ministers, because he

was the most successful exponent of such a policy. In domestic affairs

his influence was small and almost entirely indirect. He himself

confessed his unfitness for dealing with questions of finance. The

commercial prosperity that was produced by his war policy was in a great

part delusive, as prosperity so produced must always be, though it had

permanent effects of the highest moment in the rise of such centres of

industry as Glasgow. This, however, was a remote result which he could

have neither intended nor foreseen.

The correspondence of Lord Chatham, in four volumes, was published in

1838-1840; and a volume of his letters to Lord Camelford in 1804. The

Rev. Francis Thackeray's _History of the Rt. Hon. William Pitt, Earl

of Chatham_ (2 vols., 1827), is a ponderous and shapeless work.

Frederic Harrison's _Chatham_, in the "Twelve English Statesmen"

series (1905), though skilfully executed, takes a rather academic and

modern Liberal view. A German work, _William Pitt, Graf von Chatham_,

by Albert von Ruville (3 vols., 1905; English trans. 1907), is the

best and most thorough account of Chatham, his period, and his policy,

which has appeared. See also the separate article on William Pitt, and

the authorities referred to, especially the Rev. William Hunt's

appendix i. to his vol. x. of _The Political History of England_

(1905).

CHATHAM, also called MIRAMICHI, an incorporated town and port of entry

in Northumberland county, New Brunswick, Canada, on the Miramichi river,

24 m. from its mouth and 10 m. by rail from Chatham junction on the

Intercolonial railway. Pop. (1901) 5000. The town contains the Roman

Catholic pro-cathedral, many large saw-mills, pulp-mills, and several

establishments for curing and exporting fish. The lumber trade, the

fisheries, and the manufacture of pulp are the chief industries.

CHATHAM, a city and port of entry of Ontario, Canada, and the capital of

Kent county, situated 64 m. S.W. of London, and 11 m. N. of Lake Erie,

on the Thames river and the Grand Trunk, Canadian Pacific and Lake Erie

& Detroit River railways. Pop. (1901) 9068. It has steamboat connexion

with Detroit and the cities on Lakes Huron and Erie. It is situated in a

rich agricultural and fruit-growing district, and carries on a large

export trade. It contains a large wagon factory, planing and flour

mills, manufactories of fanning mills, binder-twine, woven wire goods,

engines, windmills, &c.

CHATHAM, a port and municipal and parliamentary borough of Kent,

England, on the right bank of the Medway, 34 m. E.S.E. of London by the

South-Eastern & Chatham railway. Pop. (1891) 31,657; (1901) 37,057.

Though a distinct borough it is united on the west with Rochester and on

the east with Gillingham, so that the three boroughs form, in

appearance, a single town with a population which in 1901 exceeded

110,000. With the exception of the dockyards and fortifications there

are few objects of interest. St Mary's church was opened in 1903, but

occupies a site which bore a church in Saxon times, though the previous

building dated only from 1786. A brass commemorates Stephen Borough (d.

1584), discoverer of the northern passage to Archangel in Russia (1553).

St Bartholomew's chapel, originally attached to the hospital for lepers

(one of the first in England), founded by Gundulph, bishop of Rochester,

in 1070, is in part Norman. The funds for the maintenance of the

hospital were appropriated by decision of the court of chancery to the

hospital of St Bartholomew erected in 1863 within the boundaries of

Rochester. The almshouse established in 1592 by Sir John Hawkins for

decayed seamen and shipwrights is still extant, the building having been

re-erected in the 19th century; but the fund called the Chatham Chest,

originated by Hawkins and Drake in 1588, was incorporated with

Greenwich Hospital in 1802. In front of the Royal Engineers' Institute

is a statue (1890) of General Gordon, and near the railway station

another (1888) to Thomas Waghorn, promoter of the overland route to

India. In 1905 King Edward VII. unveiled a fine memorial arch

commemorating Royal Engineers who fell in the South African War. It

stands in the parade ground of the Brompton barracks, facing the Crimean

arch. There are numerous brickyards, lime-kilns and flour-mills in the

district neighbouring to Chatham; and the town carries on a large retail

trade, in great measure owing to the presence of the garrison. The

fortifications are among the most elaborate in the kingdom. The

so-called Chatham Lines enclose New Brompton, a part of the borough of

Gillingham. They were begun in 1758 and completed in 1807, but have been

completely modernized. They are strengthened by several detached forts

and redoubts. Fort Pitt, which rises above the town to the west, was

built in 1779, and is used as a general military hospital. It was

regarded as the principal establishment of the kind in the country till

the foundation of Netley in Hampshire. The lines include the Chatham,

the Royal Marine, the Brompton, the Hut, St Mary's and naval barracks;

the garrison hospital, Melville hospital for sailors and marines, the

arsenal, gymnasium, various military schools, convict prison, and

finally the extensive dockyard system for which the town is famous. This

dockyard covers an area of 516 acres, and has a river frontage of over 3

m. It was brought into its present state by the extensive works begun

about 1867. Before that time there was no basin or wet-dock, though the

river Medway to some extent answered the same purpose, but a portion of

the adjoining salt-marshes was then taken in, and three basins have been

constructed, communicating with each other by means of large locks, so

that ships can pass from the bend of the Medway at Gillingham to that at

Upnor. Four graving docks were also formed, opening out of the first

(Upnor) basin. Subsequent improvements included dredging operations in

the Medway to improve the approach, and the provision of extra dry-dock

accommodation under the Naval Works Acts.

The parliamentary borough returns one member. The town was incorporated

in 1890, and is governed by a mayor, six aldermen and eighteen

councillors. Area, 4355 acres. The borough includes the suburb (an

ecclesiastical parish) of Luton, in which are the waterworks of Chatham

and the adjoining towns.

Chatham (_Ceteham, Chetham_) belonged at the time of the Domesday Survey

to Odo, bishop of Bayeux. During the middle ages it formed a suburb of

Rochester, but Henry VIII. in founding a regular navy began to establish

dockyards, and the harbour formed by the deep channel of the Medway was

utilized by Elizabeth, who built a dockyard and established an arsenal

here. The dockyard was altered and improved by Charles I. and Charles

II., and became the chief naval station of England. In 1708 an act was

passed for extending the fortifications of Chatham. During the

excavations on Chatham Hill after 1758 a number of tumuli containing

human remains, pottery, coins, &c., suggestive of an ancient settlement,

were found. Chatham was constituted a parliamentary borough by the

Reform Bill of 1832. In the time of Edward III. the lord of the manor

had two fairs, one on the 24th of August and the other on the 8th of

September. A market to be held on Tuesday, and a fair on the 4th, 5th

and 6th of May, were granted by Charles II. in 1679, and another

provision market on Saturday by James II. in 1688. In 1738 fairs were

held on the 4th of May and the 8th of September, and a market every

Saturday.

CHATHAM ISLANDS, a small group in the Pacific Ocean, forming part of New

Zealand, 536 m. due E. of Lyttelton in the South Island, about 44 deg.

