return Daniel O’Connell to parliament for Co. Clare at the famous election of 1828. It is interesting to note that Steele himself was a Protestant. Having ruined his fortune by contributing liberally to the causes in which he was interested, he died in London on the 15th of June 1848. He wrote Notes of the War in Spain (1824) and some essays on Irish questions.
STEELE, WILLIAM (d. 1680), lord chancellor of Ireland, was a son of Richard Steele of Sandbach, Cheshire, and was educated at Caius College, Cambridge. In 1648 he was chosen recorder of London, and he was one of the four counsel appointed to conduct the case against Charles I. in January 1649, but illness prevented him from discharging this duty. However, a few days later he took part in the prosecution of the duke of Hamilton and other Royalists. Steele was M.P. for the City of London in 1654, was chief baron of the exchequer in 1655, and was made lord chancellor of Ireland in 1656. After the fall of Richard Cromwell he was one of the five commissioners appointed in 1659 to govern Ireland. At the end of this year he returned to England, but he refused to sit on the committee of safety to which he had been named. At the Restoration he obtained the full benefits of the Act of Indemnity, but he thought it advisable to reside for a time in Holland; However, he had returned to England before his death towards the end of 1680.
See O. J. Burke, History of the Lord Chancellors of Ireland (Dublin, 1879).
STEELE, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine Province on the navigable Ruhr, 4 m. by rail E. of Essen, at the junction of the lines Duisburg-Dortmund and Vohwinkel-Hagen;, Pop. (1905), 12,988. It contains a Gothic parish church (Roman Catholic), a high school and a Roman Catholic hospital. It has coal-mines, iron and steel works, and makes fireproof bricks. A Diet of the empire was held here in the year 938 by the emperor Otto I.
STEELTON, a borough of Dauphin county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the Susquehanna river, 3 m. S.E. of Harrisburg. Pop. (1890), 9250; (1900), 12,086, of whom 2300 were foreign born and 1508 were negroes; (1910 census), 14,246. Steelton is served by the Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia & Reading railways, and is connected with Harrisburg by electric line. The city has a public library. Steelton is in an agricultural district, but its industrial importance is due primarily to the vast steel works of the Pennsylvania Steel Company. Other manufactures are flour and grist mill products, bricks, planing mill products, &c. In 1905 the total value of the borough’s factory products was $15,745,628; the capital invested in manufacturing increased from $6,266,068 in 1900 to $18,642,853 in 1905, or 197·5%. There is a large limestone quarry within the borough limits. The municipality owns its Waterworks and filtration plant. The place was laid out in 1866 under the name of Baldwin, but when it was incorporated as a borough, in 1880, the present name was adopted.
STEELYARD, MERCHANTS OF THE, Hanse merchants who settled in London in 1250 at the steelyard on the river-side, near Cosin Lane, now Ironbridge Wharf. Henry III. in 1259, at the request of his brother Richard of Cornwall, king of the Romans, conferred on them important privileges, which were confirmed by Edward I. It was chiefly through their enterprise that the early trade of London was developed, and they continued to flourish till, on the complaint of the Merchant Adventurers in the reign of Edward VI., they were deprived of their privileges. Though Hamburg and Lübeck sent ambassadors to intercede for them, they were not reinstated in their monopolies, but they succeeded in maintaining a footing in London till expelled by Elizabeth in 1597. Their beautiful guildhall in Thames Street, adorned with allegorical pictures by Holbein, and described by Stow, was made a naval storehouse; The land and buildings still remained the property of the Hanseatic League, and were subsequently let to merchants for business purposes. Destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 they were rebuilt as warehouses, and were finally sold to the South-Eastern Railway Company in 1852 by the Hanseatic towns, Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg. The site is now occupied by Cannon Street railway station.
See Lappenburg, Urkundliche Geschichte des hansischen Stahlhofes zu London (Hamburg, 1851); Stow, Survey of London (1598); Pauli, Pictures of Old London (1851); Ehrenberg, Hamburg und England im Zeitalter der Konigin Elizabeth (Jena, 1896).
STEEN, JAN HAVICKSZ (1626–1679), Dutch subject-painter, was born at Leiden in 1626, the son of a brewer of the place. He studied at Utrecht under Nicolas Knupfer, a German historical painter. Dr. Bode suggests that, before entering Knupfer’s studio, Jan Steen took drawing lessons from Jacob de Wet in Haarlem. He bases his theory on the internal evidence of such, early pictures as the “Market at Leiden” (Staedel Institute, Frankfort), the “Kermesse” (A. von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, Berlin), “Calling for the Bride” (Six Collection, Amsterdam), and “St John’s Sermon” (Dessau Castle). About the year 1644 Steen went to Haarlem, where he worked under Adrian van Ostade and under Jan van Goyen, whose daughter he married) in 1649. In the previous year he had joined the painters’ gild of the city. In 1667 he is said to have been a brewer at Delft; in 1669 a small debt of ten florins owing to an apothecary led to the seizure and sale of his pictures, and in 1672 he received municipal authority, to open a tavern. In 1673 he took a second wife, Maria van Egmont, the widow of a bookseller in Leiden. The accounts of his life, however, are very confusing and conducting. Some biographers have asserted that he was a drunkard and of dissolute life, but the number of his works—Van Westrheene, in his Jan Steen, étude sur l’art en Holland, has catalogued nearly five hundred and Hofstede de Groot about double that number-seems sufficient in itself to disprove the charge. His later pictures bear marks of haste and, are less carefully finished than those of his earlier period. He died at Leiden in 1679.
The works of Jan Steen are distinguished by correctness of drawing, admirable freedom and spirit of touch, land clearness and transparency of colouring. But their true greatness is, due to their intellectual qualities. In the wide range of his subjects, and their dramatic character, he surpasses all the Dutch figure painters, with the single exception of Rembrandt. His productions range- from the stately interiors of grave and wealthy citizens to tavern scenes of jollity and debauch. He painted chemists in their laboratories, doctors at the bedside of their patients, card-parties, marriage feasts, and the festivals of St Nicholas and Twelfth, Night; even religious subjects, though in these he was least successful. His rendering of children, is especially delightful. Dealing often with the coarser side of things, his work. is full of humour; he depicts the comedy of human life in a spirit of very genial toleration, but now and again there appear keenly telling touches of satire which recall a pictorial moralist such as Hogarth. Portraits from his brush are comparatively rare. The best known is the portrait of himself at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
The National Gallery contains three pictures by Jan Steen, of which the “Music Master” is the most important, and other excellent, examples, of his art in England are preserved in the Royal, the Bute, and the Northbrook collections, at Apsley House and Bridgewater House, and in the galleries of the Hague, Amsterdam, and the Hermitage, St Petersburg. A remarkably fine example of his work, which appeared at the Royal. Academy Winter Exhibition in 1907, is the “Grace Before Meat.”
STEENKIRK (Steenkerke), a village in the Belgian province of Hainaut, on the river Senne, famous for the battle of Steenkirk (Steinkirk, Estinkerke) fought on July 23rd/August 3rd 1692 between the Allies (see Grand Alliance, War of the) under William III. of England and the French commanded by the duke of Luxemburg. Previous to the battle the French army lay facing north-west, with its right on the Senne at Steenkirk and its left towards Enghien, while the army, of William III. was encamped about Hal. In accordance with the strategical methods of the time, the French, not, wishing to fight after having achieved the immediate object, the capture of Namur, took up a strong position, supposing the enemy would not dare to attack it, while the Allies, who would otherwise
