Authorities.—Anecdotes of the Life and Character of John Howard, written by a Gentleman(1790); Aikin,View of the Character and Public Services of the late John Howard. (1792);Memoirsby J. Baldwin Brown (1818); T. Taylor (1836), Hepworth Dixon (1849), J. Field (1850), and J. Stoughton,Howard the Philanthropist(1884).
Authorities.—Anecdotes of the Life and Character of John Howard, written by a Gentleman(1790); Aikin,View of the Character and Public Services of the late John Howard. (1792);Memoirsby J. Baldwin Brown (1818); T. Taylor (1836), Hepworth Dixon (1849), J. Field (1850), and J. Stoughton,Howard the Philanthropist(1884).
1The spinhouses were for women prisoners, who were set to spinning or other useful work; in the rasp-houses, the prisoners were employed in rasping wood.
1The spinhouses were for women prisoners, who were set to spinning or other useful work; in the rasp-houses, the prisoners were employed in rasping wood.
HOWARD, OLIVER OTIS(1830-1909), American soldier, was born in Leeds, Maine, on the 8th of November 1830. He graduated at Bowdoin College in 1850, and at the U.S. Military Academy in 1854. In 1857 he served in Florida against the Seminole Indians, and from 1857 to 1861 he was assistant professor of mathematics at West Point. At the beginning of the Civil War he resigned to become colonel of the 3rd Maine volunteer regiment, and at the first battle of Bull Run was in command of a brigade. In September he was promoted brigadier-general of volunteers. He served in the Peninsular Campaign, and at the battle of Seven Pines (Fair Oaks) he was twice wounded, losing his right arm. On his return to active service in August 1862 he took part in the Virginian campaigns of 1862-63; atAntietam he succeeded Sedgwick in command of a division, and he became major-general of volunteers in March 1863. In the campaign of Chancellorsville (seeWilderness) he commanded the XI. corps, which was routed by “Stonewall” Jackson, and in the first day’s battle at Gettysburg he was for some hours (succeeding Doubleday after Reynolds’s death) in command of the Union troops. The XI. corps was transferred to Tennessee after Rosecrans’s defeat at Chickamauga, and formed part of Hooker’s command in the great victory of Chattanooga. When Sherman prepared to invade Georgia in the spring of 1864 the XI. corps was merged with the XII. into the new XX., commanded by Hooker, and Howard was then placed, in command of the new IV. corps, which he led in all the actions of the Atlanta campaign, receiving another wound at Pickett’s Mills. On the death in action of General M’Pherson, Howard, in July 1864, was selected to command the Army of the Tennessee. In this position he took part in the “March to the Sea” and the Carolinas campaign. In March 1865 he was breveted major-general U.S.A. “for gallant and meritorious service in the battle of Ezra Church and during the campaign against Atlanta,” and in 1893 received a Congressional medal of honour for bravery at Fair Oaks. After the peace he served as commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands from 1865 until 1874; in 1872 he was special commissioner to the hostile Apaches of New Mexico and Arizona; in 1874-1881 was in command of the Department of the Columbia and conducted the campaign against Chief Joseph in 1877 and that against the Bannocks and Piutes in 1878. In 1881-1882 he was superintendent of West Point; and in 1882-1886 he commanded the Department of the Platte, in 1886-1888 the Department of the Pacific, and in 1888-1894 the Department of the East. In 1886 he was promoted major-general and in 1894 he retired. He died at Burlington, Vermont, on the 26th of October 1909.
Howard was deeply interested, in the welfare of the negroes; and the establishment by the U.S. Government in 1867 of Howard University, at Washington, especially for their education, was largely due to him; it was named in his honour, and from 1869 to 1873 he presided over it. In 1895 he founded for the education of the “mountain whites” the Lincoln Memorial University at Cumberland Gap, Tenn. (seeCumberland Mountains), and became president of its board. He held honorary degrees of various universities, and was a chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He wrote, amongst other works,Donald’s Schooldays(1877);Chief Joseph(1881); a life of General Zachary Taylor (1892) in the “Great Commanders” series;Isabella of Castile(1894);Fighting for Humanity(1898);Henry in the War(1898); papers in the “Battles and Leaders” collection on the Atlanta campaign;My Life and Experience among our Hostile Indians(1907); andAutobiography of O. O. Howard(2 vols., New York, 1907).
HOWARD, SIR ROBERT(1626-1698), English dramatist, sixth son of Thomas Howard, 1st earl of Berkshire, was born in 1626. He was knighted at the second battle of Newbury (1644) for his signal courage on the Royalist side. Imprisoned in Windsor Castle under the Commonwealth, his loyalty was rewarded at the Restoration, and he eventually became auditor of the exchequer. His best play is a comedy,The Committee, or the Faithful Irishman(1663; printed 1665), which kept the stage, long after its interest as a political satire was exhausted, for the character of Teague, said to have been drawn from one of his own servants. He was an early patron of Dryden, who married his sister, Lady Elizabeth Howard, and in theIndian Queen, a tragedy in heroic verse (1664; pr. 1665) Howard had assistance from Dryden, although the fact was not made public until the production of Dryden’sIndian Emperor. The magnificence of the spectacle, and the novelty of the costume of feathers, presented by Mrs. Aphra Behn, that was worn by Zempoalla, the Indian queen, made a great sensation. The scenery and accessories were unusually brilliant, the richest ever seen in England, according to Evelyn. In 1665 Howard publishedFoure New Plays, in the preface to which he opposed the view maintained by Dryden in the dedicatory epistle toThe Rival Ladies, that rhyme was better suited to the heroic tragedy than blank verse. Howard made an exception in favour of the rhyme of Lord Orrery, but by his silence concerning Dryden implicated him in the general censure. Dryden answered by placing Howard’s sentiments in the mouth of Crites in his ownEssay on Dramatic Poesy(1668). The controversy did not end here, but Dryden completely worsted his adversary in the 1668 edition ofThe Indian Emperor. Howard died on the 3rd of September 1698.
