Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/98

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

90 HUSH battle took place in 1771 between GOT. Tryon with 1,100 men and 2,000 of the insurgents on the banks of the Alamance, in which the latter were defeated. Husbands escaped to Penn- sylvania, where he was concerned in the whis- key insurrection in 1794, and was associated with Albert Gallatin, Breckenridge, and oth- ers, as a committee of safety. HUSU, a town of Roumania, in Moldavia, near the Pruth, 36 m. S. E. of Jassy ; pop. about 13,000. It is the seat of a Greek bishop, and has a normal school. Here, on July 25, 1711, the peace was concluded between Rus- sia and Turkey which saved Peter the Great and his army on the Pruth from destruction or captivity. Ill skixso., William, an English statesman, born at Birch-Moreton, Worcestershire, March II, 1770, died at Eccles, Lancashire, Sept. 15, 1830. lie was originally intended for the medical profession, and in his 14th year went to Paris to pursue his studies. Here he resi- ded for several years, and adopted the revolu- tionary doctrines of the day ; but he afterward abandoned them, and became private secre- tary to the British ambassador, Lord Gower, with whom he returned to England in 1792, and in 1795 was made undersecretary of state for war and the colonies. In 1796 he entered parliament, of which, with the exception of two years, from 1802 to 1804, he remained a member until his death. Following the for- tunes of Mr. Pitt, he retired from office with him in 1801, and became secretary of the treasury on the formation of the new Pitt ministry in 1804. He attached himself to Mr. Canning, taking office with him in 1807 and retiring in 1809. In 1814 he was appointed chief commissioner of woods and forests, and in 1823 entered the cabinet as president of the board of trade and treasurer of the navy, which offices he retained until the death of Canning. In the Goderich cabinet and in that of the duke of Wellington he held the office of secretary for the colonies till May, 1829, when the redemption of a pledge formerly given obliged him to vote against his col- leagues, and he resigned. As a public man he was chiefly known by his speeches on finan- cial and commercial subjects; and he is re- garded as the great pioneer in the free-trade movement. In 1823 he carried through par- liament an act for removing various restric- tions upon commerce. He was also active in procuring the repeal of the combination laws and the relaxation of the restrictions on the exportation of machinery. He was present at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway, and at Parkside, while conversing with the duke of Wellington, was run over by a locomotive, and died the same evening. Hl'SS, John, a Bohemian religious reformer, born about 1373, burned at Constance, July 6, 1415. His surname was derived from his place of birth, Hussinetz, near the border of Bavaria. He studied first in his own town, HUSS then in Prachatitz, and finally at the uni- versity of Prague, where he graduated in 1393. In 13U8 he began to give lectures in philosophy and theology ; in 1401 he became president of the university faculty of theology ; and in 1402 he was installed preacher in the Bethlehem chapel, which had been established ten years earlier for the purpose of enabling the people to hear preaching and the Scriptures in the Bohe- mian tongue. He became the confessor of the queen, and the head of a party of priests and scholars who meditated reforms in discipline and in doctrine. His first polemical treatise, De Sanguine ChrMi Glorificato, was occa- sioned by the pilgrimages to Wilsnack to see and worship the miraculous blood of Christ there shown on the consecrated host. In suc- cessive sermons preached before the arch- bishop, Huss next arraigned the misconduct of the clergy even in high places ; demanded the despoiling of the churches of useless orna- ments, that the poor might be fed and clothed ; and called upon the secular officers to hinder and punish the open vices of ecclesiastics. This excited strong opposition, which was in- creased when the ordinance of Charles IV., giving special privileges to the native over the foreign students, was revived by Huss, and the Poles and Germans deserted the uni- versity, depriving the city of thousands of its population. Soon afterward he became rec- tor of the university. Other circumstances, connected with the papal schism, aided to em- broil Huss with the archbishop and his friends. It became a warfare between the university and the cathedral. The pope interfered for the latter ; and, fortified by his bull, at the close of the year 1409 the archbishop Sbinko burned 200 volumes of the works of Wycliffe, which had been deposited in his palace. Against this act Huss protested, in a spirited treatise addressed to the new pope, John XXIIL, with arguments of such weight that a commission of doctors condemned the arch- bishop for irregular action. The cry of heresy was now raised against Huss, and he was sum- moned to Rome to answer this charge. The court, the university, and even the archbishop sent a defence of his orthodoxy, and Hnss sent advocates to plead his cause before the cardi- nals, but they were not heard. He was con- demned as a heretic, and ordered to quit Prague; and the city was placed under ban so long as he should remain there. Finding it vain to resist, he left the city ; but his retire- ment only inflamed the zeal of his partisans. The books which he wrote at this period, half apologetic, half polemic, tended more and more to widen the breach and to arouse acts of violence. An outbreak in the city followed ; the partisans of Huss were victorious, the arch- bishop fled, and Huss came back to his chapel, emboldened to preach more and more vehe- mently against prevalent corruptions. He praised the king for upholding the cause of truth and purity against the mandates of eccle-