of Harvard College, made in 1659 and revoked in 1660 by the General Court of Massachusetts). In 1717 this part of Marlboro, with other lands, was erected into the township of Westboro, to which parts of Sutton (1728), Shrewsbury (1762 and 1793) and Upton (1763) were subsequently annexed, and from which Northboro was separated in 1766.
WEST BROMWICH, a market town and municipal, county
and parliamentary borough of Staffordshire, England, 6 m. N.W.
of Birmingham, on the northern line of the Great Western
railway. Pop. (1891) 59,538, (1901) 65,175. The appearance
of the town, like its growth as an industrial centre of the Black
Country, is modern. It is, however, of ancient origin; thus the
church of All Saints, formerly St Clement, was given by Henry I.
to the convent of Worcester, from which it passed to the priors
of Sandwell, who rebuilt it in the Decorated period, the present
structure (1872) following their plan. The chief public buildings
are the town hall (1875), the Institute (1886), providing instruction
in science and art, under the corporation since 1894, the
free library (1874) and law-courts (1891). The picturesque
Oak House, of the 16th century, was opened as a museum and
art gallery in 1898. Among schools is one for pauper children
in which engineering, baking, spade-husbandry, &c., are taught.
Sandwell Hall, formerly a seat of the earls of Dartmouth, contains
a school for daughters of clergymen, &c. The house,
standing in pleasant wooded grounds, is on the site of the Benedictine
priory of Sandwell, founded in the time of Henry II.
There are charities founded by the families of Stanley and
Whorwood (1613 and 1614). Dartmouth Park is a recreation
ground of about 60 acres; others are Farley, Kenwick and Hill
Top Park. Numerous mines work the extensive coalfields,
which include a thirty-foot seam. There are large iron and brass
foundries and smelting furnaces, and malting and brickmaking
are carried on. The parliamentary borough returns one member.
The town is governed by a mayor 6 aldermen and 18 councillors.
Area, 5860 acres.
WESTBROOK, a city of Cumberland county, Maine, U.S.A.,
on the Presumpscot river, 5 m. N.W. of Portland. Pop. (1890)
6632, (1900) 7283 (1673 foreign-born), (1910) 8281. It is
served by the Maine Central and the Boston & Maine railways.
In Westbrook are the Walker Memorial Library (1894) and the
Warren Library (1879). The river provides water-power, and
among the manufactures are paper, silks, cotton goods, &c. In
1814 Westbrook was separated from Falmouth and incorporated
as a township under the name of Stroudwater, and in 1815 the
present name was adopted in honour of Colonel Thomas Westbrook,
who had distinguished himself in wars with the Indians.
In 1871 Deering, now a part of Portland, was taken from the
township. A city charter was granted to Westbrook in 1889
and adopted in 1891.
WESTBURY, RICHARD BETHELL, 1st Baron (1800–1873), lord chancellor of Great Britain, was the son of Dr Richard Bethell, and was born at Bradford, Wilts. Taking a high degree at Oxford in 1818, he was elected a fellow of Wadham College. In 1823 he was called to the bar at the Middle Temple. On attaining the dignity of queen's counsel in 1840 he rapidly took the foremost place at the Chancery bar and was appointed vice chancellor of the county palatine of Lancaster in 1851. His most important public service was the reform of the then existing mode of legal education, a reform which ensured that students before call to the bar should have at least some acquaintance with the elements of the subject which they were to profess. In 1851 he
obtained a seat in the House of Commons, where he continued to sit, first as member for Aylesbury, then as member for Wolverhampton, until he was raised to the peerage. Attaching himself to the liberals, he became solicitor-general in 1852 and attorney general in 1856 and again in 1859. On June 26, 1861, on the death of Lord Campbell, he was created lord high chancellor
of Great Britain, with the title of Baron Westbury of Westbury, county Wilts. The ambition of his life was to set on foot the compilation of a digest of the whole law, but for various reasons this became impracticable. The conclusion of his tenure of the chanccllorshiD was unfortunately marked by events which, although they did not render personal corruption imputable to him, made it evident that he had acted with some laxity and want of caution.
