CAPI AGA CAPILLARY TUBES. 



and mayor of the palace under the Merovingian dy- 

 nasty, hud displaced tliut royal house, and usurped the 

 throne of the.. ancient kings of Uie Franks. Aftera 

 space of 235 y<jors, his own descendants, the Carlovin- 

 gian monarch* Experienced a similar fete. Under the 

 last Carlov in i;uis. destitute alike of energy and wis- 

 dom, Hugh the Great, duke of France (by' which was 

 then understood the Isle of France), Orleans, and 

 Burgundy, exercised a power ns unlimited as tliat of 

 the mayor of the palace under the Merovingians. 

 On the death of Louis V., without children, in 987, 

 liis uncle Charles, duke of Lower Lorraine, laid 

 claim to the throne, which the Franks had sworn to 

 preserve to the family of Charlemagne. The French 

 nobility, supported by pope John XV., proclaimed 

 Hugh, son ot Hugh the Great, duke of Fiance and 

 count of Paris, king, with the surname of Capet (ca- 

 petus, capita, broaoVhead ; or, more probably, from a 

 sort of liat, capatus). The valiant Charles of Lor- 

 raine was surprised in Laon, by the treachery of a 

 bishop, and made prisoner. He died, soon after- 

 wards, in prison, and liis son Otho, duke of Lower 

 Lorraine, died in 1006. Both his younger brothers 

 died childless in Germany. Thus the race of Capet 

 was left in possession of the throne of France. Ac- 

 cording to some historians, Hugh Capet was descend- 

 ed from a German family. He was married to a 

 German princess, Adelaide, daughter of King Henry 

 I. of Germany (duke of Saxony). Hugh was crown- 

 ed at Rheims. and swore to preserve to the nation, 

 and particularly to the powerful feudal nobility and 

 clergy, all their existing privileges. By his wise 

 measures, he gave permanence to nis dynasty, which, 

 next to the family of Guelph, is the eldest sovereign 

 house at present existing. (See Bourbon.) Hugh 

 and the succeeding monarchs, till Louis VII., took 

 the precaution to have their successors invested with 

 tlie royal title during their own life-time. Thus 

 Hugh had his son Robert crowned and anointed, as 

 his colleague, as early as Jan. 1, 988. He abolish- 

 ed, by law, the partition of the hereditary estates 

 among the sons of the kings, and forbade the aliena- 

 tion of the family domains. The daughters of the 

 kings were endowed, from that time, with money, 

 and the appanage which was given to the princes of 

 the blood returned to the crown in default of male 

 heirs. Both these principles were more fully con- 

 firmed by later laws. Thus Hugh Capet, by uniting 

 his hereditary duchy, consisting of Paris, Isle de 

 France, and Burgundy, unalienamy with the crown, 

 may be regarded as the founder of the French mon- 

 archy. What he had begun was completed by his 

 successors, particularly in the times of the crusades, 

 and by the establishment of standing armies. All the 

 political statements illustrative of this subject are 

 collected by the marquis de Pastoret, peer of France, 

 in his continuation of the Ordonnances des Rots de 

 France de la troisieme Race, vols. xv., xvi., xvii. 

 (Paris, 1811, 1814, 1820, fol.), with which may be 

 compared the essay of the advocate Beugnot, which 

 obtained the prize of the academy of inscriptions, 

 Essai surles Institutions de St Louis (Paris, 1821). 



CAPI AGA ; in the Turkish court, the superin- 

 tendent of the eunuchs. He also announces all who 

 desire to speak to the grand vizier, and introduces 

 foreign ambassadors to an audience. Capigi (capid- 

 tchf) is a name applied to the guards or door-keepers 

 of the seraglio, in number about 400. Their super- 

 intendent is called Capigi Baschi. They likewise 

 convey the sultan's orders. Among their duties is 

 tliat of carrying the cord to those who are to be 

 strangled. 



