business which his brother had founded after the success of Answers. He founded the Glasgow Daily Record, bought the Leeds Mercury, and shared in the purchase of The Times (1908). He became known also as a most generous benefactor of charities. By the gift of a large sum he enabled the Union Jack Club to provide worthy accommodation for sailors and soldiers in London; and he gave 10,000 to the Territorial Force County of London Association. In 1910 he founded the King Edward chair of English literature at Cambridge, and in the same year he ceased his connexion with The Times, Daily Mail, and Evening News. In 1914 he acquired the Daily Mirror from Lord Northcliffe, and this henceforth became his special organ. In 1915 he founded the Sunday Pictorial, the first fully illustrated Sunday newspaper in London.
In the World War, Mr. Lloyd George, while Secretary for War, appointed Lord Rothermere in 1916 Director-General of the Royal Army Clothing Department. In the following year he accepted the office of Air Minister, under Mr. Lloyd George as Premier. He at once declared himself “whole-heartedly in favour of reprisals,” which were the best means of carrying the war into Germany and protecting British towns against air attacks. Suffering from precarious health and his bereavements in the war, he resigned on April 25 1918, after he had carried out the fusion of the Royal Naval Air Force and Royal Flying Corps. " My second tragic loss in the war, ten weeks since," he wrote to the Prime Minister, " caused me great distress of mind and body . . . I was suffering from ill-health and insomnia." Immediately after the war he began a most energetic campaign, against extravagance in national and local finance, himself contributing numerous articles to his newspapers.
The tragic losses to which he referred were those of his two sons, Capt. Harold Alfred Vyvyan St. George Harmsworth, M.C. (b. Aug. 2 1894) and Lieut. Vere Sidney Tudor Harmsworth (b. Sept. 25 1895), both of whom, after showing exceptional promise in civil fields, served with extreme gallantry in battle and fell in the national cause. Harold, in the Irish Guards, was twice severely wounded in 1915, and was then given a staff appointment in England. This he insisted on resigning and returned to his battalion at the front. There in Bourlon Wood, on Nov. 27 1917, he received mortal wounds of which he died on Feb. 12 1918. In recording the grant of the M.C. for his con- duct on that occasion the London Gazette stated: " He led his company forward under heavy fire and himself put out of action two enemy machine-guns. It was entirely due to his splendid example that his company reached their objective." In his memory Lord Rothermere founded and endowed the Harold Vyvyan chair of American history at Oxford University in June 1920. Vere, educated for the navy which he had to leave owing to gun-deafness, joined the Royal Naval Division immediately after the outbreak of war, took part in the expedition to Antwerp, and, when his battalion was driven across the frontier into Holland, made his escape from Dutch internment. He was in the terrific fighting at Gallipoli and in the battle of the Somme, having refused a staff appointment, like his brother, because he was determined to share the fortunes of his men. Twice wounded in the storming of Beaucourt on Nov. 13 1916, but still advancing and setting an example which, as his commander wrote, “thrilled with pride the men of his battalion,” he was struck a third time by a shell and killed. In memory of him Lord Rothermere in 1919 established and endowed the chair of naval history at Cambridge which bears his name.
Lord Rothermere’s third and only surviving son, Esmond Cecil (b. May 26 1898), who had served during the last part of the war in the Royal Marine Artillery, was in 1919 elected “anti-waste” M.P. for Thanet, and was then the youngest member of the House of Commons and the fifth of his family in Parliament. (H. W. W.)
ROTHSCHILD, NATHANIEL MAYER, 1st Baron (1840–1915),
Jewish financier, was born in London Nov. 8 1840, the
son of Lionel Nathan de Rothschild, Austrian baron, head of
the English branch of the famous financial family (see 23.758).
He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1879
succeeded his father as Austrian baron. He sat in the House
of Commons from 1865 to 1885 when he was created a peer by
Mr. Gladstone, the first of his race and religion to be raised to
the House of Lords. He was well known as an agriculturist as
well as a financier, and he was renowned for his charities. He
died in London March 31 1915.
His brother, Leopold de Rothschild (1845–1917), who had been throughout associated with him in the management of the financial house, succeeded him as its head and also took over most of his public offices, besides interesting himself especially in the Jewish community and becoming president of the United Synagogue. He was an art collector and owner of race-horses. He died at Ascott, Leighton Buzzard, May 29 1917.
ROUND, JOHN HORACE (1854 –), English historian, only
son of John Round, lord of the manor of West Bergholt in Essex,
and through his mother grandson of Horace Smith, author of
Rejected Addresses, was born at Brighton on Feb. 22 1854. He
was educated privately, afterwards going to Balliol College,
Oxford, where he took a first-class in modern history. The
teaching of Dr. Stubbs, then Regius Professor of History, greatly
stimulated the young student, whose independent and critical
genius had already begun to revolt against the superficial
methods of historical study traditional in the English schools,
and after a few years he devoted himself to historical research.
His own aim as a historian, as stated by himself, was “to add to
or correct our knowledge of facts” (preface to Feudal England),
and from the first he insisted that students of mediaeval history
must go to the records in order to find evidence to supplement
and check the chroniclers on whom historians of the type of
Freeman had too exclusively relied. In 1883 he published in the
Antiquary a criticism of Brewer's introduction to the Book of
Howth (Rolls Series), in which he proved that the author was
“strangely at fault” in his views on its authorship, its origin
and its contents; and three years later, in his Early Life of Anne
Boleyn, he again pointed out errors “on the simplest matters of
fact” made by the same eminent scholar. In 1884-5 he
published in a magazine articles on “The Origins of the House of
Lords” (reprinted in Peerage and Pedigree, 1910), in which he
argued for “that feudal origin of the House which, in view of
the teaching of Freeman and Stubbs, it was, at that time,
heresy to assert.” In 1888 appeared his edition of Ancient
Charters, Royal and Private, prior to 1200 (Pipe Roll Soc. vol. x.), in
the preface to which he pointed out their use for genealogy,
topography, legal and ecclesiastical antiquities, etc. In 1891
appeared his Introduction of Knight-service into England
(privately printed, reprinted in Feudal England, 1895), in which he
proved the entirely Norman and feudal origin of this institution
(see the article by Round in the E.B. 15.867).
In 1892 he published in the Quarterly Review (vol. 175, No. 349) his famous attack on Freeman's historical method. He accused him of working as a historian “not from manuscripts, but from printed books,” and pointed out “the danger to our national school of history in the wide-spread and almost superstitious belief in his unimpeachable authority.” This authority he proceeded to assail, centring his attack on that “palisade” of solid timber which, in his Norman Conquest, Freeman had imaginatively built round the English host at “Senlac,” and proving that this palisade had as little existence as “Senlac” itself (see E.B. 13.59 note). Round had begun openly to attack Freeman as early as 1882, but the fact that the Quarterly article, though written before Freeman's death, did not appear till afterwards excited unjust comment, and blinded the dead historian's friends to the convincing force of the criticism itself. The long and bitter controversy that followed was summed up by Round in “Mr. Freeman and the Battle of Hastings” in Feudal England. In 1892 also appeared Geoffrey de Mandeville, a study of the anarchy under Stephen, which established the author's reputation as a constructive historian. In Feudal England, which appeared in 1895, Round published in collected form some of the results of his researches into the history of the 11th and 12th centuries, the first part of the book setting forth views as revolutionary on the Domesday side and the whole system of land
