CHARTRES 



rilAsi; 



129 



and aided by them after the disturbances l>egan. It 



imng proof of the revolutionary spirit \vliii-h 



animated tin- ( 'hartiste, that they opposed the 



lion for the Repeal of the Corn Laws as a 



in- likely to maKe food eheap, to keep wages 



down, -tiid thereby to InmeJit only the middle 



a. In 184s the Chartist movement came to 



id through the agitation consequent on the 



revolution in Franco. (Jreat uneasiness prevailed, 



especially at many of the industrial centres, and 



ri^in^'- were feared. But the greatest demonstra- 



i the movement took place in London, where 



in tie. meeting on Kennington Common was 



:m mm need for the 10th of April. It was to be 



attended by half a million or men, who were to 



to parliament a petition for reform signed by 



nillion names. Sucli rumours excited great 

 alarm. The procession was forbidden. Military 

 measures were taken by the Duke of Wellington to 



:it violence, and about 200,000 special con- 

 stables were enrolled (amongst whom was Louis 

 Napoleon, afterwards emperor). After all this pre- 

 paration the demonstration proved a failure. Only 

 80,000 gathered on Kennington Common, and their 



is shrank from a conflict with the authorities. 

 On examining the monster petition it was found 

 that the signatures were fictitious to an unheard-of 

 extent, yet the genuine ones amounted to nearly 

 two millions. 



Since 1848 Chartism has gradually died out. Its 

 political principles were not new. The Duke of 

 Richmond in 1780 introduced a bill into the House 

 of Lords to give universal suffrage and annual 

 parliaments, and earlier than this John Cart-wright 

 <<|.v.) had advocated earnestly not only these but 

 also vote by ballot. In 1780 Charles James Fox 

 declared himself in favour of the identical six 

 points which were afterwards included in the 

 Charter. And in 1792 Grey, Erskine, Mackintosh, 

 ami many others, formed a 'Society of Friends of 

 the People,' which aimed at obtaining a very large 

 extension of the franchise. 



But while the political side of Chartism was the 

 most prominent, it should be recognised that the 

 essence of it was economic and social. As one of 

 its leaders said, it was a ' knife and fork question.' 

 The movement was primarily due to economic 

 offering, and many of the remedies proposed were 

 strongly socialistic in tendency. The reviving and 

 increasing prosperity of the country after the 

 collapse of Chartism in 1848 effectually prevented a 

 return of the same spirit of discontent. This ->r ;s- 

 perity was due not only to the Repeal of the t!orn 

 Laws, but to the great industrial and colonial 

 expansion of Britain which took a fresh start 

 about the same time. Through the Reform Bills 

 of 1867 and 1885, and the Ballot Act of 1872, the 

 most important demands of the Charter have been 

 substantially conceded. Industrial prosperity and 

 political reform, with the development of trades- 

 '.uiions and of the co-operative system, have worked 

 a decided change in the position of the working- 

 classes as contrasted with their wretched lot in the 

 period about 1840. See the articles on COOPER and 

 O'CONNOR ; Cooper's Life, written by Himself; 

 Carlyle's Chartism ; Kingsley's Alton Locke ; Wai- 

 pole s History of England ; and R. G. Gammage's 

 History of the Chartist Movement (1894). 



Chartres the capital of the French department 

 >i Eure-et-Loir, 55 miles SW. of Paris, is built 

 partly at the base and partly on the declivity of a 

 iiill overlooking the river Eure, which is here 

 livided into two channels, one flowing within, and 

 the other without the former ramparts, which are 

 Converted into agreeable promenades. It consists 

 jf an upper and lower town, connected by very 

 '. iteep streets ; and the highest point is crowned by 

 the glorious cathedral of Notre Dame in Street s 

 ua 



opinion, the finest in France. Built chiefly be- 

 tween 1194 and 1200, it has two spires, of whi<*h 

 the smith western is .H424 feet high, and the north- 

 western, 371 ; the latter, built in 1507-14, being, 

 ' on the whole, the most beautiful spire on the Con- 

 tinent. ' Other features are the three rose- windows, 

 the splendid portals, and the 13th-century stained - 

 glass that tills no fewer than 130 windows. The 

 church of St Pierre (12th century), the Porte 

 Guillaume ( 14th century), and the obelisk to the 

 memory of General Marceau, are also noteworthy. 

 The weekly corn-market is one of the largest 

 in France, and is remarkable as being under a 

 corporation of women. It has manufactures of 

 woollen, hosiery, and leather. Chartres usually 

 gave the title of Duke to the eldest son of the 

 Orleans branch of the Bourbons (see BOURBON). 

 Pop. (1872) 19,322; (1886)21,523; (1891)23,108.- 

 The Autricum of the Carnutes (hence the present 

 name), ( "dartres in 1594 was the scene of the 

 coronation of Henry IV. 



Chartrense, LA GRANDE, the original Car- 

 thusian monastery, founded by St Bruno in 1084, 

 is situated in the French department of Isere, 14 

 miles NNE. of Grenoble, in a wild and romantic 

 valley, at an altitude of 4268 feet above the sea. 

 The convent is a huge ungainly structure, dating 

 mostly from the 17th century, earlier buildings 

 having been several times destroyed by fire. The 

 monks, who long manufactured a famous green, 

 yellow, or white liqueur from various herbs, had 

 at one time considerable property, but they 

 were despoiled at the Revolution, being exiled 

 from 1793 till 1816; and in November 1880 they 

 declined to accept indulgence from the decrees for 

 the expulsion or the religious orders. A remnant 

 of monks still left received Queen Victoria and 

 the Princess Beatrice on the occasion of their 

 visit in 1887. Ruskin in part iv. of his Prasterita 

 (1888) describes his disappointment in both the 

 monastery and its occupants. Certosa and Charter- 

 house are Italian and English forms of the French 

 name. See CARTHUSIANS. 



Chartlllary means a collection of charters. So 

 soon as any body, ecclesiastical or secular, came to 

 be possessed of a considerable number of charters, 

 obvious considerations of convenience and safety 

 j would suggest the advantage of having them classi- 

 fied and copied into a book or roll. Such book or 

 roll has generally received the name of a Chartulary. 

 Mabillon traces chartularies in France as far back 

 as the 10th century, and some antiquaries think 

 that chartularies were compiled even still earlier. 

 But it was not until the 12th and 13th centuries 

 that chartularies became common. They were 

 kept not only by all kinds of religious and civil 

 corporations, but also by private families. Many 

 of them have been printed, and their contents 

 generally are of the greatest value in historical, 

 archa'ological, and genealogical inquiries. The 

 name is in Scotland applied to the record of 

 feu-charters kept by the superior's law-agent. 



Charybdis. See SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS. 



Chase* SALMON PORTLAND, American states- 

 man, born at Cornish, New Hampshire, 13th Janu- 

 ary 1808, in 1830 settled as a lawyer in Cincin- 

 nati, where he acted as counsel for the defence 

 of numerous fugitive slaves. An uncompromising 

 opponent of slaverv, his political course was for 

 many years guided by the attitude of the two great 

 parties towards this question. In 1841, foreseeing 

 as little assistance from the Whigs as from the 

 Democrats, he was largely instrumental in founding 

 the Liberty partr, which in 1844 brought about 

 Clay's defeat. Chase was returned to tne United 

 States senate in 1849 by the Ohio Democrats, 

 but separated from the party in 1852, when it 



