VOLUME XI SLICE I Franciscans to French Language (continued 7)

Bibliography.—D. Fassmann, Leben und Thaten Friedrich Wilhelms (2 vols., Hamburg and Breslau, 1735, 1741); F. Förster, Friedrich Wilhelm I. (3 vols., Potsdam, 1834 and 1835); C. v. Noorden, Historische Vorträge (Leipzig, 1884); O. Krauske, “Vom Hofe Friedrich Wilhelms I.,” Hohenzollernjahrbuch, v. (1902); R. Koser, Friedrich der Grosse als Kronprinz (2nd ed., Stuttgart, 1901); W. Oncken, “Sir Charles Hotham und Friedrich Wilhelm I. im Jahre 1730,” Forschungen zur brandenburgischen Geschichte, vol. vii. et seq.; J. G. Droysen in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, vii. (1878), and in Geschichte der preussischen Politik, section iv., vols. ii.-iv. (2nd ed., 1868 et seq.); L. v. Ranke, Zwölf Bücher preussischer Geschichte (1874 et seq.); Stenzel, Geschichte des preussischen Staates, iii. (1841); F. Holke, “Strafrechtspflege unter Friedrich Wilhelm I.,” Beiträge zur brandenburgischen Rechtsgeschichte, iii. (1894); V. Loewe, “Allodifikation der Leben unter Friedrich Wilhelm I.,” Forschungen zur brandenburgischen Geschichte, xi.; G. Schmoller, “Epochen der preuss. Finanzpolitik,” Umrisse und Untersuchungen (Leipzig, 1898), “Innere Verwaltung unter Friedrich Wilhelm I.,” Preuss. Jahrbücher, xxvi., “Städtewesen unter Friedrich Wilhelm I.,” Zeitschrift für preussische Geschichte, x. et seq.; B. Reuter, “König Friedrich Wilhelm I. und das General-Direktorium,” ibid. xii.; V. Loewe, “Zur Grundungsgeschichte des General-Direktoriums,” Forschungen, &c., xiii.; R. Stadelmann, Preussens Könige in ihrer Tätigkeit für die Landeskultur, vol. i. “Friedrich Wilhelm I.” (1878); M. Beheim-Schwarzbach, Hohenzollern’sche Kolonizationen (Leipzig, 1874); W. Naude, “Die merkantilistische Wirtschaftspolitik Friedrich Wilhelms I.,” Historische Zeitschrift, xc.; M. Lehmann, “Werbung, &c., im Heere Friedrich Wilhelms I.,” ibid. lxvii.; Isaacson, “Erbpachtsystem in der preussischen Domänenverwaltung,” Zeitschrift für preuss. Gesch. xi. Cf. also Hohenzollernjahrbuch, viii. (1905), for particulars of his education and death; letters to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau in the Acta Borussica (1905). English readers will find a picturesque account of him in Thomas Carlyle’s Frederick the Great.

(J. Hn.)

FREDERICK WILLIAM II. (1744-1797), king of Prussia, son of Augustus William, second son of King Frederick William I. and of Louise Amalie of Brunswick, sister of the wife of Frederick the Great, was born at Berlin on the 25th of September 1744, and became heir to the throne on his father’s death in 1757. The boy was of an easy-going and pleasure-loving disposition, averse from sustained effort of any kind, and sensual by nature. His marriage with Elisabeth Christine, daughter of Duke Charles of Brunswick, contracted in 1765, was dissolved in 1769, and he soon afterwards married Frederika Louisa, daughter of the landgrave Louis IX. of Hesse-Darmstadt. Although he had a numerous family by his wife, he was completely under the influence of his mistress, Wilhelmine Enke, afterwards created Countess Lichtenau, a woman of strong intellect and much ambition. He was a man of singularly handsome presence, not without mental qualities of a high order; he was devoted to the arts—Beethoven and Mozart enjoyed his patronage and his private orchestra had a European reputation. But an artistic temperament was hardly that required of a king of Prussia on the eve of the Revolution; and Frederick the Great, who had employed him in various services—notably in an abortive confidential mission to the court of Russia in 1780—openly expressed his misgivings as to the character of the prince and his surroundings.

The misgivings were justified by the event. Frederick William’s accession to the throne (August 17, 1786) was, indeed, followed by a series of measures for lightening the burdens of the people, reforming the oppressive French system of tax-collecting introduced by Frederick, and encouraging trade by the diminution of customs dues and the making of roads and canals. This gave the new king much popularity with the mass of the people; while the educated classes were pleased by his removal of Frederick’s ban on the German language by the admission of German writers to the Prussian Academy, and by the active encouragement given to schools and universities. But these reforms were vitiated in their source. In 1781 Frederick William, then prince of Prussia, inclined, like many sensual natures, to mysticism, had joined the Rosicrucians, and had fallen under the influence of Johann Christof Wöllner (1732-1800), and by him the royal policy was inspired. Wöllner, whom Frederick the Great had described as a “treacherous and intriguing priest,” had started life as a poor tutor in the family of General von Itzenplitz, a noble of the mark of Brandenburg, had, after the general’s death and to the scandal of king and nobility, married the general’s daughter, and with his mother-in-law’s assistance settled down on a small estate. By his practical experiments and by his writings he gained a considerable reputation as an economist; but his ambition was not content with this, and he sought to extend his influence by joining first the Freemasons and afterwards (1779) the Rosicrucians. Wöllner, with his impressive personality and easy if superficial eloquence, was just the man to lead a movement of this kind. Under his influence the order spread rapidly, and he soon found himself the supreme director (Oberhauptdirektor) of some 26 “circles,” which included in their membership princes, officers and high officials. As a Rosicrucian Wöllner dabbled in alchemy and other mystic arts, but he also affected to be zealous for Christian orthodoxy, imperilled by Frederick II.’s patronage of “enlightenment,” and a few months before Frederick’s death wrote to his friend the Rosicrucian Johann Rudolph von Bischoffswerder (1741-1803) that his highest ambition was to be placed at the head of the religious department of the state “as an unworthy instrument in the hand of Ormesus” (the prince of Prussia’s Rosicrucian name) “for the purpose of saving millions of souls from perdition and bringing back the whole country to the faith of Jesus Christ.”

Such was the man whom Frederick William II., immediately after his accession, called to his counsels. On the 26th of August 1786 he was appointed privy councillor for finance (Geheimer Oberfinanzrath), and on the 2nd of October was ennobled. Though not in name, in fact he was prime minister; in all internal affairs it was he who decided; and the fiscal and economic reforms of the new reign were the application of his theories. Bischoffswerder, too, still a simple major, was called into the king’s counsels; by 1789 he was already an adjutant-general. These were the two men who enmeshed the king in a web of Rosicrucian mystery and intrigue, which hampered whatever healthy development of his policy might have been possible, and led ultimately to disaster. The opposition to Wöllner was, indeed, at the outset strong enough to prevent his being entrusted with the department of religion; but this too in time was overcome, and on the 3rd of July 1788 he was appointed active privy councillor of state and of justice and head of the spiritual department for Lutheran and Catholic affairs. War was at once declared on what—to use a later term—we may call the “modernists.” The king, so long as Wöllner was content to condone his immorality (which Bischoffswerder, to do him justice, condemned), was eager to help the orthodox crusade. On the 9th of July was issued the famous religious edict, which forbade Evangelical ministers to teach anything not contained in the letter of their official books, proclaimed the necessity of protecting the Christian religion against the “enlighteners” (Aufklärer), and placed educational establishments under the supervision of the orthodox clergy. On the 18th of December a new censorship law was issued, to secure the orthodoxy of all published books; and finally, in 1791, a sort of Protestant Inquisition was established at Berlin (Immediat-Examinations-commission) to watch over all ecclesiastical and scholastic appointments. In his zeal for orthodoxy, indeed, Frederick William outstripped his minister; he even blamed Wöllner’s “idleness and vanity” for the inevitable failure of the attempt to regulate opinion from above, and in 1794 deprived him of one of his secular offices in order that he might have more time “to devote himself to the things of God”; in edict after edict the king continued to the end of his reign to make regulations “in order to maintain in his states a true and active Christianity, as the path to genuine fear of God.”

The effects of this policy of blind obscurantism far outweighed any good that resulted from the king’s well-meant efforts at economic and financial reform; and even this reform was but spasmodic and partial, and awoke ultimately more discontent than it allayed. But far more fateful for Prussia was the king’s attitude towards the army and foreign policy. The army was the very foundation of the Prussian state, a truth which both Frederick William I. and the great Frederick had fully realized; the army had been their first care, and its efficiency had been maintained by their constant personal supervision. Frederick William, who had no taste for military matters, put his authority as “War-Lord” into commission under a supreme college of war (Oberkriegs-Collegium) under the duke of Brunswick and General von Möllendorf. It was the beginning of the process that ended in 1806 at Jena.

In the circumstances Frederick William’s intervention in European affairs was not likely to prove of benefit to Prussia. The Dutch campaign of 1787, entered on for purely family reasons, was indeed successful; but Prussia received not even the cost of her intervention. An attempt to intervene in the war of Russia and Austria against Turkey failed of its object; Prussia did not succeed in obtaining any concessions of territory from the alarms of the Allies, and the dismissal of Hertzberg in 1791 marked the final abandonment of the anti-Austrian tradition of Frederick the Great. For, meanwhile, the French Revolution had entered upon alarming phases, and in August 1791 Frederick William, at the meeting at Pillnitz, arranged with the emperor Leopold to join in supporting the cause of Louis XVI. But neither the king’s character, nor the confusion of the Prussian finances due to his extravagance, gave promise of any effective action. A formal alliance was indeed signed on the 7th of February 1792, and Frederick William took part personally in the campaigns of 1792 and 1793. He was hampered, however, by want of funds, and his counsels were distracted by the affairs of Poland, which promised a richer booty than was likely to be gained by the anti-revolutionary crusade into France. A subsidy treaty with the sea powers (April 19, 1794) filled his coffers; but the insurrection in Poland that followed the partition of 1793, and the threat of the isolated intervention of Russia, hurried him into the separate treaty of Basel with the French Republic (April 5, 1795), which was regarded by the great monarchies as a betrayal, and left Prussia morally isolated in Europe on the eve of the titanic struggle between the monarchical principle and the new political creed of the Revolution. Prussia had paid a heavy price for the territories acquired at the expense of Poland in 1793 and 1795, and when, on the 16th of November 1797, Frederick William died, he left the state in bankruptcy and confusion, the army decayed and the monarchy discredited.