His brother, James Howard, wrote two comedies,All Mistaken, or the Mad Couple, a comedy (1667; pr. 1672), andThe English Mounsieur(1666; pr. 1674), the success of which seems to have been partly due to the acting of Nell Gwynn.
HOWARD, LORD WILLIAM(1563-1640), known as “Belted, or Bauld (bold) Will,” 3rd son of Thomas Howard, 4th duke of Norfolk (executed in 1572), and of his second wife Margaret, daughter of Lord Audley, was born at Audley End in Essex on the 19th of December 1563. He married on the 28th of October 1577 Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas, Lord Dacre, and proceeded subsequently to the University of Cambridge. Being suspected of treasonable intentions together with his elder brother, Philip, earl of Arundel, he was imprisoned in 1583, 1585 and 1589. He joined the church of Rome in 1584, both brothers being dispossessed by the queen of a portion of their Dacre estates, which were, however, restored in 1601 for a payment of £10,000. Howard then took up his residence with his children and grandchildren at Naworth Castle in Cumberland, restored the castle, improved the estate and established order in that part of the country. In 1603, on the accession of James, he had been restored in blood. In 1618 he was made one of the commissioners for the border, and performed great services in upholding the law and suppressing marauders. Lord William was a learned and accomplished scholar, praised by Camden, to whom he sent inscriptions and drawings from relics collected by him from the Roman wall, as “a singular lover of valuable antiquity and learned withal.” He collected a valuable library, of which most of the printed works remain still at Naworth, though the MSS. have been dispersed, a portion being now in the Arundel MSS. in the Royal College of Arms; he corresponded with Ussher and was intimate with Camden, Spelman, and Cotton, whose eldest son married his daughter. He published, in 1592 an edition of Florence of Worcester’sChronicon ex Chronicis, dedicated to Lord Burghley, and drew up a genealogy of his family, now among the duke of Norfolk’s MSS. at Norfolk House. He died in October 1640 at Greystock, to which place he had been removed when failing in health to escape the Scots who were threatening an advance on Naworth. He had a large family of children, of whom Philip, his heir, was the grandfather of Charles, 1st earl of Carlisle, and Francis was the ancestor of the Howards of Corby.
HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM, WILLIAM HOWARD,1stBaron(c.1510-1573), English lord high admiral, was the son of the 2nd duke of Norfolk. He was popular with Henry VIII., and at Anne Boleyn’s coronation was deputy earl marshal; and he was sent on missions to Scotland and France; but in 1541 he was charged with abetting his relative Queen Catherine Howard, and was convicted of misprision of treason, but pardoned. In 1552 he was made governor of Calais, and in 1553 lord high admiral, being created Baron Howard of Effingham in 1554 for his defence of London in Sir Thomas Wyat’s rebellion against Queen Mary. He befriended the princess Elizabeth, but his popularity with the navy saved him from Mary’s resentment; and when Elizabeth became queen he had great influence with her and filled several important posts. His son, the second baron, who is famous in English naval history, was created earl of Nottingham (q.v.); and from a younger son the later earls of Effingham were descended. William’s descendant, Francis (d. 1695), inherited the barony of Howard of Effingham on the death of his cousin, Charles, in 1681; and Francis’s son, Francis (1683-1743), was created earl of Effingham in 1731. This earldom became extinct on the death of Richard, the fourth holder, in 1816; but it was created again in 1837 in favour of Kenneth Alexander (1767-1845), another of William Howard’s descendants,who had succeeded to the barony of Howard of Effingham in 1816.
HOWE, ELIAS(1819-1867), American sewing-machine inventor, was born in Spencer, Massachusetts, on the 9th of July 1819. His early years were spent on his father’s farm. In 1835 he entered the factory of a manufacturer of cotton-machinery at Lowell, Massachusetts, where he learned the machinist’s trade. Subsequently, while employed in a machine shop at Cambridge, Mass., he conceived the idea of a sewing machine, and for five years spent all his spare time in its development. In September 1846 a patent for a practical sewing machine was granted to him; and Howe spent the following two years (1847-1849) in London, employed by William Thomas, a corset manufacturer, to whom he had sold the English rights for £250. Years of disappointment and discouragement followed before he was successful in introducing his invention, and several imitations which infringed his patent, particularly that of Isaac Merritt Singer (1811-1875), had already been successfully introduced and were widely used. His rights were established after much litigation in 1854, and by the date of expiration of his patent (1867) he had realized something over $2,000,000 out of his invention. He died in Brooklyn, New York, on the 3rd of October 1867.
SeeHistory of the Sewing Machine and of Elias Howe, Jr., the Inventor(Detroit, 1867); P. G. Hubert, Jr.,Inventors, in “Men of Achievement” series (New York, 1893).
SeeHistory of the Sewing Machine and of Elias Howe, Jr., the Inventor(Detroit, 1867); P. G. Hubert, Jr.,Inventors, in “Men of Achievement” series (New York, 1893).
