1895), English statesman, was born at Duffryn, Aberdare, Glamorganshire, on the 16th of April 1815, the son of John Bruce, a Glamorganshire landowner. John Bruce’s original family name was Knight, but on coming of age in 1805 he assumed the name of Bruce, his mother, through whom he inherited the Duffryn estate, having been the daughter of William Bruce, high sheriff of Glamorganshire. Henry Austin Bruce was educated at Swansea grammar school, and in 1837 was called to the bar. Shortly after he had begun to practise, the discovery of coal beneath the Duffryn and other Aberdare Valley estates brought the family great wealth. From 1847 to 1852 he was stipendiary magistrate for Merthyr Tydvil and Aberdare, resigning the position in the latter year, when he entered parliament as Liberal member for Merthyr Tydvil. In 1862 he became under-secretary for the home department, and in 1869, after losing his seat at Merthyr Tydvil, but being re-elected for Renfrewshire, he was made home secretary by W. E. Gladstone. His tenure of this office was conspicuous for a reform of the licensing laws, and he was responsible for the Licensing Act of 1872, which constituted the magistrates the licensing authority, increased the penalties for misconduct in public-houses and shortened the number of hours for the sale of drink. In 1873 he relinquished the home secretaryship, at Gladstone’s request, to become lord president of the council, and was almost simultaneously raised to the peerage as Baron Aberdare. The defeat of the Liberal government in the following year terminated Lord Aberdare’s official political life, and he subsequently devoted himself to social, educational and economic questions. In 1876 he was elected F.R.S.; from 1878 to 1892 he was president of the Royal Historical Society; and in 1881 he became president of the Royal Geographical Society. In 1882 he began a connexion with West Africa which lasted the rest of his life, by accepting the chairmanship of the National African Company, formed by Sir George Taubman Goldie, which in 1886 received a charter under the title of the Royal Niger Company and in 1899 was taken over by the British government, its territories being constituted the protectorate of Nigeria. West African affairs, however, by no means exhausted Lord Aberdare’s energies, and it was principally through his efforts that a charter was in 1894 obtained for the university of Wales at Cardiff. Lord Aberdare, who in 1885 was made a G.C.B., presided over several Royal Commissions at different times. He died in London on the 25th of February 1895. His second wife was the daughter of Sir William Napier, the historian of the Peninsular war, whose Life he edited.
ABERDARE, a market town of Glamorganshire, Wales, situated (as the name implies) at the confluence of the Dâr and Cynon, the latter being a tributary of the Taff. Pop. of urban district (1901), 43,365. It is 4 m. S.W. of Merthyr Tydvil, 24 from Cardiff and 160 from London by rail. It has a station on the Pontypool and Swansea section of the Great Western railway, and is also served by the Llwydcoed and Abernant stations which are on a branch line to Merthyr. The Taff Vale line (opened 1846) has a terminus in the town. The Glamorgan canal has also a branch (made in 1811) running from Abercynon to Aberdare. From being, at the beginning of the 19th century, a mere village in an agricultural district, the place grew rapidly in population owing to the abundance of its coal and iron ore, and the population of the whole parish (which was only 1486 in 1801) increased tenfold during the first half of the century. Ironworks were established at Llwydcoed and Abernant in 1799 and 1800 respectively, followed by others at Gadlys and Aberaman in 1827 and 1847. These have not been worked since about 1875, and the only metal industries remaining in the town are an iron foundry or two and a small tinplate works at Gadlys (established in 1868). Previous to 1836, most of the coal worked in the parish was consumed locally, chiefly in the ironworks, but in that year the working of steam coal for export was begun, pits were sunk in rapid succession, and the coal trade, which at least since 1875 has been the chief support of the town, soon reached huge dimensions. There are also several brickworks and breweries. During the latter half of the 19th century, considerable public improvements were effected in the town, making it, despite its neighbouring collieries, an agreeable place of residence. Its institutions included a post-graduate theological college (opened in connexion with the Church of England in 1892, until 1907, when it was removed to Llandaff). There is a public park of fifty acres with two small lakes. Aberdare, with the ecclesiastical parishes of St Fagan’s (Trecynon) and Aberaman carved out of the ancient parish, has some twelve Anglican churches, one Roman Catholic church (built in 1866 in Monk Street near the site of a cell attached to Penrhys Abbey) and over fifty Nonconformist chapels. The services in the majority of the chapels are in Welsh. The whole parish falls within the parliamentary borough of Merthyr Tydvil. The urban district includes what were once the separate villages of Aberaman, Abernant, Cwmbach, Cwmaman, Cwmdare, Llwydcoed and Trecynon. There are several cairns and the remains of a circular British encampment on the mountain between Aberdare and Merthyr. Hirwaun moor, 4 m. to the N.W. of Aberdare, was according to tradition the scene of a battle at which Rhys ap Jewdwr, prince of Dyfed, was defeated by the allied forces of the Norman Robert Fitzhamon and Iestyn ab Gwrgan, the last prince of Glamorgan.
ABERDEEN, GEORGE GORDON, 1st Earl of (1637–1720), lord chancellor of Scotland, son of Sir John Gordon, 1st baronet of Haddo, Aberdeenshire, executed by the Presbyterians in 1644, was born on the 3rd of October 1637. He graduated M.A., and was chosen professor at King’s College, Aberdeen, in 1658. Subsequently he travelled and studied civil law abroad. At the Restoration the sequestration of his father’s lands was annulled, and in 1665 he succeeded by the death of his elder brother to the baronetcy and estates. He returned home in 1667, was admitted advocate in 1668 and gained a high legal reputation. He represented Aberdeenshire in the Scottish parliament of 1669 and in the following assemblies, during his first session strongly opposing the projected union of the two legislatures. In November 1678 he was made a privy councillor for Scotland, and in 1680 was raised to the bench as Lord Haddo. He was a leading member of the duke of York’s administration, was created a lord of session in June and in November 1681 president of the court. The same year he is reported as moving in the council for the torture of witnesses.[1] In 1682 he was made lord chancellor of Scotland, and was created, on the 13th of November, earl of Aberdeen, Viscount Formartine, and Lord Haddo, Methlick, Tarves and Kellie, in the Scottish peerage, being appointed also sheriff principal of Aberdeenshire and Midlothian. Burnet reflects unfavourably upon him, calls him “a proud and covetous man,” and declares “the new chancellor exceeded all that had gone before him.”[2] He executed the laws enforcing religious conformity with severity, and filled the parish churches, but resisted the excessive measures of tyranny prescribed by the English government; and in consequence of an intrigue of the duke of Queensberry and Lord Perth, who gained the duchess of Portsmouth with a present of £27,000, he was dismissed in 1684. After his fall he was subjected to various petty prosecutions by his victorious rivals with the view of discovering some act of maladministration on which to found a charge against him, but the investigations only served to strengthen his credit. He took an active part in parliament in 1685 and 1686, but remained a non-juror during the whole of William’s reign, being frequently fined for his non-attendance, and took the oaths for the first time after Anne’s accession, on the 11th of May 1703. In the great affair of the Union in 1707, while protesting against the completion of the treaty till the act declaring the Scots aliens should be repealed, he refused to support the opposition to the measure itself and refrained from attending parliament when the treaty was settled. He died on the 20th of April 1720, after having amassed a large fortune. He is described by John Mackay as “very knowing in the laws and constitution of his country and is believed to be the solidest statesman in Scotland, a fine orator, speaks slow but sure.”
- ↑ Sir J. Lauder’s Hist. Notices (Bannatyne Club, 1848), p. 297.
- ↑ Hist. of his own Times, i. 523.
