ROARING FORTIES 



ROBERT III. 



743 



operation, and had to be destroyed. This proved a 

 great disappointment to the veterinary profession, 

 as hopes hail been held out that at last a cure for 

 roaring hail been discovered. 



Roaring is now included by the Royal Agri- 

 cultural Society of England among the hereditary 

 nnsoundnesses, and their veterinary officers are 

 instructed to disqualify all horses exhibited at the 

 great national snow that give any signs of this 

 grave hereditary disease. See works by George 

 Fleming (1889) and T. J. Cadiot (trans. 1893). 



Roaring Forties, a sailor's term for a region 

 of the great Southern Ocean lying south of 40 S. 

 lat. (especially south of 45), where the prevailing 

 winds are strong WNW. and NW. winds, often 

 stormy. It is owing to these winds that the out- 

 ward voyage to Australia is made by the Cape, 

 ami the homeward voyage by Cape Horn. The 

 same name is sometimes given by analogy to a belt 

 of the North Atlantic about 40-50 N. 



Robben Island (Dutch, 'seal island'), an 

 islet at the entrance of Table Bay, 10 miles NW. 

 of Capetown. It contains a lunatic asylum and 

 a leper colony, the management of which latter 

 institution caused some discussion in 1889 and 1890. 



Robber Council. See EUTYCHES. 



Robbery is the taking and carrying away, 

 either with violence or witli threats of injury, of a 

 thing which is on the body or in the immediate 

 presence of the person from whom it is taken, 

 under snch circumstances that in the absence of 

 violence or threats the act committed would be a 

 theft In order to constitute the crime, the robber 

 must actually obtain possession of the goods. 

 Further, it is well established that no sudden 

 snatching of property unawares from a person is 

 sufficient to constitute robbery, unless some injury 

 be done to the person, or there l>e a previous 

 struggle for the possession of the property, or some 

 force used to obtain it. By statutory law in Eng- 

 land and Ireland (24 and 25 Viet. chap. 96) the 

 punishment for robbery is imprisonment or penal 

 servitude, varying according to the nature of the 

 violence or threats used. By the Criminal Pro- 

 cedure (Scotland) Act, 1887 (50 and 51 Viet. chap. 

 35), the jurisdiction of sheriffs has been extended 

 to robbery and certain other crimes which formerly 

 were cognisable only by the Court of Justiciary. 

 It is, however, to be noted that this extension of 

 jurisdiction does not render bailable crimes, such 

 as robl>ery, which were not formerly bailable. By 

 the above-mentioned statute it is now competent, 

 under an indictment for robbery, to convict of 

 reset or theft, or attempt to rob. An act of robbery 

 committed upon the high seas constitutes the 

 offence of piracy at common law ; and each state 

 is entitled to visit the crime with the penalties 

 which its own laws may determine. In England 

 cases of piracy are now tried at the Central Criminal 

 Court and at the assizes. 