HOWE, JOHN(1630-1706), English Puritan divine, was born on the 17th of May 1630 at Loughborough, Leicestershire, where his father was vicar. On the 19th of May 1647 he entered Christ’s College, Cambridge, as a sizar, and in the following year took his degree of B.A. During his residence at the university he made the acquaintance of Ralph Cudworth, Henry More and John Smith, from intercourse with whom, as well as from direct acquaintance with theDialoguesthemselves, his mind received that “Platonic tinge” so perceptible in his writings. Immediately after graduation at Cambridge, he migrated to Oxford, where he became fellow and chaplain of Magdalen College, proceeding M.A. in 1652. He was then ordained by Charles Herle (1598-1659), the Puritan rector of Winwick, and in 1654 went as perpetual curate to Great Torrington in Devon, where he preached the discourses which later took shape in his treatises onThe Blessedness of the Righteousand onDelighting in God. In the beginning of 1657 a journey to London accidentally brought Howe under the notice of Cromwell, who made him his domestic chaplain. In this position his conduct was such as to win the praise of even the bitterest enemies of his party. Without overlooking his fellow-Puritans, he was always ready to help pious and learned men of other schools. Seth Ward (afterwards bishop of Exeter) and Thomas Fuller were among those who profited by Howe’s kindness, and were not ashamed subsequently to express their gratitude for it. On the resignation of Richard Cromwell, Howe returned to Great Torrington, to leave it again in 1662 on the passing of the Act of Uniformity. For several years he led a wandering and uncertain life, preaching in secret as occasion offered to handfuls of trusted hearers. Being in straits he published in 1668The Blessedness of the Righteous; the reputation which he thus acquired procured him an invitation from Lord Massereene, of Antrim Castle, Ireland, with whom he lived for five or six years as domestic chaplain, frequently preaching in public, with the approval of the bishop of the diocese. Here too he produced the most eloquent of his shorter treatises,The Vanity of Man as Mortal, andOn Delighting in God, and planned his best work,The Living Temple. In the beginning of 1676 he accepted an invitation to become joint-pastor of a nonconformist congregation at Haberdashers’ Hall, London; and in the same year he published the first part ofThe Living TempleentitledConcerning God’s Existence and his Conversableness with Man: Against Atheism or the Epicurean Deism. In 1677 appeared his tractateOn the Reconcileableness of God’s Prescience of the Sins of Men with the Wisdom and Sincerity of His Counsels, Exhortations and whatsoever means He uses to prevent them, which was attacked from various quarters, and had Andrew Marvell for one of its defenders.On Thoughtfulness for the Morrowfollowed in 1681;Self-DedicationandUnion among Protestantsin 1682, andThe Redeemer’s Tears wept over Lost Soulsin 1684.
For five years after his settlement in London Howe enjoyed comparative freedom, and was on not unfriendly terms with many eminent Anglicans, such as Stillingfleet, Tillotson, John Sharp and Richard Kidder; but the greater severity which began to be exercised towards nonconformists in 1681 so interfered with his liberty that in 1685 he gladly accepted the invitation of Philip, Lord Wharton, to travel abroad with him. In 1686 he determined to settle for a time at Utrecht, where he officiated in the English chapel. Among his friends there was Gilbert Burnet, by whose influence he obtained several confidential interviews with William of Orange. In 1687 Howe availed himself of the declaration for liberty of conscience to return to England, and in the following year he headed the deputation of nonconformist ministers who went to congratulate William on his accession to the English throne. The remainder of his life was uneventful. His influence was always on the side of mutual forbearance, between conformists and dissenters in 1689, and between Congregationalists and Presbyterians in 1690. In 1693 he published three discoursesOn the Carnality of Religious Contention, suggested by the disputes that became rife among nonconformists as soon as liberty of doctrine and worship had been granted. In 1694 and 1695 he published various treatises on the subject of the Trinity, the principal beingA Calm and Solemn Inquiry concerning the Possibility of a Trinity in the Godhead. The second part ofThe Living Temple, entitledAnimadversions on Spinosa and a French Writer pretending to confute him, with a recapitulation of the former part and an account of the destitution and restitution of God’s Temple among Men, appeared in 1702. In 1701 he had some controversy with Daniel Defoe on the question of occasional conformity. In 1705 he published a discourseOn Patience in the Expectation of Future Blessedness, but his health had begun to fail, and he died in London on the 2nd of April 1706. Richard Cromwell visited him in his last illness.
Though excelled by Baxter as a pulpit orator, and by Owen in exegetical ingenuity and in almost every department of theological learning, Howe compares favourably with either as a sagacious and profound thinker, while he was much more successful in combining religious earnestness and fervour of conviction with large-hearted tolerance and cultured breadth of view. He was a man of high principle and fine presence, and it was said of him “that he never made an enemy and never lost a friend.”
The works published in his lifetime, including a number of sermons, were collected into 2 vols. fol. in 1724, and again reprinted in 3 vols. 8vo. in 1848. A complete edition of theWhole Works, including much posthumous and additional matter, appeared with a memoir in 8 vols, in 1822; this was reprinted in 1 vol. in 1838 and in 6 vols. in 1862-1863. E. Calamy’sLife(1724) forms the basis ofThe Life and Character of Howe, with an Analysis of his Writings, by Henry Rogers (1836, new ed. 1863). See also a sketch by R. F. Horton (1896).
The works published in his lifetime, including a number of sermons, were collected into 2 vols. fol. in 1724, and again reprinted in 3 vols. 8vo. in 1848. A complete edition of theWhole Works, including much posthumous and additional matter, appeared with a memoir in 8 vols, in 1822; this was reprinted in 1 vol. in 1838 and in 6 vols. in 1862-1863. E. Calamy’sLife(1724) forms the basis ofThe Life and Character of Howe, with an Analysis of his Writings, by Henry Rogers (1836, new ed. 1863). See also a sketch by R. F. Horton (1896).
