Many results of great importance are associated with his name. Thus in 1864 the spectroscope yielded him evidence that planetary and irregular nebulae consist of luminous gas—a conclusion tending to support the nebular hypothesis of the origin of stars and planets by condensation from glowing masses of fluid material. On the 18th of May 1866 he made the first spectroscopic examination of a temporary star (Nova Coronae), and found it to be enveloped in blazing hydrogen. In 1868 he proved incandescent carbon-vapours to be the main source of cometary light; and on the 23rd of April in the same year applied Doppler’s principle to the detection and measurement of stellar velocities in the line of sight. Data of this kind, which are by other means inaccessible to the astronomer, are obviously indispensable to any adequate conception of the stellar system as a whole or in its parts. In solar physics Huggins suggested a spectroscopic method for viewing the red prominences in daylight; and his experiments went far towards settling a much-disputed question regarding the solar distribution of calcium. In the general solar spectrum this element is represented by a large number of lines, but in the spectrum of the prominences and chromosphere one pair only can be detected. This circumstance appeared so anomalous that some astronomers doubted whether the surviving lines were really due to calcium; but Sir William and Lady Huggins (née Margaret Lindsay Murray, who, after their marriage in 1875, actively assisted her husband) successfully demonstrated in the laboratory that calcium vapour, if at a sufficiently low pressure, gives under the influence of the electric discharge precisely these lines and no others. The striking discovery was, in 1903, made by the same investigators that the spontaneous luminosity of radium gives a spectrum of a kind never before obtained without the aid of powerful excitation, electrical or thermal. It consists, that is to say, in a range of bright lines, the agreement of which with the negative pole bands of nitrogen, together with details of interest connected with its mode of production, was ascertained by a continuance of the research. Sir William Huggins, who was made K.C.B. in 1897, received the Order of Merit in 1902, and was awarded many honours, academic and other. He presided over the meeting of the British Association in 1891, and during the five years 1900–1905 acted as president of the Royal Society, from which he at different times received a Royal, a Copley and a Rumford medal. Four of his presidential addresses were republished in 1906, in an illustrated volume entitled The Royal Society. A list of his scientific papers is contained in chapter ii. of the magnificent Atlas of Representative Stellar Spectra, published in 1899, by Sir William and Lady Huggins conjointly, for which they were adjudged the Actonian prize of the Royal Institution. Sir William Huggins died on the 12th of May 1910.
See ch. i. of Atlas of Stellar Spectra, containing a history of the Tulse Hill observatory; Sir W. Huggins’s personal retrospect in the Nineteenth Century for June 1897; “Scientific Worthies,” with photogravure portrait (Nature); Astronomers of To-Day, by Hector Macpherson, junr. (1905) (portrait); Month. Notices Roy. Astr. Society, xxvii. 146 (C. Pritchard). (A. M. C.)
HUGH, ST. St Hugh of Avalon (c. 1140–1200), bishop of
Lincoln, who must be distinguished from Hugh of Wells, and
also from St Hugh of Lincoln (see below), was born of a noble
family at Avalon in Burgundy. At the age of eight he entered
along with his widowed father the neighbouring priory of canons
regular at Villard-Benoît, where he was ordained deacon at
nineteen. Appointed not long after prior of a dependent cell,
Hugh was attracted from that position by the holy reputation
of the monks of the Grande Chartreuse, whose house he finally
entered despite an oath to the contrary which he had given his
superior. There he remained about ten years, receiving priest’s
orders, and rising to the important office of procurator, which
brought him into contact with the outer world. The wide
reputation for energy and tact which Hugh speedily attained
penetrated to the ears of Henry II. of England, and induced
that monarch to request the procurator’s assistance in establishing
at Witham in Somersetshire the first English Carthusian
monastery. Hugh reluctantly consented to go to England,
where in a short time he succeeded in overcoming every obstacle,
and in erecting and organizing the convent, of which he was
appointed first prior. He speedily became prime favourite with
Henry, who in 1186 procured his election to the see of Lincoln.
