VOLUME XVII SLICE II Luray Cavern to Mackinac Island (continued 7)

In 1826 Macaulay was called to the bar and joined the northern circuit. But he soon gave up even the pretence of reading law, and spent many more hours under the gallery of the house of commons than in the court. His first attempt at a public speech, made at an anti-slavery meeting in 1824, was described by the Edinburgh Review as “a display of eloquence of rare and matured excellence.” His first considerable appearance in print was in No. 1 of Knight’s Quarterly Magazine, a periodical which enjoyed a short but brilliant existence, and which was largely supported by Eton and Cambridge. In August 1825 began Macaulay’s connexion with the periodical which was to prove the field of his literary reputation. The Edinburgh Review was at this time at the height of its power, not only as an organ of the growing opinion which, leant towards reform, but as a literary tribunal from which there was no appeal. His essay on Milton (Aug. 1825), so crude that the author afterwards said that “it contained scarcely a paragraph such as his matured judgment approved,” created for him at once a literary reputation which suffered no diminution to the last, a reputation which he established and confirmed, but which it would have been hardly possible to make more conspicuous. The publisher John Murray declared that it would be worth the copyright of Childe Harold to have Macaulay on the staff of the Quarterly Review, and Robert Hall, the orator, writhing with pain, and well-nigh worn out with disease, was discovered lying on the floor employed in learning by aid of grammar and dictionary enough Italian to enable him to verify the parallel between Milton and Dante.

This sudden blaze of popularity, kindled by a single essay, is partly to be explained by the dearth of literary criticism in England at that epoch. For, though a higher note had already been sounded by Hazlitt and Coleridge, it had not yet taken hold of the public mind, which was still satisfied with the feeble appreciations of the Retrospective Review, or the dashing and damnatory improvisation of Wilson in Blackwood or Jeffrey in the Edinburgh. Still, allowance being made for the barbarous partisanship of the established critical tribunals of the period, it seems surprising that a social success so signal should have been the consequence of a single article. The explanation is that the writer of the article on Milton was, unlike most authors, also a brilliant conversationalist. There has never been a period when an amusing talker has not been in great demand at London tables; but when Macaulay made his debut witty conversation was studied and cultivated as it has ceased to be in the more busy age which has succeeded. At the university Macaulay had been recognized as pre-eminent for inexhaustible talk and genial companionship among a circle of such brilliant young men as Charles Austin, Romilly, Praed and Villiers. He now displayed these gifts on a wider theatre. Launched on the best that London had to give in the way of society, Macaulay accepted and enjoyed with all the zest of youth and a vigorous nature the opportunities opened for him. He was courted and admired by the most distinguished personages of the day. He was admitted at Holland House, where Lady Holland listened to him with deference, and scolded him with a circumspection which was in itself a compliment. Samuel Rogers spoke of him with friendliness and to him with affection. He was treated with almost fatherly kindness by “Conversation” Sharp.

Thus distinguished, and justifiably conscious of his great powers, Macaulay began to aspire to a political career. But the shadow of pecuniary trouble early began to fall upon his path. When he went to college his father believed himself to be worth £100,000. But commercial disaster overtook the house of Babington & Macaulay, and the son now saw himself compelled to work for his livelihood. His Trinity fellowship of £300 a year became of great consequence to him, but it expired in 1831; he could make at most £200 a year by writing; and a commissionership of bankruptcy, which was given him by Lord Lyndhurst in 1828, and which brought him in about £400 a year, was swept away, without compensation, by the ministry which came into power in 1830. Macaulay was reduced to such straits that he had to sell his Cambridge gold medal.

In February 1830 the doors of the House of Commons were opened to him through what was then called a “pocket borough.” Lord Lansdowne, who had been struck by two articles on James Mill and the Utilitarians, which appeared in the Edinburgh Review in 1829, offered the author the seat at Calne. The offer was accompanied by the express assurance that the patron had no wish to interfere with Macaulay’s freedom of voting. He thus entered parliament at one of the most exciting moments of English domestic history, when the compact phalanx of reactionary administration which for nearly fifty years had commanded a crushing majority in the Commons was on the point of being broken by the growing strength of the party of reform. Macaulay made his maiden speech on the 5th of April 1830, on the second reading of the Bill for the Removal of Jewish Disabilities. In July the king died and parliament was dissolved; the revolution took place in Paris. Macaulay, who was again returned for Calne, visited Paris, eagerly enjoying a first taste of foreign travel. On the 1st of March 1831 the Reform Bill was introduced, and on the second night of the debate Macaulay made the first of his reform speeches. It was, like all his speeches, a success. Sir Robert Peel said of it that “portions were as beautiful as anything I have ever heard or read.”

Encouraged by this first success, Macaulay now threw himself with ardour into the life of the House of Commons, while at the same time he continued to enjoy to the full the social opportunities which his literary and political celebrity had placed within his reach. He dined out almost nightly, and spent many of his Sundays at the suburban villas of the Whig leaders, while he continued to supply the Edinburgh Review with articles. On the triumph of Earl Grey’s cabinet, and the passing of the Reform Act in June 1832, Macaulay, whose eloquence had signalized every stage of the conflict, became one of the commissioners of the board of control, and applied himself to the study of Indian affairs. Giving his days to India and his nights to the House of Commons, he could only devote a few hours to literary composition by rising at five when the business of the house had allowed of his getting to bed in time on the previous evening. Between September 1831 and December 1833 he furnished the Review with eight important articles, besides writing his ballad on the Armada.

In the first Reform Parliament, January 1833, Macaulay took his seat as one of the two members for Leeds, which up to that date had been unrepresented in the House of Commons. He replied to O’Connell in the debate on the address, meeting the great agitator face to face, with high, but not intemperate, defiance. In July he defended the Government of India Bill in a speech of great power, and he was instrumental in getting the bill through committee without unnecessary friction. When the abolition of slavery came before the house as a practical question, Macaulay had the prospect of having to surrender office or to vote for a modified abolition, viz. twelve years’ apprenticeship, which was proposed by the ministry, but condemned by the abolitionists. He was prepared to make the sacrifice of place rather than be unfaithful to the cause to which his father had devoted his life. He placed his resignation in Lord Althorp’s hands, and spoke against the ministerial proposal. But the sense of the house was so strongly expressed as unfavourable that, finding they would be beaten if they persisted, the ministry gave way, and reduced apprenticeship to seven years, a compromise which the abolition party accepted; and Macaulay remained at the board of control.

While he was thus growing in reputation, and advancing his public credit, the fortunes of the family were sinking, and it became evident that his sisters would have no provision except such as their brother might be enabled to make for them. Macaulay had but two sources of income, both of them precarious—office and his pen. As to office, the Whigs could not have expected at that time to retain power for a whole generation; and, even while they did so, Macaulay’s resolution that he would always give an independent vote made it possible that he might at any moment find himself in disagreement with his colleagues, and have to quit his place. As to literature, he wrote to Lord Lansdowne (1833), “it has been hitherto merely my relaxation; I have never considered it as the means of support. I have chosen my own topics, taken my own time, and dictated my own terms. The thought of becoming a bookseller’s hack, of spurring a jaded fancy to reluctant exertion, of filling sheets with trash merely that sheets may be filled, of bearing from publishers and editors what Dryden bore from Tonson and what Mackintosh bore from Lardner, is horrible to me.” Macaulay was thus prepared to accept the offer of a seat in the supreme council of India, created by the new India Act. The salary of the office was fixed at £10,000, out of which he calculated to be able to save £30,000 in five years. His sister Hannah accepted his proposal to accompany him, and in February 1834 the brother and sister sailed for Calcutta.

Macaulay’s appointment to India occurred at the critical moment when the government of the company was being superseded by government by the Crown. His knowledge of India was, when he landed, but superficial. But at this juncture there was more need of statesmanship directed by general liberal principles than of a practical knowledge of the details of Indian administration. Macaulay’s presence in the council was of great value; his minutes are models of good judgment and practical sagacity. The part he took in India has been described as “the application of sound liberal principles to a government which had till then been jealous, close and repressive.” He vindicated the liberty of the press; he maintained the equality of Europeans and natives before the law; and as president of the committee of public instruction he inaugurated the system of national education.

A clause in the India Act 1833 occasioned the appointment of a commission to inquire into the jurisprudence of the Eastern dependency. Macaulay was appointed president of that commission. The draft of a penal code which he submitted became, after a revision of many years, and by the labour of many experienced lawyers, the Indian criminal code. Of this code Sir James Stephen said that “it reproduces in a concise and even beautiful form the spirit of the law of England, in a compass which by comparison with the original may be regarded as almost absurdly small. The Indian penal code is to the English criminal law what a manufactured article ready for use is to the materials out of which it is made. It is to the French code pénal, and to the German code of 1871, what a finished picture is to a sketch. It is simpler and better expressed than Livingston’s code for Louisiana; and its practical success has been complete.”

Macaulay’s enlightened views and measures drew down on him, however, the abuse and ill-will of Anglo-Indian society. Fortunately for himself he was enabled to maintain a tranquil indifference to political detraction by withdrawing his thoughts into a sphere remote from the opposition and enmity by which he was surrounded. Even amid the excitement of his early parliamentary successes literature had balanced politics in his thoughts and interests. Now in his exile he began to feel more strongly each year the attraction of European letters and European history. He wrote to his friend Ellis: “I have gone back to Greek literature with a passion astonishing to myself. I have never felt anything like it. I was enraptured with Italian during the six months which I gave up to it; and I was little less pleased with Spanish. But when I went back to the Greek I felt as if I had never known before what intellectual enjoyment was.” In thirteen months he read through, some of them twice, a large part of the Greek and Latin classics. The fascination of these studies produced their inevitable effect upon his view of political life. He began to wonder what strange infatuation leads men who can do something better to squander their intellect, their health and energy, on such subjects as those which most statesmen are engaged in pursuing. He was already, he says, “more than half determined to abandon politics and give myself wholly to letters, to undertake some great historical work, which may be at once the business and the amusement of my life, and to leave the pleasures of pestiferous rooms, sleepless nights, and diseased stomachs to Roebuck and to Praed.”