HOWE, JOSEPH(1804-1873), Canadian statesman, was born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the 13th of December 1804, the son of John Howe (1752-1835), a United Empire Loyalist who was for many years king’s printer and postmaster-general for the Maritime Provinces and the Bermudas. He received little regular education, and at the age of 13 entered his father’s office. In 1827 he started theAcadian, a weekly non-political journal, but soon sold it, and in 1828 purchased theNova Scotian, which later became amalgamated with theMorning Chronicle. From this date he devoted increasing attention to political affairs, and in 1835 was prosecuted for libelling the magistrates of Halifax. Being unable to find a lawyer willing to undertake his case, he pleaded it himself, and won his acquittal by a speech of over six hours, which secured for Nova Scotia the freedom of the press and for himself the reputation of an orator. In 1836 he was elected member for Halifax in the provincial assembly, and during the next twelve years devoted himself to attainingresponsible government for Nova Scotia. This brought him into fierce conflict with the reigning oligarchy and with the lieutenant-governor, Lord Falkland (1803-1884), whom he forced to resign. Largely owing to Howe’s statesmanship responsible government was finally conceded in 1848 by the imperial authorities, and was thus gained without the bloodshed and confusion which marked its acquisition in Ontario and Quebec. In 1850 he was appointed a delegate to England on behalf of the Intercolonial railway, for which he obtained a large imperial guarantee. In 1854 he resigned from the cabinet, and was appointed chief commissioner of railways. In 1855 he was sent by the imperial government to the United States in connexion with the Foreign Enlistment Act, to raise soldiers for the war in the Crimea. Through the rashness of others he got into difficulties, and was attacked in the British House of Commons by Mr Gladstone, whom he compelled to apologize.
In 1855 he was defeated by Mr (afterwards Sir Charles) Tupper, but was elected by acclamation in the next year in Hants county, and was from 1860 to 1863 premier of Nova Scotia. In the latter years he was appointed by the imperial government fishery commissioner to the United States, and thus took no part in the negotiations for confederation. Though his eloquence had done more than anything else to make practicable a union of the British North American provinces, he opposed confederation, largely owing to wounded vanity; but on finding it impossible to obtain from the imperial authorities the repeal of the British North America Act, he refused to join his associates in the extreme measures which were advocated, and on the promise from the Canadian government of better financial terms to his native province, entered (on the 30th of January 1869) the cabinet of Sir John Macdonald as president of the council. This brought upon him a storm of obloquy, under which his health gradually gave way. In May 1873 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, but died suddenly on the 1st of June of the same year.
Howe’s eloquence, and still more his unfailing wit and high spirits, made him for many years the idol of his province. He is the finest orator whom Canada has produced, and also wrote poetry, which shows in places high merit. Many of his sayings are still current in Nova Scotia. In 1904 a statue in his honour was erected in Halifax.
HisLetters and Speecheswere published in 1858 in Boston, Mass., in 2 vols., edited nominally by William Annand, really by himself. See alsoPublic Letters and Speeches of Joseph Howe(Halifax, 1909). TheLife and Timesby G. E. Fenety (1896) is poor. TheLifeby the Hon. James W. Longley (Toronto, 1904) is dispassionate, but otherwise mediocre.Joseph Howe, by George Monro Grant (reprinted Halifax, 1904), is a brilliant sketch.
HisLetters and Speecheswere published in 1858 in Boston, Mass., in 2 vols., edited nominally by William Annand, really by himself. See alsoPublic Letters and Speeches of Joseph Howe(Halifax, 1909). TheLife and Timesby G. E. Fenety (1896) is poor. TheLifeby the Hon. James W. Longley (Toronto, 1904) is dispassionate, but otherwise mediocre.Joseph Howe, by George Monro Grant (reprinted Halifax, 1904), is a brilliant sketch.
(W. L. G.)
