Essex, and of Theodosia, daughter of Sir Edward Montagu of Broughton, Northamptonshire, was elected a member of the Short and Long Parliaments in 1640 for Hertfordshire. He at first supported the opposition to Charles’s arbitrary government, but soon allied himself with the king’s cause, on which side his sympathies were engaged, and was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Capel of Hadham on the 6th of August 1641. On the outbreak of the war he was appointed lieutenant-general of Shropshire, Cheshire and North Wales, where he rendered useful military services, and later was made one of the prince of Wales’s councillors, and a commissioner at the negotiations at Uxbridge in 1645. He attended the queen in her flight to France in 1646, but disapproved of the prince’s journey thither, and retired to Jersey, subsequently aiding in the king’s escape to the Isle of Wight. He was one of the chief leaders in the second Civil War, but met with no success, and on the 27th of August, together with Lord Norwich, he surrendered to Fairfax at Colchester on promise of quarter for life.[1] This assurance, however, was afterwards interpreted as not binding the civil authorities, and his fate for some time hung in the balance. He succeeded in escaping from the Tower, but was again captured, was condemned to death by the new “high court of justice” on the 8th of March 1649, and was beheaded together with the duke of Hamilton and Lord Holland the next day. He married Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Sir Charles Morrison of Cassiobury, Hertfordshire, through whom that estate passed into his family, and by whom besides four daughters he had five sons, the eldest Arthur being created earl of Essex at the Restoration. Lord Capel, who was much beloved, and who was a man of deep religious feeling and exemplary life, wrote Daily Observations or Meditations: Divine, Morall, published with some of his letters in 1654, and reprinted, with a short life of the author, under the title Excellent Contemplations, in 1683.
CAPEL CURIG, a tourist resort in Carnarvonshire, North Wales, 1412 m. from Bangor. It is a collection of a few houses, too scattered to form a village properly so called. At the Roberts hotel is shown on a window pane the supposed signature of Wellington. The road from Bettws y coed, past the Swallow Falls to Capel Curig, and thence to Llanberis and Carnarvon, is very interesting, grand and lonely. Excellent fishing is to be had here, chiefly for trout. In summer, coaching tours discharge numbers of visitors daily; the railway station is Bettws (London & North-Western railway). Capel Curig means “chapel of Curig,” a British saint mentioned in Welsh poetry. The place is a centre for artists, geologists and botanists, for the ascent of Snowdon, Moel Siabod, Glydyr Fawr, Glydyr Fach, Tryfan, &c., and for visiting Llyn Ogwen, Llyn Idwal, Twll du (Devil’s Kitchen), Nant Ffrancon and the Penrhyn quarries.
CAPELL, EDWARD (1713–1781), English Shakespearian critic, was born at Troston Hall in Suffolk on the 11th of June 1713. Through the influence of the duke of Grafton he was appointed to the office of deputy-inspector of plays in 1737, with a salary of £200 per annum, and in 1745 he was made groom of the privy chamber through the same influence. In 1760 appeared his Prolusions, or Select Pieces of Ancient Poetry, a collection which included Edward III., placed by Capell among the doubtful plays of Shakespeare. Shocked at the inaccuracies which had crept into Sir Thomas Hanmer’s edition of Shakespeare, he projected an entirely new edition, to be carefully collated with the original copies. After spending three years in collecting, and comparing scarce folio and quarto editions, he published his own edition in 10 vols. 8vo (1768), with an introduction written in a style of extraordinary quaintness, which was afterwards appended to Johnson’s and Steevens’s editions. Capell published the first part of his commentary, which included notes on nine plays with a glossary, in 1774. This he afterwards recalled, and the publication of the complete work, Notes and Various Readings of Shakespeare (1779–1783), the third volume of which bears the title of The School of Shakespeare, was completed, under the superintendence of John Collins, in 1783, two years after the author’s death. It contains the results of his unremitting labour for thirty years, and throws considerable light on the history of the times of Shakespeare, as well as on the sources from which he derived his plots. Collins asserted that Steevens had stolen Capell’s notes for his own edition, the story being that the printers had been bribed to show Steevens the sheets of Capell’s edition while it was passing through the press. Besides the works already specified, he published an edition of Antony and Cleopatra, adapted for the stage with the help of David Garrick in 1758. His edition of Shakespeare passed through many editions (1768, 1771, 1793, 1799, 1803, 1813). Capell died in the Temple on the 24th of February 1781.
