time a strong Liberal; he hoped to see Germany united into a single state with a parliamentary government, and that all the smaller states would be swept away. In 1863 he was appointed professor at Freiburg; in 1866, at the outbreak of war, his sympathies with Prussia were so strong that he went to Berlin, became a Prussian subject, and was appointed editor of the Preussische Jahrbücher. A violent article, in which he demanded the annexation of Hanover and Saxony, and attacked with great bitterness the Saxon royal house, led to an estrangement from his father, who enjoyed the warm friendship of the king. It was only equalled in its ill humour by his attacks on Bavaria in 1870. After holding appointments at Kiel and Heidelberg, he was in 1874 made professor at Berlin; he had already in 1871 become a member of the Reichstag, and from that time till his death in 1896 he was one of the most prominent figures in the city. On Sybel’s death he succeeded him as editor of the Historische Zeitschrift. He had outgrown his early Liberalism and become the chief panegyrist of the house of Hohenzollern. He did more than any one to mould the minds of the rising generation, and he carried them with him even in his violent attacks on all opinions and all parties which appeared in any way to be injurious to the rising power of Germany. He supported the government in its attempts to subdue by legislation the Socialists, Poles and Catholics; and he was one of the few men of eminence who gave the sanction of his name to the attacks on the Jews which began in 1878. As a strong advocate of colonial expansion he was also a bitter enemy of Great Britain, and he was to a large extent responsible for the anti-British feeling of German Chauvinism during the last years of the 19th century. In the Reichstag he had originally been a member of the National Liberal party, but in 1879 he was the first to accept the new commercial policy of Bismarck, and in his later years he joined the Moderate Conservatives, but his deafness prevented him from taking a prominent part in debate. He died at Berlin on the 28th of April 1896.
As an historian Treitschke holds a very high place. He approached history as a politician and confined himself to those periods and characters in which great political problems were being worked out: above all, he was a patriotic historian, and he never wandered far from Prussia. His great achievement was the History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century. The first volume was published in 1879, and during the next sixteen years four more volumes appeared, but at his death he had only advanced to the year 1847. The work shows extreme diligence, and scrupulous care in the use of authorities. It is discursive and badly arranged, but it is marked by a power of style, a vigour of narrative, and a skill in delineation of character which give life to the most unattractive period of German history; notwithstanding the extreme spirit of partisanship and some faults of taste, it will remain a remarkable monument of literary ability. Besides this he wrote a number of biographical and historical essays, as well as numerous articles and papers on contemporary politics, of which some are valuable contributions to political thought.
The most important of the essays have been collected under the title Historische und politische Aufsätze (4 vols., Leipzig, 1896); a selection from his more controversial writings was made under the title Zehn Jahre deutscher Kämpfe; in 1896 a new volume appeared, called Deutsche Kämpfe, neue Folge. After his death his lectures on political subjects were published under the title Politik. He brought out also in 1856 a short volume of poems called Vaterländische Gedichte, and another volume in the following year. The only works translated into English are two pamphlets on the war of 1870, What we demand from France (London, 1870), and The Fire-test of the North German Confederation (1870).
See Schiemann, Heinrich v. Treitschkes Lehr- und Wanderjahre, 1836–1866 (Munich, 1896); Gustav Freitag und Heinrich v. Treitschke im Briefwechsel (Leipzig, 1900); Deutsche Rundschau (Oct. 1896); and article by J. W. Headlam, Hist. Rev. (Dec. 1897). (J. W. He.)
TRELAWNY, EDWARD JOHN (1792–1881), English sailor
and friend of Shelley and Byron, was born in London on the
13th of November 1792, the son of an army officer. After a
short term in the navy and a naval school, he shipped for India,
but deserted at Bombay. For several years he led an
adventurous life in India, but about 1813 returned to England, married
and settled down. In was early in 1822 that he met Shelley
and Byron at Pisa and passed nearly every day with one or
both of them until the drowning of Shelley (q.v.) and Williams
on the 8th of July. He it was who superintended the recovery
and cremation of the bodies, snatching Shelley’s heart from the
flames, and who added the lines from the Tempest to Leigh
Hunt’s “Cor Cordium”; and, finally, who supplied the funds
for Mrs Shelley’s return to England. In 1823 he set out with
Byron for Greece, to aid in the struggle for independence.
