[1] See Hallam, _Const. Hist._ vol. i., c. vii. (12th ed.) p. 384.
[2] Hallam, _Const. Hist._ vol. ii., c. viii. (12th ed.) p. 2.
[3] _Ibid._ c. ix. (12th ed.) p. 98.
[4] _Ibid._ vol. iii., c. xiii. (12th ed.) p. 12.
[5] Dicey, _Law of the Constitution_ (6th ed.), p. 217.
[6] Dicey, Law of the Constitution (6th ed.), p. 195.
HABERDASHER, a name for a tradesman who sells by retail small articles
used in the making or wearing of dress, such as sewing cottons or silks,
tapes, buttons, pins and needles and the like. The sale of such articles
is not generally carried on alone, and a "haberdashery counter" usually
forms a department of drapers' shops. The word, found in Chaucer, and
even earlier (1311), is of obscure origin; the suggestion that it is
connected with an Icelandic _haprtask_, "haversack," is, according to
the _New English Dictionary_, impossible. _Haperlas_ occurs in an early
Anglo-French customs list, which includes articles such as were sold by
haberdashers, but this word may itself have been a misspelling of
"haberdash." The obscurity of origin has left room for many conjectures
such as that of Minsheu that "haberdasher" was perhaps merely a
corruption of the German _Habt ihr das?_ "Have you that?" or _Habe das,
Herr_, "Have that, sir," used descriptively for a general dealer in
miscellaneous wares. The Haberdashers' Company is one of the greater
Livery Companies of the City of London. Originally a branch of the
mercers, the fraternity took over the selling of "small wares," which
included not only articles similar to those sold as "haberdashery" now,
but such things as gloves, daggers, glass, pens, lanterns, mousetraps
and the like. They were thus on this side connected with the Milliners.
On the other hand there was early a fusion with the old gild of the
"Hurers," or cap makers, and the hatters, and by the reign of Henry VII.
the amalgamation was complete. There were long recognized two branches
of the haberdashers, the haberdashers of "small wares," and the
haberdashers of hats (see further LIVERY COMPANIES). The haberdashers
are named, side by side with the _capellarii_, in the White Book (_Liber
Albus_) of the city of London (see _Munimenta Gildhallae Londiniensis_,
ed. H. T. Riley, Rolls Series, 12, 1859-1862), and a haberdasher forms
one of the company of pilgrims in the _Canterbury Tales_ (Prologue,
361).
HABINGTON, WILLIAM (1605-1654), English poet, was born at Hendlip Hall,
Worcestershire, on the 4th of November 1605. He belonged to a well-known
Catholic family. His father, Thomas Habington (1560-1647), an antiquary
and historical scholar, had been implicated in the plots on behalf of
Mary queen of Scots; his uncle, Edward Habington, was hanged in 1586 on
the charge of conspiring against Elizabeth in connexion with Anthony
Babington; while to his mother, Mary Habington, was attributed the
revelation of the Gunpowder Plot. The poet was sent to the college at St
Omer, but, pressure being brought to bear on him to induce him to become
a Jesuit, he removed to Paris. He married about 1632 Lucy, second
daughter of Sir William Herbert, first Baron Powys. This lady he had
addressed in the volume of lyrical poems arranged in two parts and
entitled _Castara_, published anonymously in 1634. In 1635 appeared a
second edition enlarged by three prose characters, fourteen new lyrics
and eight touching elegies on his friend and kinsman, George Talbot. The
third edition (1640) contains a third part consisting of a prose
character of "A Holy Man" and twenty-two devotional poems. Habington's
lyrics are full of the far-fetched "conceits" which were fashionable at
court, but his verse is quite free from the prevailing looseness of
morals. Indeed his reiterated praises of Castara's virtue grow
wearisome. He is at his best in his reflective poems on the uncertainty
of human life and kindred topics. He also wrote a _Historie of Edward
the Fourth_ (1640), based on notes provided by his father; a
tragi-comedy, _The Queene of Arragon_ (1640), published without his
consent by his kinsman, the earl of Pembroke, and revived at the
Restoration; and six essays on events in modern history, _Observations
upon History_ (1641). Anthony a Wood insinuated that during the
Commonwealth the poet "did run with the times, and was not unknown to
Oliver the usurper." He died on the 30th of November 1654.