S., 177 deg. W. It consists of three islands, a large one called

Whairikauri, or Chatham Island, a smaller one, Rangihaute, or Pitt

Island, and a third, Rangatira, or South-east Island. There are also

several small rocky islets. Whairikauri, whose highest point reaches

about 1000 ft., is remarkable for the number of lakes and tarns it

contains, and for the extensive bogs which cover the surface of nearly

the whole of the uplands. It is of very irregular form, about 38 m. in

length and 25 m. in extreme breadth, with an area of 321 sq. m.--a

little larger than Middlesex. The geological formation is principally of

volcanic rocks, with schists and tertiary limestone; and an early

physical connexion of the islands with New Zealand is indicated by their

geology and biology. The climate is colder than that of New Zealand. In

the centre of Whairikauri is a large brackish lake called Tewanga, which

at the southern end is separated from the sea by a sandbank only 150

yds. wide, which it occasionally bursts through. The southern part of

the island has an undulating surface, and is covered either with an open

forest or with high ferns. In general the soil is extremely fertile, and

where it is naturally drained a rich vegetation of fern and flax occurs.

On the north-west are several conical hills of basalt, which are

surrounded by oases of fertile soil. On the south-western side is Petre

Bay, on which, at the mouth of the river Mantagu, is Waitangi, the

principal settlement.

The islands were discovered in 1791 by Lieutenant W.R. Broughton

(1762-1821), who gave them the name of Chatham from the brig which he

commanded. He described the natives as a bright, pleasure-loving people,

dressed in sealskins or mats, and calling themselves Morioris or

Maiorioris. In 1831 they were conquered by 800 Maoris who were landed

from a European vessel. They were almost exterminated, and an epidemic

of influenza in 1839 killed half of those left; ten years later there

were only 90 survivors out of a total population of 1200. They

subsequently decreased still further. Their language was allied to that

of the Maoris of New Zealand, but they differed somewhat from them in

physique, and they were probably a cross between an immigrating

Polynesian group and a lower indigenous Melanesian stock. The population

of the islands includes about 200 whites of various races and the same

number of natives (chiefly Maoris). Cattle and sheep are bred, and a

trade is carried on in them with the whalers which visit these seas. The

chief export from the group is wool, grown upon runs farmed both by

Europeans and Morioris. There is also a small export by the natives of

the flesh of young albatrosses and other sea-birds, boiled down and

cured, for the Maoris of New Zealand, by whom it is reckoned a delicacy.

The imports consist of the usual commodities required by a population

where little of the land is actually cultivated.

There are no indigenous mammals; the reptiles belong to New Zealand

species. The birds--the largest factor in the fauna--have become very

greatly reduced through the introduction of cats, dogs and pigs, as well

as by the constant persecution of every sort of animal by the natives.

The larger bell-bird (_Anthornis melanocephala_) has become quite

scarce; the magnificent fruit-pigeon (_Carpophaga chathamensis_), and

the two endemic rails (_Nesolimnas dieffenbachii_ and _Cabalus

modestus_), the one of which was confined to Whairikauri and the other

to Mangare Island, are extinct. Several fossil or subfossil avian forms,

very interesting from the point of view of geographical distribution,

have been discovered by Dr H.O. Forbes, namely, a true species of raven

(_Palaeocorax moriorum_), a remarkable rail (_Diaphorapteryx_), closely

related to the extinct _Aphanapteryx_ of Mauritius, and a large coot

(_Palaeolimnas chathamensis_). There have also been discovered the

remains of a species of swan belonging to the South American genus

_Chenopis_, and of the tuatara (_Hatteria_) lizard, the unique species

of an ancient family now surviving only in New Zealand. The swan is

identical with an extinct species found in caves and kitchen-middens in

New Zealand, which was contemporaneous with the prehistoric Maoris and

was largely used by them for food. One of the finest of the endemic

flowering plants of the group is the boraginaceous "Chatham Island lily"

(_Myositidium nobile_), a gigantic forget-me-not, which grows on the

shingly shore in a few places only, and always just on the high-water

mark, where it is daily deluged by the waves; while dracophyllums,

leucopogons and arborescent ragworts are characteristic forms in the

vegetation.

See Bruno Weiss, _Funfzig Jahre auf Chatham Island_ (Berlin, 1900);

H.O. Forbes, "The Chatham Islands and their Story," _Fortnightly

Review_ (1893), vol. liii. p. 669, "The Chatham Islands, their

relation to a former Southern Continent," _Supplementary_ _Papers_,

R.G.S., vol. iii. (1893); J.H. Scott, "The Osteology of the Maori and

the Moriori," _Trans. New Zealand Institute_, vol. xxvi. (1893); C.W.

Andrews, "The Extinct Birds of the Chatham Islands," _Novitates

Zoologicae_, vol. ii. p. 73 (1896).

CHATILLON, the name of a French family whose history has furnished

material for a large volume in folio by A. du Chesne, a learned

Frenchman, published in 1621. But in spite of its merits this book

presents a certain number of inaccurate statements, some of which it is

important to notice. If, for instance, it be true that the Chatillons

came from Chatillon-sur-Marne (Marne, arrondissement of Reims), it is

now certain that, since the 11th century, this castle belonged to the

count of Champagne, and that the head of the house of Chatillon was

merely tenant in that place. One of them, however, Gaucher of Chatillon,

lord of Crecy and afterwards constable of France, became in 1290 lord of

Chatillon-sur-Marne by exchange, but since 1303 a new agreement allotted

to him the countship of Porcien, while Chatillon reverted to the domain

of the counts of Champagne. It may be well to mention also that, in

consequence of a resemblance of their armorial bearings, du Chesne

considered wrongly that the lords of Bazoches and those of

Chateau-Porcien of the 12th and 13th centuries drew their descent from

the house of Chatillon.

The most important branches of the house of Chatillon were those of (1)

St Pol, beginning with Gaucher III. of Chatillon, who became count of St

Pol in right of his wife Isabella in 1205, the last male of the line

being Guy V. (d. 1360); (2) Blois, founded by the marriage of Hugh of

Chatillon-St Pol (d. 1248) with Mary, daughter of Margaret of Blois (d.

1230),--this branch became extinct with the death of Guy II. in 1397;

(3) Porcien, from 1303 to 1400, when Count John sold the countship to

Louis, duke of Orleans; (4) Penthievre, by the marriage of Charles of

Blois (d. 1364) with Jeanne (d. 1384), heiress of Guy, count of

Penthievre (d. 1331), the male line becoming extinct in 1457.

See A. du Chesne, _Histoire genealogique de la maison de

Chastillon-sur-Marne_ (1621); Anselme, _Histoire genealogique de la

maison royale de France_, vi. 91-124 (1730). (A. Lo.)

CHATILLON-SUR-SEINE, a town of eastern France, capital of an

arrondissement in the department of Cote-d'Or, on the Eastern and

Paris-Lyon railways, 67 m. N.N.W. of Dijon, between that city and

Troyes. Pop. (1906) 4430. It is situated on both banks of the upper

Seine, which is swelled at its entrance to the town by the Douix, one of

the most abundant springs in France. Chatillon is constructed on ample

lines and rendered attractive by beautiful promenades. Some ruins on an

eminence above it mark the site of a chateau of the dukes of Burgundy.