Frederick William II. was twice married: (1) in 1765 to Elizabeth of Brunswick (d. 1841), by whom he had a daughter, Frederika, afterwards duchess of York, and from whom he was divorced in 1769; (2) in 1769 to Frederika Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt, by whom he had four sons, Frederick William III., Louis (d. 1796), Henry and William, and two daughters, Wilhelmina, wife of William of Orange, afterwards William I., king of the Netherlands, and Augusta, wife of William II., elector of Hesse. Besides his relations with his maîtresse en titre, the countess Lichtenau, the king—who was a frank polygamist—contracted two “marriages of the left hand” with Fräulein von Voss and the countess Dönhoff.

See article by von Hartmann in Allgem. deutsche Biog. (Leipzig, 1878); Stadelmann, Preussens Könige in ihrer Tätigkeit für die Landeskultur, vol. iii. “Friedrich Wilhelm II.” (Leipzig, 1885); Paulig, Friedrich Wilhelm II., sein Privatleben u. seine Regierung (Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, 1896).

FREDERICK WILLIAM III. (1770-1840), king of Prussia, eldest son of King Frederick William II., was born at Potsdam on the 3rd of August 1770. His father, then prince of Prussia, was out of favour with Frederick the Great and entirely under the influence of his mistress; and the boy, handed over to tutors appointed by the king, lived a solitary and repressed life which tended to increase the innate weakness of his character. But though his natural defects of intellect and will-power were not improved by the pedantic tutoring to which he was submitted, he grew up pious, honest and well-meaning; and had fate cast him in any but the most stormy times of his country’s history he might well have left the reputation of a model king. As a soldier he received the usual training of a Prussian prince, obtained his lieutenancy in 1784, became a colonel commanding in 1790, and took part in the campaigns of 1792-94. In 1793 he married Louise, daughter of Prince Charles of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, whom he had met and fallen in love with at Frankfort (see Louise, queen of Prussia). He succeeded to the throne on the 16th of November 1797 and at once gave earnest of his good intentions by cutting down the expenses of the royal establishment, dismissing his father’s ministers, and reforming the most oppressive abuses of the late reign. Unfortunately, however, he had all the Hohenzollern tenacity of personal power without the Hohenzollern genius for using it. Too distrustful to delegate his responsibility to his ministers, he was too infirm of will to strike out and follow a consistent course for himself.

The results of this infirmity of purpose are written large on the history of Prussia from the treaty of Lunéville in 1801 to the downfall that followed the campaign of Jena in 1806. By the treaty of Tilsit (July 9th, 1807) Frederick William had to surrender half his dominions, and what remained to him was exhausted by French exactions and liable at any moment to be crushed out of existence by some new whim of Napoleon. In the dark years that followed it was the indomitable courage of Queen Louise that helped the weak king not to despair of the state. She seconded the reforming efforts of Stein and the work of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in reorganizing the army, by which the resurrection of Prussia became a possibility. When Stein was dismissed at the instance of Napoleon, Hardenberg succeeded him as chancellor (June 1810). In the following month Queen Louise died, and the king was left alone to deal with circumstances of ever-increasing difficulty. He was forced to join Napoleon in the war against Russia; and even when the disastrous campaign of 1812 had for the time broken the French power, it was not his own resolution, but the loyal disloyalty of General York in concluding with Russia the convention of Tauroggen that forced him into line with the patriotic fervour of his people.

Once committed to the Russian alliance, however, he became the faithful henchman of the emperor Alexander, whose fascinating personality exercised over him to the last a singular power, and began that influence of Russia at the court of Berlin which was to last till Frederick William IV.’s supposed Liberalism was to shatter the cordiality of the entente. That during and after the settlement of 1815 Frederick William played a very secondary part in European affairs is explicable as well by his character as by the absorbing character of the internal problems of Prussia. He was one of the original co-signatories of the Holy Alliance, though, in common with most, he signed it with reluctance; and in the counsels of the Grand Alliance he allowed himself to be practically subordinated to Alexander and later to Metternich. In a ruler of his character it is not surprising that the Revolution and its developments had produced an unconquerable suspicion of constitutional principles and methods, which the Liberal agitations in Germany tended to increase. At the various congresses, from Aix-la-Chapelle (1818) to Verona (1822), therefore, he showed himself heartily in sympathy with the repressive policy formulated in the Troppau Protocol. The promise of a constitution, which in the excitement of the War of Liberation he had made to his people, remained unfulfilled partly owing to this mental attitude, partly, however, to the all but insuperable difficulties in the way of its execution. But though reluctant to play the part of a constitutional king, Frederick William maintained to the full the traditional character of “first servant of the state.” Though he chastised Liberal professors and turbulent students, it was in the spirit of a benevolent Landesvater; and he laboured assiduously at the enormous task of administrative reconstruction necessitated by the problem of welding the heterogeneous elements of the new Prussian kingdom into a united whole. He was sincerely religious; but his well-meant efforts to unite the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, in celebration of the tercentenary of the Reformation (1817), revealed the limits of his paternal power; eleven years passed in vain attempts to devise common formulae; a stubborn Lutheran minority had to be coerced by military force, the confiscation of their churches and the imprisonment or exile of their pastors; not till 1834 was outward union secured on the basis of common worship but separate symbols, the opponents of the measure being forbidden to form communities of their own. With the Roman Church, too, the king came into conflict on the vexed question of “mixed marriages,” a conflict in which the Vatican gained an easy victory (see Bunsen, C. C. J., Baron von).

The revolutions of 1830 strengthened Frederick William in his reactionary tendencies; the question of the constitution was indefinitely shelved; and in 1831 Prussian troops concentrated on the frontier helped the task of the Russians in reducing the military rising in Poland. Yet, in spite of all, Frederick William was beloved by his subjects, who valued him for the simplicity of his manners, the goodness of his heart and the memories of the dark days after 1806. He died on the 7th of June 1840. In 1824 he had contracted a morganatic marriage with the countess Auguste von Harrach, whom he created Princess von Liegnitz. He wrote Luther in Bezug auf die Kirchenagenda von 1822 und 1823 (Berlin, 1827), Reminiszenzen aus der Kampagne 1792 in Frankreich, and Journal meiner Brigade in der Kampagne am Rhein 1793.

The correspondence (Briefwechsel) of King Frederick William III. and Queen Louise with the emperor Alexander I. has been published (Leipzig, 1900) and also that between the king and queen (ib. 1903), both edited by P. Bailleu. See W. Hahn, Friedrich Wilhelm III. und Luise (3rd ed., Leipzig, 1877); M. W. Duncker, Aus der Zeit Friedrichs des Grossen und Friedrich Wilhelms III. (Leipzig, 1876); Bishop R. F. Eylert, Charakterzüge aus dem Leben des Königs von Preussen Friedrich Wilhelm III. (3 vols., Magdeburg, 1843-1846).

FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. (1795-1861), king of Prussia, eldest son of Frederick William III., was born on the 15th of October 1795. From his first tutor, Johann Delbrück, he imbibed a love of culture and art, and possibly also the dash of Liberalism which formed an element of his complex habit of mind. But after a time Delbrück, suspected of inspiring his charge with a dislike of the Prussian military caste and even of belonging to a political secret society, was dismissed, his place being taken by the pastor and historian Friedrich Ancillon, while a military governor was also appointed. By Ancillon he was grounded in religion, in history and political science, his natural taste for the antique and the picturesque making it easy for his tutor to impress upon him his own hatred of the Revolution and its principles. This hatred was confirmed by the sufferings of his country and family in the terrible years after 1806, and his first experience of active soldiering was in the campaigns that ended in the occupation of Paris by the Allies in 1814. In action his reckless bravery had earned him rebuke, and in Paris he was remarked for the exact performance of his military duties, though he found time to whet his appetite for art in the matchless collections gathered by Napoleon as the spoil of all Europe. On his return to Berlin he studied art under the sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch and the painter and architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841), proving himself in the end a good draughtsman, a born architect and an excellent landscape gardener. At the same time he was being tutored in law by Savigny and in finance by a series of distinguished masters. In 1823 he married the princess Elizabeth of Bavaria, who adopted the Lutheran creed. The union, though childless, was very happy. A long tour in Italy in 1828 was the beginning of his intimacy with Bunsen and did much to develop his knowledge of art and love of antiquity.

On his accession to the throne in 1840 much was expected of a prince so variously gifted and of so amiable a temper, and his first acts did not belie popular hopes. He reversed the unfortunate ecclesiastical policy of his father, allowing a wide liberty of dissent, and releasing the imprisoned archbishop of Cologne; he modified the strictness of the press censorship; above all he undertook, in the presence of the deputations of the provincial diets assembled to greet him on his accession, to carry out the long-deferred project of creating a central constitution, which he admitted to be required alike by the royal promises, the needs of the country and the temper of the times. The story of the evolution of the Prussian parliament belongs to the history of Prussia. Here it must suffice to notice Frederick William’s personal share in the question, which was determined by his general attitude of mind. He was an idealist; but his idealism was of a type the exact reverse of that which the Revolution in arms had sought to impose upon Europe. The idea of the sovereignty of the people was to him utterly abhorrent, and even any delegation of sovereign power on his own part would have seemed a betrayal of a God-given trust. “I will never,” he declared, “allow to come between Almighty God and this country a blotted parchment, to rule us with paragraphs, and to replace the ancient, sacred bond of loyalty.” His vision of the ideal state was that of a patriarchial monarchy, surrounded and advised by the traditional estates of the realm—nobles, peasants, burghers—and cemented by the bonds of evangelical religion; but in which there should be no question of the sovereign power being vested in any other hands than those of the king by divine right. In Prussia, with its traditional loyalty and its old-world caste divisions, he believed that such a conception could be realized, and he took up an attitude half-way between those who would have rejected the proposal for a central diet altogether as a dangerous “thin end of the wedge,” and those who would have approximated it more to the modern conception of a parliament. With a charter, or a representative system based on population, he would have nothing to do. The united diet which was opened on the 3rd of February 1847 was no more than a congregation of the diets instituted by Frederick William III. in the eight provinces of Prussia. Unrepresentative though it was—for the industrial working-classes had no share in it—it at once gave voice to the demand for a constitutional system.

