yet he could not obtain payment of the debt due to him from the state till 1643. He was bound by the pacta conventa which he signed on his accession to maintain a fleet on the Baltic. He proposed to do so by levying tolls on all imports and exports passing through the Prussian ports which had been regained by the truce of Stumdorf. Sweden during her temporary occupation of these ports had derived from them an annual income of 3,600,000 gulden. But when Wladislaus, their lawful possessor, imposed similar tolls in the interests of the republic, Danzig protested and appealed to the Scandinavian powers. Wladislaus's little fleet attempted to blockade the port of the rebellious city, whereupon a Danish admiral broke the blockade and practically destroyed the Polish flotilla.Yet the sejm, so sensitive to its own privileges, allowed the insult to the king and the injury to the state to pass unnoticed, conniving at the destruction of the national navy and the depletion of the treasury, “lest warships should make the crown too powerful.” For some years after this humiliation, Wladislaus became indifferent to affairs and sank into a sort of apathy; but the birth of his son Sigismund (by his first wife, Cecilia Renata of Austria, in 1640) gave him fresh hopes, and he began with renewed energy to labour for the dynasty as well as for the nation.He saw that Poland, with her existing constitution, could not hope for a long future, and he determined to bring about a royalist reaction and a reform along with it by every means in his power. He began by founding the Order of the Immaculate Conception, consisting of 72 young noblemen who swore a special oath of allegiance to the crown, and were to form the nucleus of a patriotic movement antagonistic to the constant usurpation’s of the diet, but the sejm promptly intervened and quashed the attempt. Then he conceived the idea of using the Cossacks, who were deeply attached to him, as a means of chastising the szlachta, and at the same time forcing a war with Turkey, which would make his military genius indispensable to the republic, and enable him if successful to carry out domestic reforms by force of arms. His chief confidant in this still mysterious affair was the veteran grand hetman of the crown, Stanislaw Koniecpolski, who understood the Cossacks better than any man then living, but differed from the king in preferring the conquest of the Crimea to an open war with Turkey. Simultaneously Wladislaus contracted an offensive and defensive alliance with Venice against the Porte, a treaty directly contrary indeed to the pacta conventa he had sworn to observe, but excusable in the desperate circumstances. The whole enterprise fell through, owing partly to the death of Koniecpolski before it was matured, partly to the hastiness with which the king published his intentions, and partly to the careful avoidance by the Porte of the slightest occasion of a rupture. Frustrated in all his plans, broken-hearted by the death of his son (by his second wife, Marie Ludwika of Angouleme, Wladislaus had no issue), the king, worn out and disillusioned, died at Merecz on the 20th of May 1648, in his 52nd year. After his cousin Gustavus Adolphus, whom in many respects he strikingly resembled, he was indubitably the most amiable and brilliant of all the princes of the House of Vasa.
See Wiktor Czermak, The Plans of the Turkish Wars of Wladislaus IV. (Pol.) (Cracow, 1895); V. V . Volk-Karachcvsky, The Struggle of Poland with the Cossacks (Rus.) (Kiev, 1899); Letters and other Writings of Wladislaus IV. (Pol.) (Cracow, 1845). (R. N. B.)
WOAD, a herbaceous plant, known botanically as Isatis tinctoria (natural order Cruciferae), which occurs sporadically in England in fields, on banks and chalk-pits. The erect branched Stem, 1 to 3 ft. in height, bears sessile leaves and terminal clusters of small yellow flowers; the brown pendulous pods are 12 in. long. The ancient Britons stained themselves with this plant. It is still cultivated in Lincolnshire.
