being named Hertford, and the western the liberty of St Albans. These divisions have since been abolished.
Hertfordshire has always been an agricultural county, with few manufactures, and at the time of the Domesday Survey its wealth was derived almost entirely from its rural manors, with their water meadows, woodlands, fisheries paying rent in eels, and water-mills, the shire on its eastern side being noticeably free from waste land. In Norman times the woollen trade was considerable, and the great corn market at Royston has been famous since the reign of Elizabeth. At the time of the Civil War the malting industry was largely carried on, and saltpetre was produced in the county. In the 17th century Hertfordshire was famous for its horses, and the 18th century saw the introduction of several minor industries, such as straw-plaiting, paper-making and silk weaving.
In 1290 Hertfordshire returned two members to parliament, and in 1298 the borough of Hertford was represented. St Albans, Bishop Stortford and Berkhampstead acquired representation in the 14th century, but from 1375 to 1553 no returns were made for the boroughs. St Albans regained representation in 1553 and Hertford in 1623. Under the Reform Act of 1832 the county returned three members. St Albans was disfranchised on account of bribery in 1852. Hertford lost one member in 1868, and was disfranchised by the act of 1885.
Antiquities.—Among the objects of antiquarian interest may be mentioned the cave of Royston, doubtless once used as a hermitage; Waltham Cross, erected to mark the spot where rested the body of Eleanor, queen of Edward I., on its way to Westminster for interment; and the Great Bed of Ware referred to in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and preserved at Rye House. The principal monastic buildings are the noble pile of St Albans abbey; the remains of Sopwell Benedictine nunnery near St Albans, founded in 1140; the remains of the priory of Ware, dedicated to St Francis, and originally a cell to the monastery of St Ebrulf at Utica in Normandy; and the remains of the priory at Hitchin built by Edward II. for the Carmelites. Among the more interesting churches may be mentioned those of Abbots Langley and Hemel Hempstead, both of Late Norman architecture; Baldock, a handsome mixed Gothic building supposed to have been erected by the Knights Templars in the reign of Stephen; Royston, formerly connected with the priory of canons regular; Hitchin of the 15th century; Hatfield, dating from the 13th century but in the main later; Berkhampstead, chiefly in the Perpendicular style, with a tower of the 16th century. Sandridge church shows good Norman work with the use of Roman bricks; Wheathampstead church, mainly very fine Decorated, has pre-Norman remains. The remains of secular buildings of importance are those of Berkhampstead castle, Hertford castle, Hatfield palace of the bishops of Ely, the slight traces at Bishop Stortford, and the earthworks at Anstey. Among the numerous mansions of interest, Rye House, erected in the reign of Henry VI., was tenanted by Rumbold, one of the principal agents in the plot to assassinate Charles II. Moor Park, Rickmansworth, once the property of St Albans abbey, was granted by Henry VII. to John de Vere, earl of Oxford, and was afterwards the property of the duke of Monmouth, who built the present mansion, which, however, was subsequently cased with Portland stone and received various other additions. Knebworth, the seat of the Lyttons, was originally a Norman fortress, rebuilt in the time of Elizabeth in the Tudor style and restored in the 19th century. Hatfield House is the seat of the marquis of Salisbury; but its earlier history is of great interest, as is that of Theobalds near Cheshunt. Panshanger House, until recently the principal seat of the Cowpers, is a splendid mansion in Gothic style erected at the beginning of the 19th century. The manor of Cashiobury House, the seat of the earls of Essex, was formerly held by the abbot of St Albans, but the mansion was rebuilt in the beginning of the 19th century from designs by Wyatt. Gorhambury House, near St Albans, the seat of the earl of Verulam, formerly the seat of the Bacons, and the residence of the great chancellor, was rebuilt at the close of the 18th century. At Kings Langley and Hunsdon were also former royal residences.
See Sir H. Chauncy, Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire (London, 1700, 2nd ed., Bishop Stortford, 1826); N. Salmon, History of Hertfordshire (London, 1728); R. Clutterbuck, History and Antiquities of the County of Hertford (London, 1815–1827); W. Berry, Pedigrees of the Hertfordshire Families (London, 1844); J. E. Cussans, History of Hertfordshire (London, 1870–1881); Victoria County History, Hertfordshire (London, 1902, &c.); see also “Visitation of Hertfordshire, 1572–1634,” in Harleian Society’s Publ. vol. xvii., and various papers in Middlesex and Hertfordshire Notes and Queries (1895–1898), which in January 1899 was incorporated in the Home Counties Magazine.
HERTHA, or Nerthus, in Teutonic mythology, the goddess of fertility, “Mother Earth.” Tacitus states that many Teutonic tribes worshipped her with orgies and mysterious rites celebrated at night. The chief seat of her cult was an island which has not been identified. A single priest performed the service. Her veiled statue was moved from place to place by sacred cows on which none but the priest might lay hands. At the conclusion of the rites the image, its vestments and its vehicle were bathed in a lake.
HERTZ, HEINRICH RUDOLF (1857–1894), German physicist, was born at Hamburg on the 22nd of February 1857. On leaving school he determined to adopt the profession of engineering, and in the pursuance of this decision went to study in Munich in 1877. But soon coming to the conclusion that engineering was not his vocation he abandoned it in favour of physical science, and in October 1878 began to attend the lectures of G. R. Kirchhoff and H. von Helmholtz at Berlin. In preparation for these he spent the winter of 1877–1878 in reading up original treatises like those of Laplace and Lagrange on mathematics and mechanics, and in attending courses on practical physics under P. G. von Jolly and J. F. W. von Bezold; the consequence was that within a few days of his arrival in Berlin in October 1878 he was able to plunge into original research on a problem of electric inertia. For the best solution a prize was offered by the philosophical faculty of the University, and this he succeeded in winning with the paper which was published in 1880 on the “Kinetic Energy of Electricity in Motion.” His next investigation, on “Induction in Rotating Spheres,” he offered in 1880 as his dissertation for his doctor’s degree, which he obtained with the rare distinction of summa cum laude. Later in the same year he became assistant to Helmholtz in the physical laboratory of the Berlin Institute. During the three years he held this position he carried out researches on the contact of elastic solids, hardness, evaporation and the electric discharge in gases, the last earning him the special commendation of Helmholtz. In 1883 he went to Kiel, becoming Privatdozent, and there he began the studies in Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory which a few years later resulted in the discoveries that rendered his name famous. These were actually made between 1885 and 1889, when he was professor of physics in the Carlsruhe Polytechnic. He himself recorded that their origin is to be sought in a prize problem proposed by the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1879, having reference to the experimental establishment of some relation between electromagnetic forces and the dielectric polarization of insulators. Imagining that this would interest Hertz and be successfully attacked by him, Helmholtz specially drew his attention to it, and promised him the assistance of the Institute if he decided to work on the subject; but Hertz did not take it up seriously at that time, because he could not think of any procedure likely to prove effective. It was of course well known, as a necessity of Maxwell’s mathematical theory, that the polarization and depolarization of an insulator must give rise to the same electromagnetic effects in the neighbourhood as a voltaic current in a conductor. The experimental proof, however, was still lacking, and though several experimenters had come very near its discovery, Hertz was the first who actually succeeded in supplying it, in 1887. Continuing his inquiries for the next year or two, he was able to discover the progressive propagation of electromagnetic action through space, to measure the length and velocity of electromagnetic waves, and to show that in the transverse nature of their vibration and their susceptibility to reflection, refraction and polarization they are in complete correspondence with the waves of light and heat. The result, was in Helmholtz’s words, to establish beyond doubt that