This demand gained overwhelmingly in force with the revolutionary outbreaks of 1848. To Frederick William these came as a complete surprise, and, rudely awakened from his medieval dreamings, he even allowed himself to be carried away for a while by the popular tide. The loyalty of the Prussian army remained inviolate; but the king was too tender-hearted to use military force against his “beloved Berliners,” and when the victory of the populace was thus assured his impressionable temper yielded to the general enthusiasm. He paraded the streets of Berlin wrapped in a scarf of the German black and gold, symbol of his intention to be the leader of the united Germany; and he even wrote to the indignant tsar in praise of “the glorious German revolution.” The change of sentiment was, however, apparent rather than real. The shadow of venerable institutions, past or passing, still darkened his counsels. The united Germany which he was prepared to champion was not the democratic state which the theorists of the Frankfort national parliament were evolving on paper with interminable debate, but the old Holy Roman Empire, the heritage of the house of Habsburg, of which he was prepared to constitute himself the guardian so long as its lawful possessors should not have mastered the forces of disorder by which they were held captive. Finally, when Austria had been excluded from the new empire, he replied to the parliamentary deputation that came to offer him the imperial crown that he might have accepted it had it been freely offered to him by the German princes, but that he would never stoop “to pick up a crown out of the gutter.”

Whatever may be thought of the manner of this refusal, or of its immediate motives, it was in itself wise, for the German empire would have lost immeasurably had it been the cause rather than the result of the inevitable struggle with Austria, and Bismarck was probably right when he said that, to weld the heterogeneous elements of Germany into a united whole, what was needed was, not speeches and resolutions, but a policy of “blood and iron.” In any case Frederick William, uneasy enough as a constitutional king, would have been impossible as a constitutional emperor. As it was, his refusal to play this part gave the deathblow to the parliament and to all hope of the immediate creation of a united Germany. For Frederick William the position of leader of Germany now meant the employment of the military force of Prussia to crush the scattered elements of revolution that survived the collapse of the national movement. His establishment of the northern confederacy was a reversion to the traditional policy of Prussia in opposition to Austria, which, after the emperor Nicholas had crushed the insurrection in Hungary, was once more free to assert her claims to dominance in Germany. But Prussia was not ripe for a struggle with Austria, even had Frederick William found it in his conscience to turn his arms against his ancient ally, and the result was the humiliating convention of Olmütz (November 29th, 1850), by which Prussia agreed to surrender her separatist plans and to restore the old constitution of the confederation. Yet Frederick William had so far profited by the lessons of 1848 that he consented to establish (1850) a national parliament, though with a restricted franchise and limited powers. The House of Lords (Herrenhaus) justified the king’s insistence in calling it into being by its support of Bismarck against the more popular House during the next reign.

In religious matters Frederick William was also largely swayed by his love for the ancient and picturesque. In concert with his friend Bunsen he laboured to bring about a rapprochement between the Lutheran and Anglican churches, the first-fruits of which was the establishment of the Jerusalem bishopric under the joint patronage of Great Britain and Prussia; but the only result of his efforts was to precipitate the secession of J. H. Newman and his followers to the Church of Rome. In general it may be said that Frederick William, in spite of his talents and his wide knowledge, lived in a dream-land of his own, out of touch with actuality. The style of his letters reveals a mind enthusiastic and ill-balanced. In the summer of 1857 he had a stroke of paralysis, and a second in October. From this time, with the exception of brief intervals, his mind was completely clouded, and the duties of government were undertaken by his brother William (afterwards emperor), who on the 7th of October 1858 was formally recognized as regent. Frederick William died on the 2nd of January 1861.

Selections from the correspondence (Briefwechsel) of Frederick William IV. and Bunsen were edited by Ranke (Leipzig, 1873); his proclamations, speeches, &c., from the 6th of March 1848 to the 31st of May 1851 have been published (Berlin, 1851); also his correspondence with Bettina von Arnim, Bettina von Arnim und Friedrich Wilhelm IV., ungedruckte Briefe und Aktenstücke, ed. L. Geiger (Frankfort-on-Main, 1902). See L. von Ranke, Friedrich Wilhelm IV., König von Preussen (works 51, 52 also in Allgem. deutsche Biog. vol. vii.), especially for the king’s education and the inner history of the debates leading up to the united diet of 1847; H. von Petersdorff, König Friedrich Wilhelm IV. (Stuttgart, 1900); F. Rachfahl, Deutschland, König Friedrich Wilhelm IV. und die Berliner Märzrevolution (Halle, 1901); H. von Poschinger (ed.), Unter Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Denkwürdigkeiten des Ministers Otto Frhr. von Manteuffel, 1848-1858 (3 vols., Berlin, 1900-1901); and Preussens auswärtige Politik, 1850-1858 (3 vols., ib., 1902), documents selected from those left by Manteuffel; E. Friedberg, Die Grundlagen der preussischen Kirchenpolitik unter Friedrich Wilhelm IV. (Leipzig, 1882).

FREDERICK WILLIAM (1620-1688), elector of Brandenburg, usually called the “Great Elector,” was born in Berlin on the 16th of February 1620. His father was the elector George William, and his mother was Elizabeth Charlotte, daughter of Frederick IV., elector palatine of the Rhine. Owing to the disorders which were prevalent in Brandenburg he passed part of his youth in the Netherlands, studying at the university of Leiden and learning something of war and statecraft under Frederick Henry, prince of Orange. During his boyhood a marriage had been suggested between him and Christina, afterwards queen of Sweden; but although the idea was revived during the peace negotiations between Sweden and Brandenburg, it came to nothing, and in 1646 he married Louise Henriette (d. 1667), daughter of Frederick Henry of Orange, a lady whose counsel was very helpful to him and who seconded his efforts for the welfare of his country.

Having become ruler of Brandenburg and Prussia by his father’s death in December 1640, Frederick William set to work at once to repair the extensive damage wrought during the Thirty Years’ War, still in progress. After some difficulty he secured his investiture as duke of Prussia from Wladislaus, king of Poland, in October 1641, but was not equally successful in crushing the independent tendencies of the estates of Cleves. It was in Brandenburg, however, that he showed his supreme skill as a diplomatist and administrator. His disorderly troops were replaced by an efficient and disciplined force; his patience and perseverance freed his dominions from the Swedish soldiers; and the restoration of law and order was followed by a revival of trade and an increase of material prosperity. After a tedious struggle he succeeded in centralizing the administration, and controlling and increasing the revenue, while no department of public life escaped his sedulous care (see Brandenburg). The area of his dominions was largely increased at the peace of Westphalia in 1648, and this treaty and the treaty of Oliva in 1660 alike added to his power and prestige. By a clever but unscrupulous use of his intermediate position between Sweden and Poland he procured his recognition as independent duke of Prussia from both powers, and eventually succeeded in crushing the stubborn and lengthened opposition which was offered to his authority by the estates of the duchy (see Prussia). After two checks he made his position respected in Cleves, and in 1666 his title to Cleves, Jülich and Ravensberg was definitely recognized. His efforts, however, to annex the western part of the duchy of Pomerania, which he had conquered from the Swedes, failed owing to the insistence of Louis XIV. at the treaty of St Germain-en-Laye in 1679, and he was unable to obtain the Silesian duchies of Liegnitz, Brieg and Wohlau from the emperor Leopold I. after they had been left without a ruler in 1675.

Frederick William played an important part in European politics. Although found once or twice on the side of France, he was generally loyal to the interests of the empire and the Habsburgs, probably because his political acumen scented danger to Brandenburg from the aggressive policy of Louis XIV. He was a Protestant in religion, but he supported Protestant interests abroad on political rather than on religious grounds, and sought, but without much success, to strengthen Brandenburg by allaying the fierce hostility between Lutherans and Calvinists. His success in founding and organizing the army of Brandenburg-Prussia was amply demonstrated by the great victory which he gained over the Swedes at Fehrbellin in June 1675, and by the eagerness with which foreign powers sought his support. He was also the founder of the Prussian navy. The elector assisted trade in every possible way. He made the canal which still bears his name between the Oder and the Spree; established a trading company; and founded colonies on the west coast of Africa. He encouraged Flemings to settle in Brandenburg, and both before and after the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685 welcomed large numbers of Huguenots, who added greatly to the welfare of the country. Education was not neglected; and if in this direction some of his plans were abortive, it was from lack of means and opportunity rather than effort and inclination. It is difficult to overestimate the services of the great elector to Brandenburg and Prussia. They can only be properly appreciated by those who compare the condition of his country in 1640 with its condition in 1688. Both actually and relatively its importance had increased enormously; poverty had given place to comparative wealth, and anarchy to a system of government which afterwards made Prussia the most centralized state in Europe. He had scant sympathy with local privileges, and in fighting them his conduct was doubtless despotic. His aim was to make himself an absolute ruler, as he regarded this as the best guarantee for the internal and external welfare of the state.