In 1838 Macaulay and his sister Hannah, who had married Charles Trevelyan in 1834, returned to England. He at once entered parliament as member for Edinburgh. In 1839 he became secretary at war, with a seat in the cabinet in Lord Melbourne’s ministry. His acceptance of office diverted him for a time from prosecuting the plan he had already formed of a great historical work. But in less than two years the Melbourne ministry fell. In 1842 appeared his Lays of Ancient Rome, and in the next year he collected and published his Essays. He returned to office in 1846, in Lord John Russell’s administration, as paymaster-general. His duties were very light, and the contact with official life and the obligations of parliamentary attendance were even of benefit to him while he was engaged upon his History. In the sessions of 1846-1847 he spoke only five times, and at the general election of July 1847 he lost his seat for Edinburgh. The balance of Macaulay’s faculties had now passed to the side of literature. At an earlier date he had relished crowds and the excitement of ever new faces; as years went forward, and absorption in the work of composition took off the edge of his spirits, he recoiled from publicity. He began to regard the prospect of business as worry, and had no longer the nerve to brace himself to the social efforts required of one who represents a large constituency.

Macaulay retired into private life, not only without regret, but with a sense of relief. He gradually withdrew from general society, feeling the bore of big dinners and country-house visits, but he still enjoyed close and constant intercourse with a circle of the most eminent men that London then contained. At that time social breakfasts were in vogue. Macaulay himself preferred this to any other form of entertainment. Of these brilliant reunions nothing has been preserved beyond the names of the men who formed them—Rogers, Hallam, Sydney Smith, Lord Carlisle, Lord Stanhope, Nassau Senior, Charles Greville, Milman, Panizzi, G. C. Lewis, Van de Weyer. His biographer thus describes Macaulay’s appearance and bearing in conversation: “Sitting bolt upright, his hands resting on the arms of his chair, or folded over the handle of his walking-stick, knitting his eyebrows if the subject was one which had to be thought out as he went along, or brightening from the forehead downwards when a burst of humour was coming, his massive features and honest glance suited well with the manly sagacious sentiments which he set forth in his sonorous voice and in his racy and intelligible language. To get at his meaning people had never the need to think twice, and they certainly had seldom the time.”

But, great as was his enjoyment of literary society and books, they only formed his recreation. In these years he was working with unflagging industry at the composition of his History. His composition was slow, his corrections both of matter and style endless; he spared no pains to ascertain the facts. He sacrificed to the prosecution of his task a political career, House of Commons fame, the allurements of society. The first two volumes of the History of England appeared in December 1848. The success was in every way complete beyond expectation. The sale of edition after edition, both in England and the United States, was enormous.

In 1852, when his party returned to office, he refused a seat in the cabinet, but he could not bring himself to decline the compliment of a voluntary amende which the city of Edinburgh paid him in returning him at the head of the poll at the general election in July of that year. He had hardly accepted the summons to return to parliamentary life before fatal weakness betrayed itself in deranged action of the heart; from this time forward till his death his strength continued steadily to sink. The process carried with it dejection of spirits as its inevitable attendant. The thought oppressed him that the great work to which he had devoted himself would remain a fragment. Once again, in June 1853, he spoke in parliament, and with effect, against the exclusion of the master of the rolls from the House of Commons, and at a later date in defence of competition for the Indian civil service. But he was aware that it was a grievous waste of his small stock of force, and that he made these efforts at the cost of more valuable work.

In November 1855 vols. iii. and iv. of the History appeared and obtained a vast circulation. Within a generation of its first appearance upwards of 140,000 copies of the History were printed and sold in the United Kingdom alone; and in the United States the sales were on a correspondingly large scale. The History was translated into German, Polish, Danish, Swedish, Hungarian, Russian, Bohemian, Italian, French, Dutch and Spanish. Flattering marks of respect were heaped upon the author by foreign academies. His pecuniary profits were (for that time) on a scale commensurate with the reputation of the book: the cheque he received for £20,000 has become a landmark in literary history.

In May 1856 he quitted the Albany, in which he had passed fifteen happy years, and went to live at Holly Lodge, Campden Hill, then, before it was enlarged, a tiny bachelor’s dwelling, but with a lawn whose unbroken slope of verdure gave it the air of a considerable country house. In the following year (1857) he was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Macaulay of Rothley. “It was,” says Lady Trevelyan, “one of the few things that everybody approved; he enjoyed it himself, as he did everything, simply and cordially.” It was a novelty in English life to see eminence which was neither that of territorial opulence nor of political or military services recognized and rewarded by elevation to the peerage.

But Macaulay’s health, which had begun to give way in 1852, was every year visibly failing. In May 1858 he went to Cambridge for the purpose of being sworn in as high steward of the borough, to which office he had been elected on the death of Earl Fitzwilliam. When his health was given at a public breakfast in the town-hall he was obliged to excuse himself from speaking. In the upper house he never spoke. Absorbed in the prosecution of his historical work, he had grown indifferent to the party politics of his own day. Gradually he had to acquiesce in the conviction that, though his intellectual powers remained unimpaired, his physical energies would not carry him through the reign of Anne; and, though he brought down the narrative to the death of William III., the last half-volume wants the finish and completeness of the earlier portions. The winter of 1859 told on him, and he died on the 28th of December. On the 9th of January 1860 he was buried in Westminster Abbey, in Poets’ Corner, near the statue of Addison.

Lord Macaulay never married. A man of warm domestic affections, he found their satisfaction in the attachment and close sympathy of his sister Hannah, the wife of Sir Charles Trevelyan. Her children were to him as his own. Macaulay was a steadfast friend, and no act inconsistent with the strictest honour and integrity was ever imputed to him. When a poor man, and when salary was of consequence to him, he twice resigned office rather than make compliances for which he would not have been severely blamed. In 1847, when his seat in parliament was at stake, he would not be persuaded to humour, to temporize, even to conciliate. He had a keen relish for the good things of life, and desired fortune as the means of obtaining them; but there was nothing mercenary or selfish in his nature. When he had raised himself to opulence, he gave away with an open hand, not seldom rashly. His very last act was to write a letter to a poor curate enclosing a cheque for £25. The purity of his morals was not associated with any tendency to cant.

The lives of men of letters are often records of sorrow or suffering. The life of Macaulay was eminently happy. Till the closing years (1857-1859), he enjoyed life with the full zest of healthy faculty, happy in social intercourse, happy in the solitude of his study, and equally divided between the two. For the last fifteen years of his life he lived for literature. His writings were remunerative to him far beyond the ordinary measure, yet he never wrote for money. He lived in his historical researches; his whole heart and interest were unreservedly given to the men and the times of whom he read and wrote. His command of literature was imperial. Beginning with a good classical foundation, be made himself familiar with the imaginative, and then with the historical, remains of Greece and Rome. He went on to add the literature of his own country, of France, of Italy, of Spain. He learnt Dutch enough for the purposes of his history. He read German, but for the literature of the northern nations he had no taste, and of the erudite labours of the Germans he had little knowledge and formed an inadequate estimate. The range of his survey of human things had other limitations more considerable still. All philosophical speculation was alien to his mind; nor did he seem aware of the degree in which such speculation had influenced the progress of humanity. A large—the largest—part of ecclesiastical history lay outside his historical view. Of art he confessed himself ignorant, and even refused a request to furnish a critique on Swift’s poetry to the Edinburgh Review. Lessing’s Laocoon, or Goethe’s criticism on Hamlet, “filled” him “with wonder and despair.”

Of the marvellous discoveries of science which were succeeding each other day by day he took no note; his pages contain no reference to them. It has been told already how he recoiled from the mathematical studies of his university. These deductions made, the circuit of his knowledge still remains very wide—as extensive perhaps as any human brain is competent to embrace. His literary outfit was as complete as has ever been possessed by any English writer; and, if it wants the illumination of philosophy, it has an equivalent resource in a practical acquaintance with affairs, with administration, with the interior of cabinets, and the humour of popular assemblies. Nor was the knowledge merely stored in his memory; it was always at his command. Whatever his subject, he pours over it his stream of illustration, drawn from the records of all ages and countries. His Essays are not merely instructive as history; they are, like Milton’s blank verse, freighted with the spoils of all the ages. As an historian Macaulay has not escaped the charge of partisanship. He was a Whig; and in writing the history of the rise and triumph of Whig principles in the latter half of the 17th century he identified himself with the cause. But the charge of partiality, as urged against Macaulay, means more than that he wrote the history of the Whig revolution from the point of view of those who made it. When he is describing the merits of friends and the faults of enemies his pen knows no moderation. He has a constant tendency to glaring colours, to strong effects, and will always be striking violent blows. He is not merely exuberant but excessive. There is an overweening confidence about his tone; he expresses himself in trenchant phrases, which are like challenges to an opponent to stand up and deny them. His propositions have no qualifications. Uninstructed readers like this assurance, as they like a physician who has no doubt about their case. But a sense of distrust grows upon the more circumspect reader as he follows page after page of Macaulay’s categorical affirmations about matters which our own experience of life teaches us to be of a contingent nature. We inevitably think of a saying attributed to Lord Melbourne: “I wish I were as cocksure of any one thing as Macaulay is of everything.” Macaulay’s was the mind of the advocate, not of the philosopher; it was the mind of Bossuet, which admits no doubts or reserves itself and tolerates none in others, and as such was disqualified from that equitable balancing of evidence which is the primary function of the historian.

Macaulay, the historian no less than the politician, is, however, always on the side of justice, fairness for the weak against the strong, the oppressed against the oppressor. But though a Liberal in practical politics, he had not the reformer’s temperament. The world as it is was good enough for him. The glories of wealth, rank, honours, literary fame, the elements of vulgar happiness, made up his ideal of life. A successful man himself, every personage and every cause is judged by its success. “The brilliant Macaulay,” says Emerson, “who expresses the tone of the English governing classes of the day, explicitly teaches that ‘good’ means good to eat, good to wear, material commodity.” Macaulay is in accord with the average sentiment of orthodox and stereotyped humanity on the relative values of the objects and motives of human endeavour. And this commonplace materialism is one of the secrets of his popularity, and one of the qualities which guarantee that that popularity will be enduring.

(M. P.)

