ORDAINERS 



5866 



ORDER-IN-COUNC1L 



Ordainers, LORDS. Body of 21 

 peers appointed in 1310, by a par- 

 liament consisting of peers only, to 

 amend the unsatisfactory govern- 

 ment of Edward II. It was ar- 

 ranged that they should administer 

 affairs for 18 months and then for- 

 mulate proposals. These proposals, 

 known as the ordinances of 1311, 

 secured the expulsion of Gaveston, 

 the king's disreputable favourite, 

 and of otherforeigners, various limi- 

 tations of the royal power, and the 

 summoning of Parliament once a 

 year. See Edward II ; England : 

 History. 



Ordeal. Ancient form of trial 

 per Dei judicium, by judgement 

 ot God. The underlying belief 

 that Divine providence would in- 

 tervene to protect the innocent 

 from unjust condemnation is of 

 remote antiquity and universal dis- 

 tribution. A test of innocence of 

 infidelity by drinking bitter water 

 mixed with dust from the floor of 

 the tabernacle (Numbers 5) shows 

 that the practice was in use among 

 the Jews. That it obtained among 

 the ancient Greeks is proved by 

 a passage in Sophocles' Antigone, 

 where the watchman protests his 

 readiness to hold red hot iron in his 

 hand and walk through fire, to 

 prove his innocence of Cleon's 

 charge of having given Polynices 

 proper burial. 



Among the Anglo-Saxons the 

 test generally took one of four 

 forms : ordeal by battle ; ordeal 

 by fire either by handling hot iron, 

 or walking blindfold and barefoot 

 over red hot ploughshares placed 

 at irregular intervals ; by hot 

 water, when the suspect plunged 

 his arm up to the elbow into 

 boiling water ; or by cold water, 

 when the suspect was flung into 

 a stream or pond and, making no 

 effort to swim, either sank, when 

 he was deemed innocent, or floated, 

 in which case he was convicted and 

 punished. 



Legal ordeals were abolished in 

 England under Henry III, with 

 the exception of trial by battle, 

 which actually survived on the 

 statute book until 1818, when it 

 was abolished in consequence of 

 the right to trial by battle being 

 claimed by a man charged with 

 murder. Swimming, or floating, 

 was the common method of testing 

 witches until the 18th century, the 

 women being bound right thumb 

 to left toe and left thumb to right 

 toe, in which position they could 

 not keep themselves afloat, and 

 were left to the judgement of 

 heaven. See Divination; Duel: 

 Trial by Battle. 



Ordeal Bean (Physostigma 

 venenosum). Perennial climbing 

 herb of the natural order Legumi- 



nosae, native of tropical Africa. 

 The leaves are broken into three 

 leaflets. The purple, bean-like 

 flowers are in sprays, and are suc- 

 ceeded by dark- brown pods con- 

 taining two or three large blackish 



Ordeal Bean: foliage and flowers. Inset, 

 seeds, showing the bilum or deep groove 



or brown seeds with a deep groove 

 (hilum) along one side and around 

 one end. These seeds are extremely 

 poisonous, and are employed by the 

 natives of Old Calabar as an ordeal 

 for those suspected of witchcraft. 

 The suspect has to eat beans until 

 he vomits and so prove his inno- 

 cence, or he dies, and so proves bis 

 guilt. It has been found useful in 

 ophthalmic surgery for contraction 

 of the pupil of the eye. 



Ordeal of Richard Fever el. 

 THE. Novel by George Meredith 

 (q.v.), first published in 1859 with 

 the sub-title of A History of Father 

 and Son. The earliest of its author's 

 series of fiction studies of modern 

 life, this story is by some critics re- 

 garded as on the whole the greatest 

 of them. Its theme is the danger of 

 applying academic theories to 

 education for practical life. The 

 story represents the best qualities 

 of Meredith as a novelist, his wit, 

 humour, poetry, and rare skill in 

 psychological analysis. 



Order (Lat. ordiri, to begin). 

 Word used in several senses. Its 

 prime meaning is that of a series or 

 row, hence an order or regular ar- 

 rangement. From this came the 

 idea of obedience, and so we have 

 the use of the word for a command. 



To-day an order means a class of 

 persons united together in some 

 way. Such are the orders of knight- 

 hood and other orders of the same 

 kind, which do not carry the hon- 

 our of knighthood, the order of 

 merit, for instance, and the mon- 

 astic and other religious and semi- 

 religious orders. (See Knighthood ; 

 Merit, Order of ; S. John of Jeru- 

 .salem ; Templars, etc.) 



In the sense of a command the 

 word is frequent in military and 

 naval language, for instance, close 

 order, fighting order, sealed orders, 

 etc. The same idea is seen in 



ecclesiastical matters, the order of 

 service and the phrases Holy Orders 

 and minor orders being examples. 

 It is the same in business, in such 

 phrases as payable to order. In a 

 related sense order implies good 

 and peaceable conditions, e.g. pub- 

 lic order and to maintain order. 

 (See Holy Orders.) 



In natural science, especially in 

 zoology and botany, an order refers 

 to a number of genera having im- 

 portant points in common. It is 

 thus intermediate between a class 

 and a family. In architecture, an 

 order is one of the different ways hi 

 which the column, with its various 

 parts and its entablature, are 

 moulded and related to each other. 

 There are three main orders. Doric, 

 Ionian, and Corinthian, and two 

 minor ones, Tuscan and Composite. 

 See Architecture ; Column ; Corin- 

 thian Order; Doric Order, etc. 



Ordericus Vitalis (1075-1142). 

 Medieval chronicler. Born near 

 Shrewsbury, England, Feb. 16, 

 1075, the son of a French priest and 

 an English mother, he passed the 

 greater part of his life in the 

 Norman monastery of St. Evroul. 

 About 1123 he began to write the 

 history of the monastery, but this 

 was soon expanded into a general 

 history, although described as His- 

 toria Ecclesiastica only. He had 

 .good sources of information about 

 England as well as France, and the 

 part of his work which deals with 

 his own age, the eighty years after 

 the Norman conquest, is a valuable 

 contribution to the history of the 

 two countries. It has been edited 

 by French scholars and translated 

 into English. 



Order - in - Council. In the 



United Kingdom, and also in Can- 

 ada, Australia, and other parts of 

 the British Empire, an order issued 

 by the sovereign on the advice of 

 the privy council. It is thus a 

 method of legislation, having taken 

 the place of the proclamations 

 issued by the Tudor and later 

 sovereigns. 



The place of orders-in-council in 

 the parliamentary system is main- 

 tained by a fiction. Theoretically 

 they are issued by the advice of the 

 privy council, but in practice, on 

 the advice of only a few of its mem- 

 bers, who are also members of the 

 Government, and as such respon- 

 sible to Parliament. These orders 

 were first issued in the 18th cen- 

 tury, and a notable instance was in 

 1807-8, when by them all vessels 

 were forbidden to trade with ports 

 under French control. (See Berlin 

 ' 'Decree.) They were extensively 

 used during the Great War, especi- 

 ally for matters of urgency. Orders- 

 in-Council are used to carry out 

 Acts of Parliament. Towards 