The great elector died at Potsdam from dropsy on the 9th of May 1688, and was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Frederick. His personal appearance was imposing, and although he was absolutely without scruples when working for the interests of Brandenburg, he did not lack a sense of justice and generosity. At all events he deserves the eulogy passed upon him by Frederick the Great, “Messieurs; celui-ci a fait de grandes choses.” His second wife, whom he married in 1668, was Dorothea (d. 1689), daughter of Philip, duke of Holstein-Glücksburg, and widow of Christian Louis, duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg; she bore him four sons and three daughters. His concluding years were troubled by differences between his wife and her step-son, Frederick; and influenced by Dorothea he bequeathed portions of Brandenburg to her four sons, a bequest which was annulled under his successor.

See S. de Pufendorf, De rebus gestis Friderici Wilhelmi Magni (Leipzig and Berlin, 1733); L. von Orlich, Friedrich Wilhelm der grosse Kurfürst (Berlin, 1836); K. H. S. Rödenbeck, Zur Geschichte Friedrich Wilhelms des grossen Kurfürsten (Berlin, 1851); B. Erdmannsdörffer, Der grosse Kurfürst (Leipzig, 1879); J. G. Droysen, Geschichte der preussischen Politik (Berlin, 1855-1886); M. Philippson, Der grosse Kurfürst (Berlin, 1897-1903); E. Heyck, Der grosse Kurfürst (Bielefeld, 1902); Spahn, Der grosse Kurfürst (Mainz, 1902); H. Landwehr, Die Kirchenpolitik des grossen Kurfürsten (Berlin, 1894); H. Prutz, Aus des grossen Kurfürsten letzten Jahren (Berlin, 1897). Also Urkunden und Aktenstücke zur Geschichte des Kurfürsten Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg (Berlin, 1864-1902); T. Carlyle, History of Frederick the Great, vol. i. (London, 1858); and A. Waddington, Le Grand Électeur et Louis XIV (Paris, 1905).

FRÉDÉRICK-LEMAÎTRE, ANTOINE LOUIS PROSPER (1800-1876) French actor, the son of an architect, was born at Havre on the 28th of July 1800. He spent two years at the Conservatoire, and made his first appearance at a variety performance in one of the basement restaurants at the Palais Royal. At the Ambigu on the 12th of July 1823 he played the part of Robert Macaire in L’Auberge des Adréts. The melodrama was played seriously on the first night and was received with little favour, but it was changed on the second night to burlesque, and thanks to him had a great success. All Paris came to see it, and from that day he was famous. He created a number of parts that added to his popularity, especially Cardillac, Cagliostro and Cartouche. His success in the last led to an engagement at the Porte St Martin, where in 1827 he produced Trente ans, ou la vie d’un joueur, in which his vivid acting made a profound impression. Afterwards at the Odéon and other theatres he passed from one success to another, until he put the final touch to his reputation as an artist by creating the part of Ruy Blas in Victor Hugo’s play. On his return to the Porte St Martin he created the title-rôle in Balzac’s Vautrin, which was forbidden a second presentation, on account, it is said, of the resemblance of the actor’s wig to the well-known toupet worn by Louis Philippe. His last appearance was at this theatre in 1873 as the old Jew in Marie Tudor, and he died at Paris on the 26th of January 1876.

FREDERICKSBURG, a city of Spottsylvania county, Virginia, U.S.A., on the Rappahannock river, at the head of tide-water navigation, about 60 m. N. of Richmond and about 55 m. S.S.W. of Washington. Pop. (1890) 4528; (1900) 5068 (1621 negroes); (1910) 5874. It is served by the Potomac, Fredericksburg & Piedmont, and the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac railways, and by several coasting steamship lines. The city is built on a series of terraces between the river and hills of considerable height. The river is here spanned by iron bridges, and just above the city is a dam 900 ft. long and 18 ft. high. By means of this dam and a canal good water-power is furnished, and the city’s manufactures include flour, leather, shoes, woollens, silks, wagons, agricultural implements and excelsior (fine wood-shavings for packing or stuffing). The water-works, gas and electric-lighting plants are owned and operated by the municipality. At Fredericksburg are Fredericksburg College (founded in 1893; co-educational), which includes the Kenmore school for girls and the Saunders memorial school for boys (both preparatory); a Confederate and a National cemetery (the latter on Marye’s Heights), a monument (erected in 1906) to General Hugh Mercer (c. 1720-1777), whose home for several years was here and who fell in the battle of Princeton; and a monument to the memory of Washington’s mother, who died here in 1789 and whose home is still standing. Other buildings of interest are the old Rising Sun Hotel, a popular resort during Washington’s time, and “Kenmore,” the home of Colonel Fielding Lewis, who married a sister of Washington. The city was named in honour of Frederick, father of George III., and was incorporated in 1727, long after its first settlement; in 1871 it was re-chartered by act of the General Assembly of Virginia.

The battle of Fredericksburg in the American Civil War was fought on the 13th of December 1862 between the Union forces (Army of the Potomac) under Major-General A. E. Burnside and the Confederates (Army of Northern Virginia) under General R. E. Lee. In the middle of November, Burnside, newly appointed to command the Army of the Potomac, had manœuvred from the neighbourhood of Warrenton with a view to beginning an offensive move from Fredericksburg and, as a preliminary, to seizing a foothold beyond the Rappahannock at or near that place. On arriving near Falmouth, however, he found that the means of crossing that he had asked for had not been forwarded from Washington, and he sat down to wait for them, while, on the other side, the Confederate army gradually assembled south of the Rappahannock in a strong position with the left on the river above Fredericksburg and the right near Hamilton’s Crossing on the Richmond railway. On the 10th of December Burnside, having by now received his pontoons, prepared to cross the river and to attack the Confederate entrenched position on the heights beyond the town. The respective forces were Union 122,000, Confederate 79,000. Major-General E. V. Sumner, commanding the Federal right wing (II. and IX. corps), was to cross at Fredericksburg, Major-General W. B. Franklin with the left (I. and VI. corps) some miles below, while the centre (III. and V. corps) under Major-General Joseph Hooker was to connect the two attacks and to reinforce either at need. The Union artillery took position along the heights of the north bank to cover the crossing, and no opposition was encountered opposite Franklin’s command, which formed up on the other side during the 11th and 12th. Opposite Sumner, however, the Confederate riflemen, hidden in the gardens and houses of Fredericksburg, caused much trouble and considerable losses to the Union pioneers, and a forlorn hope of volunteers from the infantry had to be rowed across under fire before the enemy’s skirmishers could be dislodged. Sumner’s two corps crossed on the 12th. The battle took place next morning.

Controversy has raged round Burnside’s plan of action and in particular round his orders to Franklin, as to which it can only be said that whatever chance of success there was in so formidable an undertaking as attacking the well-posted enemy was thrown away through misunderstandings, and that nothing but misunderstandings could be expected from the vague and bewildering orders issued by the general in command. The actual battle can be described in a few words. Jackson held the right of Lee’s line, Longstreet the left, both entrenched. Franklin, tied by his instructions, attacked with one division only, which a little later he supported by two more (I. corps, Major-General J. F. Reynolds) out of eight or nine available. His left flank was harassed by the Confederate horse artillery under the young and brilliant Captain John Pelham, and after breaking the first line of Stonewall Jackson’s corps the assailants were in the end driven back with heavy losses. On the other flank, where part of Longstreet’s corps held the low ridge opposite Fredericksburg called Marye’s Heights, Burnside ordered in the II. corps under Major-General D. N. Couch about 11 A.M., and thenceforward division after division, on a front of little more than 800 yds., was sent forward to assault with the bayonet. The “Stone Wall” along the foot of Marye’s was lined with every rifle of Longstreet’s corps that could find room to fire, and above them the Confederate guns fired heavily on the assailants, whose artillery, on the height beyond the river, was too far off to assist them. Not a man of the Federals reached the wall, though the bravest were killed a few paces from it, and Sumner’s and most of Hooker’s brigades were broken one after the other as often as they tried to assault. At night the wrecks of the right wing were withdrawn. Burnside proposed next day to lead the IX. corps, which he had formerly commanded, in one mass to the assault of the Stone Wall, but his subordinates dissuaded him, and on the night of the 15th the Army of the Potomac withdrew to its camps about Falmouth. The losses of the Federals were 12,650 men, those of the Confederates 4200, little more than a third of which fell on Longstreet’s corps.

See F. W. Palfrey, Antietam and Fredericksburg (New York, 1881); G. W. Redway, Fredericksburg (London, 1906); and G. F. R. Henderson, Fredericksburg (London, 1889).

FREDERICTON, a city and port of entry of New Brunswick, Canada, capital of the province, situated on the St John river, 84 m. from its mouth, and on the Canadian Pacific railway. It stands on a plain bounded on one side by the river, which is here ¾ m. broad, and on the other by a range of hills which almost encircle the town. It is regularly built with long and straight streets, and contains the parliament buildings, government house, the Anglican cathedral, the provincial university and several other educational establishments. Fredericton is the chief commercial centre in the interior of the province, and has also a large trade in lumber. Its industries include canneries, tanneries and wooden ware factories. The river is navigable for large steamers up to the city, and above it by vessels of lighter draught. Two bridges, passenger and railway, unite the city with the towns of St Marye’s and Gibson on the east side of the river, at its junction with the Nashwaak. The city was founded in 1785 by Sir Guy Carleton, and made the capital of the province, in spite of the jealousy of St John, on account of its superior strategical position. Pop. (1901) 7117.