Macaulay’s whole works were collected in 1866 by his sister, Lady Trevelyan, in 8 vols. The first four volumes are occupied by the History; the next three contain the Essays, and the Lives which he contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In vol. viii. are collected his Speeches, the Lays of Ancient Rome, and some miscellaneous pieces. The “life” by Dean Milman, printed in vol. viii. of the edition of 1858-1862, is prefixed to the “People’s Edition” (4 vols., 1863-1864). Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co. published a complete edition, the “Albany,” in 12 vols., in 1898. There are numerous editions of the Critical and Historical Essays, separately and collectively; they were edited in 1903 by F. C. Montagu.

The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (2 vols., 1876), by his nephew, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, is one of the best biographies in the English language. The life (1882) in the “English Men of Letters” series was written by J. Cotter Morison. Far further criticism, see Hepworth Dixon, in his Life of Penn (1841); John Paget, The New Examen: Inquiry into Macaulay’s History (1861) and Paradoxes and Puzzles (1874); Walter Bagehot, in the National Review (Jan. 1856), reprinted in his Literary Studies (1879); James Spedding, Evenings with a Reviewer (1881), discussing his essay on Bacon; Sir L. Stephen, Hours in a Library, vol. ii. (1892); Lord Morley, Critical Miscellanies (1877), vol. ii.; Lord Avebury, Essays and Addresses (1903); Thum, Anmerkungen zu Macaulay’s History of England (Heilbronn, 1882). A bibliography of German criticism of Macaulay is given in G. Körting’s Grd. der engl. Literatur (4th ed., Münster, 1905).

MACAW, or, as formerly spelt, Maccaw, the name given to some fifteen or more species of large, long-tailed birds of the parrot-family, natives of the neotropical region, and forming a very well-known and easily recognized genus Ara, and to the four species of Brazilian Hyacinthine macaws of the genera Anodorhynchus and Cyanopsittacus. Most of the macaws are remarkable for their gaudy plumage, which exhibits the brightest scarlet, yellow, blue and green in varying proportion and often in violent contrast, while a white visage often adds a very peculiar and expressive character.1 With one exception the known species of Ara inhabit the mainland of America from Paraguay to Mexico, being especially abundant in Bolivia, where no fewer than seven of them (or nearly one half) have been found (Proc. Zool. Soc., 1879, p. 634). The single extra-continental species, A. tricolor, is one of the most brilliantly coloured, and is peculiar to Cuba, where, according to Gundlach (Ornitologia Cubana, p. 126), its numbers are rapidly decreasing so that there is every chance of its becoming extinct.2

Of the best known species of the group, the blue-and-yellow macaw, A. ararauna, has an extensive range in South America from Guiana in the east to Colombia in the west, and southwards to Paraguay. Of large size, it is to be seen in almost every zoological garden, and it is very frequently kept alive in private houses, for its temper is pretty good, and it will become strongly attached to those who tend it. Its richly coloured plumage, sufficiently indicated by its common English name, supplies feathers eagerly sought by salmon-fishers for the making of artificial flies. The red-and-blue macaw, A. macao, is even larger and more gorgeously clothed, for, besides the colours expressed in its ordinary appellation, yellow and green enter into its adornment. It inhabits Central as well as South America as far as Bolivia, and is also a common bird in captivity, though perhaps less often seen than the foregoing. The red-and-yellow species, A. chloroptera, ranging from Panama to Brazil, is smaller, or at least has a shorter tail, and is not quite so usually met with in menageries. The red-and-green, A. militaris, smaller again than the last, is not unfrequent in confinement, and presents the colours of the name it bears. This has the most northerly extension of habitat, occurring in Mexico and thence southwards to Bolivia. In A. manilata and A. nobilis the prevailing colour is green and blue. The Hyacinthine macaws A. hyacinthinus, A. leari, A. glaucus and Cyanopsittacus spixi are almost entirely blue.

The macaws live well in captivity, either chained to a perch or kept in large aviaries in which their strong flight is noticeable. The note of these birds is harsh and screaming. The sexes are alike; the lustreless white eggs are laid in hollow trees, usually two at a time. The birds are gregarious but apparently monogamous.

(A. N.)

1 This serves to separate the macaws from the long-tailed parakeets of the New World (Conurus), to which they are very nearly allied.

2 There is some reason to think that Jamaica may have formerly possessed a macaw (though no example is known to exist), and if so it was most likely a peculiar species. Sloane (Voyage, ii. 297), after describing what he calls the “great maccaw” (A. ararauna), which he had seen in captivity in that island, mentions the “small maccaw” as being very common in the woods there, and P. H. Gosse (Birds of Jamaica, p. 260) gives, on the authority of Robinson, a local naturalist of the last century, the description of a bird which cannot be reconciled with any species now known, though it must have evidently been allied to the Cuban A. tricolor.

MACBETH, king of Scotland (d. 1058), was the son of Findlaech, mormaer or hereditary ruler of Moreb (Moray and Ross), who had been murdered by his nephews in 1020. He probably became mormaer on the death of Malcolm, one of the murderers, in 1029, and he may have been one of the chiefs (the Maclbaethe of the Saxon Chronicle) who submitted to Canute in 1031. Marianus records that in 1040 Duncan, the grandson and successor of Malcolm king of Scotland, was slain by Macbeth. Duncan had shortly before suffered a severe defeat at the hands of Thorfinn, the Norwegian earl of Orkney and Caithness, and it was perhaps this event which tempted Macbeth to seize the throne. As far as is known he had no claim to the crown except through his wife Gruach, who appears to have been a member of the royal family. Macbeth was apparently a generous benefactor to the Church, and is said to have made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050. According to S. Berchan his reign was a time of prosperity for Scotland. The records of the period, however, are extremely meagre, and much obscurity prevails, especially as to his relations with the powerful earl Thorfinn. More than one attempt was made by members of the Scottish royal family to recover the throne; in 1045 by Crinan, the lay abbot of Dunkeld, son-in-law of Malcolm II., and in 1054 by Duncan’s son Malcolm with the assistance of Siward the powerful earl of Northumbria, himself a connexion of the ousted dynasty. Three years later in 1057 Malcolm and Siward again invaded Scotland and the campaign ended with the defeat and death of Macbeth, who was slain at Lumphanan. Macbeth is, of course, chiefly famous as the central figure of Shakespeare’s great tragedy.

See W. F. Skene, Chronicles of the Picts and Scots (1867) and Celtic Scotland (1876); Sir John Rhys, Celtic Britain (1904).

MACCABEES, the name (in the plural) of a distinguished Jewish family dominant in Jerusalem in the 2nd century B.C. According to 1 Macc. ii. 4, the name Maccabaeus (Gr. Μακκαβῖος-? Heb. מקבי) was originally the distinctive surname of Judas, third son of the Jewish priest Mattathias, who struck the first blow for religious liberty during the persecution under Antiochus IV. (Epiphanes). Subsequently, however, it obtained a wider significance, having been applied first to the kinsmen of Judas, then to his adherents, and ultimately to all champions of religion in the Greek period. Thus the mother of the seven brethren, whose martyrdom is related in 2 Macc. vi., vii., is called by early Christian writers “the mother of the Maccabees.” The name is used still more loosely in the titles of the so-called Third, Fourth and Fifth Books of Maccabees. It is now customary to apply it only to the sons and descendants of Mattathias. As, however, according to Josephus (Ant. xii. 6. 1), this brave priest’s great-great-grandfather was called Ḥasmon (i.e. “rich” = magnate; cf. Ps. lxviii. 31 [32]), the family is more correctly designated by the name of Hasmonaeans or Asmoneans (q.v.). This name Jewish authors naturally prefer to that of Maccabees; they also style 1 and 2 Macc. “Books of the Hasmonaeans.”

If Maccabee (maqqābi) is the original form of the name, the most probable derivation is from the Aramaic maqqābā (Heb. מקבת, Judg. iv. 21, &c.) = “hammer.” The surname “hammerer” might have been applied to Judas either as a distinctive title pure and simple or symbolically as in the parallel case of Edward I., “Scotorum malleus.” Even if māqqāba does denote the ordinary workman’s hammer, and not the great smith’s hammer which would more fitly symbolize the impetuosity of Judas, this is not a fatal objection. The doubled k of the Greek form is decisive against (1) the theory that the name Maccabee was made up of the initials of the opening words of Exod. xv. ii; (2) the derivation from מכבי = “extinguisher” (cf. Isa. xliii. 17), based by Curtiss (The Name Machabee, Leipzig, 1876) on the Latin spelling Machabaeus = Μακκαβῖος, which Jerome probably adopted in accordance with the usage of the times.

The Maccabaean revolt was caused by the attempt of Antiochus IV. (Epiphanes), king of Syria (175-164 B. C.), to force Hellenism upon Judaea (see Seleucid Dynasty; Hellenism). Ever since the campaigns of Alexander the Great, Greek habits and ideas had been widely adopted in Palestine. Over the higher classes especially Hellenism had cast its spell. This called forth the organized opposition of the Ḥasīdīm (= “the pious”), who constituted themselves champions of the Law. Joshua, who headed the Hellenistic faction, graecized his name into Jason, contrived to have the high-priesthood taken from his brother Onias III., and conferred upon himself, and set up a gymnasium hard by the Temple. After three years’ tenure of office Jason was supplanted by the Benjamite Menelaus, who disowned Judaism entirely. Antiochus punished an outburst of strife between the rivals by plundering the Temple and slaying many of the inhabitants (170 B. C.). Two years later Jerusalem was devastated by his general Apollonius, and a Syrian garrison occupied the citadel (Akra). The Jews were ordered under pain of death to substitute for their own observances the Pagan rites prescribed for the empire generally. In December 168 sacrifice was offered to Zeus upon an idol altar (“the abomination of desolation,” Dan. x. 27) erected over the great altar of burnt-offering. But Antiochus had miscalculated, and by his extreme measures unwittingly saved Judaism from its internal foes. Many hellenizers rallied round those who were minded to die rather than abjure their religion. The issue of an important edict ordaining the erection of heathen altars in every township of Palestine, and the appointment of officers to deal with recusants, brought matters to a crisis. At Modin, Mattathias, an aged priest, not only refused to offer the first sacrifice, but slew an apostate Jew who was about to step into the breach. He also killed the king’s commissioner and pulled down the altar. Having thus given the signal for rebellion, he then with his five sons took to the mountains. In view of the ruthless slaughter of a thousand sabbatarians in the wilderness, Mattathias and his friends decided to resist attack even on the sabbath. Many, including the Ḥasīdīm, thereupon flocked to his standard, and set themselves to revive Jewish rites and to uproot Paganism from the land. In 166 Mattathias died, after charging his sons to give their lives for their ancestral faith, and nominating Judas Maccabaeus as their leader in the holy campaign.

