occasionally been used as a royal residence, and was the scene, in November 1285, of the revels held in celebration of the marriage (solemnized in the abbey) of Alexander III. to Joleta, or Yolande, daughter of the count of Dreux. The site was occupied in 1823 by the county prison, now known as the castle, a castellated structure which gradually fell into disuse and was acquired by the corporation in 1890. A house exists in Backgate in which Mary Queen of Scots resided in 1566, and one in Castlegate which Prince Charles Edward occupied in 1745.
The public buildings include the grammar school (built in 1883 to replace the successor of the school in the abbey), founded by William Turnbull, bishop of Glasgow (d. 1454), the county buildings, the free library and the public hall, which succeeded to the corn exchange destroyed by fire in 1898, a loss that involved the museum and its contents, including the banners captured by the Jethart weavers at Bannockburn and Killiecrankie. The old market cross still exists, and there are two public parks. The chief industry is the manufacture of woollens (blankets, hosiery), but brewing, tanning and iron-founding are carried on, and fruit (especially pears) and garden produce are in repute. Jedburgh was made a royal burgh in the reign of David I., and received a charter from Robert I. and another, in 1566, from Mary Queen of Scots. Sacked and burned time after time during the Border strife, it was inevitable that the townsmen should become keen fighters. Their cry of “Jethart’s here!” was heard wherever the fray waxed most fiercely, and the Jethart axe of their invention—a steel axe on a 4-ft. pole—wrought havoc in their hands.
“Jethart or Jeddart justice,” according to which a man was hanged first and tried afterwards, seems to have been a hasty generalization from a solitary fact—the summary execution in James VI.’s reign of a gang of rogues at the instance of Sir George Home, but has nevertheless passed into a proverb.
Old Jeddart, 4 m. S. of the present town, the first site of the burgh, is now marked by a few grassy mounds, and of the great Jedburgh forest, only the venerable oaks, the “Capon Tree” and the “King of the Woods” remain. Dunion Hill (1095 ft.), about 2 m. south-west of Jedburgh, commands a fine view of the capital of the county.
JEEJEEBHOY (Jijibhai), SIR JAMSETJEE (Jamsetji), Bart. (1783–1859), Indian merchant and philanthropist, was born in Bombay in 1783, of poor but respectable parents, and was left an orphan in early life. At the age of sixteen, with a smattering of mercantile education and a bare pittance, he commenced a series of business travels destined to lead him to
fortune and fame. After a preliminary visit to Calcutta, he undertook a voyage to China, then fraught with so much difficulty and risk that it was regarded as a venture betokening considerable enterprise and courage; and he subsequently initiated a systematic
trade with that country, being himself the carrier of his
merchant wares on his passages to and fro between Bombay and
Canton and Shanghai. His second return voyage from China
was made in one of the East India Company’s fleet, which, under
the command of Sir Nathaniel Dance, defeated the French
squadron under Admiral Linois (Feb. 15, 1804). On his
fourth return voyage from China, the Indiaman in which he
sailed was forced to surrender to the French, by whom he was
carried as a prisoner to the Cape of Good Hope, then a neutral
Dutch possession; and it was only after much delay, and with
great difficulty, that he made his way to Calcutta in a Danish
ship. Nothing daunted, he undertook yet another voyage to
China, which was more successful than any of the previous ones.
By this time he had fairly established his reputation as a merchant
possessed of the highest spirit of enterprise and considerable
wealth, and thenceforward he settled down in Bombay,
where he directed his commercial operations on a widely extended
scale. By 1836 his firm was large enough to engross the energies
of his three sons and other relatives; and he had amassed what
at that period of Indian mercantile history was regarded as
fabulous wealth. An essentially self-made man, having experienced
in early life the miseries of poverty and want, in his days
of affluence Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy developed an active instinct
of sympathy with his poorer countrymen, and commenced that
career of private and public philanthropy which is his chief title
to the admiration of mankind. His liberality was unbounded,
and the absorbing occupation of his later life was the alleviation
of human distress. To his own community he gave lavishly,
but his benevolence was mainly cosmopolitan. Hospitals,
schools, homes of charity, pension funds, were founded or endowed
by him, while numerous public works in the shape of wells,
reservoirs, bridges, causeways, and the like, not only in Bombay,
but in other parts of India, were the creation of his bounty. The
total of his known benefactions amounted at the time of his
death, which took place in 1859, to over £230,000. It was not,
however, the amount of his charities so much as the period and
circumstances in which they were performed that made his
benevolent career worthy of the fame he won. In the first half
of the 19th century the various communities of India were much
more isolated in their habits and their sympathies than they are
now. Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy’s unsectarian philanthropy awakened
a common understanding and created a bond between them
which has proved not only of domestic value but has had a
national and political significance. His services were recognized
first in 1842 by the bestowal of a knighthood upon him, and in
1858 by that of a baronetcy. These were the very first distinctions
of their kind conferred by Queen Victoria upon a British
subject in India.
His title devolved in 1859 on his eldest son Cursetjee, who, by a special Act of the Viceroy’s Council in pursuance of a provision in the letters-patent, took the name of Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy as second baronet. At his death in 1877 his eldest son, Menekjee, became Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, the third baronet. Both had the advantage of a good English education, and continued the career of benevolent activity and devoted loyalty to British rule which had signalized the life-work of the founder of the family. They both visited England to do homage to their sovereign; and their public services were recognized by their nomination to the order of the Star of India, as well as by appointment to the Legislative Councils of Calcutta and Bombay.
On the death of the third baronet, the title devolved upon his brother, Cowsajee (1853–1908), who became Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, fourth baronet, and the recognized leader of the Parsee community all over the world. He was succeeded by his son Rustomjee (b. 1878), who became Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, fifth baronet.
Since their emigration from Persia, the Parsee community had never had a titular chief or head, its communal funds and affairs being managed by a public body, more or less democratic in its constitution, termed the Parsee panchayat. The first Sir Jamsetjee, by the hold that he established on the community, by his charities and public spirit, gradually came to be regarded in the light of its chief; and the recognition which he was the first in India to receive at the hands of the British sovereign finally fixed him and his successors in the baronetcy in the position and title of the official Parsee leader. (M. M. Bh.)
JEFFERIES, RICHARD (1848–1887), English naturalist and author, was born on the 6th of November 1848, at the farmhouse of Coate about 212 m. from Swindon, on the road to Marlborough. He was sent to school, first at Sydenham and then at Swindon, till the age of fifteen or so, but his actual education was at the hands of his father, who gave him his love for Nature and taught him how to observe. For the faculty of observation, as Jefferies, Gilbert White, and H. D. Thoreau have remarked, several gifts are necessary, including the possession of long sight and quick sight, two things which do not always go together. To them must be joined trained sight and the knowledge of what to expect. The boy’s father first showed him what there was to look for in the hedge, in the field, in the trees, and in the sky. This kind of training would in many cases be wasted: to one who can understand it, the book of Nature will by-and-by offer pages which are blurred and illegible to the city-bred lad, and even to the country lad the power of reading them must be maintained by constant practice. To live amid streets or in the working world destroys
