1013 



PULTENEY, WILLIAM, EARL OF BATH. 



PURBACH, GEORGE. 



10H 



* PULSZKY, THERESA, born in 1815 at Vienna, married in 1845 to 

 Ferencz Pulszky, is the authoress of ' Memoirs of a Hungarian Laily ' 

 (2 Tola., 1851 ), and of some other works in conjunction with her husbaiid. 

 The Memoirs are written entirely in an Hungarian spirit. 



PULTENEY, WILLIAM, EABL OF BA.TH, was born in 1682. He 

 was the eldest son of a father of the same names, whose father, Sir 

 William, had represented the city of Westminster in parliament with 

 some distinction. The surname is supposed to have been taken from 

 Pulteney in Leicestershire, where the family had been anciently 

 established. 



Young Pulteuey, having been sent first to Westminster school and 

 then to Christchurch, Oxford, afterwards travelled on the Continent, 

 and on his return home in 1705 was brought into parliament for the 

 borough of Hedon in Yorkshire. He was indebted for his. seat to his 

 guardian, Henry Guy, Esq., formerly secretary to the treasury, who 

 afterwards left him a legacy of 40,000?., and landed property to the 

 value of 5001. a year. Pulteney besides derived a considerable estate 

 from his father, and he also received a large portion with his wife, 

 Anna Maria, daughter of John Gumley, Esq., of Isleworth. All this 

 wealth he increased by the practice throughout his life of a very rigid 

 economy, "which," says Coxe, in his 'Memoirs of Walpole,' "his 

 enemies called avarice, but which did not prevent him from performing 

 many acts of charity and beneficence." 



From his entry into the House of Commons, Pulteney attached 

 himself to the Whig party, which was that of his family. He con- 

 tinued to sit for Hedon throughout the reign of Anne, but his name 

 does not appear in the reported parliamentary debates during that 

 reign. Coxe however states that he spoke for the first time on the 

 ' Place Bill,' which he warmly supported. ' Place Bills,' or proposals 

 for excluding placemen from parliament, were brought forward in tbe 

 House of Commons almost every session in this reign. He appears 

 also to have distinguished himself on the question of the prosecution 

 of Sacheverell ; and he is said to have made himself so obnoxious to 

 the Tories that, when they came into power in 1710, they revenged 

 themselves upon the young orator by removing his uncle, John 

 Pulteney, Esq., from the board of trade. During the last four years 

 of Queen Anne he not only took a principal share in the debates, but 

 was admitted to the most important secrets of his party ; and on the 

 prosecution of Walpole in 1712, Pulteney defended his friend in a very 

 elegant speech. 



On the accession of George I. Pulteuey was appointed secretary-at- 

 war, but when Walpole resigned in 1717 Pulteney also gave up his 

 office. Soon after this however a coolness took place between the t\vo 

 friends, which was not removed by the appointmeut of Pulteoey to 

 the valuable sinecure of cofferer of the household on Walpole's 

 resumption of office in 1720 ; but it was not till 1725 that Pulteney 

 openly threw hinuelf into the ranks of opposition, was dimissed from 

 his place of cofferer, and began that course of bitter and incessant 

 attack upon the niiui.-ter which did not cease till Walpole was driven 

 from power in 1742. Nor did he confine his exertions to his place in 

 parliament ; out of doors he entered iuto a close union with the party 

 of which Biding broke was the head, and became the principal assistant 

 of that writer in his paper called the ' Craftsman.' He also wrote 

 several pamphlets, attacking the minister aud his friends with extreme 

 virulence. A passage in one of these led to a duel between Pulteney 

 and Lord Hervey (January 1731), in which both were slightly wounded. 

 By hi* shining powers as a debater also, and the flaming patriotism 

 with which he filled his harangues as leader of the opposition, he 

 raised himself to the height of public favour, and was for some years 

 the most popular man in the kingdom. When the administration of 

 Walpole was at last overthrown (February '1742), all the authority of 

 the state seemed for a moment to lie at the feet of Pulteney ; aud he 

 actually named the new ministry, taking to himself a seat in the cabiuet 

 without any office, and stipulating for a peerage. But the arrangements 

 that were made had in fact been all, it may be said, dictated by Walpole, 

 who still retained his influence with the kin;.', and secretly arranged 

 with his majesty the course into whioh Pulteney was to be seduced with 

 the view of destroying the popularity which was his chief strength. 

