railways, and has connexion with all the important railway systems of the West Riding, and with the extensive canal system of Lancashire and Yorkshire. It is well situated on a slope above the river Colne, a tributary of the Calder. It is built principally of stone, and contains several handsome streets with numerous great warehouses and business premises, many of which are of high architectural merit. Of the numerous churches and chapels all are modern, and some of considerable beauty. The parish church of St Peter, however, though rebuilt in 1837, occupies a site which is believed to have carried a church since the 11th century. The town hall (1880) and the corporation offices (1877) are handsome classic buildings; the Ramsden Estate buildings are a very fine block of the mixed Italian order. The market hall (1880) surmounted by a clock-tower is in geometrical Decorated style. The cloth-hall dates from 1784, when it was erected as a clothiers’ emporium. It is no longer used for any such purpose, but serves as an exchange news-room. The Armoury, erected as a riding-school, was the headquarters of a volunteer corps, and is also used for concerts and public meetings. The chief educational establishments are the Huddersfield College (1838), a higher-grade school, the technical school and several grammar-schools, of which Longwood school was founded in 1731. The Literary and Scientific Society possesses a museum. Of the numerous charitable institutions, the Infirmary, erected in 1831, is housed in a building of the Doric order. The chief open spaces are Greenhead and Beaumont parks, the last named presented to the town by Mr H. F. Beaumont in 1880. There is a sulphurous spa in the district of Lockwood.
Huddersfield is the principal seat of the fancy woollen trade in England, and fancy goods in silk and cotton are also produced in great variety. Plain cloth and worsteds are also manufactured. There are silk and cotton spinning-mills, iron foundries and engineering works. Coal is abundant in the vicinity. The parliamentary borough returns one member. The county borough was created in 1888. The municipal borough is under a mayor, 15 aldermen and 45 councillors. Area, 11,859 acres.
Huddersfield (Oderesfelte) only rose to importance after the introduction of the woollen trade in the 17th century. After the Conquest William I. granted the manor to Ilbert de Laci, of whom the Saxon tenant Godwin was holding as underlord at the time of the Domesday Survey. In Saxon times it had been worth l00s., but after being laid waste by the Normans was still of no value in 1086. From the Lacys the manor passed to Thomas Plantagenet, duke of Lancaster, through his marriage with Alice de Lacy, and so came to the crown on the accession of Henry IV. In 1599 Queen Elizabeth sold it to William Ramsden, whose descendants still own it. Charles II. in 1670 granted to John Ramsden a market in Huddersfield every Wednesday with the toll and other profits belonging. By the beginning of the 18th century Huddersfield had become a “considerable town,” chiefly owing to the manufacture of woollen kersies, and towards the end of the same century the trade was increased by two events—the opening of navigation on the Calder in 1780, and in 1784 that of the cloth-hall or piece-hall, built and given to the town by Sir John Ramsden, baronet. Since 1832 the burgesses have returned members to parliament. The town possesses no charter before 1868, when it was created a municipal borough.
HUDSON, GEORGE (1800–1871), English railway financier,
known as the “railway king,” was born in York in March 1800.
Apprenticed to a firm of linendrapers in that city, he soon
became a successful merchant, and in 1837 was elected lord
mayor of York. Having inherited, in 1827, a sum of £30,000,
he invested it in North Midland Railway shares, and was shortly
afterwards appointed a director. In 1833 he had founded and
for some time acted as manager of the York Banking Company.
He had for long been impressed with the necessity of getting
the railway to York, and he took an active part in securing the
passing of the York and North Midland Bill, and was elected
chairman of the new company—the line being opened in 1839.
From this time he turned his undivided attention to the projection
of railways. In 1841 he initiated the Newcastle and Darlington
line. With George Stephenson he planned and carried out
the extension of the Midland to Newcastle, and by 1844 had
over a thousand miles of railway under his control. In this year
the mania for railway speculation was at its height, and no
man was more courted than the “railway king.” All classes
delighted to honour him, and, as if a colossal fortune were an
insufficient reward for his public services, the richest men in
England presented him with a tribute of £20,000. Deputy-lieutenant
for Durham, and thrice lord mayor of York, he was
returned in the Conservative interest for Sunderland in 1845,
the event being judged of such public interest that the news
was conveyed to London by a special train, which travelled part
of the way at the rate of 75 m. an hour. Full of rewards and
honours, he was suddenly ruined by the disclosure of the Eastern
Railway frauds. Sunderland clung to her generous representative
till 1859, but on the bursting of the bubble he had lost
influence and fortune at a single stroke. His later life was
chiefly spent on the continent, where he benefited little by a
display of unabated energy and enterprise. Some friends gave
him a small annuity a short time before his death, which took
place in London, on the 14th of December 1871. His name
has long been used to point the moral of vaulting ambition and
unstable fortune. The “big swollen gambler,” as Carlyle calls
him in one of the Latter-Day Pamphlets, was savagely and
excessively reprobated by the world which had blindly believed
in his golden prophecies. He certainly ruined scrip-holders,
and disturbed the great centres of industry; but he had an
honest faith in his own schemes, and, while he beggared himself
in their promotion, he succeeded in overcoming the powerful
landed interest which delayed the adoption of railways in
England long after the date of their regular introduction into
America.
HUDSON, HENRY, English navigator and explorer. Nothing
is known of his personal history excepting such as falls within
the period of the four voyages on which his fame rests. The
first of these voyages in quest of new trade and a short route
to China by way of the North Pole, in accordance with the suggestion
of Robert Thorne (d. 1527), was made for the Muscovy
Company with ten men and a boy in 1607. Hudson first coasted
the east side of Greenland, and being prevented from proceeding
northwards by the great ice barrier which stretches thence to
Spitzbergen sailed along it until he reached “Newland,” as Spitzbergen
was then called, and followed its northern coast to beyond
80° N. lat. On the homeward voyage he accidentally discovered
an island in lat. 71° which he named Hudson’s Touches, and
which has since been identified with Jan Mayen Island.
Molineux’s chart, published by Hakluyt about 1600, was Hudson’s
blind guide in this voyage, and the polar map of 1611 by
Pontanus illustrates well what he attempted, and the valuable
results both negative and positive which he reached. He investigated
the trade prospects at Bear Island, and recommended
his patrons to seek higher game in Newland; hence he may be
called the father of the English whale-fisheries at Spitzbergen.
Next year Hudson was again sent by the Muscovy Company to open a passage to China, this time by the north-east route between Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, which had been attempted by his predecessors and especially by the Dutch navigator William Barents. This voyage lasted from the 22nd of April to the 26th of August 1608. He raked the Barents Sea in vain between 75° 30′ N.W. and 71° 15′ S.E. for an opening through the ice, and on the 6th of July, “voide of hope of a north-east passage (except by the Waygats, for which I was not fitted to trie or prove),” he resolved to sail to the north-west, and if time and means permitted to run a hundred leagues up Lumley’s Inlet (Frobisher Strait) or Davis’s “overfall” (Hudson Strait). But his voyage being delayed by contrary winds he was finally compelled to return without accomplishing his wish. The failure of this second attempt satisfied the Muscovy Company, which thenceforward directed all its energies to the profitable Spitzbergen trade.
Towards the end of 1608 Hudson “had a call” to Amsterdam,