The military genius of Judas made this the most stirring chapter in Israelitish history. In quick succession he overthrew the Syrian generals Apollonius, Seron and Gorgias, and after the regent Lysias had shared the same fate at his hands he restored the Temple worship (165). These exploits dismayed his opponents and kindled the enthusiasm of his friends. When, however, Lysias returned in force to renew the contest, Judas had to fall back upon the Temple mount, and escaped defeat only because the Syrian leader was obliged to hasten back to Antioch in order to prevent a rival from seizing the regency. Under these circumstances Lysias unexpectedly guaranteed to the Jews their religious freedom (162). But though they had thus gained their end, the struggle did not cease; it merely assumed a new phase. The Ḥasīdīm indeed were satisfied, and declined to fight longer, but the Maccabees determined not to desist until their nation was politically as well as religiously free. In 161 Judas defeated Nicanor at Adasa, but within a few weeks thereafter, in a heroic struggle against superior numbers under Bacchides at Elasa, he was himself cut off. Even this, however, did not prove fatal to the cause which Judas had espoused. If in his brother Jonathan it did not possess so brilliant a soldier, it had in him an astute diplomatist who knew how to exploit the internal troubles of Syria. In the contest between Demetrius I. and Alexander Balas for the throne, Jonathan supported the latter, who in 153 nominated him high priest, and conferred on him the order of “King’s Friend,” besides other honours. After the accession of Demetrius II. (145) Jonathan contrived to win his favour, and helped him to crush a rebellion in Antioch on condition that the Syrian garrisons should be withdrawn from Judaea. When, however, Demetrius failed to keep his word, Jonathan transferred his allegiance to Antiochus VI., whom Tryphon had crowned as king. After subjugating the territory between Jerusalem and Damascus, he routed the generals of Demetrius on the plain of Hazor. But as the Maccabees had now in the name of the Syrians cleared the Syrians out of Palestine, Tryphon’s jealousy was aroused, and he resolved to be rid of Jonathan, who, with all his cunning, walked into a trap at Ptolemais, was made prisoner and ultimately slain (143). The leadership now devolved upon Simon, the last survivor of the sons of Mattathias. He soon got the better of Tryphon, who vainly tried to reach Jerusalem. Allying himself to Demetrius, Simon succeeded in negotiating a treaty whereby the political independence of Judaea was at length secured. The garrison in the Akra having been starved into submission, Simon triumphantly entered that fortress in May 142. In the following year he was by popular decree invested with absolute powers, being appointed leader, high priest and ethnarch. As these offices were declared hereditary in his family, he became the founder of the Hasmonaean dynasty. The first year of his reign (Seleucid year 170 = 143-142 B.C.) was made the beginning of a new era, and the issue of a Jewish coinage betokened the independence of his sovereignty. Under Simon’s administration the country enjoyed signal prosperity. Its internal resources were assiduously developed; trade, agriculture, civic justice and religion were fostered; while at no epoch in its post-exilic history did Israel enjoy an equal measure of social happiness (I Macc. xiv. 4 seq.). Simon’s beneficent activities came, however, to a sudden and tragic end. In 135 he and two of his sons were murdered by Ptolemy, his son-in-law, who had an eye to the supreme power. But Simon’s third son, John Hyrcanus, warned in time, succeeded in asserting his rights as hereditary head of the state. All the sons of Mattathias had now died for the sake of “The Law”; and the result of their work, so valorously prosecuted for over thirty years, was a new-born enthusiasm in Israel for the ancestral faith. The Maccabaean struggle thus gave fresh life to the Jewish nation.

After the death of Antiochus VII. Sidetes in 128 left him a free hand, Hyrcanus (135-105) soon carved out for himself a large and prosperous kingdom, which, however, was rent by internal discord owing to the antagonism developed between the rival parties of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Hyrcanus was succeeded by his son Aristobulus, whose reign of but one year was followed by that of his brother, the warlike Alexander Jannaeus (104-78). The new king’s Sadducean proclivities rendered him odious to the populace, which rose in revolt, but only to bring upon itself a savage revenge. The accession of his widow Salome Alexandra (78-69) witnessed a complete reversal of the policy pursued by Jannaeus, for she chose to rule in accordance with the ideals of the Pharisees. Her elder son, Hyrcanus II., a pliable weakling, was appointed high priest; her younger son, the energetic Aristobulus, who chafed at his exclusion from office, seized some twenty strongholds and with an army bore down upon Jerusalem. At this crisis Alexandra died, and Hyrcanus agreed to retire in favour of his masterful brother. A new and disturbing element now entered into Jewish politics in the person of the Idumaean Antipater, who for selfish ends deliberately made mischief between the brothers. An appeal to M. Aemilius Scaurus, who in 65 came into Syria as the legate of Pompey, led to the interference of the Romans, the siege of Jerusalem by Pompey, and the vassalage of the Jews (q.v.). Hyrcanus II. was appointed high priest and ethnarch, without the title of king (63). Repeated but fruitless attempts were made by the Hasmonaeans and their patriotic supporters to throw off the Roman yoke. In 47 Antipater, who curried favour with Rome, was made procurator of Judaea, and his sons Phasael and Herod governors of Jerusalem and Galilee respectively. Six years later the Idumaean brothers were appointed tetrarchs of Judaea. At length, in 40, the Parthians set up as king Antigonus, sole surviving son of Aristobulus. Thereupon Phasael committed suicide in prison, but Herod effected his escape and with the help of the Romans seated himself on the throne of Judaea (37 B.C.). Through the execution of Antigonus by M. Antonius (Mark Antony) the same year the Hasmonaean dynasty became extinct.

Literature.—1 and 2 Macc. and Josephus are the main sources for the Maccabaean history. For references in classical authors see E. Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes (1901, p 106 seq.). Besides the numerous modern histories of Israel (e.g. those by Dérenbourg, Ewald, Stanley, Stade, Renan, Schürer, Kent, Wellhausen, Guthe), see also Madden, Coins of the Jews (1881), H. Weiss’s Judas Makkabaeus (1897), and the articles in the Ency. Bib., Hastings’s Dict. Bible, the Jewish Encyclopedia. Among more popular sketches are Moss’s From Malachi to Matthew (1893); Streanes’ The Age of the Maccabees (1898); Morrison’s The Jews under Roman Rule (“Story of the Nations” series); W. Fairweather’s From the Exile to the Advent (1901); E. R. Bevan’s Jerusalem under the High Priests (1904); F. Henderson’s The Age of the Maccabees (1907); also, articles Jews; Seleucid Dynasty.

(W. F.*)

MACCABEES, BOOKS OF, the name given to several Apocryphal books of the Old Testament. The Vulgate contains two books of Maccabees which were declared canonical by the council of Trent (1546) and found a place among the Apocrypha of the English Bible. Three other books of this name are extant. Book iii. is included in the Septuagint but not in the Vulgate. Book iv. is embraced in the Alexandrian, Sinaitic, and other MSS. of the Septuagint, as well as in some MSS. of Josephus. A “Fifth” book is contained in the Ambrosian Peshitta, but it seems to be merely a Syriac reproduction of the sixth book of Josephus’s history of the Jewish War. None of the books of Maccabees are contained in the Vatican (B); all of them are found in a Syriac recension.

1 Maccabees was originally written in Hebrew, but is preserved only in a Greek translation. Origen gives a transliteration of “its Semitic title,”1 and Jerome says distinctly: “The First Book of Maccabees I found in Hebrew.” The frequent Hebraisms which mark the Greek translation, as well as the fact that some obscure passages in the Greek text are best accounted for as mistranslations from the Hebrew, afford internal evidence of the truth of this testimony. There are good reasons for regarding the book as a unity, although some scholars (Destinon, followed by Wellhausen) consider the concluding chapters (xiii.-xvi.) a later addition unknown to Josephus, who, however, seems to have already used the Greek. It probably dates from about the beginning of the first century B.C.2

As it supplies a detailed and accurate record of the forty years from the accession of Antiochus Epiphanes to the death of Simon (175-135 B.C.), without doubt the most stirring chapter in Jewish history, the book is one of the most precious historical sources we possess. In its careful chronology, based upon the Seleucid era, in the minuteness of its geographical knowledge, in the frankness with which it records defeat as well as victory, on the restraint with which it speaks of the enemies of the Jews, in its command of details, it bears on its face the stamp of genuineness. Not that it is wholly free from error or exaggeration, but its mistakes are due merely to defective knowledge of the outside world, and its overstatements, virtually confined to the matter of numbers, proceed from a patriotic desire to magnify Jewish victories. While the author presumably had some written sources at his disposal,3 his narrative is probably for the most part founded upon personal knowledge and recollection of the events recorded, and upon such first-hand information as, living in the second generation after, he would still be in a position to obtain. His sole aim is honestly to relate what he knew of the glorious struggles of his nation.

Although written in the style of the historical books of the old Testament, the work is characterized by a religious reticence which avoids even the use of the divine name, and by the virtual absence of the Messianic hope. The observance of the law is strongly urged, and the cessation of prophecy deplored (iv. 46; xiv. 41). There is no allusion either to the immortality of the soul or to the resurrection of the dead. The rewards to which the dying Mattathias points his sons are all for this life. Many scholars are of opinion that the unknown author was a Sadducee,4 but all that can be said with certainty is that he was a Palestinian Jew devotedly attached to the national cause.

Until the council of Trent 1 Maccabees had only “ecclesiastical” rank, and although not accepted as canonical by the Protestant churches, it has always been held in high estimation. Luther says “it closely resembles the rest of the books of Holy Scripture, and would not be unworthy to be enumerated with them.”