Owing to the reception by parliament of reports of committees nominated to consider the circumstances of certain appointments in the Leeds Bankruptcy Court, as well as the granting a pension to a Mr Leonard Edmunds, a clerk in the patent office, and a clerk of the parliaments, the lord chancellor felt it incumbent upon him to resign his office, which he accordingly did on the 5th of July 1865, and was succeeded by Lord Cranworth. After his resignation he continued to take part in the judicial sittings of the House of Lords and the privy council until his death. In 1872 he was appointed arbitrator under the European Assurance Society Act 1872, and his judgments in that capacity have been collected and published by Mr F. S. Reilly. As a writer on law he made no mark, and few of his decisions take the highest judicial rank. Perhaps the best known is the judgment delivering the opinion of the judicial committee of the privy council in 1863 against the heretical character of certain extracts from the well-known publication Essays and Reviews. His principal legislative achievements were the passing of the Divorce Act 1857, and of the Land Registry Act 1862 (generally known as Lord Westbury's Act), the latter of which in practice proved a failure. What chiefly distinguished Lord Westbury was the possession of a certain sarcastic humour; and numerous are the stories, authentic and apocryphal, of its exercise. In fact, he and Mr Justice Maule fill a position analogous to that of Sydney Smith, convenient names to whom "good things" may be attributed. Lord Westbury died on the 20th of July 1873, within a day of the death of Bishop Wilberforce, his special antagonist in debate.
See Life of Lord Westbury by T. A . Nash.
WESTBURY, an urban district in the Westbury parliamentary
division of Wiltshire, England, on the river Biss, a small tributary
of the Lower Avon. Pop. (1901) 3305. It is 955 m. W. by S.
of London by the Great Western railway, and lies within 3 m.
of the Somerset border, sheltered on the east by the high tableland
of Salisbury Plain. All Saints' church is Norman and later, with
a magnificent nave. In the south transept stands a monument
to Sir James Ley, earl of Marlborough and president of the
council in 1629; the " good earl " addressed in a sonnet by
Milton.
A chained black-letter copy of Erasmus “Paraphrase
of the New Testament” is preserved in the south chapel. In the suburb of Westbury Leigh is the " Palace Garden," a
moated site said to have been a royal residence in Saxon times.
Westbury (Westberie, Westburi) figures in Domesday as a
manor held by the king. The manor was granted by Henry II.
to Reginald de Pavely in 1172–1173, and from then onwards
passed through various families until in 1810 it was purchased
by Sir M. M. Lopez from the earl of Abingdon. A post mote was
held for Westbury in 1361–1362, but the earliest mention of the
town as a borough occurs in 1442–1443. The charter of incorporation
is lost (tradition says it was burnt), and the town possesses no
other charter. The title of the corporation was " Mayor and
Burgesses of Westbury," and it consisted of a mayor, recorder
and 13 capital burgesses. The borough returned two members
to parliament from 1448. In 1832 the number was reduced to
one, and in 1885 the representation was merged in that of the
county. In 1252 Henry III. granted to Walter de Pavely a yearly fair for three days from October 31, and a weekly market on Friday. Henry VI. in 1460 granted three fairs yeariy for three days from April 22, Whit Monday and September 13 respectively, and a market on Thursdays. In 1835 the mayor's fair was held at Whitsuntide, and the lord of the manor's at Easter. In 1875 a yearly sheep fair took place on the first Tuesday in September and a pleasure fair on Easter and Whit Monday; in 1888 on the first Tuesday in September and on the 24th of that month; the former still exists. In 1673 there was a market on Friday, in 1835 a nominal one on Tuesday and after 1875 it ceased. During the 18th and 19th centuries there was a considerable trade in malt, bricks, tiles and cloth. The last, once the most extensive, has now sunk into insignificance, while the others exist also only on a small scale.