HOWE, JULIA WARD(1819-1910), American author and reformer, was born in New York City on the 27th of May 1819. Her father, Samuel Ward, was a banker; her mother, Julia Rush [Cutler] (1796-1824), a poet of some ability. When only sixteen years old she had begun to contribute poems to New York periodicals. In 1843 she married Dr Samuel Gridley Howe (q.v.), with whom she spent the next year in England, France, Germany and Italy. She assisted Dr Howe in editing theCommonwealthin 1851-1853. The results of her study of German philosophy were seen in philosophical essays; in lectures on “Doubt and Belief,” “The Duality of Character,” &c., delivered in 1860-1861 in her home in Boston, and later in Washington; and in addresses before the Boston Radical Club and the Concord school of philosophy. Samuel Longfellow, his brother Henry, Wendell Phillips, W. L. Garrison, Charles Sumner, Theodore Parker and James Freeman Clarke were among her friends; she advocated abolition, and preached occasionally from Unitarian pulpits. She was one of the organizers of the American Woman-Suffrage Association and of the Association for the Advancement of Women (1869), and in 1870 became one of the editors of theWoman’s Journal, and in 1872 president of the New England Women’s Club. In the same year she was a delegate to the Prison Reform Congress in London, and founded there the Woman’s Peace Association, one of the many ways in which she expressed her opposition to war. She wroteThe World’s Own(unsuccessfully played at Wallack’s, New York, in 1855, published 1857), and in 1858, for Edwin Booth,Hippolytus, never acted or published. Her lyric poetry, thanks to her temperament, and possibly to her musical training, was her highest literary form: she publishedPassion Flowers(anonymously, 1854),Words for the Hour(1856),Later Lyrics(1866), andFrom Sunset Ridge: Poems Old and New(1898); her most popular poem isThe Battle Hymn of the Republic, written to the old folk-tune associated with the song of “John Brown’s Body,” when Mrs Howe was at the front in 1861, and published (Feb. 1862) in theAtlantic Monthly, to which she frequently contributed. She editedSex and Education(1874), an answer toSex in Education(1873) by Edward Hammond Clarke (1820-1877); and wrote several books of travel,Modern Society(1880) andIs Polite Society Polite?(1895), collections of addresses, each taking its title from a lecture criticizing the shallowness and falseness of society, the power of money, &c.,A Memoir of Dr Samuel G. Howe(1876),Life of Margaret Fuller(1883), in the “Famous Women” series.Sketches of Representative Women of New England(1905) and her ownReminiscences(Boston, 1899). Her children were: Julia Romana Anagnos (1844-1886), who, like her mother, wrote verse and studied philosophy, and who taught in the Perkins Institution, in the charge of which her husband, Michael Anagnos (1837-1906), whose family name had been Anagnostopoulos, succeeded her father; Henry Marion Howe (b. 1848), the eminent metallurgist, and professor in Columbia University; Laura Elizabeth Richards (b. 1850), and Maud Howe Elliott (b. 1855), wife of John Elliott, the painter of a fine ceiling in the Boston library,—both these daughters being contributors to literature. Mrs Howe died on the 17th of October 1910.
HOWE, RICHARD HOWE,Earl(1726-1799), British admiral, was born in London on the 8th of March 1726. He was the second son of Emmanuel Scrope Howe, 2nd Viscount Howe, who died governor of Barbadoes in March 1735, and of Mary Sophia Charlotte, a daughter of the baroness Kilmansegge, afterwards countess of Darlington, the mistress of George I.—a relationship which does much to explain his early rise in the navy. Richard Howe entered the navy in the “Severn,” one of the squadron sent into the south seas with Anson in 1740. The “Severn” failed to round the Horn and returned home. Howe next served in the West Indies in the “Burford,” and was present in her when she was very severely damaged, in the unsuccessful attack on La Guayra on the 18th of February 1742. He was made acting-lieutenant in the West Indies in the same year, and the rank was confirmed in 1744. During the Jacobite rising of 1745 he commanded the “Baltimore” sloop in the North Sea, and was dangerously wounded in the head while co-operating with a frigate in an engagement with two strong French privateers. In 1746 he became post-captain, and commanded the “Triton” (24) in the West Indies. As captain of the “Cornwall” (80), the flagship of Sir Charles Knowles, he was in the battle with the Spaniards off Havana on the 2nd of October 1748. While the peace between the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War lasted, Howe held commands at home and on the west coast of Africa. In 1755 he went with Boscawen to North America as captain of the “Dunkirk” (60), and his seizure of the French “Alcide” (64) was the first shot fired in the war. From this date till the peace of 1763 he served in the Channel in various more or less futile expeditions against the coast of France, with a steady increase of reputation as a firm and skilful officer. On the 20th of November 1759 he led Hawke’s fleet as captain of the “Magnanime” (64) in the magnificent victory of Quiberon.
By the death of his elder brother, killed near Ticonderoga on the 6th of July 1758, he became Viscount Howe—an Irish peerage. In 1762 he was elected M.P. for Dartmouth, and held the seat till he received a title of Great Britain. During 1763 and 1765 he was a member of the Admiralty board, and from 1765 to 1770 was treasurer of the navy. In that year he was promoted rear-admiral, and in 1775 vice-admiral. In 1776 he was appointed to the command of the North American station. The rebellionof the colonies was making rapid progress, and Howe was known to be in sympathy with the colonists. He had sought the acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin, who was a friend of his sister Miss Howe, a clever eccentric woman well known in London society, and had already tried to act as a peacemaker. It was doubtless because of his known sentiments that he was selected to command in America, and was joined in commission with his brother Sir William Howe, the general at the head of the land forces, to make a conciliatory arrangement. A committee appointed by the Continental Congress conferred with the Howes in September 1776 but nothing was accomplished. The appointment of a new peace commission in 1778 offended the admiral deeply, and he sent in a resignation of his command. It was reluctantly accepted by Lord Sandwich, then First Lord, but before it could take effect France declared war, and a powerful French squadron was sent to America under the count d’Estaing. Being greatly outnumbered, Howe had to stand on the defensive, but he baffled the French admiral at Sandy Hook, and defeated his attempt to take Newport in Rhode Island by a fine combination of caution and calculated daring. On the arrival of Admiral John Byron from England with reinforcements, Howe left the station in September. Until the fall of Lord North’s ministry in 1782 he refused to serve, assigning as his reason that he could not trust Lord Sandwich. He considered that he had not been properly supported in America, and was embittered both by the supersession of himself and his brother as peace commissioners, and by attacks made on him by the ministerial writers in the press.