2 Maccabees, the epitome of a larger work in five books by one Jason of Cyrene, deals with the same history as its predecessor, except that it begins at a point one year earlier (176 B.C.), and stops short at the death of Nicanor (161 B.C.), thus covering a period of only fifteen years. First of all5 the writer describes the futile attempt of Heliodorus to rob the Temple, and the malicious intrigues of the Benjamite Simon against the worthy high priest Onias III. (iii. i-iv. 6). As throwing light upon the situation prior to the Maccabaean revolt this section of the book is of especial value. Chapters iv. 7-vii. 42 contain a more detailed narrative of the events recorded in 1 Macc. i. 10-64. The remainder of the book runs parallel to 1 Macc, iii.-vii.

Originally written in excellent Greek, from a pronouncedly Pharisaic standpoint, it was possibly directed against the Hasmonaean dynasty. It shows no sympathy with the priestly class. Both in trustworthiness and in style it is inferior to 1 Macc. Besides being highly coloured, the narrative does not observe strict chronological sequence. Instead of the sober annalistic style of the earlier historian we have a work marked by hyperbole, inflated rhetoric and homiletic reflection. Bitter invective is heaped upon the national enemies, and strong predilection is shown for the marvellous. The fullness and inaccuracy of detail which are a feature of the book suggest that Jason’s information was derived from the recollections of eye-witnesses orally communicated. In spite of its obvious defects, however, it forms a useful supplement to the first book.

The writer’s interests are religious rather than historical. In 1 Macc, there is a keen sense of the part to be played by the Jews themselves, of the necessity of employing their own skill and valour; here they are made to rely rather upon divine intervention. Fantastic apparitions of angelic and supernatural beings, gorgeously arrayed and mostly upon horseback, are frequently introduced. In general, the views reflected in the book are those of the Pharisees. The ungodly will be punished mercilessly, and in exact correspondence to their sins.6 The chastisements of erring Jews are of short duration, and intended to recall them to duty. If the faithful suffer martyrdom, it is in order to serve as an example to others, and they shall be compensated by being raised up “unto an eternal renewal of life.” The eschatology of 2 Macc. is singularly advanced, for it combines the doctrine of a resurrection with that of immortality. It is worthy of note that the Roman Church finds support in this book for its teaching with reference to prayers for the dead and purgatory (xii. 43 seq.). An allusion to Jeremiah as “he who prayeth much for the people and the holy city” (xv. 14) it likewise appeals to as favouring its views respecting the intercession of the saints.

Neither of Jason’s work, nor of the epitomizer’s, can the precise date be determined. The changed relations with Rome (viii. 10, 36) prove, however, that the latter was written later than 1 Macc.; and it is equally clear that it was composed before the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 70.

The account given of the martyrs in chs. vi. and vii. led to frequent allusions to this book in early patristic literature. Only Augustine, however, was minded to give it the canonical rank to which it has been raised by the Roman Church. Luther judged of it as unfavourably as he judged of 1 Macc, favourably, and even “wished it had never existed.”

3 Maccabees, although purporting to be an historical narrative, is really an animated, if somewhat vapid, piece of fiction written in Greek somewhere between 100 B.C. and A.D. 70,7 and apparently preserved only in part.8 It has no connexion with the Hasmonaeans, but is a story of the deliverance experienced by the Egyptian Jews from impending martyrdom at the hand of Ptolemy IV. Philopator, who reigned in the century previous to the Maccabaean rising (222-205 B.C.). The title is of later origin, and rendered possible only by the generalization of the name Maccabee so as to embrace all who suffered for the ancestral faith. Josephus refers the legend on which it is based to the time of Ptolemy VII. Physcon (146-117 B.C.). Some scholars (Ewald, Reuss, Hausrath) think that what the story really points to is the persecution under Caligula, but in that case Ptolemy would naturally have been represented as claiming divine honours. No other source informs us of a visit to Jerusalem, or of a persecution of the Jews, on the part of Philopator. Possibly, however, the story may be founded on some historical situation regarding which we have no definite knowledge. The purpose of the writer was evidently to cheer his Egyptian brethren during some persecution at Alexandria. Although the book was favourably regarded in the Syrian, it was apparently unknown to the Latin Church. Among the Jews it was virtually ignored.

Briefly, the tale is as follows:—After the battle of Raphia9 (217 B.C.), Ptolemy IV. Philopator insisted on entering the sanctuary at Jerusalem, but was struck down by the Almighty in answer to the prayers of the horrified Jews. On his return to Egypt he revenged himself by curtailing the religious liberty of the Alexandrian Jews, and by depriving of their civic rights all who refused to worship Bacchus. Exasperated by their loyalty to their religion, the king ordered all the Jews in Egypt to be imprisoned in the hippodrome of Alexandria. Clerks were told off to prepare a list of the prisoners’ names, but after forty days constant toil they had exhausted their writing materials without finishing their task. Ptolemy further commanded that 500 elephants should be intoxicated and let loose upon the occupants of the race-course. Only an accident prevented the carrying out of this design; the king had slept until it was past the time for his principal meal. On the following day, in virtue of a divinely induced forgetfulness, Ptolemy recollected nothing but the loyalty of the Jews to his throne. The same evening, nevertheless, he repeated his order for their destruction. Accordingly, on the morning of the third day, when the king attended to see his commands executed, things had reached a crisis. The Jews prayed to the Lord for mercy, and two angels appeared from heaven, to the confusion of the royal troops, who were trampled down by the elephants. Ptolemy now vented his wrath upon his counsellors, liberated the Jews, and feasted them for seven days. They determined that these should be kept as festal days henceforth in commemoration of their deliverance. The provincial governors were enjoined to take the Jews under their protection, and leave was given to the latter to slay those of their kinsmen who had deserted the faith. They further celebrated their deliverance at Ptolemais, where they built a synagogue, and they reached their various abodes to find themselves not only reinstated in their possessions, but raised in the esteem of the Egyptians.

4 Maccabees differs essentially from the other books of this name. While it does not itself aim at being a history, it makes striking use of Jewish history for purposes of edification. It bears, moreover, a distinctly philosophical character, and takes the form of a “tractate” or discourse, addressed to Jews only,10 upon “the supremacy of pious reason over the passions.” 11 The material is well arranged and systematically handled. In the prologue (i. 1-12) the writer explains the aim and scope of his work. Then follows the first main division (i. 13-iii. 18), in which he treats philosophically the proposition that reason is the mistress of the passions, inquiring what is meant by “reason” and what by “passion,” as well as how many kinds of passion there are, and whether reason rules them all. The conclusion reached is that with the exception of forgetfulness and ignorance all the affections are under the lordship of reason, or at all events of pious reason. To follow the dictates of pious reason in opposition to natural inclination is to have learned the secret of victory over the passions. In the second part of the book (iii. 19-xviii. 5) the writer goes on to prove his thesis from Jewish history, dwelling in particular upon the noble stand made against the tyranny of Antiochus IV. Epiphanes by the priest Eleazar, the seven brothers and their mother—all of whom chose torture and death rather than apostatize from the faith. Finally he appeals to his readers to emulate these acts of piety (xvii. 7-xviii. 24). In his gruesome descriptions of physical sufferings the author offends against good taste even more than the writer of 2 Macc., while both contrast very unfavourably in this respect with the sober reserve of the gospel narratives.

The book is written in a cultured, if somewhat rhetorical, Greek style, and is unmistakably coloured by the Stoic philosophy. The four cardinal virtues are represented as forms of wisdom, which again is inseparable from the Mosaic law. That the writer owes no slavish adherence to any philosophical system is plain from his independent treatment of the affections. Although influenced by Hellenism, he is a loyal Jew, earnestly desirous that all who profess the same faith should adhere to it in spite of either Greek allurements or barbaric persecution. It is not to reason as such, but only to pious reason (i.e. to reason enlightened and controlled by the divine law), that he attributes lordship over the passions. While in his zeal for legalism he virtually adopts the standpoint of Pharisaism, he is at one with Jewish Hellenism in substituting belief in the soul’s immortality for the doctrine of a bodily resurrection.

The name of the author is unknown. He was, however, clearly a Hellenistic Jew, probably resident in Alexandria or Asia Minor. In the early Church the work was commonly ascribed to Josephus and incorporated with his writings. But apart from the fact that it is found also in several MSS. of the Septuagint, the language and style of the book are incompatible with his authorship. So also is the circumstance that 2 Macc., which forms the basis of 4 Macc., was unknown to Josephus. Moreover, several unhistorical statements (such as, e.g. that Seleucus was succeeded by his son Antiochus Epiphanes, iv. 15) militate against the view that Josephus was the author. The date of composition cannot be definitely fixed. It is, however, safe to say that the book must have been written later than 2 Macc., and (in view of the acceptance it met with in the Christian Church) prior to the destruction of Jerusalem. Most likely it is a product of the Herodian period.

5 Maccabees. Writing in 1566 Sixtus Senensis mentions having seen at Lyons a manuscript of a so-called “Fifth Book of Maccabees” in the library of Santas Pagninus, which was soon afterwards destroyed by fire. It began with the words: “After the murder of Simon, John his son became high priest in his stead.” Sixtus conjectures that it may have been a Greek translation of the “chronicles” of John Hyrcanus, alluded to in 1 Macc., xvi. 24. He acknowledges that it is a history of Hyrcanus practically on the lines of Josephus, but concludes from its Hebraistic style that it was not from that writer’s pen. The probability, however, is that it was “simply a reproduction of Josephus, the style being changed perhaps for a purpose” (Schürer).

The Arabic “Book of Maccabees” contained in the Paris and London Polyglotts, and purporting to be a history of the Jews from the affair of Heliodorus (186 B.C.) to the close of Herod’s reign, is historically worthless, being nothing but a compilation from 1 and 2 Macc. and Josephus. In the one chapter (xii.) where the writer ventures to detach himself from these works he commits glaring historical blunders. The book was written in somewhat Hebraistic Greek subsequent to A.D. 70. In Cotton’s English translation of The Five Books of Maccabees it is this book that is reckoned the “Fifth.”

