Ludovicus Odaxius, from Urbino, in August 1499. After being chamberlain to Alexander VI. he came to England in 1501 as deputy collector of Peter's pence for the cardinal. As Hadrian's proxy, he was enthroned bishop of Bath and Wells in October 1504. It was at Henry VII.’s instance that he commenced his Historia Anglica—a work which, though seemingly begun as early as 1505, was not completed till August 1533, the date of its dedication to Henry VIII., nor published till 1534. In May 1514 he and his patron the cardinal are found supporting Wolsey’s claims to the cardinalship, but he had lost the great minister’s favour before the year was out. A rash letter, reflecting severely on Henry VIII. and Wolsey, was intercepted early in 1515, after which Polydore was cast into prison and supplanted in his collectorship (March and April). He was not without some powerful supporters, as both Catherine de’ Medici and Leo X. wrote to the king on his behalf. From his prison he sent an abject and almost blasphemous letter to the offended minister, begging that the fast approaching Christmas—a time which witnessed the restitution of a world—might see his pardon also. He was set at liberty before Christmas 1515, though he never regained his collectorship. In 1525 he published the first edition of Gildas, dedicating the work to Tunstall, bishop of London. Next year appeared his Liber de Prodigiis, dedicated from London (July) to Francesco Maria, duke of Urbino. Somewhere about 1538 he left England, and remained in Italy for some time. Ill-health, he tells us, forbade him on his return to continue his custom of making daily notes on contemporary events. About the end of 1551 he went home to Urbino, where he appears to have died in 1555. He had been naturalized an Englishman in October 1510, and had held several clerical appointments in England. In 1508 he was appointed archdeacon of Wells, and in 1513 prebendary of Oxgate in St Paul’s cathedral, both of which offices he held after his return to Urbino.
The first edition of the Historia Anglica (twenty-six books) was printed at Basel in 1534; the twenty-seventh book, dealing with the reign of Henry VIII. down to the birth of Edward VI. (October 1536), was added to the third edition of 1555. Polydore claims to have been very careful in collecting materials for this work, and takes credit for using foreign historians as well as English, for which reason, he remarks, the English, Scotch and French will find several things reported in his pages far differently from the way in which they are told in current national story. In his search after information he applied to James IV. of Scotland for a list of the Scottish kings and their annals; but not even his friendship for Gavin Douglas could induce him to give credit to the historical notions of this accomplished bishop, who traced the pedigree of the Scots down from the banished son of an Athenian king and Scotta the daughter of the Egyptian tyrant of the Israelites. A similar scepticism made him doubt the veracity of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and thus called forth Leland’s Defensio Gallofridi and Assertio Incomparabilis Arturii. This doubting instinct led to his being accused of many offences against learning, such as that of burning cartloads of MSS. lest his errors should be discovered, of purloining books from libraries and shipping them off by the vesselful to Rome. As a matter of fact, it is of course mainly from the time of Henry VI., where our contemporary records begin to fail so sadly, that Polydore’s work is useful. He must have been personally acquainted with many men whose memories could carry them back to the beginning of the Wars of the Roses. Dr Brewer speaks somewhat harshly of him as an authority for the reign of Henry VIII., and indeed his spite against Wolsey is evident; but it is impossible to read his social and geographical accounts of England and Scotland without gratitude for a writer who has preserved so many interesting details. Polydore’s Adagia (Venice, April 1498) was the first collection of Latin proverbs ever printed; it preceded Erasmus’s by two years, and the slight misunderstanding that arose for the moment out of rival claims gave place to a sincere friendship. A second series of Biblical proverbs (553 in number) was dedicated to Wolsey’s follower, Richard Pace, and is preceded by an interesting letter (June 1519), which gives the names of many of Polydore’s English friends, from More and Archbishop Warham to Linacre and Tunstall. The De Inventoribus, treating of the origin of all things whether ecclesiastical or lay (Paris, 1499), originally consisted of only seven books, but was increased to eight in 1521. It was exceedingly popular, and was early translated into French (1521), German (1537), English (1546) and Spanish (1551). All editions, however, except those following the text sanctioned by Gregory XIII. in 1576, are on the Index Expurgatorius. The De Prodigiis also achieved a great popularity, and was soon translated into Italian (1543), English (1546) and Spanish (1550). This treatise takes the form of a Latin dialogue between Polydore and his Cambridge friend Robert Ridley. It takes place in the open air, at Polydore’s country house near London. Polydore’s duty is to state the problems and supply the historical illustrations; his friend’s to explain, rationalize and depreciate as best he can. Here, as in the Historia Anglica, it is plain that the writer plumes himself specially on the excellence of his Latin, which in Sir Henry Ellis’s opinion is purer than that of any of his contemporaries.
