granted a new charter by which the burgesses elected 2 bailiffs and 12 burgesses annually and did service at their own courts every three weeks, the court leet being held twice a year. In resisting an attack made by the bishop in 1660 on their right of toll, the burgesses could only claim Farnham as a borough by prescription as their charters had been mislaid, but the charters were subsequently found, and after some litigation their rights were established. In the 18th century the corporation, a close body, declined, its duties being performed by the vestry, and in 1789 the one survivor resigned and handed over the town papers to the bishop. Farnham sent representatives to parliament in 1311 and 1460, on both occasions being practically the bishop’s pocket borough. In accordance with the grant of 1247 a fair was held on All Saints’ day and also on Holy Thursday; the former was afterwards held on All Souls’ Day. Farnham was early a market of importance, and in 1216 a royal grant changed the market day from Sunday to Thursday in each week. It was famous in the early 17th century for wheat and oats; hop-growing began in 1597.
FARNWORTH, an urban district in the Radcliffe-cum-Farnworth
parliamentary division of Lancashire, England, on
the Irwell, 3 m. S.E. of Bolton by the Lancashire & Yorkshire
railway. Pop. (1901) 25,925. Cotton mills, iron foundries,
brick and tile works, and collieries employ the large industrial
population.
FARO, the capital of a district bearing the same name, in
southern Portugal; at the terminus of the Lisbon-Faro railway,
and on the Atlantic Ocean. Pop. (1900) 11,789. Faro is an
episcopal see, with a Renaissance cathedral of great size, an
ecclesiastical seminary, and a ruined castle surrounded by
Moorish fortifications. Its broad but shallow harbour is protected
on the south by the long island of Cães, and a number of
sandy islets, which, being constantly enlarged by silt from the
small river Fermoso, render the entrance of large vessels impossible.
Fishing is an important industry, and fish, with wine,
fruit, cork, baskets and sumach, are the principal articles of
export. Little has been done to develop the mineral resources
of the district, which include tin, lead, antimony and auriferous
quartz. Faro was taken from the Moors by Alphonso III. of
Portugal (1248–1279). It was sacked by the English in 1596,
and nearly destroyed by an earthquake in 1755.
The administrative district of Faro coincides with the ancient kingdom and province of Algarve (q.v.); pop. (1900) 255,191; area, 1937 sq. m.
FARO (from Pharaoh, a picture of the Egyptian king appearing
on a card of the old French pack), a game of cards, played with
a full pack. Originally the pack was held in the dealer’s left
hand, but nowadays very elaborate and expensive implements
are used. The dealer places the pack, after shuffling and cutting,
in a dealing-box face upwards, and the cards are taken from the
top of the box in couples through a slit in the side. The exposed
card on top is called soda, and the last card left in the box is
in hoc. The implements include counters of various colours
and values, a dealing-box, a case or frame manipulated by a
“case-keeper,” upon which the cards already played are arranged
in sight, a shuffling-board, and score-sheets for the players.
Upon the table is the “lay-out,” a complete suit of spades,
enamelled on green cloth, upon or near which to place the stakes.
The dealer takes two cards from the box, placing the first one
near it and the second close beside it. Each deal of two cards
is called a turn, and there are twenty-five such, soda and hoc
not counting. The players stake upon any card they please, or
in such manner as to take in several cards, reducing the amount,
but increasing the chances, of winning, as at roulette. The
dealer, having waved the hand, after which no more bets may
be made, deals the turn, and then proceeds to gather in the
stakes won by him, and to pay those he has lost. The chances
as between dealer and punters, or players, are equal, except
that the banker wins half the money staked on the cards of a
turn should they chance to be alike. Faro is played considerably
in parts of the United States, whither it is said to have been
taken from France, where it had a great vogue during the reign
of Louis XIV. Owing to the dishonest methods of many
gambling “clubs” the game is in disrepute.