The best modern editions of the Greek text of the four books of Maccabees are those of O. F. Fritzsche (1871) and H. B. Swete (Cambridge Septuagint, vol. iii., 1894). C. J. Ball’s The Variorum Apocrypha will be found specially useful by those who cannot conveniently consult the Greek. The best modern commentary is that of C. L. W. Grimm (1853-1857). C. F. Keil’s commentary on 1 and 2 Macc. is very largely indebted to Grimm. More recently there have appeared commentaries by E. C. Bissell on 1, 2 and 3 Macc. in Lange-Schaff’s commentary, 1880—the whole Apocrypha being embraced in one volume, and much of the material being transferred from Grimm; G. Rawlinson on 1 and 2 Macc. in the Speaker’s Commentary 1888 (containing much useful matter, but marred by too frequent inaccuracy); O. Zöckler, on 1, 2 and 3 Macc., 1891 (slight and unsatisfactory); W. Fairweather and J. S. Black on 1 Macc. in the Cambridge Bible for Schools (1897); E. Kautzsch on 1 and 3 Macc., A. Kamphausen on 2 Macc. and A. Deissmann on 4 Macc. in Die Apok. u. Pseudepigr. des Alt. Test., 1898 (a most serviceable work for the student of apocryphal literature). Brief but useful introductions to all the four books of Maccabees are given in E. Schürer’s Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi (3rd ed., 1898-1901; Eng. tr. of earlier edition, 1886-1890).

(W. F.*)

1 Σαρβὴθ Σαβαναιέλ (Sarbeth Sabanaiel). No satisfactory explanation of this title has yet been given from the Hebrew (see the commentaries). The book may, however, have been known to Origen only in an Aramaic translation, in which case, according to the happy conjecture of Dalman (Gramm. 6) the two words may have represented the Aramaic ספר בית חשמונאי (“book of the Hasmonaean house”).

2 If the book is a unity, ch. xvi. 23 implies that it was written after the death of Hyrcanus which occurred in 105 B.C. On the other hand the friendly references to Rome in ch. viii. show that it must have been written before the siege of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 B.C.

3 Cf. ix. 22, xi. 37, xiv. 18, 27.

4 See especially Geiger, Urschrift und Uebersetzungen der Bibel, 206 seq.

5 Prefixed to the book are two spurious letters from Palestinian Jews (i., ii. 18), having no real connexion with it, or even with one another, further than that they both urge Egyptian Jews to observe the Feast of the Dedication. Between these and the main narrative is inserted the writer’s own preface, in which he explains the source and aim of his work (ii. 19-32).

6 iv. 38. 42; v. 9 seq.; ix. 5-18.

7 The date of composition can be only approximately determined. As the writer is acquainted with the Greek additions to Daniel (vi. 6), the first century B.C. forms the superior limit; and as the book found favour in the Eastern Church, the first century A.D. forms the inferior limit.

8 Apart from its abrupt commencement, the references in i. 2 to “the plot” as something already specified, and in ii. 25 to the king’s “before-mentioned” companions, of whom, however, nothing is said in the previous section of the book, point to the loss of at least an introductory chapter.

9 The statements with reference to the war between Antiochus the Great and Ptolemy Philopator are in general agreement with those of the classical historians, and to this extent the tale may be said to have an historical setting. By Grimm (Einl. § 3), the observance of the two yearly festivals (vi. 26; vii. 19), and the existence of the synagogue at Ptolemais when the book was written, are viewed as the witness of tradition to the fact of some great deliverance. Fritzsche has well pointed out, however (art. “Makkabäer” in Schenkel’s Bibel-Lexicon) that in the hands of Jewish writers of the period nearly every event of consequence has a festival attached to it.

10 Even if with Freudenthal we regard the work as a homily actually delivered to a Jewish congregation—and there are difficulties in the way of this theory, particularly the absence of a Biblical text—it was clearly intended for publication. It is essentially a book in the form of a discourse, whether it was ever orally delivered or not. So Deissmann in Kautzsch, Die Apok. u. Pseudepigr. des A. T. ii. 151.

11 Hence the title sometimes given to it: αύτοκράτορος λογισμοῦ (“On the supremacy of reason”). It is also styled Μακκαβαίων δ᾽, Μακκαβαῒκόν, εἰς τοὺς Μακκαβαίους.

MacCARTHY, DENIS FLORENCE (1817-1882), Irish poet, was born in Dublin on the 26th of May 1817, and educated there and at Maynooth. His earlier verses appeared in The Dublin Satirist, and in 1843 he became a regular contributor of political verse to the recently founded Nation. He also took an active part in the Irish political associations. In 1846 he edited The Poets and Dramatists of Ireland and the Book of Irish Ballads. His collected Ballads, Poems and Lyrics (1850), including translations from nearly all the modern languages, took immensely with his countrymen on account of their patriotic ring. This was followed by The Bellfounder (1857), Under-glimpses and other poems (1857) and The Early Life of Shelley (1871). In 1853 he began a number of translations from the Spanish of Calderon’s dramas, which won for him a medal from the Royal Spanish Academy. He had already been granted a civil list pension for his literary services. He died in Ireland on the 7th of April 1882.

M‘CARTHY, JUSTIN (1830- ), Irish politician, historian and novelist, was born in Cork on the 22nd of November 1830, and was educated at a school in that town. He began his career as a journalist, at the age of eighteen, in Cork. From 1853 to 1859 he was in Liverpool, on the staff of the Northern Daily Times, during which period he married (in March 1855) Miss Charlotte Allman. In 1860 he removed to London, as parliamentary reporter to the Morning Star, of which he became editor in 1864. He gave up his post in 1868, and, after a lecturing tour in the United States, joined the staff of the Daily News as leader-writer in 1870. In this capacity he became one of the most useful and respected upholders of the Liberal politics of the time. He lectured again in America in 1870-1871, and again in 1886-1887. He represented Co. Longford in Parliament as a Liberal and Home Ruler from 1879 to 1885; North Longford, 1885-1886; Londonderry, 1886-1892; and North Longford from 1892 to 1900. He was chairman of the Anti-Parnellites from the fall of C. S. Parnell in 1890 until January 1896; but his Nationalism was of a temperate and orderly kind, and though his personal distinction singled him out for the chairmanship during the party dissensions of this period, he was in no active sense the political leader. His real bent was towards literature. His earliest publications were novels, some of which, such as A Fair Saxon (1873), Dear Lady Disdain (1875), Miss Misanthrope (1878), Donna Quixote (1879), attained considerable popularity. His most important work is his History of Our Own Times (vols. i.-iv., 1879-1880; vol. v., 1897), which treats of the period between Queen Victoria’s accession and her diamond jubilee. Easily and delightfully written, and on the whole eminently sane and moderate, these volumes form a brilliant piece of narrative from a Liberal standpoint. He also began a History of the Four Georges (1884-1901), of which the latter half was written by his son, Justin Huntly M‘Carthy (b. 1860), himself the author of various clever novels, plays, poetical pieces and short histories. Justin M‘Carthy, amongst other works, wrote biographies of Sir Robert Peel (1891), Pope Leo XIII. (1896) and W. E. Gladstone (1898); Modern England (1898); The Reign of Queen Anne (1902) and Reminiscences (2 vols., 1899).

McCHEYNE, ROBERT MURRAY (1813-1843), Scottish divine, was born at Edinburgh on the 21st of May 1813, was educated at the University and at the Divinity Hall of his native city, and held pastorates at Larbert, near Falkirk, and Dundee. A mission of inquiry among the Jews throughout Europe and in Palestine, and a religious revival at his church in Dundee, made him feel that he was being called to evangelistic rather than to pastoral work, but before he could carry out his plans he died, on the 25th of March 1843. McCheyne, though wielding remarkable influence in his lifetime, was still more powerful afterwards, through his Memoirs and Remains, edited by Andrew Bonar, which ran into far over a hundred English editions. Some of his hymns, e.g. “When this passing world is done,” are well known.

See his Life, by J. C. Smith (1910).

McCLELLAN, GEORGE BRINTON (1826-1885), American soldier, was born in Philadelphia on the 3rd of December 1826. After passing two years (1840-1842) in the university of Pennsylvania, he entered the United States military academy, from which he graduated with high honours in July 1846. Sent as a lieutenant of engineers to the Mexican War, he took part in the battles under General Scott, and by his gallantry won the brevets of first-lieutenant at Contreras-Churubusco and captain at Chapultepec; he was afterwards detailed as assistant-instructor at West Point, and employed in explorations in the South-West and in Oregon. Promoted in 1855 captain of cavalry, he served on a military commission sent to Europe to study European armies and especially the war in the Crimea. On his return he furnished an able and interesting report, republished (1861) under the title of Armies of Europe. In 1856 he designed a saddle, which was afterwards well known as the McClellan. Resigning his commission in 1857, McClellan became successively chief engineer and vice-president of the Illinois Central railroad (1857-1860), general superintendent of the Mississippi & Ohio railroad, and, a little later, president of the eastern branch of the same, with his residence in Cincinnati. When the Civil War broke out he was, in April 1861, made major-general of three months’ militia by the governor of Ohio; but General Scott’s favour at Washington promoted him rapidly (May 14) to the rank of major-general, U.S.A., in command of the department of the Ohio. Pursuant to orders, on the 26th of May, McClellan sent a small force across the Ohio river to Philippi, dispersed the Confederates there early in June, and immensely aided the Union cause in that region by rapid and brilliant military successes, gained in the short space of eight days. These operations, though comparatively trivial as the Civil War developed, brought great results, in permanently dividing old Virginia by the creation of the state of West Virginia, and in presenting the first sharp, short and wholly successful campaign of the war.

