B E R 



329 



B E R 





was recalled through court intrigue at the end of the cam- 

 paign of 1704. In the beginning of 1706 he was made a 

 marshal of France, and was again sent to command in Spain, 

 where in 1 707 he won the decisive battle of Almanza, against 

 the Earl of Galway and the Marquis de las Minas, imme- 

 diately after which Philip V. created him a grandee of the 

 first class, by the title of Duke of Liria and Xerica. Having 

 served on the Rhine and in Flanders in 1 708, he was sent 

 in 1709 to command in Provence and Dauphiny ; his suc- 

 cessful defence of this frontier against the superior force of 

 the Duke of Savoy, is the chief foundation of his military 

 fame, and has been considered a masterpiece of strategy. 

 During the remainder of his life he was constantly employed 

 in important commands, with the exception of the period 

 from 1724 to 1733, during which he lived in retirement. 

 He was killed by a cannon ball at the siege of Philipsburg, 

 June 12, 1734. 



The Duke of Berwick was twice married; first in 1695, 

 to a daughter of the Earl of Clanrickarde, who died in 1 698. 

 By her he had one son, who succeeded to his titles and 

 estates in Spain. Secondly, to a niece of Lord Bulkeley, in 

 1697. In 1709 he was created a duke and peer of France, 

 with remainder to his children by her. The present duke 

 of Fitzjames descends from this marriage. In military re- 

 putation, particularly for the conduct of defensive war, the 

 Duke of Berwick stands high among the generals of his 

 period. Both his public and private character are repre- 

 sented by Montesquieu as deserving of the highest pane- 

 gyric. His memoirs down to the year 1716, written by 

 himself, with a continuation to his death by the editor, and 

 a sketch of his character by Montesquieu, were published 

 at Paris in 1778. 



BERWICK, NORTH, a town and parish in the county 

 of Haddington, Scotland, situated on the coast at the mouth 

 of the Frith of Forth. The town is twenty-two miles north- 

 east of Edinburgh, eleven north-west of Dunbar, and ten 

 north from Haddington. 



The parish stretches about three miles along the sea- 

 coast, and is in breadth inland about two miles and a half. 

 It may contain an area of somewhat more than 4000 acres. 

 The whole parish is arable, except the hill called North 

 Berwick Law, and about eighty-nine acres of links or 

 downs near the sea. On the shore, a little to the eastward 

 of the harbour, on a sandy hill, stands a picturesque little 

 ruin : antiquarians have not ascertained whether it was the 

 chapel of a nunnery, an hospital, or a hermitage. 



About two miles to the east of North Berwick stands the 

 castle of Tantallon, on a high rocky cliff overlooking the 

 sea, which surrounds it on three sides. In shape it is halt' 

 an irregular hexagon. It is encompassed towards the land 

 side by a double ditch ; the inner ditch appears to have 

 been very deep. The entrance was by a draw-bridge ; but 

 it is not known when it was built. Inside the castle is a 

 labyrinth of broken staircases and vaulted chambers and 

 passages. Much of the building remains, though in a ruin- 

 ous state. Formerly it was one of the strongholds of the 

 Douglas family, and Lindsay of Pitscottie relates a siege of 

 it by James V. 



The town government of North Berwick, which was made 

 a royal burgh by James VI., is in the hands of two baillies, 

 a treasurer, and nine councillors. The burgh joins Lauder, 

 Dunbar, Jedburgh, and Haddington, in sending a member 

 to parliament. The parliamentary boundaries are fixed by 

 the Scotch Reform Act. The burgh consists of a long 

 street running east and west, at the east end of which is the 

 town-house, and a street which leads to the harbour. The 

 pier is tolerably good, but the harbour is difficult of access. 

 The inhabitants have a common for cows near the town. 

 The burgh has little or no trade. There is a good reading- 

 room and inn ; and the parish church and manse are within 

 the boundaries of the town. The number of houses of the 

 annual value of \dl. and upwards in the burgh was, in 1831, 

 in all 71. The assessed taxes were <J7l. 6s. 3d. The gross 

 population was, in 1831, in the burgh and parish, 1824 ; the 

 number of houses inhabited was 284 ; the number of fa- 

 milies, 415; the number of houses uninhabited, 15; the 

 number of families chiefly employed in agriculture, 175 ; in 

 trade, manufactures, and handicraft, 105; all other families 

 not comprised in the two preceding classes, 135 ; the number 

 of males was 853, of females 971 . In this parish there are 

 14 men employed in fishing, and 12 in quarries; and the 

 number of capitalists, bankers, professional and other edu- 

 cated men is 1 9. 