CAPELLA, MARTIANUS MINNEUS FELIX, Latin writer, according to Cassiodorus a native of Madaura in Africa, flourished during the 5th century, certainly before the year 439. He appears to have practised as a lawyer at Carthage and to have been in easy circumstances. His curious encyclopaedic work, entitled Satyricon, or De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii et de septem Artibus liberalibus libri novem, is an elaborate allegory in nine books, written in a mixture of prose and verse, after the manner of the Menippean satires of Varro. The style is heavy and involved, loaded with metaphor and bizarre expressions, and verbose to excess. The first two books contain the allegory proper—the marriage of Mercury to a nymph named Philologia. The remaining seven books contain expositions of the seven liberal arts, which then comprehended all human knowledge. Book iii. treats of grammar, iv. of dialectics, v. of rhetoric, vi. of geometry, vii. of arithmetic, viii. of astronomy, ix. of music. These abstract discussions are linked on to the original allegory by the device of personifying each science as a courtier of Mercury and Philologia. The work was a complete encyclopaedia of the liberal culture of the time, and was in high repute during the middle ages. The author’s chief sources were Varro, Pliny, Solinus, Aquila Romanus, and Aristides Quintilianus. His prose resembles that of Apuleius (also a native of Madaura), but is even more difficult. The verse portions, which are on the whole correct and classically constructed, are in imitation of Varro and are less tiresome.
A passage in book viii. contains a very clear statement of the heliocentric system of astronomy. It has been supposed that Copernicus, who quotes Capella, may have received from this work some hints towards his own new system.
Editio princeps, by F. Vitalis Bodianus, 1499; the best modern edition is that of F. Eyssenhardt (1866); for the relation of Martianus Capella to Aristides Quintilianus see H. Deiters, Studien zu den griechischen Musikern (1881). In the 11th century the German monk Notker Labeo translated the first two books into Old High German.
CAPE MAY, a city and watering-place of Cape May county, New Jersey, U.S.A., on the Atlantic coast, 2 m. E.N.E. of Cape May, the S. extremity of the state, and about 80 m. S. by E. of Philadelphia. Pop. (1890) 2136; (1900) 2257; (1905) 3006; (1910) 2471. Cape May is served by the Maryland, Delaware & Virginia (by ferry to Lewes, Delaware), the West Jersey & Seashore (Pennsylvania system), and the Atlantic City (Reading system) railways, and, during the summer season, by steamboat to Philadelphia. The principal part of the city is on a peninsula (formerly Cape Island) between the ocean and Cold Spring inlet, which has been dredged and is protected by jetties to make a suitable harbour. The further improvement of the inlet and the harbour was authorized by Congress in 1907. On the ocean side, along a hard sand beach 5 m. long, is the Esplanade. There are numerous hotels and handsome cottages for summer visitors, who come especially from Philadelphia, from New York, from the South and from the West. Cape May offers good bathing, yachting and fishing, with driving and hunting in the wooded country inland from the coast. At Cape May Point is the Cape May lighthouse, 145 ft. high, built in 1800 and rebuilt in 1859. In the city are canneries of vegetables and fruit, glass-works and a gold-beating establishment. Fish and oysters are exported. Cape May was named by Cornelis Jacobsen Mey, director of the Prince Hendrick (Delaware) river for the West India Company of
- ↑ Gardiner’s Hist. of the Civil War, iv. 206; cf. article on Fairfax by C. H. Frith in the Dict. of Nat. Biog.