FREDONIA, a village of Chautauqua county, New York, U.S.A., about 45 m. S.W. of Buffalo, and 3 m. from Lake Erie. Pop. (1900) 4127; (1905, state census) 5148; (1910 census) 5285. Fredonia is served by the Dunkirk, Allegheny Valley & Pittsburg railway, which connects at Dunkirk, 3 m. to the N., with the Erie, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, the New York, Chicago & St Louis, and the Pennsylvania railways; and by electric railway to Erie, Buffalo and Dunkirk. It is the seat of a State Normal School. The Darwin R. Barker public library contained 9700 volumes in 1908. Fredonia is situated in the grape-growing region of western New York, is an important shipping point for grapes, and has large grape-vine and general nurseries. The making of wine and of unfermented grape-juice are important industries of the village. Among other manufactures are canned goods, coal dealers’ supplies, and patent medicines. The first settlement here was made in 1804, and the place was called Canandaway until 1817, when the present name was adopted. The village was incorporated in 1829. Fredonia was one of the first places in the United States, if not the first, to make use of natural gas for public purposes. Within the village limits, near a creek, whose waters showed the presence of gas, a well was sunk in 1821, and the supply of gas thus tapped was sufficient to light the streets of the village. Another well was sunk within the village limits in 1858. About 1905 natural gas was again obtained by deep drilling near Fredonia and came into general use for heat, light and power. In the Fredonia Baptist church on the 14th of December 1873 a Woman’s Temperance Union was organized, and from this is sometimes dated the beginning of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union movement.

FREDRIKSHALD (Frederickshald, Friederichshall), a seaport and garrison town of Norway, in Smaalenene amt (county), 85 m. by rail S. by E. of Christiania. Pop. (1900) 11,948. It is picturesquely situated on both banks of the Tistedal river at its outflow to the Ide fjord, surrounded by several rocky eminences. The chief of these is occupied by the famous fortress Fredriksten, protected on three sides by precipices, founded by Frederick III. (1661), and mainly showing, in its present form, the works of Frederick V. (1766) and Christian VII. (1808). Between it and the smaller Gyldenlöve fort a monument marks the spot where Charles XII. was shot in the trenches while besieging the town (1718). The siege, which was then raised, is further commemorated by a monument to the brave defence of the brothers Peter and Hans Kolbjörnsen. Fredrikshald is close to the Swedish frontier, and had previously (1660) withstood invasion, after which its name was changed from Halden to the present form in 1665 in honour of Frederick III. The town was almost totally destroyed by fire in 1759 and 1826. The castle surrendered to the Swedish crown prince Bernadotte in 1814, and its capture was speedily followed by the conquest of the kingdom and its union with Sweden. Fredrikshald is one of the principal ports of the kingdom for the export of timber. Marble of very fine quality and grain is extensively quarried and exported for architectural ornamentation and for furniture-making. Wood-pulp is also exported. The industries embrace granite quarries, wood-pulp factories, and factories for sugar, tobacco, curtains, travelling-bags, boots, &c. There are railway communications with Gothenburg and all parts of Sweden and regular coastal and steamer services.

FREDRIKSTAD (Frederikstad), a seaport and manufacturing town of Norway in Smaalenene amt (county), 58 m. S. by E. of Christiania by the Christiania-Gothenburg railway. Pop. (1900) 14,553. It lies at the mouth and on the eastern shore of Christiania fjord, occupying both banks of the great river Glommen, which, descending from the richly-wooded district of Österdal, floats down vast quantities of timber. The new town on the right bank is therefore a centre of the timber export trade, this place being the principal port in Norway for the export of pit-props, planed boards, and other varieties of timber. There is also a great industry in the making of red bricks, owing to the expansion of Christiania, Gothenburg and other towns. Granite is quarried and exported. Besides the large number of saw and planing mills, there are shipbuilding yards, engine and boiler works, cotton and woollen mills, and factories for acetic acid and naphtha. The harbour, which can be entered by vessels drawing 14 ft., is kept open in winter by an ice-breaker. In the vicinity is the island Hankö, the most fashionable Norwegian seaside resort. The old town on the left bank was founded by Frederick II. in 1567. It was for a long time strongly fortified, and in 1716 Charles XII. of Sweden made a vain attempt to capture it.

FREE BAPTISTS, formerly called (but no longer officially) Freewill Baptists, an American denomination holding anti-paedobaptist and anti-Calvinistic doctrines, and practically identical in creed with the General Baptists of Great Britain. Many of the early Baptist churches in Rhode Island and throughout the South were believers in “general redemption” (hence called “general” Baptists); and there was a largely attended conference of this Arminian branch of the church at Newport in 1729. But the denomination known as “Free-willers” had its rise in 1779-1780, when anti-Calvinists in Loudon, Barrington and Canterbury, New Hampshire, seceded and were organized by Benjamin Randall (1749-1808), a native of New Hampshire. Randall was an itinerant missionary, who had been preaching for two years before his ordination in 1780; in the same year he was censured for “heterodox” teaching. The work of the church suffered a relapse after his death, and a movement to join the Freewill Baptists with the “Christians,” who were led by Elias Smith (1769-1846) and had been bitterly opposed by Randall, was nearly successful. Between 1820 and 1830 the denomination made considerable progress, especially in New England and the Middle West. The Freewill Baptists were joined in 1841 by many “open-communion Baptists”—those in the Carolinas who did not join the larger body distinguishing themselves by the name of Original Freewill Baptists—and soon afterwards by some of the General Baptists of North Carolina and some of the Six Principle Baptists of Rhode Island (who had added the “laying on of hands” to the Five Principles hitherto held); and the abbreviation of the denominational name to “Free Baptists” suggests their liberal policy—indeed open communion is the main if not the only hindrance to union with the “regular” Baptist Church.

Colleges founded by the denomination, all co-educational, are: Hillsdale College, opened at Spring Harbor as Michigan Central College in 1844, and established at Hillsdale, Michigan, in 1855; Bates College, Lewiston, Maine, 1863, now non-sectarian; Rio Grande College, Rio Grande, Ohio, 1876; and Parker College, Winnebago City, Minnesota, opened in 1888. At the close of 1909 there were 1294 ministers, 1303 churches, and 73,536 members of the denomination in the United States. The Morning Star of Boston, established in 1826, is the most prominent journal published by the church. In British North America, according to a Canadian census bulletin of 1902, there were, in 1901, 24,229 Free Baptists, of whom 15,502 were inhabitants of New Brunswick, 8355 of Nova Scotia, 246 of Ontario, and 87 of Quebec. The United Societies of Free Baptist Young People, an international organization founded in 1888, had in 1907 about 15,000 members. At the close of 1907 the “Original Freewill Baptists” had 120 ministers, 167 churches, and 12,000 members, practically all in the Carolinas.

See I. D. Stewart, History of the Free Will Baptists (Dover, N. H., 1862) for 1780-1830, and his edition of the Minutes of the General Conference of the Free Will Baptist Connection (Boston, 1887); James B. Taylor, The Centennial Record of the Free Will Baptists (Dover, 1881); John Buzzell, Memoir of Elder Benjamin Randall (Parsonfield, Maine, 1827); and P. Richardson, “Randall and the Free Will Baptists,” in The Christian Review, vol. xxiii. (Baltimore, 1858).

FREEBENCH, in English law, the interest which a widow has in the copyhold lands of her husband, corresponding to dower in the case of freeholds. It depends upon the custom of the manor, but as a general rule the widow takes a third for her life of the lands of which her husband dies seised, but it may be an estate greater or less than a third. If the husband surrenders his copyhold and the surrenderee is admitted, or if he contracts for a sale, it will defeat the widow’s freebench. As freebench is regarded as a continuation of the husband’s estate, the widow does not (except by special custom) require to be admitted.

FREE CHURCH FEDERATION, a voluntary association of British Nonconformist churches for co-operation in religious, social and civil work. It was the outcome of a unifying tendency displayed during the latter part of the 19th century. About 1890 the proposal that there should be a Nonconformist Church Congress analogous to the Anglican Church Congress was seriously considered, and the first was held in Manchester on the 7th of November 1892. In the following year it was resolved that the basis of representation should be neither personal (as in the Anglican Church Congress) nor denominational, but territorial. England and Wales have since been completely covered with a network of local councils, each of which elects its due proportion of representatives to the national gathering. This territorial arrangement eliminated all sectarian distinctions, and also the possibility of committing the different churches as such to any particular policy. The representatives of the local councils attend not as denominationalists but as Evangelical Free Churchmen. The name of the organization was changed from Congress to National Council as soon as the assembly ceased to be a fortuitous concourse of atoms, and consisted of duly appointed representatives from the local councils of every part of England. The local councils consist of representatives of the Congregational and Baptist Churches, the Methodist Churches, the Presbyterian Church of England, the Free Episcopal Churches, the Society of Friends, and such other Evangelical Churches as the National Council may at any time admit. The constitution states the following as the objects of the National Council: (a) To facilitate fraternal intercourse and co-operation among the Evangelical Free Churches; (b) to assist in the organization of local councils; (c) to encourage devotional fellowship and mutual counsel concerning the spiritual life and religious activities of the Churches; (d) to advocate the New Testament doctrine of the Church, and to defend the rights of the associated Churches; (e) to promote the application of the law of Christ in every relation of human life. Although the objects of the Free Church councils are thus in their nature and spirit religious rather than political, there are occasions on which action is taken on great national affairs. Thus a thorough-going opposition was offered to the Education Act of 1902, and whole-hearted support accorded to candidates at the general election of 1906 who pledged themselves to altering that measure.

A striking feature of the movement is the adoption of the parochial system for the purpose of local work. Each of the associated churches is requested to look after a parish, not of course with any attempt to exclude other churches, but as having a special responsibility for those in that area who are not already connected with some existing church. Throughout the United Kingdom local councils are formed into federations, some fifty in number, which are intermediate between them and the national council. The local councils do what is possible to prevent overlapping and excessive competition between the churches. They also combine the forces of the local churches for evangelistic and general devotional work, open-air services, efforts on behalf of Sunday observance, and the prevention of gambling. Services are arranged in connexion with workhouses, hospitals and other public institutions. Social work of a varied character forms a large part of the operations of the local councils, and the Free Church Girls’ Guild has a function similar to that of the Anglican Girls’ Friendly Society. The national council engages in mission work on a large scale, and a considerable number of periodicals, hymn-books for special occasions, and works of different kinds explaining the history and ideals of the Evangelical Free Churches have been published. The churches represented in the National Council have 9966 ministers, 55,828 local preachers, 407,991 Sunday-school teachers, 3,416,377 Sunday scholars, 2,178,221 communicants, and sitting accommodation for 8,555,460.