He took little part in political matters, maintaining as one of his
chief principles that a churchman should hold no secular office.
A sturdy upholder of what he believed to be right, he let neither
royal nor ecclesiastical influence interfere with his conduct,
but fearlessly resisted whatever seemed to him an infringement
of the rights of his church or diocese. But with all his bluff
firmness Hugh had a calm judgment and a ready tact, which
almost invariably left him a better friend than before of those
whom he opposed; and the astute Henry, the impetuous
Richard, and the cunning John, so different in other points,
agreed in respecting the bishop of Lincoln. Hugh’s manners
were a little rigid and harsh; but, though an ascetic to himself,
he was distinguished by a broad kindliness to others, so that
even the Jews of Lincoln wept at his funeral. He had great
skill in taming birds, and for some years had a pet swan, which
occupies a prominent place in all histories and representations
of the saint. In 1200 Bishop Hugh revisited his native country
and his first convents, and on the return journey was seized with
an illness, of which he died at London on the 16th of November
1200. He was canonized by Honorius III. on the 17th of
February 1220. His feast day is kept on the 17th of November
in the Roman Church.
The chief life of St Hugh, the Magna vita S. Hugonis, probably written by Adam, afterwards abbot of Eynsham, the bishop’s chaplain, was edited by J. F. Dimock in Rer. Britan. med. aevi script. No. xxxvii, (London, 1864). MSS. of this are in the Bodleian Library (Digby, 165 of the 13th century) and in Paris (Bib. Nat. 5575, Fonds Latin); the Paris MS. fortunately makes good the portions lacking in the Oxford one. Mr Dimock also edited a Metrical Life of St Hugh of Avalon (London, 1860), from two MSS. in the British Museum and the Bodleian Library. The best modern source for information as to St Hugh and his time is the Vie de St Hugues, évêque de Lincoln (1140–1200) par un religieux de la Grande Chartreuse (Montreuil, 1890), Eng. trans. edited by H. Thurston, S.J., with valuable appendices and notes (London, 1898). A complete bibliography is given in U. Chevalier, Bio-bibliographie (Paris, 1905, 2206-2207); see also A. Potthast, Bibliotheca med. aev., 1380.
Hugh of Wells, one of King John’s officials and councillors, became bishop of Lincoln in 1209. He soon fell into disfavour with John, and the earlier years of his bishopric were mainly spent abroad, while the king seized the revenues of his see. However, he was one of John’s supporters when Magna Carta was signed, and after the accession of Henry III. he was able to turn his attention to his episcopal duties. His chief work was the establishment of vicarages in his diocese, thus rendering the parish priest more independent of the monastic houses; this policy, and consequently Hugh himself, was heartily disliked by Matthew Paris and other monastic writers. The bishop, who did some building at Lincoln and also at Wells, died on the 7th of February 1235.
St Hugh of Lincoln, a native of Lincoln, was a child about ten years old when he was found dead on premises belonging to a Jew. It was said, and the story was generally believed, that the boy had been scourged and crucified in imitation of the death of Jesus Christ. Great and general indignation was aroused, and a number of Jews were hanged or punished in other ways. The incident is referred to by Chaucer in the Prioresses Tale and by Marlowe in the Jew of Malta.
HUGH, called The Great (d. 956), duke of the Franks and
count of Paris, son of King Robert I. of France (d. 923) and
nephew of King Odo or Eudes (d. 898), was one of the founders
of the power of the Capetian house in France. Hugh’s first
wife was Eadhild, a sister of the English king, Æthelstan. At
the death of Raoul, duke of Burgundy, in 936, Hugh was in
possession of nearly all the region between the Loire and the
Seine, corresponding to the ancient Neustria, with the exception
of the territory ceded to the Normans in 911. He took a very
active part in bringing Louis IV. (d’Outremer) from England in
936, but in the same year Hugh married Hadwig, sister of the
emperor Otto the Great, and soon quarrelled with Louis. Hugh