Near by stands the church of St Vorle of the l0th century, but with many

additions of later date; it contains a sculptured Holy Sepulchre of the

16th century and a number of frescoes. In a fine park stands a modern

chateau built by Marshal Marmont, duke of Ragusa, born at Chatillon in

1774. It was burnt in 1871, and subsequently rebuilt. The town preserves

several interesting old houses. Chatillon has a sub-prefecture,

tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a school of agriculture and

a communal college. Among its industries are brewing, iron-founding and

the manufacture of mineral and other blacks. It has trade in wood,

charcoal, lithographic and other stone. Chatillon anciently consisted of

two parts, Chaumont, belonging to the duchy of Burgundy, and Bourg,

ruled by the bishop of Langres; it did not coalesce into one town till

the end of the 16th century. It was taken by the English in 1360 and by

Louis XI. in 1475, during his struggle with Charles the Bold. Chatillon

was one of the first cities to adhere to the League, but suffered

severely from the oppression of its garrisons and governors, and in 1595

made voluntary submission to Henry IV. In modern times it is associated

with the abortive conference of 1814 between the representatives of

Napoleon and the Allies.

CHATSWORTH, a village of Derbyshire, England, containing a seat

belonging to the duke of Devonshire, one of the most splendid private

residences in England. Chatsworth House is situated close to the left

bank of the river Derwent, 2-3/4 m. from Bakewell. It is Ionic in style,

built foursquare, and enclosing a large open courtyard, with a fountain

in the centre. In front, a beautiful stretch of lawn slopes gradually

down to the riverside, and a bridge, from which may best be seen the

grand facade of the building, as it stands out in relief against the

wooded ridge of Bunker's Hill. The celebrated gardens are adorned with

sculptures by Gabriel Gibber; Sir Joseph Paxton designed the great

conservatory, unrivalled in Europe, which covers an acre; and the

fountains, which include one with a jet 260 ft. high, are said to be

surpassed only by those at Versailles. Within the house there is a very

fine collection of pictures, including the well-known portraits by

Reynolds of Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire. Other paintings are

ascribed to Holbein, Durer, Murillo, Jan van Eyck, Dolci, Veronese and

Titian. Hung in the gallery of sketches there are some priceless

drawings attributed to Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raffaelle,

Correggio, Titian and other old masters. Statues by Canova, Thorwaldsen,

Chantrey and R.J. Wyatt are included among the sculptures. In the state

apartments the walls and window-panes are in some cases inlaid with

marble or porphyry; the woodcarving, marvellous for its intricacy, grace

and lightness of effect, is largely the work of Samuel Watson of Heanor

(d. 1715). Chatsworth Park is upwards of 11 m. in circuit, and contains

many noble forest-trees, the whole being watered by the Derwent, and

surrounded by high moors and uplands. Beyond the river, and immediately

opposite the house, stands the model village of Edensor, where most of

the cottages were built in villa style, with gardens, by order of the

6th duke. The parish church, restored by the same benefactor, contains

an old brass in memory of John Beaton, confidential servant to Mary,

queen of Scots, who died in 1570; and in the churchyard are the graves

of Lord Frederick Cavendish, murdered in 1882 in Phoenix Park, Dublin,

and of Sir Joseph Paxton.

Chatsworth (_Chetsvorde_, _Chetelsvorde_, "the court of Chetel") took

its name from Chetel, one of its Saxon owners, who held it of Edward the

Confessor. It belonged to the crown and was entrusted by the Conqueror

to the custody of William Peverell. Chatsworth afterwards belonged for

many generations to the family of Leech, and was purchased in the reign

of Elizabeth by Sir William Cavendish, husband of the famous Bess of

Hardwick. In 1557 he began to build Chatsworth House, and it was

completed after his death by his widow, then countess of Shrewsbury.

Here Mary, queen of Scots, spent several years of her imprisonment under

the care of the earl of Shrewsbury. During the Civil War, Chatsworth was

occasionally occupied as a fortress by both parties. It was pulled down,

and the present house begun by William, 1st duke of Devonshire in 1688.

The little village consists almost exclusively of families employed upon

the estate.

CHATTANOOGA, a city and the county-seat of Hamilton county, Tennessee,

U.S.A., in the S.E. part of the state, about 300 m. S. of Cincinnati,

Ohio, and 150 m. S.E. of Nashville, Tennessee, on the Tennessee river,

and near the boundary line between Tennessee and Georgia. Pop. (1860)

2545; (1870) 6093; (1880) 12,892; (1890) 29,100; (1900) 30,154, of whom

994 were foreign-born and 13,122 were negroes; (U.S. census, 1910)

44,604. The city is served by the Alabama Great Southern (Queen and

Crescent), the Cincinnati Southern (leased by the Cincinnati, New

Orleans & Texas Pacific railway company), the Nashville, Chattanooga &

St Louis (controlled by the Louisville & Nashville), and its leased

line, the Western & Atlantic (connecting with Atlanta, Ga.), the Central

of Georgia, and the Chattanooga Southern railways, and by freight and

passenger steamboat lines on the Tennessee river, which is navigable to

and beyond this point during eight months of the year. That branch of

the Southern railway extending from Chattanooga to Memphis was formerly

the Memphis & Charleston, under which name it became famous in the

American Civil War. Chattanooga occupies a picturesque site at a sharp

bend of the river. To the south lies Lookout Mountain, whose summit

(2126 ft. above the sea; 1495 ft. above the river) commands a

magnificent view. To the east rises Missionary Ridge. Fine driveways and

electric lines connect with both Lookout Mountain (the summit of which

is reached by an inclined plane on which cars are operated by cable)

and Missionary Ridge, where there are Federal reservations, as well as

with the National Military Park (15 sq. m.; dedicated 1895) on the

battlefield of Chickamauga (q.v.); this park was one of the principal

mobilization camps of the United States army during the Spanish-American

War of 1898. Among the principal buildings are the city hall, the

Federal building, the county court house, the public library, the high

school and the St Vincent's and the Baroness Erlanger hospitals. Among

Chattanooga's educational institutions are two commercial colleges, the

Chattanooga College for Young Ladies (non-sectarian), the Chattanooga

Normal University, and the University of Chattanooga, until June 1907,

United States Grant University (whose preparatory department, "The

Athens School," is at Athens, Tenn.), a co-educational institution under

Methodist Episcopal control, established in 1867; it has a school of law

(1899), a medical school (1889), and a school of theology (1888). East

of the city is a large national cemetery containing more than 13,000

graves of Federal soldiers. Chattanooga is an important produce, lumber,

coal and iron market, and is the principal trade and jobbing centre for

a large district in Eastern Tennessee and Northern Georgia and Alabama.

The proximity of coalfields and iron mines has made Chattanooga an iron

manufacturing place of importance, its plants including car shops, blast

furnaces, foundries, agricultural implement and machinery works, and

stove factories; the city has had an important part in the development

of the iron and steel industries in this part of the South. There are

also flour mills, tanneries (United States Leather Co.), patent

medicine, furniture, coffin, woodenware and wagon factories, knitting

and spinning mills, planing mills, and sash, door and blind

factories--the lumber being obtained from logs floated down the river

and by rail. The value of the city's factory products increased from

$10,517,886 in 1900 to $15,193,909 in 1905 or 44.5%.

