MIDDLE TEMPLE 



MIDDLETON 



183 



by the neighbourhood of the county and city o 

 . London. We first hear of Middlesex as a sub-king 

 ilom dependent on Essex. Its position between the 

 territory of the East Saxons and that of the Wes 

 Saxons accounts for the name. The greater par 

 of the surface was covered with a forest, of whicl 

 Entield Chase and Hanipstead Heath are relics ; bu 

 it was traversed by the great road which crossed the 

 Thames, probably by a ford at Westminster, am 

 led north-westward under the name of the Watling 

 Street. The population was very sparse, and i 

 has Ijeen remarked that no castle stood within its 

 Imundary, and no great abbey except that ol 

 Westminster. After the Conquest we hear little 

 of the county until 1101, when Henry I. granted 

 it in farm to the citizens of London. The posi- 

 tion of Middlesex thenceforward until the pass- 

 ing of the Local Government Act in 1888 was 

 wholly peculiar. For a rent of 300 per annum 

 the citizens had the appointment of the sheritl 

 and all other regal rights. It was usual for the 

 sheriffs of the city to hold the office on alternate 

 days, whence the legal form, 'the sheriffs of 

 London and sheriff of Middlesex.' The whole 

 body of citizens held the office, and their nominees 

 were strictly speaking not high but sub-sheriffs, 

 while the Lord Mayor was Lord-lieutenant. L'nder 

 tliis regime, as is well known, the county shared 

 in the prosperity of its great neighbour, and 

 liecame at last so populous that by the act 

 already named those |H>rtions of it which lay 

 nearest the Thames and the city were severed 

 from it, and, with certain districts of Kent and 

 Surrey, were incorporated into a new 'county of 

 London' (q.v.). At the same time a sheriff for 

 Middlesex and a lord-lieutenant were apitointed 

 Of the crown, and a singular usage which had 

 sulwisted for more than seven centuries ceased to 

 obtain. 



The geological features of Middlesex are of a 

 simple character. It has no high hills, no great 

 nvers, no picturesque vallevs ; but the low roll- 

 ing undulations consist of what is known as 

 London clay, topped here and there with river- 

 drift, in which indications of earlv human life have 

 lieen detected, as well as the fossil remains of 

 elephants and other now extinct animals. There 

 \* but little tillage, except for market-gardens, and 

 a great part of the county consists of grazing land, 

 being occupied largely with villa residences, 

 surrounded in many places with large parks. 

 Brickfields occupy the western border, and the 

 number of large suburban villages without, how- 

 ever, any important town is remarkable. Urent- 

 ford, Ux bridge, and Baling are to the west of 

 London, and the first-named is usually reckoned 

 the county town. Northward are Harrow, with 

 it-- Mhool, Entield, and Tottenham. Eastward are 

 Highgata and Hornsey. London, it may be well 

 to note, was never in Middlesex. 



Middlesex, and especially its eastern Ixmler, was 

 UM -c.-ne of many conflicts with the Danes. Dur- 

 ing the Wars of the Roses, Barnet on the northern 

 verge gave its name to the battle on the neighbour- 

 ing Hadley Common, where in 1471 the King-maker 

 was defeated and slain. The principal mansions 

 are Hampton Court (q.v.), Sion House (see ISI.KS- 

 Wi.UTll), and Osterley, near Hounslow, which 

 Ix-longs to Loud Jersey, and is a handsome building 

 by Robert Adam. 



Middle Temple. See INNS OF COURT. 



Middleton, a town of Lancashire, on the Irk, 

 3 miles \V. of Oldham and 6 NNE. of Manchester. 

 Dating mainly from 1791, when it received a charter 

 for a weekly market, it was incorporated as a muni- 

 cipal borough in ISSii. the borough area including the 

 townshiiw of Middleton, Tonge, and Alkrington, 



with parts of Hopwood and Thornham. It is chiefly 

 dependent upon its manufactures of silk and 

 cotton, and has an interesting parish church, a 

 grammar-school (1572), public baths and libraries, 

 &c. Pop. (1881) 18,953 ; (1891) 21,310. 



Middleton, a town of Ireland, 13 miles by rail 

 E. of Cork. At the college (1696) Curran was 

 educated. Pop. 3358. 



Middleton, CONYERS, afamous controversialist, 

 was born at Richmond in Yorkshire in 1683. He 

 studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1706 

 obtained a fellowship, which a pmdent marriage 

 soon enabled him to resign. About 1722 he became 

 librarian to the university, and in his later years 

 was presented to the living of Hascombe in Surrey. 

 He died at his seat at Hildesham in Cambrido-e- 

 shirein 1750. All his life through Middleton was 

 busy in controversy, and in bitterness of tone and 

 ferocity of temper he was a match for any of his 

 contemporaries. His first antagonist was the 

 redoubtable Bentley ; but, though at first successful, 

 he was afterwards obliged to apologise to him for 

 libel. His later controversies were theological in 

 character, and in these he gained great distinction, 

 but left his own sincerity under grievous suspicion. 

 His Letter from Home, showing an exact Conformity 

 between Popery and Paganism ( 1729), was a severe 

 attack on the Catholic ritual, the method employed 

 being the historical so much more deadly than 

 dogmatic arguments. He next assailed the orthodox 

 champion Waterland, and startled the devout by 

 giving up literal inspiration and the historical 

 truth of the Old Testanient stories. He professed 

 to be giving an unassailable answer to Tindal and 

 his school of Deists, but it is none too certain that 

 lie was not himself a freethinker, bent on dealing 

 a secret stab to a religion the bread of which he 

 ite. In 1747 and the following year he published 

 liis famous Introductory Discourse and the Free 

 Inquiry into the miraculous powers claimed to 

 lave giilwisted in the Christian church after the 

 apostolic age. He attacked the ecclesiastical 

 miracles, pointing out that their true source was in 

 lie general intellectual condition of the age that 

 mxfaoed them, without needing to postulate either 

 lupernatural interference on the one hand or 

 mman imposture on the other. It is not a little 

 nteresting that Gibbon ascribes his Iwyish con- 

 ersion to the Roman Catholic faith to the indirect 

 ntluence of this work, which convinced him not 

 hat that church had preserved the gift of 

 miraculous powers during the first four or five 

 -enturies, but that most of its distinctive doctrines 

 vere already formulated within that period. 

 Middleton's best-known book remains his well- 

 vntten and eulogistic Life of Cicero (1741 ). See 

 >eslie Stephen's English Thought in the Eighteenth 

 ' /' I 'try, chap. iv. part 6. 



Middleton, THOMAS, dramatist, born about 

 570, was the only son of William Middleton, 

 gentleman, who settled in London and married 

 Anne, daughter of William Snow. The earliest 

 mention of Middleton in Henslowe's Diary is under 

 date 22d May 1602, when he was engaged with 

 Mnmlay, Drayton, Webster, and others on a lost 

 play, C<esar's Fall. First on the list of his printed 

 plays is Blurt, Master Constable (1602), a light, 

 fanciful comedy. Two interesting tracts, Father 

 nil/bird's Tale and The Black Book, exposing the 

 practices of London rogues and sharpers, were pub- 

 lished in 1604, to which year belongs the first part 

 of The Hontst Whore (mainly written by Dekker, 

 but containing occasional scenes by Middleton ). 

 The Phoenix and Michaelmas Term (both published 

 in 1607 ) are lively comedies ; and even more divert- 

 ing \*A Trick to catch the Old One (1608). The 

 Family of Love (1608) and Your Five Gallar.ts, 



