PRINTING 



6339 



PRIORITY 



Printing House Square. Lon- 

 don square. It is at the E. end 

 of Printing House Lane, 'Water 

 Lane, Blackfriars, E.G. Since 1788 

 occupied by the printing office of 

 The Times (q.v.), its name is due 



Printing House Square, London, 



Part of the printing office of The 



Times newspaper 



to the existence here from the time 

 of Charles IT, to Feb., 1770, of 

 the King's printers. William Fai- 

 thorne, the engraver, died here in 

 1691. The site is said to have been 

 once occupied by the Norman 

 tower or castle of Mountfiquit, or 

 Mountfichet. Part of the Roman 

 wall was discovered here in 1849. 



Prinz Adalbert. German crui- 

 ser. She was sunk by British sub- 

 marine E8 off Libau, Oct. 23, 1915, 

 and nearly all aboard the cruiser, 

 numbering at least 550, were lost. 

 The Prinz Adalbert was an ar- 

 moured cruiser 410 ft. long, 65 ft. 

 in beam, and displacing 9,000 tons. 

 Her engines were of 17,500 h.p., 

 giving a speed of 21 knots. Her 

 guns were four 8-inch, ten 6-inch, 

 and 24 smaller ; and she had four 

 torpedo tubes, three of them being 

 submerged. 



A German liner of this name be- 

 longing to the Hamburg-Amerika 

 line was in Falmouth when the 

 Great War broke out, and was de- 

 tained by the British. Condemned 

 by the prize court as enemy pro- 

 perty in 1916, the decree of con- 

 fiscation was cancelled in 1918. 



Prinz Eitel Friedrich. German 

 armed liner. While commerce 

 raiding in the Atlantic, she sank, 

 among other vessels, the Amer- 

 ican sailing ship William P. Frye 

 carrying a cargo of wheat from 

 Seattle to Falmouth. The Germans 

 maintained it was contraband. 

 News of this outrage upon a neutral 

 became known in the U.S.A., 

 March 11, 1915, when she put intft 

 Newport News for coal and re- 



pairs, and there landed some of the 

 crew of the American ship. She 

 was interned on April 8. 



Prior. Ecclesiastical title for 

 the member of a monastic estab- 

 lishment second in rank to the 

 abbot, or, where there is no abbot, 

 the head of the establishment. 

 The original term was praepositus, 

 provost. The prior is generally en- 

 trusted with the discipline of the 

 monks, management of property, 

 etc. The position of the prioress is 

 a corresponding one in women's 

 orders. The house over which a 

 prior or prioress presided was 

 known as a priory. See Abbey ; 

 Monastery. 



Prior, MATTHEW (1664-1721). 

 English poet and diplomatist. Born 

 probably at Wimborne Minster, 

 Dorset, on July 21, 1664, the 

 son of a joiner, he was brought to 

 London and sent to Westminster 

 School, where he had reached the 

 third form when his father died. 

 He then had to assist his uncle, a 

 vintner, at the 

 Rhenish wine- 

 house in Can- 

 non Row, but 

 by the liber- 

 ality of Lord 

 Dorset was en- 

 abled to return 

 to Westmin- 

 ster, whence 

 he went to S. 

 John's Col- 

 lege, Cam- 

 bridge, of which he became a fellow 

 in 1688. This fellowship he re- 

 tained until his death. 



Friend of Bolingbroke, Gay, 

 Swift, and Arbuthnot, Prior spent 

 the greater part of his life in the 

 diplomatic service, at The Hague 

 and in Paris. The treaty of Ut- 

 recht, 1713, was familiarly known 

 as Matt's Peace. He was on good 

 terms with William III and Louis 

 XIV, was M.P. for East Grinstead, 

 Feb.-June, 1701, succeeded John 

 Locke as commissioner of trade, 

 1700-7, and was commissioner of 

 customs, 1711-14. At first an ad- 

 herent of the Whigs, he joined the 

 Tories in 1702. In 1715-17 he was 

 imprisoned in the Tower on a charge 

 of treasonable intrigue in con- 

 nexion with the treaty of Utrecht. 



In 1719, by the assistance of 

 friends, he brought out a sump- 

 tuous folio edition of his poems, 

 which brought him 4,000 guineas. 

 To this Lord Harley added an 

 equal sum for the purchase of 

 Down Hall, near to Hatfield Broad 

 Oak, Essex, where Prior hence- 

 forth chiefly resided. He died 

 while on a visit to Lord Harley at 

 Wimpole, Cambridge, Sept. 18, 

 1721, and was buried in West- 

 minster Abbey. 



As writer of vers df. societe, none, 

 perhaps, has excelled Matthew 

 Prior in humour, grace, ease, and 

 spontaneity. Master of many 

 metres, he liberated English verse 

 from the thraldom of the heroic 

 couplet. Of his two longer works, 

 Alma, or the Progress of Mind, 

 modelled on Hudibras, is the more 

 notable. But he is at his best in 

 his epigrams, as that on Bibo and 

 Charon ; his verses to children : 

 To a Clu'ld of Quality, and to the 

 Honourable Lady Margaret Caven- 

 dish Holes-Harley (Peggy) ; and 

 in such verses as The English 

 Padlock, The Garland, and The 

 Female Phaeton (Kitty). His 

 Tales are largely lost to the mod- 

 ern reader on account of the change 

 of literary taste. 



Bibliography. Works, ed. J. Mit- 

 ford, 1866 ; ed. A. Dobson, 1889 ; 

 ed. R. B. Johnson, 1892 ; ed. A. R. 

 Waller, new ed. 1907 ; Life, P. 

 Bickley, 1914 ; M. P., a Study of 

 His Public Career and Correspond- 

 ence, C. W. Legg, 1921 ; English 

 Humourists, W. M. Thackeray, 

 1858 ; Eighteenth Century Vig- 

 nettes, A. Dobson, 1st series, 1892 ; 

 3rd series, 1896 ; Prior Papers, 

 1685- 1721, Hist. MSS. Com., 1904-8; 

 Dialogues of the Dead, etc., ed. A. 

 R. Waller, 1907. 



Prior, MELTON (1845-1910). 

 British war artist and correspon- 

 dent. Born in London, Sept. 12, 

 1845, the son 

 of William 

 Henry Prior, 

 landscape 

 painter, he 

 joined the staff 

 of The Illus- 

 trated London 

 News in 1868, 

 and, beginning 

 with the 

 Ashanti War, 

 1873, repre- 

 sented that paper in over 24 cam- 

 paigns and revolutions, including 

 the siege of Ladysmith, 1899-1900, 

 and the Russo-Japanese War, 

 1904-5. He died Nov. 2, 1910. 

 See Campaigns of a War Corre- 

 spondent, ed. S. L. Bensusan, 1912 



Priority. In English law, 

 term used in connexion with the 

 law relating to mortgages and 

 Other charges on property. The 

 owner of property may mortgage 

 or charge Jit as often as he pleases, 

 so long as he can get people to 

 lend him money on it ; and, if he 

 has done so, it frequently becomes 

 of great importance to know 

 whether one mortgage or -charge 

 has priority over another, because 

 when the property is eventually 

 realized there may not be enough 

 to satisfy everybody. As a rule, 

 such successive encumbrances rank 

 for priority in order of date. 



Melton Prior, 

 British war artist 



Elliott & Fry 