On the change of ministry in March 1782 he was selected to command in the Channel, and in the autumn of that year, September, October and November, he carried out the final relief of Gibraltar. It was a difficult operation, for the French and Spaniards had in all 46 line-of-battle ships to his 33, and in the exhausted state of the country it was impossible to fit his ships properly or to supply them with good crews. He was, moreover, hampered by a great convoy carrying stores. But Howe was eminent in the handling of a great multitude of ships, the enemy was awkward and unenterprising, and the operation was brilliantly carried out. From the 28th of January to the 16th of April 1783 he was First Lord of the Admiralty, and he held that post from December 1783 till August 1788, in Pitt’s first ministry. The task was no pleasant one, for he had to agree to economies where he considered that more outlay was needed, and he had to disappoint the hopes of the many officers who were left unemployed by the peace. On the outbreak of the Revolutionary war in 1793 he was again named to the command of the Channel fleet. His services in 1794 form the most glorious period of his life, for in it he won the epoch-making victory of the 1st of June (seeFirst of June, Battle of). Though Howe was now nearly seventy, and had been trained in the old school, he displayed an originality not usual with veterans, and not excelled by any of his successors in the war, not even by Nelson, since they had his example to follow and were served by more highly trained squadrons than his. He continued to hold the nominal command by the wish of the king, but his active service was now over. In 1797 he was called on to pacify the mutineers at Spithead, and his great influence with the seamen who trusted him was conspicuously shown. He died on the 5th of August 1799, and was buried in his family vault at Langar. His monument by Flaxman is in St Paul’s Cathedral. In 1782 he was created Viscount Howe of Langar, and in 1788 Baron and Earl Howe. In June 1797 he was made a knight of the Garter. With the sailors he was always popular, though he was no popularity hunter, for they knew him to be just. His nickname of Black Dick was given on account of his swarthy complexion, and the well-known portrait by Gainsborough shows that it was apt.
Lord Howe married, on the 10th of March 1758, Mary Hartop, the daughter of Colonel Chiverton Hartop of Welby in Leicestershire, and had issue two daughters. His Irish title descended to his brother William, the general, who died childless in 1814. The earldom, and the viscounty of the United Kingdom, being limited to heirs male, became extinct, but the barony, being to heirs general, passed to his daughter, Sophia Charlotte (1762-1835), who married the Hon. Penn Assheton Curzon. Their son, Richard William Curzon (1796-1870), who succeeded his paternal grandfather as Viscount Curzon in 1820, was created Earl Howe in 1821; he was succeeded by his son, George Augustus (1821-1876), and then by another son, Richard William (1822-1900), whose son Richard George Penn Curzon-Howe (b. 1861) became 4th Earl Howe in 1900.
The standardLifeis by Sir John Barrow (1838). Interesting reminiscences will be found in theLife of Codrington, by Lady Bourchier. Accounts of his professional services are in Charnock’sBiographia Navalis, v. 457, and in Ralf’sNaval Biographies, i. 83. See also Beatson’sNaval and Military Annals, James’sNaval History, and Chevalier’sHistoire de la Marine française, vols. i. and ii.
The standardLifeis by Sir John Barrow (1838). Interesting reminiscences will be found in theLife of Codrington, by Lady Bourchier. Accounts of his professional services are in Charnock’sBiographia Navalis, v. 457, and in Ralf’sNaval Biographies, i. 83. See also Beatson’sNaval and Military Annals, James’sNaval History, and Chevalier’sHistoire de la Marine française, vols. i. and ii.
(D. H.)
HOWE, SAMUEL GRIDLEY(1801-1876), American philanthropist, was born at Boston, Massachusetts, on the 10th of November 1801. His father, Joseph N. Howe, was a ship-owner and cordage manufacturer; and his mother, Patty Gridley, was one of the most beautiful women of her day. Young Howe was educated at Boston and at Brown University, Providence, and in 1821 began to study medicine in Boston. But fired by enthusiasm for the Greek revolution and by Byron’s example, he was no sooner qualified and admitted to practice than he abandoned these prospects and took ship for Greece, where he joined the army and spent six years of hardship amid scenes of warfare. Then, to raise funds for the cause, he returned to America; his fervid appeals enabled him to collect about $60,000, which he spent on provisions and clothing, and he established a relief depot near Aegina, where he started works for the refugees, the existing quay, or American Mole, being built in this way. He formed another colony of exiles on the Isthmus of Corinth. He wrote aHistory of the Greek Revolution, which was published in 1828, and in 1831 he returned to America. Here a new object of interest engaged him. Through his friend Dr John D. Fisher (d. 1850), a Boston physician who had started a movement there as early as 1826 for establishing a school for the blind, he had learnt of the similar school founded in Paris by Valentin Haüy, and it was proposed to Howe by a committee organized by Fisher that he should direct the establishment of a “New England Asylum for the Blind” at Boston. He took up the project with characteristic ardour, and set out at once for Europe to investigate the problem. There he was temporarily diverted from his task by becoming mixed up with the Polish revolt, and, in pursuit of a mission to carry American contributions across the Prussian frontier, he was arrested and imprisoned at Berlin, but was at last released through the intervention of the American minister at Paris. Returning to Boston in July 1832, he began receiving a few blind children at his father’s house in Pleasant Street, and thus sowed the seed which grew into the famous Perkins Institution. In January 1833 the funds available were all spent, but so much progress had been shown that the legislature voted $6000, later increased to $30,000 a year, to the institution on condition that it should educate gratuitously twenty poor blind from the state; money was also contributed from Salem, and from Boston, and Colonel Thomas H. Perkins, a prominent Bostonian, presented his mansion and grounds in Pearl Street for the school to be held there in perpetuity. This building being later found unsuitable, Colonel Perkins consented to its sale, and in 1839 the institution was moved to South Boston, to a large building which had previously been an hotel. It was henceforth known as the “Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum (or, since 1877, School) for the Blind.” Howe was director, and the life and soul of the school; he opened a printing-office and organized a fund for printing for the blind—the first done in America; and he was unwearied in calling public attention to the work. The Institution, through him, became one of the intellectual centres of American philanthropy, and by degrees obtained more and more financial support. In 1837 Dr Howe went still further and brought the famous blind deaf-mute, Laura Bridgman (q.v.) to the school.
