secured for him the position of rector of Aberdeen University in 1841. Lord Ellesmere was a munificent and yet discriminating patron of artists. To the splendid collection of pictures which he inherited from his great-uncle, the 3rd duke of Bridgewater, he made numerous additions, and he built a noble gallery to which the public were allowed free access. Lord Ellesmere served as president of the Royal Geographical Society and as president of the Royal Asiatic Society, and he was a trustee of the National Gallery. He died on the 18th of February 1857. He was succeeded by his son (1823–1862) as 2nd earl, and his grandson (b. 1847) as 3rd earl.
ELLESMERE, a market town in the Oswestry parliamentary
division of Shropshire, England, on the main line of the Cambrian
railway, 182 m. N.W. from London. Pop. of urban district (1901)
1945. It is prettily situated on the west shore of the mere or
small lake from which it takes its name, while in the neighbourhood
are other sheets of water, as Blake Mere, Cole Mere, White
Mere, Newton Mere and Crose Mere. The church of St Mary is
of various styles from Norman onward, but was partly rebuilt in
1848. The site of the castle is occupied by pleasure gardens,
commanding an extensive view from high ground. The town hall
contains a library and a natural history collection. The college is
a large boys’ school. The town is an important agricultural
centre. Ellesmere canal, a famous work of Thomas Telford,
connects the Severn with the Mersey, crossing the Vale of Llangollen
by an immense aqueduct, 336 yds. long and 127 ft. high.
The manor of Ellesmere (Ellesmeles) belonged before the Conquest to Earl Edwin of Mercia, and was granted by William the Conqueror to Roger, earl of Shrewsbury, whose son, Robert de Belesme, forfeited it in 1112 for treason against Henry I. In 1177 Henry II. gave it with his sister in marriage to David, son of Owen, prince of North Wales, after whose death it was retained by King John, who in 1206 granted it to his daughter Joan on her marriage with Llewellyn, prince of North Wales; it was finally surrendered to Henry III. by David, son of Llewellyn, about 1240. Ellesmere owed its early importance to its position on the Welsh borders and to its castle, which was in ruins, however, in 1349. While Ellesmere was in the hands of Joan, lady of Wales, she granted to the borough all the free customs of Breteuil. The town was governed by a bailiff appointed by a jury at one of the court leets of the lord of the manor, until a local board was formed in 1859. In 1221 Henry III. granted Llewellyn, prince of Wales, a market on Thursdays in Ellesmere. The inquisition taken in 1383 after the death of Roger le Straunge (Lord Strange), lord of Ellesmere, shows that he also held two fairs there on the feasts of St Martin and the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. By 1597 the market had been discontinued on account of the plague by which many of the inhabitants had died, and the queen granted that Sir Edward Kynaston, Kt., and thirteen others might hold a market every Thursday and a fair on the 3rd of November. Since 1792 both have been discontinued. The commerce of Ellesmere has always been chiefly agricultural.
ELLICE (LAGOON) ISLANDS, an archipelago of the Pacific
Ocean, lying between 5° and 11° S. and about 178° E., nearly
midway between Fiji and Gilbert. It is under British protection,
being annexed in 1892. It comprises a large number of low
coralline islands and atolls, which are disposed in nine clusters
extending over a distance of about 400 m. in the direction from
N.W. to S.E. Their total area is 14 sq. m. and the population is
about 2400. The chief groups, all yielding coco-nuts, pandanus
fruit and yams, are Funafuti or Ellice, Nukulailai or Mitchell,
Nurakita or Sophia, Nukufetau or De Peyster, Nui or Egg,
Nanomana or Hudson, and Niutao or Lynx. Nearly all the
natives are Christians, Protestant missions having been long
established in several of the islands. Those of Nui speak the
language of the Gilbert islanders, and have a tradition that they
came some generations ago from that group. All the others are
of Samoan speech, and their tradition that they came thirty
generations back from Samoa is supported by recent research.