Chattanooga was first settled about 1835, and was long known as Ross's

Landing. It was incorporated in 1851 as Chattanooga, and received a city

charter in 1866. Its growth for the three decades after the Civil War

was very rapid. During the American Civil War it was one of the most

important strategic points in the Confederacy, and in its immediate

vicinity were fought two great battles. During June 1862 it was

threatened by a Federal force under General O.M. Mitchel, but the

Confederate army of General Braxton Bragg was transferred thither by

rail from Corinth, Miss., before Mitchel was able to advance. In

September 1863, however, General W.S. Rosecrans, with the Union Army of

the Cumberland out-manoeuvred Bragg, concentrated his numerous columns

in the Chickamauga Valley, and occupied the town, to which, after the

defeat of Chickamauga (q.v.), he retired.

From the end of September to the 24th of November the Army of the

Cumberland was then invested in Chattanooga by the Confederates, whose

position lay along Missionary Ridge from its north end near the river

towards Rossville, whence their entrenchments extended westwards to

Lookout Mountain, which dominates the whole ground, the Tennessee

running directly beneath it. Thus Rosecrans was confined to a semicircle

of low ground around Chattanooga itself, and his supplies had to make a

long and difficult _detour_ from Bridgeport, the main road being under

fire from the Confederate position on Lookout and in the Wauhatchie

valley adjacent. Bragg indeed expected that Rosecrans would be starved

into retreat. But the Federals once more, and this time on a far larger

scale, concentrated in the face of the enemy. The XI. and XII. corps

from Virginia under Hooker were transferred by rail to reinforce

Rosecrans; other troops were called up from the Mississippi, and on the

16th of October the Federal government reconstituted the western armies

under the supreme command of General Grant. The XV. corps of the Army of

the Tennessee, under Sherman, was on the march from the Mississippi.

Hooker's troops had already arrived when Grant reached Chattanooga on

the 23rd of October. The Army of the Cumberland was now under Thomas,

Rosecrans having been recalled. The first action was fought at Brown's

Ferry in the Wauhatchie valley, where Hooker executed with complete

precision a plan for the revictualling of Chattanooga, established

himself near Wauhatchie on the 28th, and repulsed a determined attack on

the same night. But Sherman was still far distant, and the Federal

forces at Knoxville, against which a large detachment of Bragg's army

under Longstreet was now sent, were in grave danger. Grant waited for

Sherman's four divisions, but prepared everything for battle in the

meantime. His plan was that Thomas in the Chattanooga lines should

contain the Confederate centre on Missionary Ridge, while Hooker on the

right at Wauhatchie was to attack Lookout Mountain, and Sherman farther

up the river was to carry out the decisive attack against Bragg's

extreme right wing at the end of Missionary Ridgg. The last marches of

the XV. corps were delayed, by stormy weather, Bragg reinforced

Longstreet, and telegraphic communication between Grant and the Federals

at Knoxville had already ceased. But Grant would not move forward

without Sherman, and the battle of Chattanooga was fought more than two

months after Chickamauga. On the 23rd of November a forward move of

Thomas's army, intended as a demonstration, developed into a serious and

successful action, whereby the first line of the Confederate centre was

driven in for some distance. Bragg was now much weakened by successive

detachments having been sent to Knoxville, and on the 24th the real

battle began. Sherman's corps was gradually brought over the river near

the mouth of Chickamauga Creek, and formed up on the east side.

[Illustration: Confederate line of defence.]

The attack began at 1 P.M. and was locally a complete success. The

heights attacked were in Sherman's hands, and fortified against

counter-attack, before nightfall. Hooker in the meanwhile had fought the

"Battle above the Clouds" on the steep face of Lookout Mountain, and

though opposed by an equal force of Confederates, had completely driven

the enemy from the mountain. The 24th then had been a day of success for

the Federals, and the decisive attack of the three armies in concert was

to take place on the 25th. But the maps deceived Grant and Sherman as

they had previously deceived Rosecrans. Sherman had captured, not the

north point of Missionary Ridge, but a detached hill, and a new and more

serious action had to be fought for the possession of Tunnel Hill, where

Bragg's right now lay strongly entrenched. The Confederates used every

effort to hold the position and all Sherman's efforts were made in vain.

Hooker, who was moving on Rossville, had not progressed far, and Bragg

was still free to reinforce his right. Grant therefore directed Thomas

to move forward on the centre to relieve the pressure on Sherman. The

Army of the Cumberland was, after all, to strike the decisive blow.

About 3.30 P.M. the centre advanced on the Confederate's trenches at the

foot of Missionary Ridge. These were carried at the first rush, and the

troops were ordered to lie down and await orders. Then occurred one of

the most dramatic episodes of the war. Suddenly, and without orders

either from Grant or the officers at the front, the whole line of the

Army of the Cumberland rose and rushed up the ridge. Two successive

lines of entrenchments were carried at once. In a short time the crest

was stormed, and after a last attempt at resistance the enemy's centre

fled in the wildest confusion. The pursuit was pressed home by the

divisional generals, notably by Sheridan. Hooker now advanced in earnest

on Rossville, and by nightfall the whole Confederate army, except the

troops on Tunnel Hill, was retreating in disorder. These too were

withdrawn in the night, and the victory of the Federals was complete.

Bragg lost 8684 men killed, wounded and prisoners out of perhaps 34,000

men engaged; Grant, with 60,000 men, lost about 6000.

CHATTEL (for derivation see CATTLE), a term used in English law as

equivalent to "personal property," that is, property which, on the death

of the owner, devolves on his executor or administrator to be

distributed (unless disposed of by will) among the next of kin according

to the Statutes of Distributions. Chattels are divided into _chattels

real_ and _chattels personal_. Chattels real are those interests in land

for which no "real action" (see ACTION) lies; estates which are less

than freehold (estates for years, at will, or by sufferance) are

chattels real. Chattels personal are such things as belong immediately

to the person of the owner, and for which, if they are injuriously

withheld from him, he has no remedy other than by a personal action.

Chattels personal are divided into _choses in possession_ and _choses in

action_ (see CHOSE).

A chattel mortgage, in United States law, is a transfer of personal

property as security for a debt or obligation in such form that the

title to the property will pass to the mortgagee upon the failure of the

mortgagor to comply with the terms of the contract. At common law a

chattel mortgage might be made without writing, and was valid as between

the parties, and even as against third parties if accompanied by

possession in the mortgagee, but in most states of the Union legislation

now requires a chattel mortgage to be in writing and duly recorded in

order to be valid against third parties. At common law a mortgage can be

given only of chattels actually in existence and belonging to the

mortgagor, though if he acquired title afterwards the mortgage would be

good as between the parties, but not as against subsequent purchasers or

creditors. In equity, on the other hand, a chattel mortgage, though not

good as a conveyance, is valid as an executory agreement.

_Goods and chattels_ is a phrase which, in its widest signification,

includes any property other than freehold. The two words, however, have

come to be synonymous, and the expression, now practically confined to

wills, means merely things movable in possession.

CHATTERIS, a market town in the Wisbech parliamentary division of

Cambridgeshire, England, 25-1/2 m. N. by W. of Cambridge by the Great

Eastern railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 4711. It lies in the

midst of the flat Fen country. The church of St Peter is principally

Decorated; and there are fragments of a Benedictine convent founded in

the 10th century and rebuilt after fire in the first half of the 14th.

The town has breweries, and engineering and rope-making works. To the

north runs the great Forty-foot Drain, also called Vermuyden's, after

the Dutch engineer whose name is associated with the fen drainage works

of the middle of the 17th century.