Distressed by his companion’s dilatoriness, Trelawny left him
and joined the insurgent chief Odysseus and afterwards married
his sister Tersitza. While in charge of the former’s fortress
on Parnassus he was assaulted by two Englishmen and nearly
killed. Returning to England, he lived for a time in Cornwall
with his mother and afterwards in London, where his romantic
associations, picturesque person and agreeable manners made
him a great social favourite. Permission having been refused
him to write the life of Shelley, he began an account of his own
life in the Adventures of a Younger Son (1835), followed much
later by a second part: Recollections of Shelley and Byron
(1858). This gives an admirable portrait of Shelley, and a less
truthful one of Byron. He married a third time, but the irregularity
of his life estranged him from his wife, and he died at
Sompting, near Worthing, on the 13th of August 1881. His
ashes were buried in Rome by the side of those of Shelley. The
old seaman in Millais’s picture, “The North-West Passage,” in the Tate Gallery, London, gives a portrait of him.
See the Letters of Edward J. Trelawny, edited with Introduction by H. Buxton Forman, C.B. (1910).
TRELAWNY, SIR JONATHAN, Bart. (1650–1721), English prelate, was a younger son of Sir Jonathan Trelawny, hart.
(1624–1685), a member of a very old Cornish family, and was
born at Pelynt in Cornwall on the 24th of March 1650. Educated
at Westminster School and at Christ Church, Oxford, Trelawny
took holy orders in 1673, and in 1685, his elder brother having
died in 1680, became third baronet in succession to his father.
Having rendered good service to James II. during Monmouth’s
rebellion, Trelawny was consecrated bishop of Bristol on the 8th
of November 1685. He was loyal to King James until the first
declaration of indulgence in April 1687, when, as a bishop, he
used his influence with his clergy against the king, and, as a
Cornish landowner, resisted the attempt to assemble a packed
parliament. In May 1688 Trelawny signed the petition against
the second declaration of indulgence, and in the following month
was imprisoned in the Tower of London with Archbishop Sancroft
and five other bishops, sharing their triumphant acquittal.
In spite of Burnet’s assertion, it is probable that Trelawny did
not sign the invitation to William of Orange, although he certainly
welcomed his army into Bristol. Before this James II.,
anxious to regain the bishop’s support, had nominated him to
the see of Exeter; but Trelawny lost nothing, as this appointment
was almost at once confirmed by William III. Unlike five of
his colleagues among the “seven bishops,” Trelawny took the
oaths of allegiance to William and Mary; but he was soon
estranged from the new king and sided with the princess Anne,
who showed him some favour after she became queen. In 1707
Trelawny was appointed bishop of Winchester and became
prelate of the Order of the Garter, but henceforward he took very
little part in politics. He died at his residence at Chelsea on
the 19th of July 1721, and was buried at Pelynt. His wife was
Rebecca (d. 1710), daughter of Thomas Hele of Bascombe,
Devon, by Whom he had a family of six sons and six daughters.
His eldest son, John, the 4th baronet, died without sons in 1756,
and the present baronet is descended from the bishop’s brother,
Henry (d. 1702). Another of his sons was Edward Trelawny
(1699–1754), governor of Jamaica from 1738 to 1752. When
bishop of Exeter, Trelawny, as visitor of Exeter College, Oxford,
deprived the rector of his office, a sentence which was upheld on
appeal by the House of Lords; and when bishop of Winchester
he completed the rebuilding of Wolvesey Palace. Trelawny is
the hero, or one of the heroes, of the refrain:—
“And shall Trelawny die,
Here’s twenty thousand Cornishmen
Will know the reason why.”