Robhia, LUCA DEI.LA, sculptor and modeller of 

 figures in relief, was born at Florence in 1399 or 

 1400, worked all his life there, and died there 

 on 20th February 1482. He designed and executed 

 between 1431 and 1440 ten panels of Angels and 

 Dancing Boys for the cathedral, which Professor 

 J. H. Middleton calls one of the greatest pieces of 

 sculptured work in the 15th century. Another great 

 work by him was a bronze door, with ten panels of 

 figures in relief, for the sacristy of the cathedral, 

 made lietween 1448 and 1467. In marble he sculp- 

 tured, in 1457-58. the tomb of Federighi, Bishop of 

 Fieoole (now in the church of San Francesco outside 

 the city ). The frame that surrounds this monument 

 is made of exnuisitely painted majolica tiles. His 

 name is closely associated with the production of 

 figures in glazed or enamelled terra-cotta, made by 



a process which, though he did not invent it, he 

 yet perfected greatly. Amongst the works he 

 executed by this process are numerous medallions, 

 some white, some polychrome, and reliefs. His 

 principal pupil was his nephew ANDREA (1435- 

 1525), who worked chiefly at the production of 

 enamelled reliefs, retables, and medallions, these 

 last for the most part reproductions of the Madonna 

 and Child. Nearly all his works were of religious 

 subjects ; they were made chiefly for Florence, 

 Arezzo, and Prato. His son GIOVANNI (1469- 

 1529?) continued the activity of the family in this 

 style of work ; his best productions are the frieze, 

 representing the Seven Works of Mercy, outside a 

 hospital at Pistoia, and a fountain in the sacristy 

 of St Maria Novella in Florence. 



See Cavallucci and Molinier, Lfs Delia Bobbin, lm.r 

 Vie et leur (Euvre (1884); Leader Scott, Luca Delia 

 Robbia (in the 'Great Artists' series, 1883 to be useil 

 with caution ) ; and II. Reymond, Les Delia Bolilia 

 (Florence, 1897). 



Robert I. (OF SCOTLAND). See BRUCE. 



Robert II., king of Scotland 1371-90, was 

 born 2d March 1316, two years after the battle of 

 Bannockburn. His father was Walter Stewart 

 (q.v.), his mother Marjory, only daughter of Kobert 

 the Bruce ; and botli parents he lost in infancy. 

 Throughout the disastrous reign of his uncle, 

 David II. , he was one of the most prominent of the 

 patriotic nobles of Scotland, twice acting as regent 

 during his exile and captivity, and fighting at 

 Halidon Hill (1333) and Neville's Cross (1346). 

 On David's death (22d February 1371) he obtained 

 the crown, and became the founder of the Stewart 

 dynasty, in virtue of the law of succession settled 

 by the Council of Estates at Ayr in 1315. ' A man 

 not valiant,' Froissai t describes him, ' with red blear 

 eyes, who would rather lie still than ride;' and 

 partly from disposition, partly from the infirmities 

 of age, Robert proved a peaceable, if not exactly a 

 pusillanimous ruler. Such wars as were waged 

 with England were not only conducted, but 

 organised, by his powerful and intractable barons, 

 particularly the Earls of Douglas, Mar, March, 

 and Moray, who shaped the policy of the country 

 very much according to their pleasure. The misery 

 inflicted on lioth sides of the Border by the raids of 

 these warlike chiefs, and the reprisals of the Eng- 

 lish wardens the Percies and others were fright- 

 ful ; famine and pestilence became chronic ; but 

 the most celebrated incidents of Robert's reign 

 were the invasions of Scotland by an English mili- 

 tary and naval force under the command of the 

 Duke of Lancaster ( ' old John of Gaunt, time- 

 honoured Lancaster ') in 1384, and again by King 

 Richard II. himself in 1385, widen wasted the land 

 as far as Edinburgh and Fife, and the grand 

 retaliatory expedition of the Scotch in 1388, 

 which culminated in the battle of Otterburn (q.v.). 

 Robert died at his castle of Dundonald in Ayrshire, 

 19th April 1390. He married first, in 1349, his 

 mistress, Elizabeth Mure of Rowallan, and secondly, 

 in 1355, Euphemia, daughter of the Earl of Ross 

 and widow of the Earl of Moray. 



Robert III., king of Scotland 1390-1406, son 

 of the preceding, was born about 1340. His baptis- 

 mal name was John, but this name, out of hatred 

 to the memory of John Baliol, was changed on his 

 accession to the throne by an act of the Scot- 

 tish Estates. His imbecility as a ruler virtually 

 placed the reins of government in the hands of his 

 ambitious brother, Robert, Earl of Menteith and 

 Fife, in 1398 created Duke of Albany, during 

 whose regime the Scottish barons first began 

 to exercise that anarchic and disloyal authority 

 which, in the reigns of the first three Jameses, 

 threatened to destroy the power of the sove- 



