OLD BAILEY 



OLD CATHOLICS 



important researches on the probable lunar origin 

 of meteoric stoni-s. anil invented a DMtbod for cal- 

 culating the velocity of falling stars. He died at 

 Bremen, 41 March \840. His correspondence with 

 Bowel wu edited by Erman ( 18T.2). 



Old Kittle)', the court or sevsjons bouse in which 

 the sittings of the Central Criminal Court art- held 

 monthly for the trial of offence* within it- juris- 

 iliclioii.' The judges of this court are the Lord 

 Mayor, the Lord Chancellor, the judges aldermen, 

 recorder, and common Serjeant of London. But of 

 these the reconler, the Serjeant, and the judge of 

 the sheriir* court are in most cases the actually 

 presiding judges. The judicial sittings here are 

 of such antiquity that all record of their com- 

 menciMiifnt II.K l>cen lost. < 'rimes of nil kinds, 

 from treason to petty larceny, nre tried, and the 

 numbers in past times were enormous, but are 

 now greatly reduced by the extended jurisdiction 

 given to the quarter sessions, and the summary 

 powers granted to magistrates. Here were tried 

 in 11X50, after the Restoration, the surviving judges 

 of Charles I. ; and Milton's Kil:uiinklnslf.i and 

 Dcfensip Prima were in the same year burned at the 

 Old Bailey hy the comraoii hangman. The patriot 

 Lord William Kussell was tried here in 1083, 

 Jack Sheppard in 1724, Jonathan Wild in 1725, 

 the poet Savage in 1727, Dr Dodd in 1777, Belling- 

 hain, the assassin of the statesman Perceval, in 

 1812, the ( 'at.i Street conspirators in ^820. The 

 Old Bailey dinners given by the sheriffs to the 

 judges were long famous. However else varied, 

 tliev always included l>eefsteaks and marrow 

 puddings, and were served twice a day. The Old 

 Bailey adjoins Newgate (q.v.) Prison, between 

 Hollmrn Viaduct and Ludgate Hill. Prisoners 

 awaiting trial at this court are transferred to New- 

 gate for the sake of convenience whilst the sessions 

 here are sitting. 



Old Believers. See RASKOLNIK. 



Olllhliry. a busy manufacturing town of Wor- 

 cestershire, 5J miles WNW. of Birmingham, stands 

 in the midst of a rich mineral district, and has iron 

 ami steel works, I>eside8 factories for railway plant, 

 edge-tooU, chemicals, &c. Pop. (18ol) 11,741; 

 (IK81) 18,841; (1801) 20.34S. See J. Nichols' 

 lluturi/ ofManctter Parish ( 1791). 



Olilrnstlo. SIK JOHV, once popularly known 

 as the 'good Lord Cobham,' whose claim to dis- 

 tinction is that he was the first author and the 

 lir-; martyr among the English nobility, was born 

 in the reign of I'M ward III. ; the exact year is not 

 known. He acquired the title of Lord Oobtuun by 

 marriage with tlie heiress of the line, and signal - 

 i-'d himself by the ardour of his attachment to the 

 doctrines of Wyclif. At that time there was a 

 party among the English nobles and gentry sin- 

 cerely, even strongly, desirous of ecclesiastical 

 reform, whose leader was 'old John of Gaunt 

 time honoured Lancaster.' Oldcastle was active 

 in the name cause, and took part in the presenta- 

 tion of a remonstrance to the English Commons on 

 the subject of the corruptions of the church. At 

 his own expeii*o he got \Vyclifs works tran- 

 scribed, and widely disseminated among the people, 

 and paid a large body of preachers to pmp.^Mie 

 the views of the Reformer throughout the country. 

 In 1411, during the rci^n of Henry IV., he com. 

 mnndcd an English army in Prance, and forced the 

 Duke of Orleans to raise the siege of Paris ; but in 

 1413, just after tin- accession of Hetirv V., he 

 examined by Archbishop Arundel, and condemned 

 as a heretic. He e*ca|>ed from (lie Tower into 

 Wales, bnt after four years' hiding was captured. 