They have an ancient spear which they believe was brought
from Samoa, and they actually name the valley from which their
ancestors started. A missionary visiting the Samoan valley
found there a tradition of a party who put to sea never to return,
and he also found the wood of which the staff was made growing
plentifully in the district. Borings and soundings taken at
Funafuti in 1897 indicate almost beyond doubt that the whole of
this Polynesian region is an area of comparatively recent subsidence.
See Geographical Journal, passim; and Atoll of Funafuti: Borings into a Coral Reef (Report of Coral Reef Committee of Royal Society, London, 1904).
ELLICHPUR, or Illichpur, a town of India in the Amraoti
district of Berar. Pop. (1901) 26,082. It is first mentioned
authentically in the 13th century as “one of the famous cities
of the Deccan.” Though tributary to the Mahommedans after
1294, it remained under Hindu administration till 1318, when
it came directly under the Mahommedans. It was afterwards
capital of the province of Berar at intervals until the Mogul
occupation, when the seat of the provincial governor was moved
to Balapur. The town retains many relics of the nawabs of Berar.
It has ginning factories and a considerable trade in cotton and
forest produce. It is connected by good roads with Amraoti and
Chikalda. It was formerly the headquarters of the district of
Ellichpur, which had an area of 2605 sq. m. and a population in
1901 of 297,403. This district, however, was merged in that of
Amraoti in 1905. The civil station of Paratwada, 2 m. from the
town of Ellichpur, contains the principal public buildings.
ELLIOTSON, JOHN (1791–1868), English physician, was born
at Southwark, London, on the 29th of October 1791. He studied
medicine first at Edinburgh and then at Cambridge, in both which
places he took the degree of M.D., and subsequently in London
at St Thomas’s and Guy’s hospitals. In 1831 he was elected
professor of the principles and practice of physic in London
University, and in 1834 he became physician to University College
hospital. He was a student of phrenology and mesmerism, and
his interest in the latter eventually brought him into collision
with the medical committee of the hospital, a circumstance which
led him, in December 1838, to resign the offices held by him
there and at the university. But he continued the practice of
mesmerism, holding séances in his home and editing a magazine,
The Zoist, devoted to the subject, and in 1849 he founded a
mesmeric hospital. He died in London on the 29th of July 1868.
Elliotson was one of the first teachers in London to appreciate
the value of clinical lecturing, and one of the earliest among
British physicians to advocate the employment of the stethoscope.
He wrote a translation of Blumenbach’s Institutiones
Physiologicae (1817); Cases of the Hydrocyanic or Prussic Acid
(1820); Lectures on Diseases of the Heart (1830); Principles and
Practice of Medicine (1839); Human Physiology (1840); and
Surgical Operations in the Mesmeric State without Pain (1843).
He was the author of numerous papers in the Transactions
of the Medico-Chirurgical Society, of which he was at one time
president; and he was also a fellow both of the Royal College
of Physicians and Royal Society, and founder and president
of the Phrenological Society. W. M. Thackeray’s Pendennis
was dedicated to him.
ELLIOTT, EBENEZER (1781–1849), English poet, the “corn-law
rhymer,” was born at Masborough, near Rotherham, Yorkshire,
on the 17th of March 1781. His father, who was an
extreme Calvinist and a strong radical, was engaged in the iron
trade. Young Ebenezer, although one of a large family, had a
solitary and rather morbid childhood. He was sent to various
schools, but was generally regarded as a dunce, and when he
was sixteen years of age he entered his father’s foundry, working
for seven years with no wages beyond a little pocket money.
In a fragment of autobiography printed in the Athenaeum
(12th of January 1850) he says that he was entirely self-taught,
and attributes his poetic development to long country walks
undertaken in search of wild flowers, and to a collection of books,
including the works of Young, Barrow, Shenstone and Milton,
bequeathed to his father by a poor clergyman. At seventeen
he wrote his Vernal Walk in imitation of Thomson. His earlier
volumes of poems, dealing with romantic themes, received little
but unfriendly comment. The faults of Night, the earliest of