CHATTERJI, BANKIM CHANDRA [BANKIMACHANDRA CHATTARADH-YAYA] (1838-1894),

Indian novelist, was born in the district of the Twenty-four Parganas in

Bengal on the 27th of June 1838, and was by caste a Brahman. He was

educated at the Hugli College, at the Presidency College in Calcutta,

and at Calcutta University, where he was the first to take the degree of

B.A. (1858). He entered the Indian civil service, and served as deputy

magistrate in various districts of Bengal, his official services being

recognized, on his retirement in 1891, by the title of rai bahadur and

the C.I.E. He died on the 8th of April 1894.

Bankim Chandra was beyond question the greatest novelist of India during

the 19th century, whether judged by the amount and quality of his

writings, or by the influence which they have continued to exercise. His

education had brought him into touch with the works of the great

European romance writers, notably Sir Walter Scott, and he created in

India a school of fiction on the European model. His first historical

novel, the _Durges-Nandini_ or _Chief's Daughter_, modelled on Scott,

made a great sensation in Bengal; and the _Kapala-Kundala_ and

_Mrinalini_, which followed it, established his fame as a writer whose

creative imagination and power of delineation had never been surpassed

in India. In 1872 he brought out his first social novel, the

_Biska-Brikkha_ or _Poison Tree_, which was followed by others in rapid

succession. It is impossible to exaggerate the effect they produced; for

over twenty years Bankim Chandra's novels were eagerly read by the

educated public of Bengal, including the Hindu ladies in the zenanas;

and though numerous works of fiction are now produced year by year in

every province of India, his influence has increased rather than

diminished. Of all his works, however, by far the most important from

its astonishing political consequences was the _Ananda Math_, which was

published in 1882, about the time of the agitation arising out of the

Ilbert Bill. The story deals with the Sannyasi (i.e. fakir or hermit)

rebellion of 1772 near Purmea, Tirhut and Dinapur, and its culminating

episode is a crushing victory won by the rebels over the united British

and Mussulman forces, a success which was not, however, followed up,

owing to the advice of a mysterious "physician" who, speaking as a

divinely-inspired prophet, advises Satyananda, the leader of "the

children of the Mother," to abandon further resistance, since a

temporary submission to British rule is a necessity; for Hinduism has

become too speculative and unpractical, and the mission of the English

in India is to teach Hindus how to reconcile theory and speculation with

the facts of science. The general moral of the _Ananda Math_, then, is

that British rule and British education are to be accepted as the only

alternative to Mussulman oppression, a moral which Bankim Chandra

developed also in his _Dharmatattwa_, an elaborate religious treatise in

which he explained his views as to the changes necessary in the moral

and religious condition of his fellow-countrymen before they could hope

to compete on equal terms with the British and Mahommedans. But though

the _Ananda Math_ is in form an apology for the loyal acceptance of

British rule, it is none the less inspired by the ideal of the

restoration, sooner or later, of a Hindu kingdom in India. This is

especially evident in the occasional verses in the book, of which the

_Bande Mataram_ is the most famous.

As to the exact significance of this poem a considerable controversy has

raged. _Bande Mataram_ is the Sanskrit for "Hail to thee, Mother!" or

more literally "I reverence thee, Mother!", and according to Dr G.A.

Grierson (_The Times_, Sept. 12, 1906) it can have no other possible

meaning than an invocation of one of the "mother" goddesses of Hinduism,

in his opinion Kali "the goddess of death and destruction." Sir Henry

Cotton, on the other hand (ib. Sept. 13, 1906), sees in it merely an

invocation of the "mother-land" Bengal, and quotes in support of this

view the free translation of the poem by the late W.H. Lee, a proof

which, it may be at once said, is far from convincing. But though, as Dr

Grierson points out, the idea of a "mother-land" is wholly alien to

Hindu ideas, it is quite possible that Bankim Chandra may have

assimilated it with his European culture, and the true explanation is

probably that given by Mr J.D. Anderson in _The Times_ of September 24,

1906. He points out that in the 11th chapter of the 1st book of the

_Ananda Math_ the Sannyasi rebels are represented as having erected, in

addition to the image of Kali, "the Mother who Has Been," a white marble

statue of "the Mother that Shall Be," which "is apparently a

representation of the mother-land. The _Bande Mataram_ hymn is

apparently addressed to both idols."

The poem, then, is the work of a Hindu idealist who personified Bengal

under the form of a purified and spiritualized Kali. Of its thirty-six

lines, partly written in Sanskrit, partly in Bengali, the greater number

are harmless enough. But if the poet sings the praise of the "Mother"

"As Lachmi, bowered in the flower

That in the water grows,"

he also praises her as "Durga, bearing ten weapons," and lines 10, 11

and 12 are capable of very dangerous meanings in the mouths of

unscrupulous agitators. Literally translated these run, "She has seventy

millions of throats to sing her praise, twice seventy millions of hands

to fight for her, how then is Bengal powerless?" As S.M. Mitra points

out (_Indian Problems_, London, 1908), this language is the more

significant as the _Bande Mataram_ in the novel was the hymn by singing

which the Sannyasis gained strength when attacking the British forces.

During Bankim Chandra Chatterji's lifetime the _Bande Mataram_, though

its dangerous tendency was recognized, was not used as a party war-cry;

it was not raised, for instance, during the Ilbert Bill agitation, nor

by the students who flocked round the court during the trial of Surendra

Nath Banerji in 1883. It has, however, obtained an evil notoriety in the

agitations that followed the partition of Bengal. That Bankim Chandra

himself foresaw or desired any such use of it is impossible to believe.

According to S.M. Mitra, he composed it "in a fit of patriotic

excitement after a good hearty dinner, which he always enjoyed. It was

set to Hindu music, known as the _Mallar-Kawali-Tal_. The

extraordinarily stirring character of the air, and its ingenious

assimilation of Bengali passages with Sanskrit, served to make it

popular."

Circumstances have made the _Bande Mataram_ the most famous and the most

widespread in its effects of Bankim Chandra's literary works. More

permanent, it may be hoped, was the wholesome influence he exercised on

the number of literary men he gathered round him, who have left their

impress on the literature of Bengal. In his earlier years he served his

apprenticeship in literature under Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, the chief

poet and satirist of Bengal during the earlier half of the 19th century.

Bankim Chandra's friend and colleague, Dina Bandhu Mitra, was virtually

the founder of the modern Bengali drama. Another friend of his, Hem

Chandra Banerji, was a poet of recognized merit and talent. And among

the younger men who venerated Bankim Chandra, and benefited by his

example and advice, may be mentioned two distinguished poets, Nalein

Chandra Sen and Rabindra Nath Tagore.

Of Bankim Chandra's novels some have been translated into English by

H.A.D. Phillips and by Mrs M.S. Knight.