It must suffice here to chronicle the remaining more important facts in Dr Howe’s life, outside his regular work. In 1843 he married Julia Ward (see above), daughter of a New York banker, and they made a prolonged European trip, on which Dr Howe spent much time in visiting those public institutions which carried out the objects specially interesting to him. In Rome, in 1844, his eldest daughter, Julia Romana (afterwards the wife of Michael Anagnos, Dr Howe’s assistant and successor), was born, and in September the travellers returned to America, and Dr Howe resumed his activities. In 1846 he became interested in the condition and treatment of idiots, and particularly in the experiments of Dr Guggenbühl on the cretins of Switzerland. He became chairman of a state commission of inquiry into the number and condition of idiots in Massachusetts, and the report of this commission, presented in 1848, caused a profound sensation. An appropriation of $2500 per annum was made for training ten idiot children under Dr Howe’s supervision, and by degrees the value of his School for Idiotic and Feeble-minded Youths, which, starting in South Boston, was in 1890 removed to Waltham, was generally appreciated. It was the first of its kind in the United States. An enthusiastic humanitarian on all subjects, Dr Howe was an ardent abolitionist and a member of the Free Soil party, and had played a leading part at Boston in the movements which culminated in the Civil War. When it broke out he was an active member of the sanitary commission. In 1871 he was sent to Santo Domingo as a member of the commission appointed by President Grant to examine the condition of the island, the government of which desired annexation; and when that scheme was defeated through Sumner’s opposition he returned (1872) as the representative of the Samana Bay Company, which proposed to take a lease of the Samana peninsula; but though in 1874 he revisited the island, it was only to see the flag of the company hauled down. His health was then breaking and began soon after to fail rapidly, and on the 9th of January 1876 he died at Boston. The governor of the state sent a special message of grief to the legislature on his death, eulogies were delivered in the two houses, and a public memorial service was held, at which Dr O. W. Holmes read a poem. Whittier had in his lifetime commemorated him in his poem “The Hero,” in which he called him “the Cadmus of the blind”; and in 1901 a centennial celebration of his birth was held at Boston, at which, among other notable tributes, Senator Hoar spoke of Howe as “one of the great figures of American history.”
AMemoirof Dr Howe by his wife appeared in 1876. See also theLetters and Journals of S. G. Howe, edited by Laura E. Richards (1910).
AMemoirof Dr Howe by his wife appeared in 1876. See also theLetters and Journals of S. G. Howe, edited by Laura E. Richards (1910).
(H. Ch.)
HOWE, WILLIAM HOWE,5th Viscount(1729-1814), British general, was the younger brother of George Augustus, 3rd viscount, killed in the Ticonderoga expedition of 1758, and of Richard, 4th viscount and afterwards Earl Howe, the admiral. He entered the cavalry in 1746, becoming lieutenant a year later. On the disbanding of his regiment in 1749 he was made captain-lieutenant and shortly afterwards captain in Lord Bury’s (20th) regiment, in which Wolfe was then a field officer. Howe became major in 1756 and lieutenant-colonel in 1757 of the 58th (now Northampton) regiment, which he commanded at the capture of Louisburg. In Wolfe’s expedition to Quebec he distinguished himself greatly at the head of a composite light battalion. He led the advanced party in the landing at Wolfe’s Cove and took part in the battle of the Plains of Abraham which followed. He commanded his own regiment in the defence of Quebec in 1759-1760, led a brigade in the advance on Montreal and took part on his return to Europe in the siege of Belleisle (1761). He was adjutant-general of the force which besieged and took Havana in 1762, and at the close of the war had acquired the reputation of being one of the most brilliant of the junior officers of the army. He was made colonel of the 46th foot in 1764 and lieutenant-governor of the Isle of Wight four years later. From 1758 to 1780 he was M.P. for Nottingham. In 1772 he became major-general, and in 1774 he was entrusted with the training of light infantry companies on a new system, the training-ground being Salisbury Plain.
Shortly after this he was sent out to North America. He did not agree with the policy of the government towards the colonists, and regretted in particular that he was sent to Boston, where the memory of his eldest brother was still cherished by the inhabitants, and General Gage, in whom he had no confidence, commanded in chief. He was the senior officer after Gage, and led the troops actively engaged in the storming of Bunker Hill, he himself being in the thickest of the fighting. In the same year Howe was made a K.B. and a lieutenant-general, and appointed, with the local rank of general, to the chief command in the seat of war. For the events of his command seeAmerican War of Independence. He retained it until May 1778—on the whole with success. The cause of his resignation was his feeling that the home government had not afforded the proper support, and after his return to England, he and his brother engaged in a heated but fruitless controversy with the ministers. Howe’s own defence is embodied inNarrative of Sir William Howe before a Committee of the House of Commons(London, 1780). In 1782 Howe was made lieutenant-general of the ordnance; in 1790 he was placed in command of the forces organized for action against Spain, and in 1793 he was made a full general. He held various home commands in the early part of the French revolutionary war, in particular that of the eastern district at the critical moment when the French established their forces on the Dutch coast. When Earl Howe died in 1799, Sir William succeeded to the Irish viscounty. He had been made governor of Berwick-on-Tweed in 1795, and in 1805 he became governor of Plymouth, where he died on the 12th of July 1814. With his death the Irish peerage became extinct.