VIRGINAL, or Pair of Virginals, a name applied in England, and also recognized on the continent of Europe, to the spinet, and more especially to the small pentagonal and to the rectangular models. The word virginal, bestowed because it was pre-eminently the instrument for girls, denotes before all a keyboard instrument, having for each note one string only, plucked by means of a quill attached to a jack.[1] The fine instrument in the Victoria and Albert Museum, known as Queen Elizabeth’s virginal, is an Italian pentagonal spinet, elaborately emblazoned with the coat of arms of the queen, and having a compass of just over four octaves. King Henry VIII. and his daughters, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, were all accomplished performers on the virginal. (K. S.)
VIRGINIA, or Verginia, in Roman legendary history, daughter of L. Virginius, a plebeian centurion. Her beauty attracted the notice of the decemvir Appius Claudius, who instructed Marcus Claudius, one of his clients, to claim her as his slave. Marcus accordingly brought her before Appius, and asserted that she was the daughter of one of his female slaves, who had been stolen and passed off by the wife of Virginius as her own child. Virginius presented himself with his daughter before the tribunal of Appius, who, refusing to listen to any argument, declared Virginia to be a slave and the property of Marcus. Virginius thereupon stabbed her to the heart in the presence of Appius and the people. A storm of popular indignation arose and the decemvirs were forced to resign. The people for the second time “seceded” to the Sacred Mount, and refused to return to Rome until the old form of government was re-established.
See Livy iii. 44–58; Dion. Halic. xi. 28–45, whose account differs in some respects from Livy’s; Cicero, De finibus, ii. 20; Val. Max. vi. 1, 2; for a critical examination of the story and its connexion with the downfall of the decemvirs, see Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, ii.; Schwegler, Römische Geschichte, bk. xxx. 4, 5; also E. Pais, Ancient Legends of Roman History (Eng. trans. 1906), p. 185, according to whom the legends of Virginia and Lucretia (two different versions of one and the same story, connecting the history of Roman liberty with the martyrdom of a woman) are nothing but late elaborations of legends connected with the cults of Ardea.
VIRGINIA, one of the more N. of the S.E. Atlantic states of the United States of America, lying between latitudes 36° 30′ and 39° 30′ N., and longitude 75° 15′ and 83° 40′ W. It is bounded on the N.W. by Kentucky and West Virginia, the irregular boundary line following mountain ridges for a part of its course; on the N.E. by Maryland, from which it is separated by the Potomac river; on the S. by North Carolina and Tennessee, the boundary line being nominally a parallel of latitude, but actually a more irregular line. Virginia has an area of 42,627 sq. m., of which 2365 sq. m. are water surface, including land-locked bays and harbours, rivers and Lake Drummond. The state has a length of about 440 m. E. and W., measured along its S. boundary; and an extreme breadth N. and S. of about 200 m.
Physical Features.—Virginia is crossed from N to S. or N.E. to S.W. by four distinct physiographic provinces. The easternmost is the Coastal Plain Province, and forms a part of the great Coastal Plain bordering the S.E. United States from New York Harbour to the Rio Grande. This province occupies about 11,000 sq. m. of the state, and is known as “Tidewater Virginia.” After the plain had been raised above sea-level to a higher elevation than it now occupies, it was much dissected by streams and then depressed, allowing the sea to invade the stream valleys. Such is the origin of the branching bays or “drowned river valleys,” among which may be noted the lower Potomac, Rappahannock, York and James rivers. Chesapeake Bay itself is the drowned lower course of the Susquehanna river, to which the other streams mentioned were
- ↑ The mechanism is described under Pianoforte and Spinet.
