and priest. In the two winters of 1814–1816 he ministered to the English congregation at Geneva, and from 1816 to 1821 was curate of Highclere, Hampshire. In 1820 George IV. wished to appoint him canon of Windsor, but the prime minister, Lord Liverpool, objected; Sumner received instead a royal chaplaincy and librarianship, and other preferments quickly followed, till in 1826 he was consecrated bishop of Llandaff and in 1827 bishop of Winchester. In his long administration of his latter diocese he was most energetic, tactful and munificent. Though evangelical in his views he by no means confined his patronage to that school. In 1869 he resigned his see, but continued to live at the official residence at Farnham until his death on the 15th of August 1874. He published a number of charges and sermons, and The Ministerial Character of Christ Practically Considered (London, 1824). He also edited and translated John Milton’s De doctrina christiana, which was found in the State Paper office in 1823, and formed the text of Macaulay’s famous essay on Milton.
See the Life, by his son, G. H. Sumner (1876).
SUMNER, EDWIN VOSE (1797–1863), American soldier, was born at Boston, Massachusetts, and entered the United States army in 1819. He served in the Black Hawk War and in various Indian campaigns. In 1838 he commanded the cavalry instructional establishment at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He took part in the Mexican War as a major, and for his bravery at Molino del Rey he received the brevet rank of colonel. In 1857 he commanded an expedition against the Cheyenne Indians. At the outbreak of the Civil War, four years later, Sumner had just been promoted brigadier-general U.S.A. and sent to replace Sidney Johnston in command on the Pacific coast. He thus took no part in the first campaign of the Civil War. But in the autumn he was brought back to the East to command a division, and soon afterwards, as a major-general U.S.V., a corps in the army that was being organized by McClellan. This corps, numbered II., retained its independent existence throughout the war, and under the command of Sumner, Couch, Hancock and Humphreys it had the deserved reputation of being the best in the Union army. Sumner, who was by far the oldest of the generals in the army of the Potomac, led his corps throughout the peninsular campaign, was wounded during the Seven Days’ Battle, and received the brevet of major-general U.S.A., and was again wounded in the battle of Antietam. When Burnside succeeded to the command of the army of the Potomac he grouped the corps in “grand divisions,” and appointed Sumner to command the right grand division. In this capacity the old cavalry soldier took part in the disastrous battle of Fredericksburg, in which the II. corps suffered most severely. Soon afterwards, on Hooker’s appointment to command the army, Sumner was relieved at his own request. He died suddenly, on the 21st of March 1863, while on his way to assume supreme command in Missouri.
SUMNER, JOHN BIRD (1780–1862), English Archbishop, elder brother of Bishop Charles Sumner, was born at Kenilworth, Warwickshire, and educated at Eton and Cambridge. In 1802 he became a master at Eton, and in the following year he took orders. He was elected a fellow of Eton in 1817, and in 1818 the college presented him to the living of Maple Durham, Oxfordshire. After holding a prebendaryship of Durham for some years, he was consecrated bishop of Chester in 1828. During his episcopate many churches and schools were built in the diocese. His numerous writings were much esteemed, especially by the evangelical party, to which he belonged; the best known are his Treatise on the Records of Creation and the Moral Attributes of the Creator (London, 1816) and The Evidence of Christianity derived from its Nature and Reception (London, 1821). In 1848 he was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury, in which capacity he dealt impartially with the different church parties. In the well-known “Gorham case”[1] he came into conflict with Bishop Henry Phillpotts of Exeter (1778–1869), who accused him of supporting heresy and refused to communicate with him. He supported the Divorce Bill in parliament, but opposed the Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill and the bill for removing Jewish disabilities.
SUMNER, WILLIAM GRAHAM (1840–1910), American economist, was born, of English parentage, in Paterson, New Jersey, on the 30th of October 1840. He was brought up in Hartford, Connecticut, graduated at Yale College in 1863, studied French and Hebrew in Geneva in 1863–1864 and divinity and history at Göttingen in 1864–1866, and in 1866–1869 was a tutor at Yale. He was ordained a priest of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1869, was assistant rector of Calvary Church, New York City, and in 1870–1872 was rector of the Church of the Redeemer, Morristown, New Jersey. From 1872 to 1909, when he became professor emeritus, he was professor of political and social science at Yale. In 1909 he was president of the American Sociological Society. He died at Englewood, New Jersey, on the 12th of April 1910.
He was notable especially as an opponent of protectionism, and was a great teacher. He wrote: History of American Currency (1874); Lectures on the History of Protection in the United States (1875) Life of Andrew Jackson (1882), in the “American Statesmen Series”; What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883); Collected Essays in Political and Social Sciences (1885); Protectionism (1885); Alexander Hamilton (1891), and Robert Morris (1891), in the “Makers of America Series”; The Financier and Finances of the American Revolution (2 vols., 1891); A History of Banking in the United States (1896); and Folkways: a Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores and Morals (1907), a valuable sociological summary.
SUMPTER, a pack-horse or mule, a beast for carrying burdens, particularly for military purposes. There were two words once in use, which in sense, if not in form, have coalesced. These are “sommer” or “summer” and “sumpter.” The first comes through the Old French sommier, a pack-horse, the other through sommetier, a pack-horse driver. Both come ultimately from Late Lat. salma, from sagma, a pack, burden, Old French somme, saume; Greek σάγμα, burden, σάττειν, to load. “Sumpter” in the sense of a driver of a pack-horse is rare, and the word is always joined with another explanatory word.
SUMPTUARY LAWS (from Lat. sumptuarius, belonging to cost or expense, sumptus), those laws intended to limit or regulate the private expenditure of the citizens of a community. They may be dictated by political, or economic, or moral considerations. They have existed both in ancient and in modern states. In Greece, it was amongst the Dorian races, whose temper was austere and rigid, that they most prevailed. All the inhabitants of Laconia were forbidden to attend drinking entertainments, nor could a Lacedaemonian possess a house or furniture which was the work of more elaborate implements than the axe and saw. Among the Spartans proper simple and frugal habits of life were secured rather by the institution of the pheiditia (public meals) than by special enactments. The possession of gold or silver was interdicted to the citizens of Sparta, and the use of iron money alone was permitted by the Lycurgean legislation. “Even in the cities which had early departed from the Doric customs” says K. O. Müller, “there were frequent and strict prohibitions against expensiveness of female attire, prostitutes alone being wisely excepted.” In the Locrian code of Zaleucus citizens were forbidden to drink undiluted wine. The Solonian sumptuary enactments were directed principally against the extravagance of female apparel and dowries of excessive amount; costly banquets also were forbidden, and expensive funeral solemnities. The Pythagoreans in Magna Graecia not only protested against the luxury of their time but encouraged legislation with a view to restraining it.
At Rome the system of sumptuary edicts and enactments was largely developed, whilst the objects of such legislation were concurrently sought to be attained through the exercise of the censorial power. The code of the Twelve Tables contained provisions limiting the expenditure on funerals. The most important sumptuary laws of the Roman commonwealth are the following:—
- ↑ George Cornelius Gorham (1787–1857) was refused institution by Bishop Phillpotts because of his Calvinistic views on baptismal regeneration. The court of arches upheld the bishop, but its decision was reversed by the privy council.