A remarkable manifestation of this unprecedented reunion was the fact that a committee of the associated churches prepared and published a catechism expressing the positive and fundamental agreement of all the Evangelical Free Churches on the essential doctrines of Christianity (see The Contemporary Review, January 1899). The catechism represents substantially the creed of not less than 80,000,000 Protestants. It has been widely circulated throughout Great Britain, the British Colonies and the United States of America, and has also been translated into Welsh, French and Italian.

The movement has spread to all parts of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Jamaica, the United States of America and India. It is perhaps necessary to add that it differs essentially from the Evangelical Alliance, inasmuch as its unit is not an individual, private Christian, but a definitely organized and visible Church. The essential doctrine of the movement is a particular doctrine of churchmanship which, as explained in the catechism, regards the Lord Jesus Christ as the sole and Divine Head of every branch of the Holy Catholic Church throughout the world. For this reason those who do not accept the deity of Christ are necessarily excluded from the national council and its local constituent councils.

FREE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, a Protestant episcopal church “essentially one with the established church of England, but free to go into any parish, to use a revised edition of the Book of Common Prayer, to associate the laity with the clergy in the government and work of the church, and to hold communion with Christians of other denominations.” It was founded in 1844 in opposition to the Tractarian movement, and embodies the distinctively evangelical elements of the Reformation. It preserves and maintains to the letter all that is Protestant and evangelical in the liturgy and services of the Anglican church, while its free constitution and revised formularies meet the needs of members of that communion who resent sacerdotal and ritualistic tendencies. There are two dioceses (northern and southern) each with a bishop, about 30 churches and ministers, and about 1300 members.

FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. In one sense the Free Church of Scotland dated its existence from the Disruption of 1843, in another it claimed to be the rightful representative of the National Church of Scotland (see Scotland, Church of) as it was reformed in 1560.1 In the ecclesiastical history of Scotland the Free Churchman sees three great reforming periods. In his view these deserve to be called reforming on many accounts, but most especially because in them the independence of the church, her inherent scriptural right to exercise a spiritual jurisdiction in which she is responsible to her Divine Head alone, was both earnestly asserted and practically maintained. The first reformation extended from 1560, when the church freely held her first General Assembly, and of her own authority acted on the First Book of Discipline, to 1592, when her Presbyterian order was finally and fully ratified by the parliament. The second period began in 1638, when, after 20 years of suspended animation, the Assembly once more shook off Episcopacy, and terminated in 1649, when the parliament of Scotland confirmed the church in her liberties in a larger and ampler sense than before. The third period began in 1834, when the Assembly made use of what the church believed to be her rights in passing the Veto and Chapel Acts. It culminated in the Disruption of 1843.

The fact that the Church, as led first by John Knox and afterwards by Andrew Melville, claimed an inherent right to exercise a spiritual jurisdiction is notorious. More apt to be overlooked is the comparative freedom with which that right was actually used by the church irrespective of state recognition. That recognition was not given until after the queen’s resignation in 1567;2 but, for several years before it came, the church had been holding her Assemblies and settling all questions of discipline, worship, and administration as they arose, in accordance with the first book of polity or discipline which had been drawn up in 1560. Further, in 1581 she, of her own motion, adopted a second book of a similar character, in which she expressly claimed an independent and exclusive jurisdiction or power in all matters ecclesiastical, “which flows directly from God and the Mediator Jesus Christ, and is spiritual, not having a temporal head on earth, but only Christ, the only king and governor of his church”; and this claim, though directly negatived in 1584 by the “Black Acts,” which included an Act of Supremacy over estates spiritual and temporal, continued to be asserted by the Assemblies, until at last it also was practically allowed in the act of 1592.3 This legislation of 1592, however, did not long remain in force. An act of parliament in 1606, which “reponed, restored and reintegrated” the estate of bishops to their ancient dignities, prerogatives and privileges, was followed by several acts of various subservient assemblies, which, culminating in that of 1618, practically amounted to a complete surrender of jurisdiction by the church itself. For twenty years no Assemblies whatever were held. This interval must necessarily be regarded from the Presbyterian point of view as having been one of very deep depression. But a second reformation, characterized by great energy and vigour, began in 1638. The proceedings of the Assembly of that year, afterwards tardily and reluctantly acquiesced in by the state, finally issued in the acts of parliament of 1649, by which the Westminster standards were ratified, lay-patronage was abolished, and the coronation oath itself framed in accordance with the principles of Presbyterian church government. Another period of intense reaction soon set in. No Assemblies were permitted by Cromwell after 1653; and, soon after the Restoration, Presbytery was temporarily overthrown by a series of rescissory acts. Nor was the Revolution Settlement of 1690 so entirely favourable to the freedom of the church as the legislation of 1649 had been. Prelacy was abolished, and various obnoxious statutes were repealed, but the acts rescissory were not cancelled; presbyterianism was re-established, but the statutory recognition of the Confession of Faith took no notice of certain qualifications under which that document had originally been approved by the Assembly of 1647;4 the old rights of patrons were again discontinued, but the large powers which had been conferred on congregations by the act of 1649 were not wholly restored. Nevertheless the great principle of a distinct ecclesiastical jurisdiction, embodied in the Confession of Faith, was accepted without reservation, and a Presbyterian polity effectively confirmed both then and at the ratification of the treaty of Union. This settlement, however, did not long subsist unimpaired. In 1712 the act of Queen Anne, restoring patronage to its ancient footing, was passed in spite of the earnest remonstrances of the Scottish people. For many years afterwards (until 1784) the Assembly continued to instruct each succeeding commission to make application to the king and the parliament for redress of the grievance. But meanwhile a new phase of Scottish ecclesiastical politics commonly known as Moderatism had been inaugurated, during the prevalence of which the church became even more indifferent than the lay patrons themselves to the rights of her congregations with regard to the “calling” of ministers. From the Free Church point of view, the period from which the secessions under Ebenezer Erskine and Thomas Gillespie are dated was also characterized by numerous other abuses on the Church’s part which amounted to a practical surrender of the most important and distinctive principles of her ancient Presbyterian polity.5 Towards the beginning of the present century there were many circumstances, both within and without the church, which conspired to bring about an evangelical and popular reaction against this reign of “Moderatism.” The result was a protracted struggle, which is commonly referred to as the Ten Years’ Conflict, and which has been aptly described as the last battle in the long war which for nearly 300 years had been waged within the church itself, between the friends and the foes of the doctrine of an exclusive ecclesiastical jurisdiction. That final struggle may be said to have begun with the passing in 1834 of the “Veto” Act, by which it was declared to be a fundamental law of the church that no pastor should be intruded on a congregation contrary to the will of the people,6 and by which it was provided that the simple dissent of a majority of heads of families in a parish should be enough to warrant a presbytery in rejecting a presentee. The question of the legality of this measure soon came to be tried in the civil courts; and it was ultimately answered in a sense unfavourable to the church by the decision (1838) of the court of session in the Auchterarder case, to the effect that a presbytery had no right to reject a presentee simply because the parishioners protested against his settlement, but was bound to disregard the veto (see Chalmers, Thomas). This decision elicited from the Assembly of that year a new declaration of the doctrine of the spiritual independence of the church. The “exclusive jurisdiction of the civil courts in regard to the civil rights and emoluments secured by law to the church and the ministers thereof” was acknowledged without qualification; and continued implicit obedience to their decisions with reference to these rights and emoluments was pledged. At the same time it was insisted on “that, as is declared in the Confession of Faith of this National Established Church, ‘the Lord Jesus Christ, as King and Head of the church, hath therein appointed a government in the hand of church officers distinct from the civil magistrate’; and that in all matters touching the doctrine, discipline and government of the church her judicatories possess an exclusive jurisdiction, founded on the Word of God, which power ecclesiastical” (in the words of the Second Book of Discipline) “flows immediately from God and the Mediator the Lord Jesus Christ, and is spiritual, not having a temporal head on earth, but only Christ, the only spiritual King and Governor of His Kirk.” And it was resolved to assert, and at all hazards defend, this spiritual jurisdiction, and firmly to enforce obedience to the same upon the office-bearers and members of the church. The decision of the court of session having been confirmed by the House of Lords early in 1839, it was decided in the Assembly of that year that the church, while acquiescing in the loss of the temporalities at Auchterarder, should reaffirm the principle of non-intrusion as an integral part of the constitution of the Reformed Church of Scotland, and that a committee should be appointed to confer with the government with a view to the prevention, if possible, of any further collision between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. While the conference with the government had no better result than an unsuccessful attempt at compromise by means of Lord Aberdeen’s Bill, which embodied the principle of a dissent with reasons, still graver complications were arising out of the Marnoch and other cases.7 In the circumstances it was resolved by the Assembly of 1842 to transmit to the queen, by the hands of the lord high commissioner, a “claim, declaration, and protest,” complaining of the encroachments of the court of session,8 and also an address praying for the abolition of patronage. The home secretary’s answer (received in January 1843) gave no hope of redress. Meanwhile the position of the evangelical party had been further hampered by the decision of the court of session declaring the ministers of chapels of ease to be unqualified to sit in any church court. A final appeal to parliament by petition was made in March 1843, when, by a majority of 135 (211 against 76), the House of Commons declined to attempt any redress of the grievances of the Scottish Church.9 At the first session of the following General Assembly (18th May 1843) the reply of the non-intrusion party was made in a protest, signed by upwards of 200 commissioners, to the effect that since, in their opinion, the recent decisions of the civil courts, and the still more recent sanction of these decisions by the legislature, had made it impossible at that time to hold a free Assembly of the church as by law established, they therefore “protest that it shall be lawful for us, and such other commissioners as may concur with us, to withdraw to a separate place of meeting, for the purpose of taking steps for ourselves and all who adhere to us—maintaining with us the Confession of Faith and standards of the Church of Scotland as heretofore understood—for separating in an orderly way from the Establishment, and thereupon adopting such measures as may be competent to us, in humble dependence on God’s grace and the aid of His Holy Spirit, for the advancement of His glory, the extension of the gospel of our Lord and Saviour, and the administration of the affairs of Christ’s house according to His holy word.” The reading of this document was followed by the withdrawal of the entire non-intrusion party to another place of meeting, where the first Assembly of the Free Church was constituted, with Dr Thomas Chalmers as moderator. This Assembly sat from the 18th to the 30th of May, and transacted a large amount of important business. On Tuesday the 23rd, 39610 ministers and professors publicly adhibited their names to the Act of Separation and deed of demission by which they renounced all claim to the benefices they had held in connexion with the Establishment, declaring them to be vacant, and consenting to their being dealt with as such. By this impressive proceeding the signatories voluntarily surrendered an annual income amounting to fully £100,000.

