WARKWORTH, a small town in the Wansbeck parliamentary division of Northumberland, England, 32 m. N. of Newcastle-upon-Tyne by the North-Eastern railway. Pop. (1901) 712. It is beautifully situated in a hollow of the river Coquet, 1½ m. above its mouth, where on the S. bank is Amble, an urban district (pop. 4428), with a harbour. An ancient bridge of two arches crosses the river, with a fortified gateway on the road mounting to the castle, the site of which is surrounded on three sides by the river. Of this Norman stronghold there are fine remains, including walls, a gateway and hall, while the remainder, including the Lion tower and the keep, is of the 13th and 14th centuries. Roger Fitz-Richard held the manor and probably built the earliest parts of the castle in the reign of Henry II. The lordship came to the Percies in Edward III.'s reign and is still held by their descendants the dukes of Northumberland, though it passed from them temporarily after the capture of the castle by Henry IV. in 1405, and again on the fall of the house of Lancaster. The foundation of Warkworth church is attributed to Ceolwulf, king of Northumbria (c. 736), who subsequently became a monk. It was the scene of a massacre by a Scottish force sent by William the Lion in 1174. The church is principally of Norman and Perpendicular work, but remains of the Saxon building have been discovered. In the vicinity are remains of a Benedictine priory of the 13th century. By the side of the Coquet above the castle is the Hermitage of Warkworth. This remarkable relic consists of an outer portion built of stone, and an inner portion hewn from the steep rock above the river. This inner part comprises a chapel and a smaller chamber, both having altars. There is an altar-tomb with a female effigy in the chapel. From the window between the inner chamber and the chapel, and from other details, the date of the work may be placed in the latter part of the 14th century, the characteristics being late Decorated. The traditional story of the origin of the hermitage, attributing it to one of the Bertrams of Bothal Castle in this county, is told in Bishop Percy's ballad The Hermit of Warkworth (1771). At Amble are ruins of a monastic toll-house, where a tax was levied on shipping; and Coquet Island, 1 m. off the mouth of the river, was a monastic resort from the earliest times, like the Farne and Holy Islands farther north. The harbour at Amble has an export trade in coal and bricks, coal and fireclay being extensively worked in the neighbourhood, and an import trade in timber.
WARLOCK, a wizard, sorcerer or magician (see Magic). The word in O. Eng. is wǽrloga, literally “a liar against the truth,” from wǽr, truth, cognate with Lat. verum (cf. Ger. wahr), and loga, liar, from léogan, to lie (cf. Ger. lügen). It was thus used with the meaning of a traitor, a deceiver, a breaker of a truce. In M. Eng. it is found as a name for the devil (warloghe), the arch liar and deceiver. The use of the word for a sorcerer or wizard, one whose magic powers are gained by his league with the devil, seems to be a northern English or Scottish use.
WARMINSTER, a market town in the Westbury parliamentary division of Wiltshire, England, 100¼ m. W. by S. of London by the Great Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 5547. Its white stone houses form a long curve between the uplands of Salisbury Plain, which sweep away towards the north and east, and the tract of park and meadow land lying south and west. The cruciform church of St Denys has a 14th-century south porch and tower. St Lawrence's chapel, a chantry built under Edward I., was bought by the townsfolk at the Reformation. Warminster has also a free school established in 1707, a missionary college, a training home for lady missionaries and a reformatory for boys. Besides a silk mill, malthouses and engineering and agricultural implement works, there is a brisk trade in farm produce.
Warminster appears in Domesday, and was a royal manor whose tenant was bound to provide, when required, a night's lodging for the king and his retinue. This privilege was enforced by George III. when he visited Longleat. The meeting of roads from Bath, Frome, Shaftesbury and Salisbury made Warminster a busy coaching centre. Eastward, within 2 m., there are two great British camps: Battlesbury, almost impregnable save on the north, where its entrenchments are double; and Scratchbury, a line of outworks encircling an area of some 40 acres, with three entrances and a citadel in the midst. Barrows are numerous. Longleat, a seat of the marquesses of Bath, lies 5 m. S.E., surrounded by its deer park, crossed from N. to S. by a long and narrow mere. The house is one of the largest and most beautiful examples in the county, dating from the close of the 16th century. Its name is derived from the “leat” or conduit which conveyed water from Horningsham, about 1 m. south, to supply the mill and Austin priory founded here late in the 13th century. The monastic estates passed at the Dissolution to the Thynne family, who built Longleat. Sir Christopher Wren added certain staircases and a doorway. In 1670 the owner was the celebrated Thomas Thynne satirized in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, and Bishop Ken found a home at Longleat for twenty years after the loss of his bishopric.
WARNER, CHARLES DUDLEY (1829-1900), American essayist and novelist, was born of Puritan ancestry, in Plainfield, Massachusetts, on the 12th of September 1829. From his sixth to his fourteenth year he lived in Charlemont, Mass., the scene of the experiences pictured in his delightful study of childhood, Being a Boy (1877). He removed thence to Cazenovia, New York, and in 1851 graduated from Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y. He worked with a surveying party in Missouri; studied law at the university of Pennsylvania; practised in Chicago (1856-1860); was assistant editor (1860) and editor (1861-1867) of The Hartford Press, and after The Press was merged into The Hartford Courant, was co-editor with Joseph R. Hawley; in 1884 he joined the editorial staff of Harper's Magazine, for which he conducted “The Editor's Drawer” until 1892, when he took charge of “The Editor's Study.” He died in Hartford on the 20th of October 1900. He travelled widely, lectured frequently, and was actively interested in prison reform, city park supervision and other movements for the public good. He was the first president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and, at the time of his death, was president of the American Social Science Association. He first attracted attention by the reflective sketches entitled My Summer in a Garden (1870; first published in The Hartford Courant), popular for their abounding and refined humour and mellow personal charm, their wholesome love of out-door things, their suggestive comment on life and affairs, and their delicately finished style, qualities that suggest the work of Washington Irving. Among his other works are Saunterings (descriptions of travel in eastern Europe, 1872) and Back-Log Studies (1872); Baddeck, and That Sort of Thing (1874), travels in Nova Scotia and elsewhere; My Winter on the Nile (1876); In the Levant (1876); In the Wilderness (1878); A Roundabout Journey, in Europe (1883); On Horseback, in the Southern States (1888); Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada (1889); Our Italy, southern California (1891); The Relation of Literature to Life (1896); The People for Whom Shakespeare Wrote (1897); and Fashions in Literature (1902). He also edited “The American Men of Letters” series, to which he contributed an excellent biography of Washington Irving (1881), and edited a large “Library of the World's Best Literature.” His other works include his graceful essays, As We Were Saying (1891) and As We Go (1893); and his novels, The Gilded Age (in collaboration with Mark Twain, 1873); Their Pilgrimage (1886); A Little Journey in the World (1889); The Golden House (1894); and That Fortune (1889).
See the biographical sketch by T. R. Lounsbury in the Complete Writings (15 vols., Hartford, 1904) of Warner.
WARNER, OLIN LEVI (1844-1896), American sculptor, was born at West Suffield, Connecticut, on the 9th of April 1844. In turn an artisan and a telegraph operator, by 1869 he had earned enough money to support him through a course of study in Paris under Jouffroy and Carpeaux. He was in France when the Republic was proclaimed in 1870 and enlisted in the Foreign Legion, resuming his studies at the termination of the siege. In 1872 he removed to New York, where, however, he met with little success; he then went to his father's farm in Vermont, and worked for manufacturers of silver and plated ware as well