Soon after the first Bull Run disaster he was summoned to Washington, and the Union hailed him as chieftain and preserver. Only thirty-four years old, and with military fame and promotion premature and quite in excess of positive experience, he reached the capital late in July and assumed command there. At first all was deference and compliance with his wishes. In November Scott retired that the young general might control the operations of the whole Union army. McClellan proved himself extraordinarily able as an organizer and trainer of soldiers. During the autumn, winter and spring he created the famous Army of the Potomac, which in victory and defeat retained to the end the impress of McClellan’s work. But he soon showed petulance towards the civil authorities, from whom he came to differ concerning the political ends in view; and he now found severe critics, who doubted his capacity for directing an offensive war; but the government yielded to his plans for an oblique, instead of a direct, movement upon Richmond and the opposing army. At the moment of starting he was relieved as general-in-chief. By the 5th of April a great army was safely transported to Fortress Monroe, and other troops were sent later, though a large force was (much against his will) retained to cover Washington. McClellan laid slow siege to Yorktown, not breaking the thin line first opposed to him, but giving Johnston full time to reinforce and then evacuate the position. McClellan followed up the Confederate rearguard and approached Richmond, using White House on the Pamunkey as a base of supplies; this entailed a division of his forces on either bank of the Chickahominy. At Fair Oaks (Seven Pines) was fought on the 31st of May a bloody battle, ending the following day in a Confederate repulse. Johnston being severely wounded, Lee came to command on the Southern side. After a pause in the operations McClellan felt himself ready to attack at the moment when Lee, leaving a bare handful of men in the Richmond lines, despatched two-thirds of his entire force to the north of the Chickahominy to strike McClellan’s isolated right wing. McClellan himself made little progress, and the troops beyond the Chickahominy were defeated after a strenuous defence; whereupon McClellan planned, and during the celebrated Seven Days’ Battle triumphantly executed, a change of base to the James river. But the result was strategically a failure, and General Halleck, who was now general-in-chief, ordered the army to reinforce General Pope in central Virginia. The order was obeyed reluctantly.

Pope’s disastrous defeats brought McClellan a new opportunity to retrieve his fame. Again in command of the Army of the Potomac, he was sent with all available forces to oppose Lee, who had crossed the Potomac into Maryland early in September. McClellan advanced slowly and carefully, reorganizing his army as he went. The battle of South Mountain placed him in a position to attack Lee, and a few days later was fought the great battle of Antietam, in which Lee was worsted. But the Confederates safely recrossed the Potomac, and McClellan showed his former faults in a tardy pursuit. On the eve of an aggressive movement, which he was at last about to make, he was superseded by Burnside (Nov. 7). McClellan was never again ordered to active command, and the political elements opposed to the general policy of Lincoln’s administration chose him as presidential candidate in 1864, on a platform which denounced the war as a failure and proposed negotiating with the South for peace. McClellan, while accepting his candidacy, repudiated the platform, like a soldier and patriot. At the polls on the 8th of November Lincoln was triumphantly re-elected president. McClellan had previously resigned his commission in the army, and soon afterwards went to Europe, where he remained until 1868. Upon his return he took up his residence in New York City, where (1868-1869) he was engaged in superintending the construction of an experimental floating battery. In 1870-1872 he was engineer-in-chief of the city’s department of docks. With Orange, N.J., as his next principal residence, he became governor of New Jersey (1878-1881). During his term he effected great reforms in the administration of the state and in the militia. He was offered, but declined, a second nomination. During his last years he made several tours of Europe, visited the East, and wrote much for the magazines. He also prepared monographs upon the Civil War, defending his own action. He died suddenly of heart-disease on the 29th of October 1885 at Orange.

McClellan was a clear and able writer and effective speaker; and his Own Story, edited by a friend and published soon after his death, discloses an honourable character, sensitive to reproach, and conscientious, even morbidly so, in his patriotism. He carried himself well in civil life and was of irreproachable private conduct. During the Civil War, however, he was promoted too early and rapidly for his own good, and the strong personal magnetism he inspired while so young developed qualities injurious to a full measure of success and usefulness, despite his great opportunities. The reasons for his final displacement in 1862 were both civil and military, and the president had been forbearing with him. As a soldier he possessed to an extraordinary degree the enthusiastic affection of his men. With the army that he had created the mere rumour of his presence was often a spur to the greatest exertions. That he was slow, and perhaps too tender-hearted, in handling armed masses for action may be admitted, and though admirable for defensive war and a safe strategist, he showed himself unfitted to take the highly essential initiative, both because of temperament and his habitual exaggeration of obstacles and opposing numbers. But he met and checked the armies of the Confederacy when they were at their best and strongest, and his work laid the foundations of ultimate success.

His son, George Brinton Mcclellan (b. 1865), graduated in 1886 at Princeton (from which he received the degree of LL.D. in 1905), and became a newspaper reporter and editor in New York City. He identified himself with the Tammany Hall organization, and in 1889-1892 was treasurer of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge under the city government. In 1892 he was admitted to the bar, and was elected to the board of aldermen, of which he was president in 1893 and 1894. In 1895-1903 he was a Democratic representative in Congress; in 1903 he was elected mayor of New York City on the Tammany ticket, defeating mayor Seth Low, the “Fusion” candidate; and in 1905 he was re-elected for a four-year term, defeating William M. Ivins (Republican) and William R. Hearst (Independence League). He published The Oligarchy of Venice (1904).

Besides the report mentioned above, General McClellan wrote a Bayonet Exercise (1852); Report on Pacific Railroad Surveys (1854); Report on the Organization, &c., of the Army of the Potomac (1864), a government publication which he himself republished with the addition of a memoir of the West Virginian campaign. He also wrote a series of articles on the Russo-Turkish War for The North American Review. See memoir prefaced to McClellan’s Own Story, and Michie, General McClellan (“Great Commanders” series).

McCLERNAND, JOHN ALEXANDER (1812-1900), American soldier and lawyer, was born in Breckinridge county, Kentucky, on the 30th of May 1812. He was admitted to the bar in Shawneetown, Illinois, in 1832; in the same year served as a volunteer in the Black Hawk War, and in 1835 founded the Shawneetown Democrat, which he thereafter edited. As a Democrat he served in 1836 and in 1840-1843 in the Illinois House of Representatives, and in 1843-1851 and in 1859-1861 was a representative in Congress, where in his first term he vigorously opposed the Wilmot proviso, but in his second term was a strong Unionist and introduced the resolution of the 15th of July 1861, pledging money and men to the national government. He resigned from congress, raised in Illinois the “McClernand Brigade,” and was commissioned (May 17, 1861) brigadier-general of volunteers. He was second in command at the battle of Belmont (Missouri) in November 1861, and commanded the right wing at Fort Donelson. On the 21st of March he became a major-general of volunteers. At Shiloh he commanded a division, which was practically a reserve to Sherman’s. In October 1861 Stanton, secretary of war, ordered him north to raise troops for the expedition against Vicksburg; and early in January 1864, at Milliken’s Bend, McClernand, who had been placed in command of one of the four corps of Grant’s army, superseded Sherman as the leader of the force that was to move down the Mississippi. On the 11th of January he took Arkansas Post. On the 17th, Grant, after receiving the opinion of Admiral Foote and General Sherman that McClernand was unfit, united a part of his own troops with those of McClernand and assumed command in person, and three days later ordered McClernand back to Milliken’s Bend. During the rest of this Vicksburg campaign there was much friction between McClernand and his colleagues; he undoubtedly intrigued for the removal of Grant; it was Grant’s opinion that at Champion’s Hill (May 16) he was dilatory; and because a congratulatory order to his corps was published in the press (contrary to an order of the department and another of Grant) he was relieved of his command on the 18th of June, and was replaced by General E. O. C. Ord. President Lincoln, who saw the importance of conciliating a leader of the Illinois War-Democrats, restored him to his command in 1864, but McClernand resigned in November of that year. He was district judge of the Sangamon (Illinois) District in 1870-1873, and was president of the National Democratic Convention in 1876. He died in Springfield, Illinois, on the 20th of September 1900.

His son, Edward John Mcclernand (b. 1848), graduated at the U.S. Military Academy in 1870. He served on the frontier against the Indians, notably in the capture of Chief Joseph in October 1877, became lieutenant-colonel and assistant adjutant-general of volunteers in 1898, and served in Cuba in 1898-99. He was then ordered to the Philippines, where he commanded various districts, and from April 1900 to May 1901, when he was mustered out of the volunteer service, was acting military governor.

MACCLESFIELD, CHARLES GERARD, 1st Earl of (c. 1618-1694), eldest son of Sir Charles Gerard, was a member of an old Lancashire family, his great-grandfather having been Sir Gilbert Gerard (d. 1593) of Ince, in that county, one of the most distinguished judges in the reign of Elizabeth. His mother was Penelope Fitton of Gawsworth, Cheshire. Charles Gerard was educated abroad, and in the Low Countries learnt soldiering, in which he showed himself proficient when on the outbreak of the Civil War in England he raised a troop of horse for the king’s service. Gerard commanded a brigade with distinction at Edgehill, and gained further honours at the first battle of Newbury and at Newark in 1644, for which service he was appointed to the chief command in South Wales. Here his operations in 1644 and 1645 were completely successful in reducing the Parliamentarians to subjection; but the severity with which he ravaged the country made him personally so unpopular that when, after the defeat at Naseby in June 1645, the king endeavoured to raise fresh forces in Wales, he was compelled to remove Gerard from the local command. Gerard was, however, retained in command of the king’s guard during Charles’s march from Wales to Oxford, and thence to Hereford and Chester in August 1645; and having been severely wounded at Rowton Heath on the 23rd of September, he reached Newark with Charles on the 4th of October. On the 8th of November 1645 he was created Baron Gerard of Brandon in the county of Suffolk; but about the same time he appears to have forfeited Charles’s favour by having attached himself to the party of Prince Rupert, with whom after the surrender of Oxford Gerard probably went abroad. He remained on the Continent throughout the whole period of the Commonwealth, sometimes in personal attendance on Charles II., at others serving in the wars under Turenne, and constantly engaged in plots and intrigues. For one of these, an alleged design on the life of Cromwell, his cousin Colonel John Gerard was executed in the Tower in July 1654. At the Restoration Gerard rode at the head of the king’s life-guards in his triumphal entry into London; his forfeited estates were restored, and he received lucrative offices and pensions. In 1668 he retired from the command of the king’s guard to make room for the duke of Monmouth, receiving, according to Pepys, the sum of £12,000 as solatium. On the 23rd of July 1679 Gerard was created earl of Macclesfield and Viscount Brandon. A few months later he entered into relations with Monmouth, and co-operated with Shaftesbury in protesting against the rejection of the Exclusion Bill. In September 1685, a proclamation having been issued for his arrest, Macclesfield escaped abroad, and was outlawed. He returned with William of Orange in 1688, and commanded his body-guard in the march from Devonshire to London. By William he was made a privy councillor, and lord lieutenant of Wales and three western counties. Macclesfield died on the 7th of January 1694. By his French wife he left two sons and two daughters.