 The composition of the new cabinet disappointed the expectations both 

 of partisan! and of the public ; everything wore the appearance of its 

 apparent maker having in fact made a, compact and a compromise with 

 Wiilpole; one considerable section of bis late supporters (that headed 

 by the Pitts and the Grenvilles) was wholly overlooked in the distri- 

 bution of places ; and the suspicion and sense of injury awakened by 

 all this burst into a universal storm of indignation when, after the 

 lapse of a few months, Pulteney walked into the House of Lords as 

 Karl of Bath. From this moment the late popular idol, as Chesterfield 

 wrote, "shrunk into insignificance and an earldom." On the death 

 (July 1743) of Lord Wilmington, whom he had named head of the 

 ministry, he made an unsuccessful effort to succeed him as first lord 

 of the treasury ; but on the resignation of the Pelham ministry 

 (February 174IJ), he actually obtained the coveted premiership. He 

 bad however now so entirely lost hU influence that he could not 

 induce any persona of weight to join him, and his short-lived ministry 

 was at an end within two days. However he lived till 1764, chiefly 

 occupied in nursing his private fortune, but still sometimes taking part 

 in the debates and in public affairs. In the year 1760 he published 

 A Letter to Two Great Men' (Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Newcastle), 



in which Horace Walpole, perhaps from no better authority than his 

 own suspicion and spite, says he was assisted by his chaplain Douglas 

 (the same who afterwards became successively bishop of Carlisle and 

 of Salisbury). Walpole adds, " It contained a plan of the terms which 

 his lordship thought we ought to demand if we concluded a peace : it 

 was as little regarded by the persons it addressed as a work of Mr. 

 Pitt's would have been, if, outliving his patriotism, power, and cha- 

 racter, he should twenty years after have emerged in a pamphlet." 

 (' Mems. of George II.,' ii. 412.) However the caustic annalist allows 

 that " it pleased in coffee-houses more than it deserved." 



Pulteney left no family, and his peerage became extinct on his death ; 

 but the title of Baroness Bath was conferred in 1792, and afterwards 

 that of Countess of Bath in 1803, on Henrietta Laura Pulteney, 

 daughter of Frances Pulteney, and Sir William Johnson, Bart, (who 

 took the name of Pulteney), and great-grand-daughter through her 

 mother of iv younger brother of the first earl's father. This lady, who 

 inherited the earl's fortune, died also without issue in 1808, and the 

 title again became extinct. 



PUPIE'NUS. CLODIUS PUPIENUS MAXIMUS, an officer of 

 rank in the Roman army, was elected emperor by the senate conjointly 

 with Balbinus, after the death of the two Gordians, in opposition to 

 the usurper Maximinus, A.D. 240. After a reign of about a twelve- 

 month he was killed, together with his colleague, in an insurrection of 

 the Proctorians at Rome. Further details concerning these events are 

 given under BALBIXL'S. 



Coin of Pupienus. 

 British Museum. Actual size. 



PURBACH, GEORGE, so called from the name of his birthplace, 

 Peurbach, a village on the confines of Bavaria and Austria, aud about 

 24 miles west from Liuz, was born in 1423. His family name appears 

 to be unknown. Montucla informs us that he became a pupil of 

 Gmunden, who taught astronomy in the University of Vienna; that 

 he afterwards visited the principal seats of learning in Europe, iu 

 order to acquaint himself with those jvho cultivated astronomy ; and 

 that on his return he succeeded his master Gmunden, notwithstanding 

 very strong solicitations to fix his residence at Bologna and Padua. 

 He constructed many astronomical instruments, among which is an 

 application of the plumb-line to a graduated circle ; and he computed 

 several trigonometrical tables, including a table of sines for every ten 

 minutes of the quadrant, which his pupil Miiller afterwards extended 

 to each minute. But he is now chiefly remembered on account of the 

 part he took in the translation and elucidation of the 'Almagest' of 

 Ptolemoous. 



Printing, observes Delambre, had not then been applied to the 

 diffusion of mathematical knowledge. The Greek manuscript of 

 Ptolemscus was then unknown in Europe, and the only works whence a 

 knowledge of astronomy could be derived were two Latin versions 

 of the ' Almagest ' (translated from the Arabic), both of which were 

 in many places incorrect, and more frequently altogether unintelli- 

 gible ; an imperfect Latin version of Albategnius ; cue of Alfragan ; 

 and a treatise on the sphere, by Sacrobosco, which last contained a 

 few elementary notions relating to the phenomena of the diurnal 

 motion and eclipses. Manuscripts were scarce, and those who could 

 procure them were for the most part soon discouraged by the diffi- 

 culties they encountered in their perusal of Ptolemseus, aud still more 

 by the prolixity of his interminable calculations. It cannot therefore 

 bo a matter of surprise that those whose perseverance had in some 

 measure surmounted these obstacles should enjoy a high reputation, 

 and that their assistance should be eagerly sought after by others. 

 Such was the case with Purbach. His ignorance of the Greek lan- 

 guage would have precluded his reading the 'Almagest' in the original, 

 had it been in his possession ; but he had read the Latin translations 

 of it, and, after relieving them of their geometrical reasoning and 

 tedious calculations, he endeavoured to explain the Ptolemaic system, 

 not to those who wished to become astronomers, but to those who 

 would be contented with a general notion of the mechanism of the 

 phenomena and the arrangement of the heavenly bodies. The most 

 difficult part was the theory of the planets, concerning which Sacro- 

 bosco was silent. Purbach made it the subject of a book, which was 

 not published till 1488, twenty-seven years after his death, when it 

 appeared at Venice appended to a quarto edition of Sacrobosco's 

 treatise on the sphere, under the title of ' Theorise Novae Planetarum.' 

 This work, which may be looked upon as an iutroduction to Ptoloma>us, 

 passed through many editions, accompanied by as many different com- 