The works of Habington have not been collected. _The Queene of
Arragon_ was reprinted in Dodsley's "Old Plays," vol. ix. (1825);
_Castara_ was edited by Charles Elton (1812), and by E. Arber with a
compact and comprehensive introduction (1870) for his "English
Reprints."
HABIT (through the French from Lat. _habitus_, from _habere_, to have,
hold, or, in a reflective sense, to be in a certain condition; in many
of the English senses the French use _habitude_, not _habit_), condition
of body or mind, especially one that has become permanent or settled by
custom or persistent repetition, hence custom, usage. In botany and
zoology the term is used both in the above sense of instinctive action
of animals and tendencies of plants, and also of the manner of growth
or external appearance of a plant or animal. From the use of the word
for external appearances comes its use for fashion in dress, and hence
as a term for a lady's riding dress and for the particular form of
garment adopted by the members of a religious order, like "cowl" applied
as the mark of a monk or nun.
HABITAT (a French word derived from _habiter_, Lat. _habitare_, to
dwell), in botany and zoology, the term for the locality in which a
particular species of plants or animals thrives.
HABSBURG, or HAPSBURG, the name of the famous family from which have
sprung the dukes and archdukes of Austria from 1282, kings of Hungary
and Bohemia from 1526, and emperors of Austria from 1804. They were also
Roman emperors and German kings from 1438 to 1806, and kings of Spain
from 1516 to 1700, while the minor dignities held by them at different
times are too numerous to mention.
The name Habsburg, a variant of an older form, Habichtsburg (hawk's
castle), was taken from the castle of Habsburg, which was situated on
the river Aar not far from its junction with the Rhine. The castle was
built about 1020 by Werner, bishop of Strassburg, and his brother,
Radbot, the founder of the abbey of Muri. These men were grandsons of a
certain Guntram, who, according to some authorities, is identical with a
Count Guntram who flourished during the reign of the emperor Otto the
Great, and whose ancestry can be traced back to the time of the
Merovingian kings. This conjecture, however, is extremely problematical.
Among Radbot's sons was one Werner, and Werner and his son Otto were
called counts of Habsburg, Otto being probably made landgrave of upper
Alsace late in the 11th or early in the 12th century. At all events
Otto's son Werner (d. 1167), and the latter's son Albert (d. 1199), held
this dignity, and both landgraves increased the area of the Habsburg
lands. Albert became count of Zurich and protector of the monastery of
Sackingen, and obtained lands in the cantons of Unterwalden and Lucerne;
his son Rudolph, having assisted Frederick of Hohenstaufen, afterwards
the emperor Frederick II., against the emperor Otto IV., received the
county of Aargau. Both counts largely increased their possessions in the
districts now known as Switzerland and Alsace, and Rudolph held an
influential place among the Swabian nobility. After his death in 1232
his two sons, Albert and Rudolph, divided his lands and founded the
lines of Habsburg-Habsburg and Habsburg-Laufenburg. Rudolph's
descendants, counts of Habsburg-Laufenburg, were soon divided into two
branches, one of which became extinct in 1408 and the other seven years
later. Before this date, however, Laufenburg and some other districts
had been sold to the senior branch of the family, who thus managed to
retain the greater part of the Habsburg lands.