CHATTERTON, THOMAS (1752-1770), English poet, was born at Bristol on the

20th of November 1752. His pedigree has a curious significance. The

office of sexton of St Mary Redcliffe, at Bristol, one of the most

beautiful parish churches in England, had been transmitted for nearly

two centuries in the Chatterton family; and throughout the brief life of

the poet it was held by his uncle, Richard Phillips. The poet's father,

Thomas Chatterton, was a musical genius, somewhat of a poet, a

numismatist, and a dabbler in occult arts. He was one of the

sub-chanters of Bristol cathedral, and master of the Pyle Street free

school, near Redcliffe church. But whatever hereditary tendencies may

have been transmitted from the father, the sole training of the boy

necessarily devolved on his mother, who was in the fourth month of her

widowhood at the time of his birth. She established a girls' school,

took in sewing and ornamental needlework, and so brought up her two

children, a girl and a boy, till the latter attained his eighth year,

when he was admitted to Colston's Charity. But the Bristol blue-coat

school, in which the curriculum was limited to reading, writing,

arithmetic and the Church Catechism, had little share in the education

of its marvellous pupil. The hereditary race of sextons had come to

regard the church of St Mary Redcliffe as their own peculiar domain;

and, under the guidance of his uncle, the child found there his

favourite haunt. The knights, ecclesiastics and civic dignitaries,

recumbent on its altar tombs, became his familiar associates; and by and

by, when he was able to spell his way through the inscriptions graven on

their monuments, he found a fresh interest in certain quaint oaken

chests in the muniment room over the porch on the north side of the

nave, where parchment deeds, old as the Wars of the Roses, long lay

unheeded and forgotten. They formed the child's playthings almost from

his cradle. He learned his first letters from the illuminated capitals

of an old musical folio, and learned to read out of a black-letter

Bible. He did not like, his sister said, reading out of small books.

Wayward, as it seems, almost from his earliest years, and manifesting no

sympathy with the ordinary pastimes of children, he was regarded for a

time as deficient in intellect. But he was even then ambitious of

distinction. His sister relates that on being asked what device he would

like painted on a bowl that was to be his, he replied, "Paint me an

angel, with wings, and a trumpet, to trumpet my name over the world."

From his earliest years he was liable to fits of abstraction, sitting

for hours in seeming stupor, or yielding after a time to tears, for

which he would assign no reason. He had no one near him to sympathize in

the strange world of fancy which his imagination had already called into

being; and circumstances helped to foster his natural reserve, and to

beget that love of mystery which exercised so great an influence on the

development of his genius. When the strange child had attained his sixth

year his mother began to recognize his capacity; at eight he was so

eager for books that he would read and write all day long if

undisturbed; and in his eleventh year he had become a contributor to

_Felix Farley's Bristol Journal_. The occasion of his confirmation

inspired some religious poems published in this paper. In 1763 a

beautiful cross of curious workmanship, which had adorned the churchyard

of St Mary Redcliffe for upwards of three centuries, was destroyed by a

churchwarden. The spirit of veneration was strong in the boy, and he

sent to the local journal on the 7th of January 1764 a clever satire on

the parish Vandal. But his delight was to lock himself in a little attic

which he had appropriated as his study; and there, with books, cherished

parchments, saved from the loot of the muniment room of St Mary

Redcliffe, and drawing materials, the child lived in thought with his

15th-century heroes and heroines. The first of his literary

mystifications, the duologue of "Elinoure and Juga," was written before

he was twelve years old, and he showed his poem to the usher at

Colston's hospital, Thomas Phillips, as the work of a 15th-century poet.

Chatterton remained an inmate of Colston's hospital for upwards of six

years, and the slight advantages gained from this scanty education are

traceable to the friendly sympathy of Phillips, himself a writer of

verse, who encouraged his pupils to write. Three of Chatterton's

companions are named as youths whom Phillips's taste for poetry

stimulated to rivalry; but Chatterton held aloof from these contests,

and made at that time no confidant of his own more daring literary

adventures. His little pocket-money was spent in borrowing books from a

circulating library; and he early ingratiated himself with book

collectors, by whose aid he found access to Weever, Dugdale and Collins,

as well as to Speght's edition of Chaucer, Spenser and other books.

His "Rowleian" jargon appears to have been chiefly the result of the

study of John Kersey's _Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum_, and Prof. W. W.

Skeat seems to think his knowledge of even Chaucer was very slight. His

holidays were mostly spent at his mother's house; and much of them in

the favourite retreat of his attic study there. He had already conceived

the romance of Thomas Rowley, an imaginary monk of the 15th century, and

lived for the most part in an ideal world of his own, in that elder time

when Edward IV. was England's king, and Master William Canynge--familiar

to him among the recumbent effigies in Redcliffe church--still ruled in

Bristol's civic chair. Canynge is represented as an enlightened patron

of literature, and Rowley's dramatic interludes were written for

performance at his house. In order to escape a marriage urged by the

king, Canynge retired to the college of Westbury in Gloucestershire,

where he enjoyed the society of Rowley, and eventually became dean of

the institution. In "The Storie of William Canynge," one of the shorter

pieces of his ingenious romance, his early history is recorded.

"Straight was I carried back to times of yore,

Whilst Canynge swathed yet in fleshly bed,

And saw all actions which had been before,

And all the scroll of Fate unravelled;

And when the fate-marked babe acome to sight,

I saw him eager gasping after light.

In all his sheepen gambols and child's play,

In every merrymaking, fair, or wake,

I kenn'd a perpled light of wisdom's ray;

He ate down learning with the wastel-cake;

As wise as any of the aldermen,

He'd wit enow to make a mayor at ten."

This beautiful picture of the childhood of the ideal patron of Rowley is

in reality that of the poet himself--"the fate-marked babe," with his

wondrous child-genius, and all his romantic dreams realized. The

literary masquerade which thus constituted the life-dream of the boy was

wrought out by him in fragments of prose and verse into a coherent

romance, until the credulous scholars and antiquaries of his day were

persuaded into the belief that there had lain in the parish chest of

Redcliffe church for upwards of three centuries, a collection of MSS. of

rare merit, the work of Thomas Rowley, an unknown priest of Bristol in

the days of Henry VI. and his poet laureate, John Lydgate.

Among the Bristol patrons of Chatterton were two pewterers, George

Catcott and his partner Henry Burgum. Catcott was one of the most

zealous believers in Rowley, and continued to collect his reputed

writings long after the death of their real author. On Burgum, who had

risen in life by his own exertions, the blue-coat boy palmed off the de

Bergham pedigree, and other equally apocryphal evidences of the

pewterer's descent from an ancestry old as the Norman Conquest. The de

Bergham quartering, blazoned on a piece of parchment doubtless recovered

from the Redcliffe muniment chest, was itself supposed to have lain for

centuries in that ancient depository. The pedigree was professedly

collected by Chatterton from original records, including "The Rowley

MSS." The pedigree still exists in Chatterton's own handwriting, copied

into a book in which he had previously transcribed portions of antique

verse, under the title of "Poems by Thomas Rowley, priest of St. John's,

in the city of Bristol"; and in one of these, "The Tournament," Syrr

Johan de Berghamme plays a conspicuous part. The ennobled pewterer

rewarded Chatterton with five shillings, and was satirized for this

valuation of a noble pedigree in some of Chatterton's latest verse.

On the 1st of July 1767, Chatterton was transferred to the office of

John Lambert, attorney, to whom he was bound apprentice as a clerk.

