Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/570

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536
HAW—HAW

general of the city were numerous and important. Hawkwood married Donnana, an illegitimate daughter of Bernabo Visconti, and one of his own daugliters became the wife of the count of Porziglia. His latter years were spent in a villa in the neighbourhood of Florence. On his death in 1394 the republic gave him a public funeral of great magnificence and decreed the erection of a marble monu- ment in the cathedral. This, however, was never executed; but Paolo Uccelli painted his portrait in terre-verte on the inner fagade of the building, where it still remains, though damaged by removal from the plaster to canvas. Richard IL. of England, probably at the instigation of Hawkwood’s sons, who returned to their native country, requested the Florentines to let him remove the good knight’s bones, and the Florentine Government signified its consent.


The fullest account of Sir John Hawkwood in English is in Nichol’s Bibliotheca topographica Britannica, vol. vi. He is one of Richard Johnson's Nine Worthics of London (published in Zar- lcian Misc., 1808), and Fuller ineludes him in his Jorthies of England. An elaborate life by Manni is given by Tartini in Rerunt dial. Script.; and Hawkwood is naturally treated of in Ammirato and the other Florentine chronicles. The compact with the Florentines is printed in Archivio Storico, 1868.

HAWTHORN (Anglo-Saxon, haga-, heg-, or hege-thorn), Crategus, L., a genus of plants of the natural order Rosacece and sub-order Pomece. The common hawthorn, termed also whitethorn, quickthorn, quickset, and May tree, May bush, or May (German, Lagedorn and Christdorn; Freuch, Aubépine), C. Oxyacantha, L., is a shrub or small tree having a smooth blackish bark ; numerous branches, beset usually with thorns, which represent aborted twigs ; alter- nate, long-stalked, obovate-wedge-shaped, 3- or 5-lobed, in- cised or serrate smooth leaves; flowers sweet-scented, arranged in corymbs, and having caducous bracts, broad, white, pink, or scarlet petals, and 1 to 3 styles; and fruit or “haw” an oblong or nearly globular mealy pome, commonly dark red, but occasionally yellow, black, or even greenish-orange or dull white, and of 1 or 2 cells. The common hawthorn is a native of Europe as far north as 604° in Sweden, and of North Africa, Western Asia, and Siberia, and has been naturalized in North America and Australia. It thrives best in dry soils, and in height varies from 4 or 5 to 12, 15, or, in exceptional cases, as much as between 20 and 30 feet. There are several varieties of the plant. It may be propagated from seed or from cuttings. The seeds must be from ripe fruit, and if fresh gathered should be freed from pulp by maceration in water. They germinate only in the second year after sowing; in the course of their first year the seedlings attain a height of 6 to 12 inches. In England the hawthorn has been em- ployed for enclosure of land since the Roman occupation, but for ordinary field-hedges it is believed it was not generally in use till about the end of the 17th century. James I. of Scotland, in his Quai, ii, 14 (early 15th century), mentions the “hawthorn hedges knet” of Windsor Castle. The first hawthorn hedges in Scotland are said to have been planted by soldiers of Cromwell at Inch Buckling Brae in East Lothian, and Finlarig in Perthshire. On the planting and use of hawthorn fences, see Agriculture, vol. i. pp. 296, 310. The wood of the hawthorn is white in colour, with a yellowish tinge. Fresh cut it weighs 63 Ib 12 oz. per cubic foot, and dry 57 ib 30z. It can seldom be obtained in large portions, and has the disadvantage of being apt to warp ; its great hard- ness, however, renders it valuable for the manufacture of various articles, such as the cogs of mill-wheels, flails and mallets, and handles of hammers. Both green and dry it forms excellent fuel. The bark possesses tanning pro- perties, and in Scotland in past times yielded with ferrous sulphate a black dye for wool. The leaves are eaten by cattle, and have been employed as a substitute for tea. Birds and deer feed upon the haws, which are used in the preparation of a fermented and highly intoxicating liquor, and for their astringency are sometimes resorted to in dysentery. The hawthorn serves as a stock for grafting other trees. As an ornamental feature in landscapes, it is worthy of notice; and the pleasing shelter it affords, and the beauty of its blossoms, have frequently been alluded to by poets. The custom of employing the flower- ing branches for decorative purposes on the first of May is of very early origin; but since the alteration in the calendar (see vol. iv. p. 677) the tree has rarely been in full bloom in England before the sccond week of that month, In Cornwall, however, in 1846, the flowers, though scarce, were gathered on the 18th Ajril; and in the Scotch Highlands they may be seen as late as the middle of June. The hawthorn has been regarded as the emblem of hope, and its branches are stated to have been carried by the ancient Creeks in wedding processions, and to have been used by thei to deck the altar of Hymen. The supposition that the tree was the source of Christ's crown of thorns gave rise doubtless to the tradition cur- rent among the French peasantry that it utters groans and cries on Good Friday, and probably also to the old popular superstition in Great Britain and Ireland that ill- luck attended the uprooting of hawthorns. Branches of the Glastunbury thorn, C. Oxyacantha, var. precox, which flowers both in December and in spring, were formerly highly valued in England, on account of the legend that the tree was originally the staff of Joseph of Arimathca (see Glastonbury, vol. x. pp. 674, 675). Sub-specics of C. Oxyacantha are C. monogyna, Jacquin, and C. orya- canthoides, Thuill. C. Pyracantha and C. Crus-galli are among the cultivated species of Crategus.


See Lauder, Gilpin’s For. Scencry, i., 1834; Loudon, Arburetum, li. 834; Selby, Hist. of Brit. For. Trees, 1842; Bentham, Lllustr. Handb, of Brit. Flora, i. 270, 1865; C. A. Johns, The Forest Trees of Britain, p. 83.

 



THE family name of Nathaniel Hawthorne was spelled Hathorne until it was changed by him in early manhood to its present form. The head of the American branch of the family, William Hathorne of Wilton, Wiltshire, England, emisrated with Winthrop and his company, and arrived at Salem Bay, Mass., June 12, 1630. He had grants of land at Dorchester, where he resided for upwards of six years, when he was persuaded to remove to Salem by the tender of further grants of land there, it being con- sidered a public benefit that he should become an inhabitant of that town. He represented his fellow-townsmen in the levislature, and served them in a military capacity as a captain in the first regular troop organized in Salem, which he led to victory through an Indian campaign in Maine. Originally a determined “ Separatist,” and opposed to compulsion for conscience, he signalized himself when a magistrate by the active part which he took in the Quaker persecutions of the time (1657-62), going so far on one occasion as to order the whipping of Anne Coleman and four other Friends through Salem, Boston, and Dedham. He died, an old man, in the odour of sanctity, and left a good property to his son John, who inherited his father’s capacity and intolerance, and was in turu a legislator, @ magistrate, a soldier, and a bitter persecutor of witches. Before the death of Justice Hathorne in 1717, the destiny of the family suffered a sea-change, and they began to be noted as mariners. One of these seafaring Hathornes figured in the Revolution as a privateer, who had the good fortune to escape from a British prison-ship ; and another,

Captain Daniel Hathorne, has left his mark on early