Rudolph's brother Albert (d. 1239), landgrave of Alsace, married Hedwig
of Kyburg (d. 1260), and from this union there was born in 1218 Rudolph,
the founder of the greatness of the house of Habsburg, and the first of
the family to ascend the German throne. Through his mother he inherited
a large part of the lands of the extinct family of Zahringen; he added
in other ways to his possessions, and was chosen German king in
September 1273. Acting vigorously in his new office, he defeated and
killed his most formidable adversary, Ottakar II., king of Bohemia, in
1278, and in December 1282 he invested his sons, Albert and Rudolph,
with the duchies of Austria and Styria, which with other lands had been
taken from Ottakar. This was an event of supreme moment in the history
of the Habsburgs, and was the first and most important stage in the
process of transferring the centre of their authority from western to
eastern Europe, from the Rhine to the Danube. On Rudolph's death in July
1291 the German crown passed for a time away from the Habsburgs, but in
July 1298 it was secured by his son, Albert, whose reign, however, was
short and uneventful. But before 1308, the year of Albert's death, the
long and troubled connexion of the Habsburgs with Bohemia had already
begun. In 1306 Wenceslas III., the last Bohemian king of the
P[vr]myslide dynasty, was murdered. Seizing the opportunity and
declaring that the vacant kingdom was an imperial fief, King Albert
bestowed it upon his eldest son, Rudolph, and married this prince to
Elizabeth, widow of Wenceslas II. and stepmother of Wenceslas III. But
Rudolph died in 1307, and his father's attempt to keep the country in
his own hands was ended by his murder in 1308.
Albert's successor as German king was Henry of Luxemburg (the emperor
Henry VII.), and this election may be said to initiate the long rivalry
between the houses of Habsburg and Luxemburg. But the immediate enemy of
the Habsburgs was not a Luxemburg but a Wittelsbach. Without making any
definite partition, Albert's five remaining sons spent their time in
governing their lands until 1314, when one of them, Frederick called the
Fair, forsook this comparatively uneventful occupation and was chosen by
a minority of the electors German king in succession to Henry VII. At
the same time the Wittelsbach duke of Bavaria, Louis, known to history
as the emperor Louis the Bavarian, was also chosen. War was inevitable,
and the battle of Muhldorf, fought in September 1322, sealed the fate of
Frederick. Louis was victorious: his rival went into an honourable
captivity, and the rising Habsburg sun underwent a temporary eclipse.
For more than a century after Frederick's death in 1330 the Habsburgs
were exiles from the German throne. But they were not inactive. In 1335
his two surviving brothers, Albert and Otto, inherited Carinthia and
part of Carniola by right of their mother, Elizabeth; in 1363 Albert's
son Rudolph received Tirol; and during the same century part of Istria,
Trieste and other districts were acquired. All King Albert's six sons
had died without leaving male issue save Otto, whose family became
extinct in 1344, and Albert, the ancestor of all the later Habsburgs. Of
Albert's four sons two also left no male heirs, but the remaining two,
Albert III. and Leopold III., were responsible for a division of the
family which is of some importance. By virtue of a partition made upon
their brother Rudolph's death in 1365 Albert and his descendants ruled
over Austria, while Leopold and his sons took Styria, Carinthia and
Tirol, Alsace remaining undivided as heretofore.
Towards the middle of the 15th century the German throne had been
occupied for nearly a hundred years by members of the Luxemburg family.
The reigning emperor Sigismund, who was also king of Hungary and
Bohemia, was without sons, and his daughter Elizabeth was the wife of
Albert of Habsburg, the grandson and heir of Duke Albert III., who had
died in 1395. Sigismund died in December 1437, leaving his two kingdoms
to his son-in-law, who was crowned king of Hungary in January 1438 and
king of Bohemia in the following June. Albert was also chosen and
crowned German king in succession to Sigismund, thus beginning the long
and uninterrupted connexion of his family with the imperial throne, a
connexion which lasted until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in
1806. He did not, however, enjoy his new dignities for long, as he died
in October 1439 while engaged in a struggle with the Turks. Albert left
no sons, but soon after his death one was born to him, called Ladislaus,
who became duke of Austria and king of Hungary and Bohemia. Under the
guardianship of his kinsman, the emperor Frederick III., the young
prince's reign was a troubled one, and when he died unmarried in 1457
his branch of the family became extinct, and Hungary and Bohemia passed
away from the Habsburgs, who managed, however, to retain Austria.