The stipend of North Berwick is worth, on an average, 

 1161. sterling; and the glebe, which consists of six acros, is, 

 from the richness of the soil, of considerable value. The 

 poor are supported partly by the liberality of the patron of 

 the parish, partly by the kirk-session, and partly by a fund 

 of somewhat more than twenty guineas per annum left for 

 their use. The whole sum expended on the poor amounts 

 to about SOI. sterling. 



(Communications from Scotland; the Scotch Boundary 

 Reports; the Enumeration Abstract of Population Re- 

 turns ; Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. v. ; 

 Scotch Reform Act ; Grose's Antiquities, vol. i.) 



BERWICKSHIRE, situated on the south-eastern ex- 

 tremity of Scotland, is bounded on the east by the German 

 Ocean ; on the north by Haddingtonshire ; on the west by 

 Roxburghshire and part of Edinburghshire ; by the river 

 Tweed and part of Roxburghshire on the south, and on the 

 south-east by the township of Berwick. Its most northern 

 point lies in 55 58' 30" N. lat., and its southern extremity, 

 upon the Tweed, is in 55 36' 30". Dunse, its largest town, 

 situated nearly in the centre of the county, is 2 20' west of 

 Greenwich. The greatest length of the county is thirty- 

 one miles two furlongs ; the greatest breadth nineteen miles 

 and a half; and its area is estimated at 285,440 English 

 statute acres.in Mr. John Blackadder's Map of Berwickshire, 

 from actual survey, published in 1797 in Edinburgh, and 

 at 285,600 English statute acres by Mr. William Couling, 

 civil engineer and surveyor, in his general statement of 

 the territorial surface of Great Britain, &c., given to the 

 Emigration Committee in May, 1827. Mr. Couling esti- 

 mates the cultivated lands in Berwickshire the arable 

 lands, gardens meadows, and pastures at 160,000 acres ; 

 the uncultivateu or waste lands capable of cultivation, at 

 100,000; and the unprofitable lands or surface occupied by 

 roads, lakes, rivers, canals, rivulets, brooks, farm-yards, 

 quarries, ponds, ditches, hedges, fences, cliffs, craggy de- 

 clivities, stony places, barren spots, woods and plantations, 

 &c., at 25,600 English statute acres. If we take this esti- 

 mate, the area of the county in square miles is 446J. The 

 sea-coast of Berwickshire is about seventeen miles and 

 a half in length, from the boundaries of the township of 

 Berwick to its junction with East Lothian. Greenlaw, the 

 county town, is situated thirty-seven miles to the south-east 

 of Edinburgh. The gross population of this county in 1831 

 was 34,048. 



The surface of Berwickshire is upon the whole more level 

 than is common in Scotland ; it is hilly to the north and 

 west, and slopes towards the south and east. The principal 

 part of the county seen from an eminence looking towards 

 the Tweed, appears a level surface of fields, gardens, and 

 trees, with towns, villages, and castles interspersed ; it con- 

 tains however several considerable elevations, and valleys 

 watered by rivers and streamlets. Hume castle, about three 

 miles south of Greenlaw, is built on an elevation of trap- 

 rock, 898 feet above the level of the sea. This building, 

 which forms a conspicuous and picturesque object to the 

 whole of the inland district of Berwickshire, now consists of 

 only a few battlements made out of the ruins of the former 

 castle by the late Earl of Marchmont, so as to look like a 

 castle at a distance. The old castle, after being taken by 

 the English in September, 1548, and retaken by the 

 Scots in 1549, was at last taken by some of Cromwell's 

 troops in 1650, and damaged so much that it became a 

 ruin. Almost every parish contains the ruins of some 

 fortified place ; a memorial of the unsettled state of the 

 borders before the Union. 



The following table shows the elevation of the principal 

 hills of the Lammermoor above the level of the sea, and the 

 parishes in which they are situated : 



Hills. Heights. Purishei. 



Lammerlaw 1500 feet Lauder 



Sayerslaw 1500 do. Longformacus 



Dorringtonlaw 1145 do. Do. 



Boonhill . 1090 do. Legerwood 



Soutra . 1000 do. Channelkirk 



Cockburnlaw 912 do. Duuse 



Dunslaw . 630 do. Do. 



The coast consists of bold rocky precipices of considerable 

 height, and is almost inaccessible except at Eyemouth and 

 Coldingham bays, and at two or three other places where 

 sandy or gravel beaches at the foot of the rocks are accessible 

 to fishing-boats. From the boundaries of the township of 



NO. 246. 



[THE PENNY CYCLOPEDIA.] 



VOL. IV. 2 U 