WOBURN, a market town in the northern parliamentary division of Bedfordshire, England, with a station (Woburn Sands), on a branch of the London & North-Western railway, 2 m. from the town and 51 m. N. W. by N. from London. Pop. (1901) 1129. It lies in a hollow of a northern spur of the Chiltern Hills, in a finely wooded locality. There is some agricultural trade, and a little straw-plaiting and lace-making are carried on. To the west of the town lies Woburn Park, the demesne of Woburn Abbey, the seat of the dukes of Bedford. The abbey was a Cistercian foundation of 1145, but only scanty remains of the buildings are seen in the mansion which rose on its site. This, with most of the abbey lands, was granted by Henry VIII. to John, Lord Russell, in 1547, who was created earl of Bedford in 1550 (the dukedom dating from 1694). The mansion was begun in 1744; it contains a magnificent collection of paintings and other objects of art.
WOBURN, a city of Middlesex county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 10 m. W. by N.W. of Boston. Pop. (1890) 13,499; (1900) 14,254, of whom 3840 were foreign-born and 261 were negroes; (1910, U.S. census) 15,308. Area, 12.6 sq. m. Woburn is served by the southern division of the Boston & Maine railway, and is connected with Burlington, Lexington, Reading, Stoneham, Wilmington, Winchester, Arlington, Boston and Lowell by electric railways. In the city area are several villages, including Woburn proper, known as “the Centre,” North Woburn, Woburn Highlands, Cummingsville (in the western part), Mishawum (in the north-east), Montvale (in the east) and Walnut Hill (also in the east). There are two ancient burying-grounds; the oldest, on Park Street, dates from about 1642 and contains the graves of ancestors of four presidents—Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Franklin Pierce and Garfield—and a granite obelisk to the memory of Loammi Baldwin (1744–1807). On Academy Hill is the Warren Academy building used by a Free Industrial School. Forest Park (53 acres) is a fine stretch of natural woods, and there are several small parks and squares; on Woburn Common is the Public Library, by H. H. Richardson, the gift of Charles Winn. The building houses an art gallery and historical museum, and a library of about 50,000 volumes especially rich in Americana. Among colonial houses still standing are the birthplace of Count Rumford (in North Woburn), built about 1714, and now preserved by the Rumford Historical Association as a depository for the Rumford Library and historical memorials, and the Baldwin mansion (built partly in 1661 and later enlarged), the home of Loammi Baldwin (1780–1838), known as “the father of civil engineering in America.” Woburn’s manufactories are concentrated within a small area. The city is the most important leather manufacturing centre of New England: in 1905 the value of the leather product was $2,851,554, being 61.3% of the value of all factory products (84,654,067); other manufactures are chemicals, leather-working machinery, boots and shoes, glue and cotton goods. Market gardening is an important industry.
Woburn, first settled about 1638–1640, was incorporated as a township under its present name in 1642, and was the first township set off from Charlestown. It then included a large part of the present Winchester and the greater part of the present Wilmington and Burlington, separately organized in 1730 and 1799 respectively. It was named after Woburn in Bedfordshire by its chief founder, Edward Johnson (1509–1672), whose work, The Wonder-Working Providence of Zion’s Saviour (1654; latest ed. 1910), was one of the earliest historical accounts of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The leather industry was established by David Cummings at Cummingsville shortly before the War of Independence. Woburn’s industrial growth dates from the construction through the township of the old Middlesex Canal. The city was chartered in 1888.
See P. L. Converse, Legends of Woburn, 1642–1802 (2 vols., Woburn, 1892–1896); Samuel Sewall, History of Woburn, 1640 to 1860 (Boston, 1868); F. E. Wetherell, Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of Woburn (Woburn, 1892); and G. M. Champney in S. A. Drake’s History of Middlesex County (2 vols., Boston, 1880).
WOCHUA (Achua), a pygmy people of Africa, living in the forests of the Mabode district, south of the Welle. They were discovered (1880–1883) by Dr. W. Junker, who described them as “well proportioned, though the oval-shaped head seemed somewhat too large for the size of the body.” Some are of light complexion, like the Akka and Batwa, but as a general rule they belong to the darker, crisper-haired, more genuine negro stock.
WODEN, a deity of the Anglo-Saxons, the name being the Anglo-Saxon counterpart of the Scandinavian Odin (q.v.). In German the same god was called Wodan or Wuotan. Owing