CAPIAS A writ or process of capias is one 

 whereby the sheriff is ordered to arrest the body of 

 ihe defendant, either before judgment, to compel him 



to answer to a Miit ; :ind this is called a capias ad 

 responttfnduni ; or, alter the judgment, to compel 

 him to satisfy the judgment ; and this is called ncap- 

 ias ad satis faciendum, commonly abl>re\ iated <-u. sa. 

 In case of injuries without force, the civil law, and, 

 originally, the common law, did not authorize the ar 

 rest of the defendant before judgment, that i>, tin- 

 arrest to answer ; and, upon feudal principles . 

 Sir William Blackstone, 3Com. 281, "the person 

 of a feudatory was not liable to be attached for in- 

 juries merely civil, lest, thereby, the lord should be 

 deprived of his services." The first writ of capias 

 ad respondendum was given by act of parliament in 

 1267, 52 Henry III., c. 23, sec. 1, which provided, 

 that, " if bailiff's, which ought to make account to 

 i heir lords, do withdraw themselves, and have no 

 lands nor tenements whereby they may be distrain- 

 ed, they shall be attached by their bodies, so that the 

 sheriff shall cause them to come to make their ac- 

 count." This act applied to a particular description 

 of receivers, and supposes them not only to be debt- 

 ors, but also to have in their own hands the evidence 

 of the amount of the debt, the production of which 

 was one object of the process. The statute of 13 

 Edward I., c. 11, passed in 1285, eighteen years after 

 the former, extends this process to " all manner of 

 receivers bound to yield account," and provides " if 

 they be found in arrearages upon this account, their 

 bodies shall be arrested, and, by the testimony of 

 the auditors, shall be sent into the next gaol, and be 

 imprisoned in irons under safe custody, and remain 

 in prison at their own cost, until they have satisfied 

 their master [the creditor] fully of their arrearages.'' 

 This statute seems to suppose the proof and estab- 

 lishment of the debt before the arrest, and, so far, 

 seems to have the character ofa ca. sa. ; but it is 

 considered a capias ad respondendum by Sir William 

 Blackstone ; so in Jacob's Law Dictionary, and, in- 

 deed, generally. And it appears that the practice 

 of arresting on mesne process, that is, before judg- 

 ment, to answer, in civil suits, grew out of these sta- 

 tutes ; for the subsequent statutesof 25 Edward III., 

 c. 17 (A.D. 1350), providing that " such process 

 shall be made in writ of debt, detinue of chattels, 

 and taking of beasts, by writ of capias, as is used in 

 writ of account;" and of 21 Henry VII., c. 9 (A.D. 

 1503), providing that " like process shall be hereaf- 

 ter, in actions upon the case, as in action of trespass 

 or debt ;" evidently have reference to an arrest to 

 answer. A writ upon which a suit is commenced is 

 either a capias, distress, or summons ; either the per- 

 son of the defendant is seized, and (unless he is bail- 

 ed) imprisoned until the trial, or his goods or lands 

 are seized as a guarantee of his appearance to an- 

 swer ; and more often, in modern times, to obtain a 

 lien to secure satisfaction of the judgment ; or he is 

 only summoned, that is, merely has notice that a suit 

 has been commenced before such a court, by such 

 a plaintiff, and is to be heard at such a time. This 

 last is uniformly the process adopted in claims of 

 land. But by the statute of 5 Geo. II., c. 27, since 

 made perpetual by another statute, it is provided, 

 that, " in all cases where the cause of action shall 

 not amount to ten pounds, the plaintiff shall not ar- 

 rest the body of the defendant ;" and " in all cases 

 where the cause of action shall amount to ten 

 pounds, an affidavit shall be made and filed of such 

 cause of action, and the sum specified in such affida- 

 vit shall be endorsed on the writ, for which sum the 

 sheriff shall take bail, and no more." 



CAPIGI. See Capi Aga. 



CAPILLARY TUBES, in physics ; little pipes, 

 the canals of which are extremely narrow, their dia- 

 meter being only a half, third, or fourth, &c., of a 

 line. If one end of a tube of this sort, open at both 