There he was left much alone; and after fulfilling the routine duties

devolving on him, he found leisure for his own favourite pursuits. An

ancient stone bridge on the Avon, built in the reign of Henry II., and

altered by many later additions into a singularly picturesque but

inconvenient thoroughfare, had been displaced by a structure better

adapted to modern requirements. In September 1768, when Chatterton was

in the second year of his apprenticeship, the new bridge was partially

opened for traffic. Shortly afterwards the editor of _Felix Farley's

Journal_ received from a correspondent, signing himself _Dunelmus

Bristoliensis_, a "description of the mayor's first passing over the old

bridge," professedly derived from an ancient MS. William Barrett,

F.S.A., surgeon and antiquary, who was then accumulating materials for a

history of Bristol, secured the original manuscript, which is now

preserved in the British Museum, along with other Chatterton MSS., most

of which were ultimately incorporated by the credulous antiquary into a

learned quarto volume, entitled the _History and Antiquities of the City

of Bristol_, published nearly twenty years after the poet's death. It

was at this time that the definite story made its appearance--over

which critics and antiquaries wrangled for nearly a century--of

numerous ancient poems and other MSS. taken by the elder Chatterton from

a coffer in the muniment room of Redcliffe church, and transcribed, and

so rescued from oblivion, by his son. The pieces include the "Bristowe

Tragedie, or the Dethe of Syr Charles Bawdin," a ballad celebrating the

death of the Lancastrian knight, Charles Baldwin; "Aella," a "Tragycal

Enterlude," as Chatterton styles it, but in reality a dramatic poem of

sustained power and curious originality of structure; "Goddwyn," a

dramatic fragment; "Tournament," "Battle of Hastings," "The Parliament

of Sprites," "Balade of Charitie," with numerous shorter pieces, forming

altogether a volume of poetry, the rare merit of which is indisputable,

wholly apart from the fact that it was the production of a mere boy.

Unfortunately for him, his ingenious romance had either to be

acknowledged as his own creation, and so in all probability be treated

with contempt, or it had to be sustained by the manufacture of spurious

antiques. To this accordingly Chatterton resorted, and found no

difficulty in gulling the most learned of his credulous dupes with his

parchments.

The literary labours of the boy, though diligently pursued at his desk,

were not allowed to interfere with the duties of Mr Lambert's office.

Nevertheless the Bristol attorney used to search his apprentice's

drawer, and tear up any poems or other manuscripts that he could lay his

hands upon; so that it was only during the absences of Mr Lambert from

Bristol that he was able to expend his unemployed time in his favourite

pursuits. But repeated allusions, both by Chatterton and others, seem to

indicate that such intervals of freedom were of frequent occurrence.

Some of his modern poems, such as the piece entitled "Resignation," are

of great beauty; and these, with the satires, in which he took his

revenge on all the local celebrities whose vanity or meanness had

excited his ire, are alone sufficient to fill a volume. The Catcotts,

Burgum, Barrett and others of his patrons, figure in these satires, in

imprudent yet discriminating caricature, along with mayor, aldermen,

bishop, dean and other notabilities of Bristol. Towards Lambert his

feelings were of too keen a nature to find relief in such sarcasm.

In December 1768, in his seventeenth year, he wrote to Dodsley, the

London publisher, offering to procure for him "copies of several ancient

poems, and an interlude, perhaps the oldest dramatic piece extant, wrote

by one Rowley, a priest in Bristol, who lived in the reigns of Henry VI.

and Edward IV." To this letter he appended the initials of his favourite

pseudonym, _Dunelmus Bristoliensis_, but directed the answer to be sent

to the care of Thomas Chatterton, Redcliffe Hill, Bristol. To this, as

well as to another letter enclosing an extract from the tragedy of

"Aella," no answer appears to have been returned. Chatterton, conceiving

the idea of finding sympathy and aid at the hand of some modern Canynge,

bethought him of Horace Walpole, who not only indulged in a medieval

renaissance of his own, but was the reputed author of a spurious antique

in the _Castle of Otranto_. He wrote to him offering him a document

entitled "The Ryse of Peyncteyne yn Englande, wroten by T. Rowleie,

1469, for Mastre Canynge," accompanied by notes which included specimens

of Rowley's poetry. To this Walpole replied with courteous

acknowledgments. He characterized the verses as "wonderful for their

harmony and spirit," and added, "Give me leave to ask you where Rowley's

poems are to be had? I should not be sorry to print them; or at least a

specimen of them, if they have never been printed." Chatterton replied,

enclosing additional specimens of antique verse, and telling Walpole

that he was the son of a poor widow, and clerk to an attorney, but had a

taste for more refined studies; and he hinted a wish that he might help

him to some more congenial occupation. Walpole's manner underwent an

abrupt change. The specimens of verse had been submitted to his friends

Gray and Mason, the poets, and pronounced modern. They did not thereby

forfeit the wonderful harmony and spirit which Walpole had already

professed to recognize in them. But he now coldly advised the boy to

stick to the attorney's office; and "when he should have made a

fortune," he might betake himself to more favourite studies, Chatterton

had to write three times before he recovered his MSS. Walpole has been

loaded with more than his just share of responsibility for the fate of

the unhappy poet, of whom he admitted when too late, "I do not believe

there ever existed so masterly a genius."

Chatterton now turned his attention to periodical literature and

politics, and exchanged _Felix Farley's Bristol Journal_ for the _Town

and County Magazine_ and other London periodicals. Assuming the vein of

Junius--then in the full blaze of his triumph--he turned his pen against

the duke of Grafton, the earl of Bute, and the princess of Wales. He had

just despatched one of his political diatribes to the _Middlesex

Journal_, when he sat down on Easter Eve, I7th April 1770, and penned

his "Last Will and Testament," a strange satirical compound of jest and

earnest, in which he intimated his intention of putting an end to his

life the following evening. Among his satirical bequests, such as his

"humility" to the Rev. Mr Camplin, his "religion" to Dean Barton, and

his "modesty" along with his "prosody and grammar" to Mr Burgum, he

leaves "to Bristol all his spirit and disinterestedness, parcels of

goods unknown on its quay since the days of Canynge and Rowley." In more

genuine earnestness he recalls the name of Michael Clayfield, a friend

to whom he owed intelligent sympathy. The will was probably purposely

prepared in order to frighten his master into letting him go. If so, it

had the desired effect. Lambert cancelled his indentures; his friends

and acquaintance made him up a purse; and on the 25th or 26th of the

month he arrived in London.

Chatterton was already known to the readers of the _Middlesex Journal_

as a rival of Junius, under the _nom de plume_ of Decimus. He had also

been a contributor to Hamilton's _Town and County Magazine_, and

speedily found access to the _Freeholder's Magazine_, another political

miscellany strong for Wilkes and liberty. His contributions were freely

accepted; but the editors paid little or nothing for them. He wrote in

the most hopeful terms to his mother and sister, and spent his first

earnings in buying gifts for them. His pride and ambition were amply

gratified by the promises and interested flattery of editors and

political adventurers; Wilkes himself had noted his trenchant style,

"and expressed a desire to know the author"; and Lord Mayor Beckford

graciously acknowledged a political address of his, and greeted him "as

politely as a citizen could." But of actual money he received but

little. He was extremely abstemious, his diligence was great, and his

versatility wonderful. He could assume the style of Junius or Smollett,

reproduce the satiric bitterness of Churchill, parody Macpherson's

Ossian, or write in the manner of Pope, or with the polished grace of

Gray and Collins. He wrote political letters, eclogues, lyrics, operas

and satires, both in prose and verse. In June 1770--after Chatterton had

been some nine weeks in London--he removed from Shoreditch, where he had

hitherto lodged with a relative, to an attic in Brook Street, Holborn.