His eldest son Charles, 2nd earl of Macclesfield (c. 1659-1701), was born in France and was naturalized in England by act of parliament in 1677. Like his father he was concerned in the intrigues of the duke of Monmouth; in 1685 he was sentenced to death for being a party to the Rye House plot, but was pardoned by the king. In 1689 he was elected member of parliament for Lancashire, which he represented till 1694, when he succeeded to his father’s peerage. Having become a major-general in the same year, Macclesfield saw some service abroad; and in 1701 he was selected first commissioner for the investiture of the elector of Hanover (afterwards King George I.) with the order of the Garter, on which occasion he also was charged to present a copy of the Act of Settlement to the dowager electress Sophia. He died on the 5th of November 1701, leaving no legitimate children.

In March 1698 Macclesfield was divorced from his wife Anna, daughter of Sir Richard Mason of Sutton, by act of parliament, the first occasion on which a divorce was so granted without a previous decree of an ecclesiastical court. The countess was the mother of two children, who were known by the name of Savage, and whose reputed father was Richard Savage, 4th Earl Rivers (d. 1712). The poet Richard Savage (q.v.) claimed that he was the younger of these children. The divorced countess married Colonel Henry Brett about the year 1700, and died at the age of eighty-five in 1753. Her daughter Anna Margaretta Brett was a mistress of George I. The 2nd earl of Macclesfield was succeeded by his brother Fitton Gerard, 3rd earl (c. 1665-1702), on whose death without heirs the title became extinct in December 1702.

In 1721 the title of earl of Macclesfield was revived in favour of Thomas Parker (c. 1666-1732). The son of Thomas Parker, an attorney at Leek, young Parker was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, and became a barrister in 1691. In 1705 he was elected member of parliament for Derby, and having gained some reputation in his profession, he took a leading part in the proceedings against Sacheverell in 1710. In the same year he was appointed lord chief justice of the queen’s bench, but he refused to become lord chancellor in the following year; however he accepted this office in 1718, two years after he had been made Baron Parker of Macclesfield by George I., who held him in high esteem. In 1721 he was created Viscount Parker and earl of Macclesfield, but when serious charges of corruption were brought against him he resigned his position as lord chancellor in 1725. In the same year Macclesfield was impeached, and although he made a very able defence he was found guilty by the House of Lords. His sentence was a fine of £30,000 and imprisonment until this was paid. He was confined in the Tower of London for six weeks, and after his release he took no further part in public affairs. The earl, who built a grammar school at Leek, died in London on the 28th of April 1732.

Macclesfield’s only son, George, (c. 1697-1764) 2nd earl of Macclesfield of this line, was celebrated as an astronomer. As Viscount Parker he was member of parliament for Wallingford from 1722 to 1727, but his interests were not in politics. In 1722 he became a fellow of the Royal Society, and he spent most of his time in astronomical observations at his Oxfordshire seat, Shirburn Castle, which had been bought by his father in 1716; here he built an observatory and a chemical laboratory. The earl was very prominent in effecting the change from the old to the new style of dates, which came into operation in 1752. His action in this matter, however, was somewhat unpopular, as the opinion was fairly general that he had robbed the people of eleven days. From 1752 until his death on the 17th of March 1764 Macclesfield was president of the Royal Society, and he made some observations on the great earthquake of 1755. His successor was his son Thomas (1723-1795), from whom the present earl is descended.

For the earls of the Gerard family see Lord Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, ed. by W. D. Macray; E. B. G. Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers (3 vols., 1849); State Papers of John Thurloe (7 vols., 1742); J. R. Phillips, Memoirs of the Civil War in Wales and the Marches, 1642-49 (2 vols., 1874); and the duke of Manchester, Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne (2 vols., 1864). For Lord Chancellor Macclesfield, see Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal (1845-1869).

MACCLESFIELD, a market town and municipal borough in the Macclesfield parliamentary division of Cheshire, England, 166 m. N.W. by N. of London, on the London & North-Western, North Staffordshire and Great Central railways. Pop. (1901), 34,624. It lies on and above the small river Bollin, the valley of which is flanked by high ground to east and west, the eastern hills rising sharply to heights above 1000 ft. The bleak upland country retains its ancient name of Macclesfield Forest. The church of St Michael, standing high, was founded by Eleanor, queen of Edward I., in 1278, and in 1740 was partly rebuilt and greatly enlarged. The lofty steeple by which its massive tower was formerly surmounted was battered down by the Parliamentary forces during the Civil War. Connected with the Church there are two chapels, one of which, Rivers Chapel, belonged to a college of secular priests founded in 1501 by Thomas Savage, afterwards archbishop of York. Both the church and chapels contain several ancient monuments. The free grammar school, originally founded in 1502 by Sir John Percival, was refounded in 1552 by Edward VI., and a commercial school was erected in 1840 out of its funds. The county lunatic asylum is situated here. The town-hall is a handsome modern building with a Grecian frontage on two sides. Originally the trade of Macclesfield was principally in twist and silk buttons, but this has developed into the manufacture of all kinds of silk. Besides this staple trade, there are various textile manufactures and extensive breweries; while stone and slate quarries, as well as coal-mines, are worked in the neighbourhood. Recreation grounds include Victoria Park and Peel Park, in which are preserved the old market cross and stocks. Water communication is provided by the Macclesfield canal. The borough is under a mayor, 12 aldermen and 36 councillors. Area, 3214 acres. The populous suburb of Sutton, extending S.S.E. of the town, is partly included in the borough.

Previous to the Conquest, Macclesfield (Makesfeld, Mackerfeld, Macclesfeld, Meulefeld, Maxfield) was held by Edwin, earl of Mercia, and at the time of the Domesday Survey it formed a part of the lands of the earl of Chester. The entry speaks of seven hedged enclosures, and there is evidence of fortification in the 13th century, to which the names Jordangate, Chestergate and Wallgate still bear witness. In the 15th century Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham, had a fortified manor-house here, traces of which remain. There is a tradition, supported by a reference on a plea roll, that Randle, earl of Chester (1181-1232) made Macclesfield a free borough, but the earliest charter extant is that granted by Edward, prince of Wales and earl of Chester, in 1261, constituting Macclesfield a free borough with a merchant gild, and according certain privileges in the royal forest of Macclesfield to the burgesses. This charter was confirmed by Edward III. in 1334, by Richard II. in 1389, by Edward IV. in 1466 and by Elizabeth in 1564. In 1595 Elizabeth issued a new charter to the town, confirmed by James I. in 1605 and Charles II. in 1666, laying down a formal borough constitution under a mayor, 2 aldermen, 24 capital burgesses and a high steward. In 1684 Charles II. issued a new charter, under which the borough was governed until the Municipal Reform Act 1835. The earliest mention of a market is in a grant by James I. to Charles, prince of Wales and earl of Chester, in 1617. In the charter of 1666 a market is included among the privileges confirmed to the borough as those which had been granted in 1605, or by any previous kings and queens of England. The charter of Elizabeth in 1595 granted an annual fair in June, and this was supplemented by Charles II. in 1684 by a grant of fairs in April and September. Except during the three winter months fairs are now held monthly, the chief being “Barnaby” in June, when the town keeps a week’s holiday. Macclesfield borough sent two members to parliament in 1832 for the first time. In 1880 it was disfranchised for bribery, and in 1885 the borough was merged in the county division of Macclesfield. The manufacture of silk-covered buttons began in the 16th century, and flourished until the early 18th. The first silk mill was erected about 1755, and silk manufacture on a large scale was introduced about 1790. The manufacture of cotton began in Macclesfield about 1785.

See J. Corry, History of Macclesfield (1817).

M‘CLINTOCK, SIR FRANCIS LEOPOLD (1819-1907), British naval officer and Arctic explorer, was born at Dundalk, Ireland, on the 8th of July 1819, of a family of Scottish origin. In 1831 he entered the royal navy, joining the “Samarang” frigate, Captain Charles Paget. In 1843 he passed his examination for lieutenancy and joined the “Gorgon” steamship, Captain Charles Hotham, which was driven ashore at Montevideo and salved, a feat of seamanship on the part of her captain and officers which attracted much attention. Hitherto, and until 1847, M‘Clintock’s service was almost wholly on the American coasts, but in 1848 he joined the Arctic expedition under Sir James Ross in search of Sir John Franklin’s ships, as second lieutenant of the “Enterprise.” In the second search expedition (1850) he was first lieutenant of the “Assistance,” and in the third (1854) he commanded the “Intrepid.” On all these expeditions M‘Clintock carried out brilliant sleigh journeys, and gained recognition as one of the highest authorities on Arctic travel. The direction which the search should follow had at last been learnt from the Eskimo, and M‘Clintock accepted the command of the expedition on board the “Fox,” fitted out by Lady Franklin in 1857, which succeeded in its object in 1859 (see Franklin, Sir John). For this expedition M‘Clintock had obtained leave of absence, but the time occupied was afterwards counted in his service. He was knighted and received many other honours on his return. Active service now occupied him in various tasks, including the important one of sounding in the north Atlantic, in connexion with a scheme for a north Atlantic cable route, until 1868. In that year he became naval aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria. In 1865 he had been elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He unsuccessfully contested a seat in parliament for the borough of Drogheda, where he made the acquaintance of Annette Elizabeth, daughter of R. F. Dunlop of Monasterboice; he married her in 1870. He became vice-admiral in 1877, and commander-in-chief on the West Indian and North American station in 1879. In 1882 he was elected an Elder Brother of Trinity House, and served actively in that capacity. In 1891 he was created K.C.B. He was one of the principal advisers in the preparations for the Antarctic voyage of the “Discovery” under Captain Scott. His book, The Voyage of the “Fox” in the Arctic Seas, was first published in 1859, and passed through several editions. He died on the 17th of November 1907.