The first care of the voluntarily disestablished church was to provide incomes for her clergy and places of worship for her people. As early as 1841 indeed the leading principle of a “sustentation fund” for the support of the ministry had been announced by Dr Robert Smith Candlish; and at “Convocation,” a private unofficial meeting of the members of the evangelical or non-intrusion party held in November 1842, Dr Chalmers was prepared with a carefully matured scheme according to which “each congregation should do its part in sustaining the whole, and the whole should sustain each congregation.” Between November 1842 and May 1843, 647 associations had been formed; and at the first Assembly it was announced that upwards of £17,000 had already been contributed. At the close of the first financial year (1843-1844) it was reported that the fund had exceeded £61,000. It was participated in by 583 ministers; and 470 drew the full equal dividend of £105. Each successive year showed a steady increase in the gross amount of the fund; but owing to an almost equally rapid increase of the number of new ministerial charges participating in its benefits, the stipend payable to each minister did not for many years reach the sum of £150 which had been aimed at as a minimum. Thus in 1844-1845 the fund had risen to £76,180, but the ministers had also increased to 627, and the equal dividend therefore was only £122. During the first ten years the annual income averaged £84,057; during the next decade £108,643; and during the third £130,246. The minimum of £150 was reached at last in 1868; and subsequently the balance remaining after that minimum had been provided was treated as a surplus fund, and distributed among those ministers whose congregations have contributed at certain specified rates per member. In 1878 the total amount received for this fund was upwards of £177,000; in this 1075 ministers participated. The full equal dividend of £157 was paid to 766 ministers; and additional grants of £36 and £18 were paid out of the surplus fund to 632 and 129 ministers respectively.

To provide for the erection of the buildings which, it was foreseen, would be necessary, a general building fund, in which all should share alike, was also organized, and local building funds were as far as possible established in each parish, with the result that at the first Assembly a sum of £104,776 was reported as already available. By May 1844 a further sum of £123,060 had been collected, and 470 churches were reported as completed or nearly so. In the following year £131,737 was raised and 60 additional churches were built. At the end of four years considerably more than 700 churches had been provided.

During the winter session 1843-1844 the divinity students who had joined the Free Church continued their studies under Dr Chalmers and Dr David Welsh (1793-1845); and at the Assembly of 1844 arrangements were made for the erection of suitable collegiate buildings. The New College, Edinburgh, was built in 1847 at a cost of £46,506; and divinity halls were subsequently set up also in Glasgow and Aberdeen. In 1878 there were 13 professors of theology, with an aggregate of 230 students,—the numbers at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen respectively being 129, 69 and 32.

A somewhat unforeseen result of the Disruption was the necessity for a duplicate system of elementary schools. At the 1843 Assembly it was for the first time announced by Dr Welsh that “schools to a certain extent must be opened to afford a suitable sphere of occupation for parochial and still more for private teachers of schools, who are threatened with deprivation of their present office on account of their opinions upon the church question.” The suggestion was taken up with very great energy, with the result that in May 1845, 280 schools had been set up, while in May 1847 this number had risen to 513, with an attendance of upwards of 44,000 scholars. In 1869 it was stated in an authoritative document laid before members of parliament that at that time there were connected with and supported by the Free Church 598 schools (including two normal schools), with 633 teachers and 64,115 scholars. The school buildings had been erected at a cost of £220,000, of which the committee of privy council had contributed £35,000, while the remainder had been raised by voluntary effort. Annual payments made to teachers, &c., as at 1869, amounted to £16,000. In accordance with certain provisions of the Education Act of 1872 most of the schools of the Free Church were voluntarily transferred, without compensation, to the local school boards. The normal schools are now transferred to the state.

It has been seen already that during the period of the Ten Years’ Conflict the non-intrusion party strenuously denied that in any one respect it was departing from acknowledged principles of the National Church. It continued to do so after the Disruption. In 1846, however, it was found to have become necessary, “in consequence of the late change in the outward condition of the church,” to amend the “questions and formula” to be used at the licensing of probationers and the ordination of office-bearers. These were amended accordingly; and at the same time it was declared that, “while the church firmly maintains the same scriptural principles as to the duties of nations and their rulers in reference to true religion and the Church of Christ for which she has hitherto contended, she disclaims intolerant or persecuting principles, and does not regard her Confession of Faith, or any portion thereof when fairly interpreted, as favouring intolerance or persecution, or consider that her office-bearers by subscribing it profess any principles inconsistent with liberty of conscience and the right of private judgment.” The main difference between the “formula” of the Free Church and that of the Established Church (as at the year 1900) was that the former referred to the Confession of Faith simply as “approven by General Assemblies of this Church,” while the latter described it as “approven by the General Assemblies of this National Church, and ratified by law in the year 1690, and frequently confirmed by divers Acts of Parliament since that time.” The former inserted an additional clause,—“I also approve of the general principles respecting the jurisdiction of the church, and her subjection to Christ as her only Head, which are contained in the Claim of Right and in the Protest referred to in the questions already put to me”; and also added the words which are here distinguished by italics,—“And I promise that through the grace of God I shall firmly and constantly adhere to the same, and to the utmost of my power shall in my station assert, maintain, and defend the said doctrine, worship, discipline and government of this church by kirk-sessions, presbyteries, provincial synods, and general assemblies, together with the liberty and exclusive jurisdiction thereof; and that I shall, in my practice, conform myself to the said worship and submit to the said discipline [and] government, and exclusive jurisdiction, and not endeavour directly or indirectly the prejudice or subversion of the same.” In the year 1851 an act and declaration anent the publication of the subordinate standards and other authoritative documents of the Free Church of Scotland was passed, in which the historical fact is recalled that the Church of Scotland had formally consented to adopt the Confession of Faith, catechisms, directory of public worship, and form of church government agreed upon by the Westminster Assembly; and it is declared that “these several formularies, as ratified, with certain explanations, by divers Acts of Assembly in the years 1645, 1646, and particularly in 1647, this church continues till this day to acknowledge as her subordinate standards of doctrine, worship and government.”11

In 1858 circumstances arose which, in the opinion of many, seemed fitted to demonstrate to the Free Church that her freedom was an illusion, and that all her sacrifices had been made in vain. John Macmillan, minister of Cardross, accused of immorality, had been tried and found guilty by the Free Presbytery of Dumbarton. Appeal having been taken to the synod, an attempt was there made to revive one particular charge, of which he had been finally acquitted by the presbytery; and this attempt was successful in the General Assembly. That ultimate court of review did not confine itself to the points appealed, but went into the merits of the whole case as it had originally come before the presbytery. The result was a sentence of suspension. Macmillan, believing that the Assembly had acted with some irregularity, applied to the court of session for an interdict against the execution of that sentence; and for this act he was summoned to the bar of the Assembly to say whether or not it was the case that he had thus appealed. Having answered in the affirmative, he was deposed on the spot. Forthwith he raised a new action (his previous application for an interdict had been refused) concluding for reduction of the spiritual sentence of deposition and for substantial damages. The defences lodged by the Free Church were to the effect that the civil courts had no right to review and reduce spiritual sentences, or to decide whether the General Assembly of the Free Church had acted irregularly or not. Judgments adverse to the defenders were delivered on these points; and appeals were taken to the House of Lords. But before the case could be heard there, the lord president took an opportunity in the court of session to point out to the pursuer that, inasmuch as the particular General Assembly against which the action was brought had ceased to exist, it could not therefore be made in any circumstances to pay damages, and that the action of reduction of the spiritual sentence, being only auxiliary to the claim of damages, ought therefore to be dismissed. He further pointed out that Macmillan might obtain redress in another way, should he be able to prove malice against individuals. Very soon after this deliverance of the lord president, the case as it had stood against the Free Church was withdrawn, and Macmillan gave notice of an action of a wholly different kind. But this last was not persevered in. The appeals which had been taken to the House of Lords were, in these circumstances, also departed from by the Free Church. The case did not advance sufficiently to show how far the courts of law would be prepared to go in the direction of recognizing voluntary tribunals and a kind of secondary exclusive jurisdiction founded on contract.12 But, whether recognized or not, the church for her part continued to believe that she had an inherent spiritual jurisdiction, and remained unmoved in her determination to act in accordance with that resolution “notwithstanding of whatsoever trouble or persecution may arise.”13

In 1863 a motion was made and unanimously carried in the Free Church Assembly for the appointment of a committee to confer with a corresponding committee of the United Presbyterian Synod, and with the representatives of such other disestablished churches as might be willing to meet and deliberate with a view to an incorporating union. Formal negotiations between the representatives of these two churches were begun shortly afterwards, which resulted in a report laid before the following Assembly. From this document it appeared that the committees of the two churches were not at one on the question as to the relation of the civil magistrate to the church. While on the part of the Free Church it was maintained that he “may lawfully acknowledge, as being in accordance with the Word of God, the creed and jurisdiction of the church,” and that “it is his duty, when necessary and expedient, to employ the national resources in aid of the church, provided always that in doing so, while reserving to himself full control over the temporalities which are his own gift, he abstain from all authoritative interference in the internal government of the church,” it was declared by the committee of the United Presbyterian Church that, “inasmuch as the civil magistrate has no authority in spiritual things, and as the employment of force in such matters is opposed to the spirit and precepts of Christianity, it is not within his province to legislate as to what is true in religion, to prescribe a creed or form of worship to his subjects, or to endow the church from national resources.” In other words, while the Free Church maintained that in certain circumstances it was lawful and even incumbent on the magistrate to endow the church and on the church to accept his endowment, the United Presbyterians maintained that in no case was this lawful either for the one party or for the other. Thus in a very short time it had been made perfectly evident that a union between the two bodies, if accomplished at all, could only be brought about on the understanding that the question as to the lawfulness of state endowments should be an open one. The Free Church Assembly, by increasing majorities, manifested a readiness for union, even although unanimity had not been attained on that theoretical point. But there was a minority which did not sympathize in this readiness, and after ten years of fruitless effort it was in 1873 found to be expedient that the idea of union with the United Presbyterians should for the time be abandoned. Other negotiations, however, which had been entered upon with the Reformed Presbyterian Church at a somewhat later date proved more successful; and a majority of the ministers of that church with their congregations were united with the Free Church in 1876.