Leopold III., duke of Carinthia and Styria, who was killed in 1386 at
the battle of Sempach, had four sons, of whom two only, Frederick and
Ernest, left male issue. Frederick and his only son, Sigismund, confined
their attention mainly to Tirol and Alsace, leaving the larger destinies
of the family in the hands of Ernest of Carinthia and Styria (d. 1424)
and his sons, Frederick and Albert and after the death of King Ladislaus
in 1457 these two princes and their cousin Sigismund were the only
representatives of the Habsburgs. In February 1440 Frederick of Styria
was chosen German king in succession to his kinsman Albert. He was a
weak and incompetent ruler, but a stronger and abler man might have
shrunk from the task of administering his heterogeneous and unruly
realm. Although very important in the history of the house of Habsburg,
Frederick's long reign was a period of misfortune, and the motto which
he assumed, A.E.I.O.U. (_Austriae est imperare orbi universo_), seemed
at the time a particularly foolish boast. He acted as guardian both to
Ladislaus of Hungary, Bohemia and Austria, and to Sigismund of Tirol,
and in all these countries his difficulties were increased by the
hostility of his brother Albert. Having disgusted the Tirolese he gave
up the guardianship of their prince in 1446, while in Hungary and
Bohemia he did absolutely nothing to establish the authority of his
ward; in 1452 the Austrians besieged him in Vienna Neustadt and
compelled him to surrender the person of Ladislaus, thus ending even his
nominal authority. When the young king died in 1457 the Habsburgs lost
Hungary and Bohemia, but they retained Austria, which, after some
disputing, Frederick and Albert divided between themselves, the former
taking lower and the latter upper Austria. This arrangement was of short
duration. In 1461 Albert made war upon his brother and forced him to
resign lower Austria, which, however, he recovered after Albert's death
in December 1463. Still more unfortunate was the German king in
Switzerland. For many years the Swiss had chafed under the rule of the
Habsburgs; during the reign of Rudolph I. they had shown signs of
resentment as the kingly power increased; and the struggle which had
been carried on for nearly two centuries had been almost uniformly in
their favour. It was marked by the victory of Morgarten over Duke
Leopold I. in 1315, and by that of Sempach over Leopold III. in 1386, by
the conquest of Aargau at the instigation of the emperor Sigismund early
in the 15th century, and by the final struggle for freedom against
Frederick III. and Sigismund of Tirol. Taking advantage of some
dissensions among the Swiss, the king saw an opportunity to recover his
lost lands, and in 1443 war broke out. But his allies, the men of
Zurich, were defeated, and when in August 1444 some French mercenaries,
who had advanced to his aid, suffered the same fate at St Jakob, he was
compelled to give up the struggle. A few years later Sigismund became
involved in a war with the same formidable foemen; he too was worsted,
and the "Perpetual Peace" of 1474 ended the rule of the Habsburgs in
Switzerland. This humiliation was the second great step in the process
of removing the Habsburgs from western to eastern Europe. In 1453, just
after his coronation as emperor at Rome, Frederick legalized the use of
the title archduke, which had been claimed spasmodically by the
Habsburgs since 1361. This title is now peculiar to the house of
Habsburg.
The reverses suffered by the Habsburgs during the reign of Frederick
III. were many and serious, but an improvement was at hand. The emperor
died in August 1493, and was followed on the imperial throne by his son
Maximilian I., perhaps the most versatile and interesting member of the
family. Before his father's death Maximilian had been chosen German
king, or king of the Romans, and had begun to repair the fortunes of his
house. He had married Mary, daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold,
duke of Burgundy; he had driven the Hungarians from Vienna and the
Austrian archduchies, which Frederick had, perforce, allowed them to
occupy; and he had received Tirol on the abdication of Sigismund in
1490. True it is that upon Mary's death in 1482 part of her inheritance,
the rich and prosperous Netherlands, held that her husband's authority
was at an end, while another part, the two Burgundies and Artois, had
been seized by the king of France; nevertheless, after a protracted
struggle the German king secured almost the whole of Charles the Bold's
lands for his son, the archduke Philip, the duchy of Burgundy alone
remaining in the power of France after the conclusion of the peace of
Senlis in 1493. Maximilian completed his work by adding a piece of
Bavaria, Gorz and then Gradiska to the Habsburg lands.
