in considerable quantities to the European trading stations on the Gambia and Senegal in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries appears to have come largely from Bambuk.
WANGARATTA, a town of Victoria, Australia, in the counties of Moira, Delatite and Bogong, at the junction of the Ovens and King rivers, 145½ m. by rail N.E. of Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 2621. It is a prosperous little town in an agricultural district and is the see of an Anglican bishop. It has numerous industries, including flour-milling, tanning, fellmongery, brewing, coach-building, bacon-curing, and bicycle and butter making. Important stock sales are held fortnightly, and there is an annual agricultural exhibition.
WANSTEAD, an urban district in the Romford parliamentary division of Essex, England, forming a residential suburb of London, on a branch of the Great Eastern railway, 8 m. N.E. of Liverpool Street station. Pop. (1901) 9179. Wanstead Park, 184 acres in extent, was opened in 1882. Northward extend the broken fragments of Epping Forest. Wanstead Flats, adjoining the Park, form another open ground. At Lake House Thomas Hood wrote the novel Tylney Hall. At Snaresbrook in the parish of Wanstead are the Infant Orphan Asylum, founded in 1827, and the Royal Merchant Seamen's Orphan Asylum, established in London in 1817 and refounded here in 1861. In Snaresbrook is Eagle Pond or Lake, 10½ acres in extent.
Wanstead is mentioned in Domesday, and the name is considered by some to be derived from Woden's stead or place, indicating a spot dedicated to the worship of Woden. It belonged before the time of Edward the Confessor to the monks of St Peter's, Westminster, acid afterwards to the bishop of London, of whom it was held at the time of the Domesday Survey by Ralph Fitz Brien. In the reign of Henry VIII. it came into the possession of the crown, and in 1549 it was bestowed by Edward VI. on Lord Rich, whose son sold it in 1577 to Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. The original manor house was rebuilt by Lord Chancellor Rich, who was here visited by Queen Elizabeth in 1561, and for her entertainment Sir Philip Sidney wrote a dramatic interlude which was played before the queen at Wanstead garden, and is printed at the end of the Arcadia. Sir Richard Child, afterwards earl of Tylney, built the splendid mansion of Wanstead House in 1715 (demolished in 1822), in which the prince of Condé and others of the Bourbon family resided during the reign of the first Napoleon.
WANTAGE, a market town in the Abingdon parliamentary division of Berkshire, England. Pop. of urban district (1901), 3766. It lies in the richly wooded Vale of White Horse, in a hollow at the foot of the steep hills which border the Vale on the south, 2 m. S. of Wantage Road station on the Great Western railway, with which a steam tramway connects it. The church of St Peter and St Paul is cruciform, and as a whole Perpendicular in appearance, but retains a nave arcade and ornate tower-arches of the Early English period. The font is a fine specimen of the same style; and there is beautiful woodwork in the chancel. An altar-tomb in alabaster of 1361, and a fine brass of 1414, commemorate members of the family of Fitzwarren. There are other brasses of the 15th and 16th centuries. The neighbouring building of the grammar school preserves a Norman door from another church, which formerly stood in the same churchyard with St Peter's. In the broad market-place is a great statue of King Alfred, executed by Count Gleichen and unveiled in 1877; for Wantage is famous as the birthplace of the king in 849. The town has a large agricultural trade and ironworks.
The title of Baron Wantage of Lockinge was taken in 1885 by Sir Robert Loyd-Lindsay (b. 1832) on his elevation to the peerage. He was the son of General James Lindsay of Balcarres, but took the additional surname of Loyd in 1858 on marrying the heiress of Lord Overstone, the banker; he fought with his regiment the Scots Fusilier Guards in the Crimea and won the V.C., retiring as lieutenant-colonel. He was M.P. for Berks from 1865 to 1885, and was financial secretary to the War Office in 1877-1880. The title became extinct at his death in 1900.
WAPENSHAW (M.E. for “weapon-show”), a periodical muster or review of troops formerly held in every district in Scotland, the object having been to satisfy the military chiefs that the arms of their retainers were in good condition. Scott's Old Mortality gives a description of one. The name is still given to rifle meetings held annually at Aberdeen and other places in Scotland.
WAPENTAKE, anciently the principal administrative division of the counties of York, Lincoln, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Rutland, corresponding to the hundred in the southern counties of England. In many cases, however, ancient wapentakes are now called hundreds. North of the Tees, Sadberg in Durham is the only district which was called a wapentake, and the rest of the ancient administrative divisions of the three northern counties were called wards. The word wapentake seems to have been first applied to the periodical meetings of the magnates of a district; and, if we may believe the 12th century compilation known as the Leges Edwardi, it took its name from the custom in accordance with which they touched the spear of their newly-appointed magistrate with their own spears and so confirmed his appointment. Probably it was also usual for them to signify their approval of a proposal by the clash of their arms, as was the practice among the Scandinavian peoples. Wapentakes are not found outside the parts of England which were settled by the Danes. They varied in size in different counties; those of Yorkshire, for instance, being very much larger than those of Lincolnshire. As a general rule each wapentake had its own court, which had the same jurisdiction as the hundred courts of the southern counties. In some cases, however, a group of wapentakes had a single court. It should be noticed that the court was styled wapentagium simply, and not curia wapentagii.
See Sir Henry Ellis, General Introduction to Domesday Book; W. W. Skeat, Etymological English Dictionary; W. Stubbs, Constitutional History; and H. M. Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (1905). (G. J. T.)
WAPPERS, EGIDE CHARLES GUSTAVE, Baron (1803-1874), Belgian painter, was born at Antwerp on the 23rd of August 1803. After studying at the Antwerp Academy he went to Paris in 1826. The Romantic movement was then astir in France, and in that vehement struggle towards a new ideal artists and political men were thrown together. Wappers was the first Belgian artist to take advantage of this state of affairs, and his first exhibited picture, “The Devotion of the Burgomaster of Leiden,” appearing at the appropriate moment, had a marvellous success in the Brussels Salon of 1830. The picture, although political, was in fact a remarkable work, which revolutionized the taste of Flemish painters. Wappers was invited to the court of Brussels, and was favoured with commissions. In 1832 the city of Antwerp appointed him professor of painting, and his triumph was complete when he exhibited at the Antwerp Salon of 1834 his masterpiece, “An Episode of the Belgian Revolution of 1830” (Brussels Gallery). He was subsequently appointed painter to the king of the Belgians, and at the death of Matthieu van Bree he was made director of the Antwerp Academy. Of his very numerous works we may name “Christ Entombed,” “Charles I. taking leave of his Children,” “Charles IX.,” “Camoens,” “Peter the Great at Saardam,” and “Boccaccio at the Court of Joanna of Naples.” Louis Philippe gave him a commission to paint a large picture for the gallery at Versailles, “The Defence of Rhodes by the Knights of St John of Jerusalem,” a work finished in 1844, when he received from the king of the Belgians the title of baron. After retiring from the post of director of the Antwerp Academy, he settled in 1853 in Paris, where he died on the 6th of December 1874.
See J. du Jardin, L'Art flamand; Camille Lemonnier, Histoire des beaux arts en Belgique; E. Fetis, “Notice sur Gustave Wappers,” Annuaire de l'academie royale de Belgique (1884).
WĀQIDĪ [Abū ‘Abdallah Mahommed ibn ‘Umar ul-Wāqidī] (747-823), Arabian historian, was born at Medina, where he became a corn-dealer but was compelled to flee from his creditors (owing largely to his generosity) to Bagdad. Here the Barmecide vizier Yaḥyā b. Khālid (see Barmecides) gave him means and