(J. S. Bl.)

In the last quarter of the 19th century the Free Church continued to be the most active, theologically, of the Scottish Churches. The College chairs were almost uniformly filled by advanced critics or theologians, inspired more or less by Professor A. B. Davidson. Dr A. B. Bruce, author of The Training of the Twelve, &c., was appointed to the chair of apologetics and New Testament exegesis in the Glasgow College in 1875; Henry Drummond (author of Natural Law in the Spiritual World, &c.) was made lecturer in natural science in the same college in 1877 and became professor in 1884; and Dr George Adam Smith (author of The Twelve Prophets, &c.) was called to the Hebrew chair in 1892. Attempts were made between 1890 and 1895 to bring all these professors except Davidson (similar attacks were also made on Dr Marcus Dods, afterwards principal of the New College, Edinburgh) to the bar of the Assembly for unsound teaching or writing; but in every case these were abortive, the Assembly never taking any step beyond warning the accused that their primary duty was to teach and defend the church’s faith as embodied in the confession. In 1892 the Free Church, following the example of the United Presbyterian Church and the Church of Scotland (1889), passed a Declaratory Act relaxing the stringency of subscription to the confession, with the result that a small number of ministers and congregations, mostly in the Highlands, severed their connexion with the church and formed the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, on strictly and straitly orthodox lines. In 1907 this body had twenty congregations and twelve ministers.

The Free Church always regarded herself as a National Church, and during this period she sought actively to be true to that character by providing church ordinances for the increasing population of Scotland and applying herself to the new problems of non-church-going, and of the changing habits of the people. Her Assembly’s committee on religion and morals worked toward the same ends as the similar organization of the Established Church, and in her, as in the other churches, the standard of parochial and congregational activity was raised and new methods of operation devised. She passed legislation on the difficult problem of ridding the church of inefficient ministers. The use of instrumental music was sanctioned in Free Churches during this period. An association was formed in 1891 to promote the ends of edification, order and reverence in the public services of the church, and published in 1898 A New Directory for Public Worship which does not provide set forms of prayer, but directions as to the matter of prayer in the various services. The Free Church took a large share in the study of hymnology and church music, which led to the production of The Church Hymnary. From 1885 to 1895 much of the energy of all the Presbyterian churches was absorbed by the disestablishment agitation. In the former year the Free Church, having almost entirely shed the establishment principle on which it was founded, began to rival the United Presbyterian Church in its resolutions calling for the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland. In spite of the offers of the Establishment Assembly to confer with the dissenting churches about union, the assaults upon its status waxed in vigour, till in 1893 the Free Church hailed the result of the general election as a verdict of the constituencies in favour of disestablishment, and insisted upon the government of the day taking up Sir Charles Cameron’s bill.

During the last four or five years of the century the Free and United Presbyterian churches, which after the failure of their union negotiations in 1873 had been connected together by a Mutual Eligibility Act enabling a congregation of one church to call a minister from the other, devoted their energy to the arrangement of an incorporating union. The Synod of the United Presbyterian Church resolved in 1896 to “take steps towards union,” and in the following year the Free Assembly responded by appointing a committee to confer with a committee of the other church. The joint committee discovered a “remarkable and happy agreement” between the doctrinal standards, rules and methods of the two bodies, and with very little concessions on either side a common constitution and common “questions and formula” for the admission of ministers and office-bearers were arranged. A minority, always growing smaller, of the Free Church Assembly, protested against the proposed union, and threatened if it were carried through to test its legality in the courts. To meet this opposition, the suggestion is understood to have been made that an act of parliament should be applied for to legalize the union; but this was not done, and the union was carried through on the understanding that the question of the lawfulness of church establishments should be an open one.

The supreme courts of the churches met for the last time in their respective places of meeting on the 30th of October 1900, and on the following day the joint meeting took place at which the union was completed, and the United Free Church of Scotland (q.v.) entered on its career. The protesting and dissenting minority at once claimed to be the Free Church. They met outside the Free Assembly Hall on the 31st of October, and, failing to gain admission to it, withdrew to another hall, where they elected Mr Colin Bannatyne their moderator and held the remaining sittings of the Assembly. It was reported that between 16,000 and 17,000 names had been received of persons adhering to the anti-unionist principle. At the Assembly of 1901 it was stated that the Free Church had twenty-five ministers and at least sixty-three congregations. The character of the church is indicated by the fact that its office-bearers were the faithful survivors of the decreasing minority of the Old Free Church, which had protested against the disestablishment resolutions, against the relaxation of subscription, against toleration of the teaching of the Glasgow professors, and against the use in worship of organs or of human hymns. Her congregations were mostly in the Gaelic-speaking districts of Scotland. She was confronted with a very arduous undertaking; her congregations grew in number, but were far from each other and there were not nearly enough ministers. The Highlands were filled, by the Union, with exasperation and dispeace which could not soon subside. The church met with no sympathy or assistance at the hands of the United Free Church, and her work was conducted at first under considerable hardships, nor was her position one to appeal to the general popular sentiment of Scotland. But the little church continued her course with indomitable courage and without any compromise of principle. The Declaratory Act of 1892 was repealed after a consultation of presbyteries, and the old principles as to worship were declared. A professor was obliged to withdraw a book he had written, in which the results of criticism, with regard to the Synoptic Gospels, had been accepted and applied. The desire of the Church of Scotland to obtain relaxation of her formula was declared to make union with her impossible. Along with this unbending attitude, signs of material growth were not wanting. The revenue of the church increased; the grant from the sustentation fund was in 1901 only £75, but from 1903 onwards it was £167.

The decision of the House of Lords in 1904 did not bring the trials of the Free Church to an end. In the absence of any arrangement with the United Free Church, she could only gain possession of the property declared to belong to her by an application in each particular case to the Court of Session, and a series of law-suits began which were trying to all parties. In the year 1905 the Free Church Assembly met in the historic Free Church Assembly Hall, but it did not meet there again. Having been left by the awards of the commission without any station in the foreign mission field, the Free Church resolved to start a foreign mission of her own. The urgent task confronting the church was that of supplying ordinances to her congregations. The latter numbered 200 in 1907, and the church had as yet only 74 ordained ministers, so that many of the manses allocated to her by the commissioners were not yet occupied, and catechists and elders were called to conduct services where possible. The gallant stand this little church had made for principles which were no longer represented by any Presbyterian church outside the establishment attracted to her much interest and many hopes that she might be successful in her endeavours to do something for the religious life of Scotland.

See Scotland, Church of, for bibliography and statistics.

(A. M.*)

1 “It is her being free, not her being established, that constitutes the real historical and hereditary identity of the Reformed National Church of Scotland.” See Act and Declaration, &c., of Free Assembly, 1851.

2 In the act Anent the true and holy Kirk, and of those that are declared not to be of the same. This act was supplemented by that of 1579, Anent the Jurisdiction of the Kirk.

3 The Second Book of Discipline was not formally recognized in that act; but all former acts against “the jurisdiction and discipline of the true Kirk as the same is used and exercised within the realm” were abolished; and all “liberties, privileges, immunities and freedoms whatsoever” previously granted were ratified and approved.

4 The most important of these had reference to the full right of a constituted church to the enjoyment of an absolutely unrestricted freedom in convening Assemblies. This very point on one occasion at least threatened to be the cause of serious misunderstandings between William and the people of Scotland. The difficulties were happily smoothed, however, by the wisdom and tact of William Carstares.

5 See Act and Declaration of Free Assembly, 1851.

6 This principle had been asserted even by an Assembly so late as that of 1736, and had been invariably presupposed in the “call,” which had never ceased to be regarded as an indispensable prerequisite for the settlement of a minister.

7 According to the Free Church “Protest” of 1843 it was in these cases decided (1) that the courts of the church were liable to be compelled to intrude ministers on reclaiming congregations; (2) that the civil courts had power to interfere with and interdict the preaching of the gospel and administration of ordinances as authorized and enjoined by the church; (3) that the civil courts had power to suspend spiritual censures pronounced by the courts of the church, and to interdict their execution as to spiritual effects, functions and privileges; (4) that deposed ministers, and probationers deprived of their licence, could be restored by the mandate of the civil courts to the spiritual office and status of which the church courts had deprived them; (5) that the right of membership in ecclesiastical courts could be determined by the civil courts; (6) that the civil courts had power to supersede the majority of a church court of the Establishment in regard to the exercise of its spiritual functions as a church court, and to authorize the minority to exercise the said functions in opposition to the court itself and to the superior judicatories of the church; (7) that processes of ecclesiastical discipline could be arrested by the civil courts; and (8) that without the sanction of the civil courts no increased provision could be made for the spiritual care of a parish, although such provision left all civil rights and patrimonial interests untouched.