FARQUHAR, GEORGE (1677–1707), British dramatist, son of
William Farquhar, a clergyman, was born in Londonderry,
Ireland, in 1677. When he was seventeen he was entered as
a sizar at Trinity College, Dublin, under the patronage of Dr
Wiseman, bishop of Dromore. He did not long continue his
studies, being, according to one account, expelled for a profane
joke. Thomas Wilkes, however, states that the abrupt termination
of his studies was due to the death of his patron. He became
an actor on the Dublin stage, but in a fencing scene in Dryden’s
Indian Emperor he forgot to exchange his sword for a foil, with
results which narrowly escaped being fatal to a fellow-actor.
After this accident he never appeared on the boards. He had
met Robert Wilks, the famous comedian, in Dublin. Though
he did not, as generally stated, go to London with Wilks, it was
at his suggestion that he wrote his first play, Love and a Bottle,
which was performed at Drury Lane, perhaps through Wilks’s
interest, in 1698. He received from the earl of Orrery a lieutenancy
in his regiment, then in Ireland, but in two letters of his
dated from Holland in 1700 he says nothing of military service.
His second comedy, The Constant Couple: or a Trip to the
Jubilee (1699), ridiculing the preparations for the pilgrimage
to Rome in the Jubilee year, met with an enthusiastic reception.
Wilks as Sir Harry Wildair contributed substantially to its
success. In 1701 Farquhar wrote a sequel, Sir Harry Wildair.
Leigh Hunt says that Mrs Oldfield, like Wilks, played admirably
well in it, but the original Lady Lurewell was Mrs Verbruggen.
Mrs Oldfield is said to have been the “Penelope” of Farquhar’s
letters. In 1702 Farquhar published a slight volume of miscellanies—Love
and Business; in a Collection of Occasionary
Verse and Epistolary Prose—containing, among other things, “A
Discourse on Comedy in reference to the English Stage,” in
which he defends the English neglect of the dramatic unities.
“The rules of English comedy,” he says, “don’t lie in the compass
of Aristotle or his followers, but in the pit, box and galleries.”
In 1702 he borrowed from Fletcher’s Wild Goose Chase, The
Inconstant, or the Way to win Him, in which he followed his original
fairly closely except in the last act. In 1703 he married, in the
expectation of a fortune, but found too late that he was deceived.
It is said that he never reproached his wife, although the marriage
increased his liabilities and the rest of his life was a constant
struggle against poverty. His other plays are: The Stage Coach
(1704), a one-act farce adapted from the French of Jean de la
Chapelle in conjunction with Peter Motteux; The Twin Rivals
(Drury Lane, 1702); The Recruiting Officer (Drury Lane, 1706);
and The Beaux’ Stratagem (Haymarket, 1707). The Recruiting
Officer was suggested to him by a recruiting expedition (1705)
in Shropshire, and is dedicated to his “friends round the Wrekin.”
The Beaux’ Stratagem, is the best of all his plays, and long kept
the stage. Genest notes nineteen revivals up to 1828. Two
embarrassed gentlemen travel in the country disguised as master
and servant in the hope of mending their fortune. The play gives
vivid pictures of the Lichfield inn with its rascally landlord,
and of the domestic affairs of the Sullens. Archer, the supposed
valet, whose adventurous spirit secures full play, was one of
Garrick’s best parts.
Meanwhile one of his patrons, said to have been the duke of Ormond, had advised Farquhar to sell out of his regiment, and had promised to give him a captaincy in his own. Farquhar sold his commission, but the duke’s promise remained unfulfilled. Before he had finished the second act of The Beaux’ Stratagem he knew that he was stricken with a mortal illness, but it was necessary to persevere and to be “consumedly lively to the end.” He had received in advance £30 for the copyright from Lintot the bookseller. The play was staged on the 8th of March, and Farquhar lived to have his third night, and there was an extra benefit on the 29th of April, the day of his death. He left his two children to the care of his friend Wilks. Wilks obtained a benefit at the theatre for the dramatist’s widow, but he seems to have done little for the daughters. They were apprenticed to a mantua-maker, and one of them was, as late as 1764, in