HOWEL DDA(“the Good”) (d. 950), prince of Deheubarth (South Central Wales) from before 915, and king of Wales from 943 to 950, was the grandson of Rhodri Mawr (the Great), who had united practically the whole of Wales under his supremacy. As Idwal Voel succeeded his father Anarawd, the elder son of Rhodri, as lord of Gwynedd in 915, so Howel at some time before that date succeeded Rhodri’s younger son Cadell as prince of Deheubarth. Howel married Elen, daughter of the last king of Dyfed, and also added Kidweli and Gwyr to his dominions, while on the death of Idwal, who was slain by the English in 943, he took possession of Gwynedd. Both these princes had done homage to the English kings, Edward the Elder and Aethelstan, in 922 and 926, and we find that Howel attended the witans of the English kingdom and witnessed about ten charters between the years 931 and 949. He was secure, therefore, from attack on the eastern side of his kingdom, and it is not certain whether he was engaged in any of the battles recorded during these years in Wales, either in Môn 914, at Dinas Newydd 919 or at Brun 935. To the peaceful character of his reign is probably due the high place which he holds among the Welsh princes. From 943 to 950 Howel Dda was probably ruler of all Wales except Powys (apparently dependent on Mercia), Brecheiniog, Buallt, Gwent and Morgannwg. With Morgan Hen, king of Morgannwg, Howel had a dispute which was eventually settled in favour of the former at the court of the English king. Howel died in 950, and such unity as he had preserved at once disappeared in a war between his sons and those of Idwal Voel. The code of laws attributed to this prince is perhaps his chief claim to fame. He is said to have summoned four men from each cantref in his dominions to the Ty Gwyn (perhaps Whitland in Caermarthenshire) to codify existing custom. Three codes, accordingly called Venedotian, Demetian and Gwentian, are said to have been written down by Bleggwryd, archdeacon of Llandaff (see Welsh Laws).
See Sir John Rhys and Brynmor-Jones,The Welsh People(London, 1900); and Aneurin Owen,Ancient Laws and Institutions of Wales(London, 1841).
See Sir John Rhys and Brynmor-Jones,The Welsh People(London, 1900); and Aneurin Owen,Ancient Laws and Institutions of Wales(London, 1841).
HOWELL, JAMES(c.1594-1666), British author, who came of an old Welsh family, was born probably at Abernant, in Carmarthenshire, where his father was rector. From the free grammar school at Hereford he went to Jesus College, Oxford, and took his degree of B.A. in 1613. About 1616 he was steward in Sir Robert Mansell’s glass-works in Broad Street, and was commissioned to go abroad to procure the services of expertworkmen. It was not till 1622 that he returned, having visited Holland, France, Spain and Italy. With the intention of utilizing to better purpose his knowledge of continental languages and methods, he left the glass business and applied for a diplomatic post. Failing to obtain this, he was for a short time tutor in a nobleman’s family. At the close of 1622 he was sent on a special mission to Madrid to obtain redress for the seizure of an English vessel, but, owing to the presence at the Spanish court of Prince Charles and the duke of Buckingham to arrange a marriage between the prince and the infanta of Spain, the negotiations had to be broken off. He made many friends among the prince’s retinue, and, after his return in 1624, applied for employment to the duke of Buckingham, but without success. In 1626 he became secretary to Lord Scrope, Lord President of the North at York, and retained the office under Scrope’s successor, Thomas Wentworth. In 1627 he was elected M.P. for Richmond; in 1632 he was sent as secretary to the embassy of the earl of Leicester to Denmark; and in 1642 the king appointed him one of the clerks of the privy council. In 1643 he was committed to the Fleet prison by the parliament, according to his own account, on suspicion of royalist leanings, or, as Anthony à Wood says, for debt. Whatever the reason, he remained in prison until 1651. He had acquired considerable fame by his allegoricalΔενδρολογία:Dodona’s Grove, or the Vocall Forest, published in 1640, and hisInstructions for Forreine Travell(1642), which has been described as the first continental handbook; and now he was driven to maintain himself by his pen. He edited and supplemented (1650) Cotgrave’s French and English dictionary, compiledLexicon Tetraglotton, or an English, French, Italian and Spanish Dictionary(London, 1660), translated various works from Italian and Spanish, wrote a life of Louis XIII. and issued a number of political pamphlets, varying the point of view somewhat to suit the changes of the time. Among these tracts may be mentioned a rather maliciousPerfect Description of the People and Country of Scotland, which was revived by John Wilkes and printed in theNorth Britonduring the agitation directed against Lord Bute. In 1660 he asked for the place of clerk of the privy council; and, though this was not granted him, the post of historiographer royal was created for him. In 1661 he applied for the office of tutor in foreign languages to the infanta Catherine of Braganza, and in 1662 published anEnglish Grammar translated into Spanish. He was buried in the Temple Church on the 3rd of November 1666, having realized to the last his favourite motto, “Senesco non segnesco.”
All Howell’s writings are imbued with a certain simplicity and quaintness. His elaborate allegories are forgotten; his linguistic labours, of value in their time, are now superseded; but hisLetters, theEpistolae Ho-elianae(four volumes issued in 1645, 1647, 1650 and 1655), are still models of their kind. Their dates are often fictitious, and they are, in nearly every case, evidently written for publication. Thackeray said that theLetterswas one of his bedside books. He classes it with Montaigne and says he scarcely ever tired of “the artless prattle” of the “priggish little clerk of King Charles’s council.”