Crawley Yonge, 52nd Regiment, and Frances Mary Bargus, was born on the 11th of August 1823 at Otterbourne, Hants. She was educated by her parents, and from them inherited much of the religious feeling and High Church sympathy which coloured her work. She resided at Otterbourne all her life, and was one of the most prolific writers of the Victorian era. In 1841 she published five works of fiction, including The Clever Woman of the Family, Dynevor Terrace and The Trial; and after that she was the author of about 120 volumes, including novels, tales, school manuals and biographies. Her first conspicuous success was attained with The Heir of Redclyffe (1853), which enjoyed an enormous vogue. The Daisy Chain (1856) continued the success; and among her other popular books may be mentioned Heartsease (1854), The Young Stepmother (1861) and The Dove in the Eagle’s Nest (1866). In more serious fields of literature she published Landmarks of History (three series, 1852–57), History of Christian Names (1863), Cameos of English History (1868), Life of Bishop Patteson (1874), English Church History for Use in Schools (1883) and many others. She also edited various educational works, and was for more than thirty years editor of the Monthly Packet. She died at Otterbourne on 23rd March 1901. Her books err on the side of didacticism, but exercised a wide and wholesome influence. The money realized by the early sales of The Daisy Chain was given to the building of a missionary college at Auckland, N.Z., while a large portion of the proceeds of The Heir of Redclyffe was devoted to the missionary schooner “The Southern Cross.”
See Charlotte Mary Yonge: an Appreciation, by Ethel Romanes (1908).
YONGE, JOHN (1467–1516), English ecclesiastic and diplomatist,
was born at Heyford, Oxfordshire, and educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, where he became a fellow in 1485. He was ordained in 1500 and held several livings before receiving his first diplomatic mission to arrange a commercial treaty with the archduke of Austria in 1504, and in the Low Countries in 1506 in connexion with the projected marriage between Henry VII. and Margaret of Savoy. In 1507 he was made Master of the Rolls and in the following year was employed in various diplomatic missions. He was one of the ambassadors who arranged the Holy League in 1513, and accompanied
Henry VIII. during the ensuing campaign. In 1514 he was made dean of York in succession to Wolsey, and in 1515 he was one of the commissioners for renewing the peace with Francis I. He died in London on the 25th of April 1516. Yonge was on terms of intimate friendship with Dean Colet, and was a correspondent of Erasmus.
YONGE, SIR WILLIAM, Bart (c. 1693–1753), English politician, was the son of Sir Walter Yonge of Colyton, Devonshire, and great-great-grandson of Walter Yonge of Colyton (?1581–1649), whose diaries (1604–45), more especially four volumes now in the British Museum (Add. MSS. 18777–18780),
are valuable material for history. In 1722 he was elected to parliament as member for Honiton; and he succeeded his father, the third baronet, in 1731. In the House of Commons he attached himself to the Whigs, and making himself useful to Sir Robert Walpole; was rewarded with a commissionership of the treasury in 1724. George II., who conceived a strong antipathy to Sir William, spoke of him as “Stinking Yonge”; but Yonge conducted himself so obsequiously that he obtained a commissionership of the admiralty in 1728, was restored to the treasury in 1730, and in 1735 became secretary of state for war. He especially distinguished himself in his defence of the government against a hostile motion by Pulteney in 1742. Making friends with the Pelhams, he was appointed vice-treasurer of Ireland in 1746; and, acting on the committee of management for the impeachment of Lord Lovat in 1747, he won the applause of Horace Walpole by moving that prisoners impeached for high treason should be allowed the assistance of counsel. In 1748 he was elected F.R.S. He died at Escott, near Honiton, on the 10th of August 1755. By his second wife, Anne, daughter and coheiress of Thomas, Lord Howard of Effingham, he had two sons and six daughters. He enjoyed some reputation as a versifier, some of his lines being even mistaken for the work of Pope, greatly to the disgust of the latter; and he wrote the lyrics incorporated in a comic opera, adapted from Richard Brome’s The Jovial Crew, which was produced at Drury Lane in 1730 and had a considerable vogue.
His eldest son, Sir George Yonge (1731–1812), was member of parliament for Honiton continuously from 1754 to 1794, and held a number of different government appointments, becoming a lord of the admiralty (1766–70), vice-treasurer for Ireland (1782), secretary of state for war (1782–94, with an interval from April to December 1783), master of the mint (1794–99). In 1799 he was appointed governor of the Cape of Good Hope. Serious charges being brought against his administration, which was marked by great lack of judgment, he was recalled in 1801. He died on the 25th of September 1812. The baronetcy became extinct at his death.
YONKERS, a city of Westchester county, New York, U.S.A., on the E. bank of the Hudson river, immediately adjoining New York City on the N. Pop. (1900) 47,931, of whom 14,634 were foreign-born and 1005 were negroes; (1910, U.S. census) 79,803. Yonkers is served by three divisions of the New York Central & Hudson River railway, and is connected with New York City and other places E. and N. by interurban electric lines. It has also during most of the year steamboat service on the Hudson. There are two principal residential districts: one in the N., including Amackassin Heights and (about 1 m. W.) Glenwood, where are the old Colgate Mansion and “Greystone,” the former home of Samuel J. Tilden; the other in the S., including Ludlow, Van Cortlandt Terrace and Park Hill (adjoining Riverdale in the borough of the Bronx), a parklike reserve with winding streets and drives. The business
and manufacturing districts occupy the low lands along the river. Among the public buildings are the City Hall, the High School and a Manual Training School, and Yonkers is the seat of St Joseph’s Theological Seminary (Roman. Catholic; 1896), the Halsted School (founded 1874) for girls, and a business
college. It has a good public library (established 1893; 25,000 vols. in 1910), and the Woman’s Institute (1880) and the Hollywood Inn Club (1897, for working-men) have small libraries. Philipse Manor Hall, built originally about 1682 as the mansion of the son of Frederick Philipse (1626–1702), the lord of Philipsburgh, and enlarged to its present dimensions in 1745, is of some historic interest. It was confiscated by act of the legislature in 1779 because its owner, Frederick Philipse (1746–1785), was suspected of Toryism, and was sold in 1789. In 1867 it passed into the possession of Yonkers, and from 1872 to 1908 was used as the city hall. In 1908 it was bought by the state, and is now maintained as a museum for colonial and revolutionary relics. It is one of the best examples of colonial architecture
in America. In the square before it stands a monument
to the soldiers and sailors of the Civil War. Yonkers is an
important manufacturing city, and in 1905 the value of its
factory products was $33,548,688.
On the site of Yonkers stood an Indian village known as Nappeckamack, or town of the rapid water, at the time of the settlement of the Dutch in New Amsterdam; and a great rock, near the mouth of the Nepperlian Creek, was long a place of Indian worship. The territory was part of the “Keskeskick purchase,” acquired from the Indians by the Dutch W. India Company in 1639. In 1646 the tract was included in the grant to Adrian van der Donck, the first lawyer and historian of New Netherland, author of A Description of New Netherland (1656), in Dutch. His grant, known as “Colen Donck” (Donck’s Colony), embraced all the country from Spuyten Duyvil Creek, N. along the Hudson to the Amackassin Creek, and E. to the Bronx river. Some squatters settled here before 1646. Van der Donck encouraged others to remove to his lands along the Hudson river, and in 1649 he built a saw mill near the mouth of the Nepperhan Creek, which for many years was called “Saw-Mill river.” The whole settlement soon came to be called “De Jonkheer’s Land” or “De Jonkheers”—meaning the estate of the young lord, as Van der Donck was called by