 He wan brought to London, and lieing reckoned 

 a traitor as well as a heretic was hung up in 

 chains alive upon a gallows, and, fire being put 



under him, was burned to death, December 1417. 

 Oldeostle wrote Tirr/rr ('iiiictiiswnit addrttanl to 

 the I'nrliiimrut of Kinjlnnit, several monkish 

 rhvmett against ' fleshlve livers ' among the ch 

 religious discourses, &c. Halliwell Phillip* < 

 proved in 1841 that Shakesiware's Sir John Falstatf 

 was originally Sir John ( Iklcactk n view endorsed 

 in liairdner and Spedding's Mmliet (1881). 



Old < allntlirs (Ger. Altkatl,lil;r} is the 

 title assumed by a number of Catholics who 

 at Munich protested against the new dogma of 

 the personal infallibility of the po|? in all ..r 

 i-Kthrtli-H deliverances, proclaimed by the Vatican 

 Council in 1870. It now applies to a communion 

 or church in Germany and Swit/.crland, which has 

 grown to bo considerable in numlicrs and inlluence. 

 The Munich protest by forty-four professors, l>r 

 Dollinger and Professor Friedrich at their head, 

 was directed against the binding authority of 

 the Vatican Council and the validity of its decrees. 

 To the Munich protest a nnmlier of Catholic pro- 

 fessors at Bonn, Breslau, Freiburg, and Giesoen 

 declared their adhesion. The leaders of the move- 

 ment met at the end of August at Nuremberg 

 and drew up a declaration. The German bishops, 

 though they had given warning of the dangerous 

 consequences of the proclamation of the new 

 dogma, submitted to the decision of the \atican 

 Council, and, in a pastoral letter of the Huh 

 Septemlier 1870, called upon all members of the 

 faculty of Catholic theology to signify their alle- 

 giance. Against the refractory i numerous pro- 

 fessors and one priest) they proceeded by sus- 

 pending them from their functions, and then by 

 excommunication. The Prussian ami Bavnrinii 



governments, however, took their rf-\ live sub. 



jects, the objects of those measures, under their 

 protection. 



At first the mass of the priests and laity showed 

 very little sympathy with the movement, only two 

 country congregations declaring their dissent from 

 the decree of the Vatican Council. Pamphlets 

 and appeals issued by the heads of the party 

 elicited but little response. Local committees 

 in furtherance of the cause were, however, formed 

 in towns of Bavaria and the Khinc country. At a 

 general Old Catholic Congress, held in 1871 at 

 Munich, it 'a resolved to draw the Imnds of union 

 close with the church of Utrecht, the Jan-enUts 

 (q.v.) of the Netherlands, which, under its arch- 

 bishop and two bishops, oll'ered to the Old 

 Catholics the possibility of prie.tly consecration 

 and continuation. The congress, while carefully 

 i v,-]iewing any decided breach with traditional 

 dogma, and professing the drsjre simply to main- 

 lain the church as it stood lieforc the 18th July 

 INTO, proiMinnded the far-reaching principle that 

 the decisions of an ecumenical council, to lx> valid, 

 must be in agreement with the existing faith of 

 the Catholic people and with theological science. 

 The ho|> \\;is aKo expressed of a reunion with 

 tin' Greek Oriental Church and a gradual under- 

 standing with the Protestants. Ohi Catholic con- 

 gregations !>cgan to be formed in different towns 

 of Bavaria ami the Khinc country. In 1872 the 

 Old Catholic priests in the German empire num- 

 bered altout thirty. The Archbishop of I'trecht 

 in July made a tour in Germany, holding religions 

 service in Protestant churches ami confirming 

 the children of Old Catholics. At a second 

 congress at Cologne'. 1872, Professor Friedrich 

 declared that the Old Catholic movement 

 now directed not merely against papal infalli- 

 bility, but 'against the whole papal system, a 

 yBtem of errors during a thousand years, which 

 hail onlv reached its climax in the doctrine of 

 infallibility.' Diillinger, the lender of the mo\e 

 ment which led to the formation of the new 