After Sigismund's death in 1496 Maximilian and Philip were the only
living male members of the family. Philip married Joanna, daughter of
Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and died in 1506 leaving two sons,
Charles and Ferdinand. Charles succeeded his father in the Netherlands;
he followed one grandfather, Ferdinand, as king of Spain in 1516, and
when the other, Maximilian, died in 1519 he became the emperor Charles
V., and succeeded to all the hereditary lands of the Habsburgs. But
provision had to be made for Ferdinand, and in 1521 this prince was
given the Austrian archduchies, Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola;
in the same year he married Anne, daughter of Wladislaus, king of
Hungary and Bohemia, and when his childless brother-in-law, King Louis,
was killed at the battle of Mohacs in August 1526 he claimed the two
kingdoms, both by right of his wife and by treaty. After a little
trouble Bohemia passed under his rule, but Hungary was more
recalcitrant. A long war took place between Ferdinand and John Zapolya,
who was also crowned king of Hungary, but in 1538 a treaty was made and
the country was divided, the Habsburg prince receiving the western and
smaller portion. However, he was soon confronted with a more formidable
foe, and he spent a large part of his subsequent life in defending his
lands from the attacks of the Turks.
The Habsburgs had now reached the summit of their power. The prestige
which belonged to Charles as head of the Holy Roman Empire was backed by
the wealth and commerce of the Netherlands and of Spain, and by the
riches of the Spanish colonies in America. In Italy he ruled over
Sardinia, Naples and Sicily, which had passed to him with Spain, and the
duchy of Milan, which he had annexed in 1535; to the Netherlands he had
added Friesland, the bishopric of Utrecht, Groningen and Gelderland, and
he still possessed Franche-Comte and the fragments of the Habsburg lands
in Alsace and the neighbourhood. Add to this Ferdinand's inheritance,
the Austrian archduchies and Tirol, Bohemia with her dependent
provinces, and a strip of Hungary, and the two brothers had under their
sway a part of Europe the extent of which was great, but the wealth and
importance of which were immeasurably greater. Able to scorn the rivalry
of the other princely houses of Germany, the Habsburgs saw in the kings
of the house of Valois the only foemen worthy of their regard.
When Charles V. abdicated he was succeeded as emperor, not by his son
Philip, but by his brother Ferdinand. Philip became king of Spain,
ruling also the Netherlands, Franche-Comte, Naples, Sicily, Milan and
Sardinia, and the family was definitely divided into the Spanish and
Austrian branches. For Spain and the Spanish Habsburgs the 17th century
was a period of loss and decay, the seeds of which were sown during the
reign of Philip II. The northern provinces of the Netherlands were lost
practically in 1609 and definitely by the treaty of Westphalia in 1648;
Roussillon and Artois were annexed to France by the treaty of the
Pyrenees in 1659, while Franche-Comte and a number of towns in the
Spanish Netherlands suffered a similar fate by the treaty of Nijmwegen
in 1678. Finally Charles II., the last Habsburg king of Spain, died
childless in November 1700, and his lands were the prize of the War of
the Spanish Succession. The Austrian Habsburgs fought long and valiantly
for the kingdom of their kinsman, but Louis XIV. was too strong for
them, and by the peace of Rastatt Spain passed from the Habsburgs to the
Bourbons. However, the Austrian branch of the family received in 1714
the Italian possessions of Charles II., except Sicily, which was given
to the duke of Savoy, and also the southern Netherlands, which are thus
often referred to as the Austrian Netherlands; and retained the duchy of
Mantua, which it had seized in 1708.
Ferdinand I., the founder of the line of the Austrian Habsburgs,
arranged a division of his lands among his three sons before his death
in 1564. The eldest, Maximilian II., received Austria, Bohemia and
Hungary, and succeeded his father as emperor; he married Maria, a
daughter of Charles V., and though he had a large family his male line
became extinct in 1619. The younger sons were Ferdinand, ruler of Tirol,
and Charles, archduke of Styria. The emperor Maximilian II. left five
sons, two of whom, Rudolph and Matthias, succeeded in turn to the
imperial throne, but, as all the brothers were without male issue, the
family was early in the 17th century threatened with a serious crisis.