But for most of his productions the payment was delayed; and now state

prosecutions of the press rendered letters in the Junius vein no longer

admissible, and threw him back on the lighter resources of his pen. In

Shoreditch, as in his lodging at the Bristol attorney's, he had only

shared a room; but now, for the first time, he enjoyed uninterrupted

solitude. His bed-fellow at Mr Walmsley's, Shoreditch, noted that much

of the night was spent by him in writing; and now he could write all

night. The romance of his earlier years revived, and he transcribed from

an imaginary parchment of the old priest Rowley his "Excelente Balade of

Charitie." This fine poem, perversely disguised in archaic language, he

sent to the editor of the _Town and County Magazine_, and had it

rejected.

The high hopes of the sanguine boy had begun to fade. He had not yet

completed his second month in London, and already failure and starvation

stared him in the face. Mr Cross, a neighbouring apothecary, repeatedly

invited him to join him at dinner or supper; but he refused. His

landlady also, suspecting his necessity, pressed him to share her

dinner, but in vain. "She knew," as she afterwards said, "that he had

not eaten anything for two or three days." But he was offended at her

urgency, and assured her that he was not hungry. The note of his actual

receipts, found in his pocket-book after his death, shows that

Hamilton, Fell and other editors who had been so liberal in flattery,

had paid him at the rate of a shilling for an article, and somewhat less

than eightpence each for his songs; while much which had been accepted

was held in reserve, and still unpaid for. The beginning of a new month

revealed to him the indefinite postponement of the publication and

payment of his work. He had wished, according to his foster-mother, to

study medicine with Barrett; in his desperation he now reverted to this,

and wrote to Barrett for a letter to help him to an opening as a

surgeon's assistant on board an African trader. He appealed also to Mr

Catcott to forward his plan, but in vain. On the 24th of August 1770, he

retired for the last time to his attic in Brook Street, carrying with

him the arsenic which he there drank, after tearing into fragments

whatever literary remains were at hand.

He was only seventeen years and nine months old; but the best of his

numerous productions, both in prose and verse, require no allowance to

be made for the immature years of their author, when comparing him with

the ablest of his contemporaries. He pictures Lydgate, the monk of Bury

St Edmunds, challenging Rowley to a trial at versemaking, and under

cover of this fiction, produces his "Songe of Aella," a piece of rare

lyrical beauty, worthy of comparison with any antique or modern

production of its class. Again, in his "Tragedy of Goddwyn," of which

only a fragment has been preserved, the "Ode to Liberty," with which it

abruptly closes, may claim a place among the finest martial lyrics in

the language. The collection of poems in which such specimens occur

furnishes by far the most remarkable example of intellectual precocity

in the whole history of letters. Collins, Burns, Keats, Shelley and

Byron all awaken sorrow over the premature arrestment of their genius;

but the youngest of them survived to his twenty-fifth year, while

Chatterton was not eighteen when he perished in his miserable garret.

The death of Chatterton attracted little notice at the time; for the few

who then entertained any appreciative estimate of the Rowley poems

regarded him as their mere transcriber. He was interred in a

burying-ground attached to Shoe Lane Workhouse, in the parish of St

Andrew's, Holborn, which has since been converted into a site for

Farringdon Market. There is a discredited story that the body of the

poet was recovered, and secretly buried by his uncle, Richard Phillips,

in Redcliffe Churchyard. There a monument has since been erected to his

memory, with the appropriate inscription, borrowed from his "Will," and

so supplied by the poet's own pen--"To the memory of Thomas Chatterton.

Reader! judge not. If thou art a Christian, believe that he shall be

judged by a Superior Power. To that Power only is he now answerable."

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--_Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by

Thomas Rowley and others, in the Fifteenth Century_ (1777) was edited

by Thomas Tyrwhitt; Thomas Warton, in his _History of English Poetry_

(1778), vol. ii. section viii., gives Rowley a place among the 15th

century poets; but neither of these critics believed in the antiquity

of the poems. In 1782 a new edition of Rowley's poems appeared, with a

"Commentary, in which the antiquity of them is considered and

defended," by Jeremiah Milles, dean of Exeter. The controversy which

raged round the Rowley poems is discussed in A. Kippis, _Biographia

Britannica_ (vol. iv., 1789), where there is a detailed account by G.

Gregory of Chatterton's life (pp. 573-619). This was reprinted in the

edition (1803) of Chatterton's _Works_ by R. Southey and J. Cottle,

published for the benefit of the poet's sister. The neglected

condition of the study of earlier English in the 18th century alone

accounts for the temporary success of Chatterton's mystification. It

has long been agreed that Chatterton was solely responsible for the

Rowley Poems, but the language and style are analysed in confirmation

of this view by Prof. W.W. Skeat in an introductory essay prefaced to

vol. ii. of _The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton_ (1871) in the

"Aldine Edition of the British Poets." This, which is the most

convenient edition, also contains a memoir of the poet by Edward Bell.

The spelling of the Rowley poems is there modernized, and many of the

archaic words are replaced by modern equivalents provided in many

cases from Chatterton's own notes, the theory being that Chatterton

usually composed in modern English, and inserted his peculiar words

and his complicated orthography afterwards. For some criticism of

Prof. Skeat's success in the very difficult task of reconstituting the

text, see H.B. Forman, _Thomas Chatterton and his latest Editor_

(1874). The Chatterton MSS., originally in the possession of William

Barrett of Bristol, were left by his heir to the British Museum in

1800. Others are preserved in the Bristol library.

Chatterton's genius and his tragic death are commemorated by Shelley

in _Adonais_, by Wordsworth in "Resolution and Independence," by

Coleridge in "A Monody on the Death of Chatterton," by D.G. Rossetti

in "Five English Poets," and John Keats inscribed _Endymion_ "to the

memory of Thomas Chatterton." Alfred de Vigny's drama of _Chatterton_

gives an altogether fictitious account of the poet. Herbert Croft

(q.v.), in his _Love and Madness_, interpolated a long and valuable

account of Chatterton, giving many of the poet's letters, and much

information obtained from his family and friends (pp. 125-244, letter

li.). There is a valuable collection of "Chattertoniana" in the

British Museum, consisting of separate works by Chatterton, newspaper

cuttings, articles, dealing with the Rowley controversy and other

subjects, with MS. notes by Joseph Haslewood, and several autograph

letters.

Among biographies of Chatterton may be mentioned _Chatterton: A

Biographical Study_ (1869), by Daniel Wilson; _Chatterton: A

Biography_ (1899; first printed 1856 in a volume of essays), by D.

Masson; "Thomas Chatterton" (1900), by Helene Richter, in _Wiener

Beitrage zur engl. Philologie; Chatterton_, by C.E. Russell (1909).

CHATTI, an ancient German tribe inhabiting the upper reaches of the

rivers Weser, Eder, Fulda and Werra, a district approximately

corresponding to Hesse-Cassel, though probably somewhat more extensive.

They frequently came into conflict with the Romans during the early

years of the 1st century. Eventually they formed a portion of the Franks

and were incorporated in the kingdom of Clovis probably with the

Ripuarii, at the beginning of the 6th century.

Tacitus, _Annals_, i. 2, II, 12, 13; _Germania_, 30-31; Strabo p. 291 f.