Rudolph died in 1612, the reigning emperor Matthias was old and ill, and
the question of the succession to the Empire, to the kingdoms of
Hungary and Bohemia, and to the hereditary lands of the Habsburgs became
acute. Turning to the collateral branches of the family, the sons of the
archduke Ferdinand were debarred from the succession owing to their
father's morganatic marriage with Philippine Welser, and the only hope
of the house was in the sons of Charles of Styria. To prevent the
Habsburg monarchy from falling to pieces the emperor's two surviving
brothers renounced their rights, and it was decided that Ferdinand, a
son of Charles of Styria, should succeed his cousin Matthias. The
difficulties which impeded the completion of this scheme were gradually
overcome, and the result was that when Matthias died in 1619 the whole
of the lands of the Austrian Habsburgs was united under the rule of the
emperor Ferdinand II. Tirol, indeed, a few years later was separated
from the rest of the monarchy and given to the emperor's brother, the
archduke Leopold, but this separation was ended when Leopold's son died
in 1665.
The arbitrary measures which followed Ferdinand's acquisition of the
Bohemian crown contributed to the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, but
in a short time the Bohemians were subdued, and in 1627, following a
precedent set in 1547, the emperor declared the throne hereditary in the
house of Habsburg. The treaty of Westphalia which ended this war took
comparatively little from the Habsburgs, though they ceded Alsace to
France; but the Empire was greatly weakened, and its ruler was more than
ever compelled to make his hereditary lands in the east of Europe the
base of his authority, finding that he derived more strength from his
position as archduke of Austria than from that of emperor. Ferdinand
III. succeeded his father Ferdinand II., and during the long reign of
the former's son, Leopold I., the Austrian, like the Spanish, Habsburgs
were on the defensive against the aggressive policy of Louis XIV., and
in addition they had to withstand the assaults of the Turks. In two ways
they sought to strengthen their position. The unity of the Austrian
lands was strictly maintained, and several marriages kept up a close and
friendly connexion with Spain. A series of victories over the sultan
during the later part of the 17th century rolled back the tide of the
Turkish advance, and the peace of Karlowitz made in 1699 gave nearly the
whole of Hungary to the Habsburgs. Against France Austria was less
successful, and a number of humiliations culminated in 1714 in the
failure to secure Spain, to which reference has already been made.
The hostility of Austria and France, or rather of Habsburg and Bourbon,
outlived the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1717 Spain conquered
Sardinia, which was soon exchanged by Austria for Sicily; other
struggles and other groupings of the European powers followed, and in
1735, by the treaty of Vienna, Austria gave up Naples and Sicily and
received the duchies of Parma and Piacenza. These surrenders were
doubtless inevitable, but they shook the position of the house of
Habsburg in Italy. However, a domestic crisis was approaching which
threw Italian affairs into the shade. Charles VI., who had succeeded his
brother, Joseph I., as emperor in 1711, was without sons, and his prime
object in life was to secure the succession of his elder daughter, Maria
Theresa, to the whole of his lands and dignities. But in 1713, four
years before the birth of Maria Theresa, he had first issued the famous
_Pragmatic Sanction_, which declared that the Habsburg monarchy was
indivisible and that in default of male heirs a female could succeed to
it. Then after the death of his only son and the birth of Maria Theresa
the emperor bent all his energies to securing the acceptance of the
Pragmatic Sanction. Promulgated anew in 1724, it was formally accepted
by the estates of the different Habsburg lands; in 1731 it was
guaranteed by the imperial diet. By subordinating every other interest
to this, Charles at length procured the assent of the various powers of
Europe to the proposed arrangement; he married the young princess to
Francis Stephen, duke of Lorraine, afterwards grand-duke of Tuscany, and
when he died on the 20th of October 1740 he appeared to have realized
his great ambition. With the emperor's death the house of Habsburg,
strictly speaking, became extinct, its place being taken by the house of
Habsburg-Lorraine, which sprang from the union of Maria Theresa and
Francis Stephen; and it is interesting to note that the present
Habsburgs are only descended in the female line from Rudolph I. and
Maximilian I.