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guns; the other, which has 32, stands at the north end of it: 
but there are, besides these, several platforms on the sea shore. 
Lat. 13. 15. N. long. 58. 31. W. 
SPEIGLETOWN, a village of the United States, in 
Rensselaer county. New York. 
SPEISSE, in Mineralogy, a name given by the Germans, 
and other workers on cobalt, to a sort of impure regulus of 
bismuth, sometimes occurring in their processes. 
SPELDHURST, a parish of England, in Kent; 3 miles 
norths west of Tunbridge Wells. The ancient church of this 
parish was destroyed by lightning in 1791. Over its porch, 
cut in stone, are the arms of the duke of Orleaus, who was 
taken prisoner at the battle of Agincourt,by Richard Waller, 
of Gromebridge, at whose house he was kept nearly 25 years, 
and was a great benefactor to the church of Speldhurst. Po¬ 
pulation 1909. 
SPELK, s. [j-pel, Sax., fascia, a kind of splint applied to 
fractured limbs. See Lye.] A splinter; a small stick to 
fix on thatch with. A northern word. 
SPELL, s. [rpel. Sax., a word.] A charm consisting 
of some words of occult power.—Thus Horace uses words: 
Sunt verba et voces quibus hunc lenire dolorern, 
Possis. 
Thou durst not thus disparage glorious arms, 
Had not spells 
And black enchantments, some magician’s art, 
Arm’d thee or charm'd thee strong. Milton. 
A turn of work; a vicissitude of labour. [From the Sax. 
j-pehan, vices alicujus obire. Lye.] Their toil is so ex¬ 
treme as they cannot endure it above four hours in a day, 
but are succeeded by spells: the residue of the time they 
wear out at coytes and kayles. Carew. —[j’pel, Sax. his- 
toria, narratio.\ A tale. Obsolete. 
Now—hearken to my spell: 
Of battaille, and of chevalrie. 
Anon I wil you tell. Chaucer. 
To SPELL, v. a. pret. and part. pass, spelled or spelt, 
[spellcn. Tent., spellen, Germ., which Wachter derives from 
spalten, to split, to divide.] To write with the proper letters. 
—In the criticism of spelling, the word satire ought to be 
with i, and not with y; and if this be so, then it is false 
spelled throughout. Dryden. —To read by naming letters 
singly. 
I never yet saw man, 
How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur’d. 
But she would spell him backward : if fair fac’d. 
She’d swear the gentleman should be her sister. Shahspeare. 
To read minutely; to discover by petty characters or 
marks.—In this manner to sit spelling and observing divine 
justice upon every accident, and slight disturbance, that may 
happen humanly to the affairs of men, is but another frag¬ 
ment of his broken revenge. Alii ton. —To charm. 
I have you fast: 
Unchain your spirits now with spelling charms, 
And try if they can gain your liberty. Ska/cspeare. 
[j-pelhan, Sax.] To relate; to teach. 
Might I that holy legend find, 
By fairies spelt in mystic rhymes, 
To teach enquiring later times. 
What open force, or secret guile. 
Dash’d into dust the solemn pile. Warton. 
To SPELL, v. n. To form words of letters. 
What small knowledge was, in them did dwell; 
And he a god, who could but read or spell. Dryden. 
To read. 
When gowns, not arms, repell’d 
The fierce Epirote, and the African bold. 
Whether to settle peace, or to unfold 
The drift of hollow states, hard to be spell'd. Alilton. 
To read unskilfully.—-As to his understanding, they bring 
him in void of all notion, a rude unwritten blank, sent into 
the world only to read and spell out a God in the works of 
creation. South. 
SPELL, in Sea Language, the period in which a sailor, 
or gang of sailors, is employed in a particular exercise, from 
which they are relieved as soon as the limited time expires. 
Such are the spells to the hand-lead in sounding, to the 
pump, to look out on the mast-head, &c., and to steer the 
ship, which last is generally called the trick. 
SPELLO, a decayed town of Italy, in the Popedom. 
It corresponds to the Hispellum of the ancients, and was 
sacked by the troops of the emperor Charles V., in 1529; 
10 miles south-west of Nocera. 
SPELMAN (Sir Henry), an eminent antiquary, was bom 
in 1562, and having received a common education, he was 
sent at an early age to Trinity College, Cambridge; and he 
was afterwards entered of Lincoln’s-Inn, in order that he 
might study the common law, but his inclination was not 
favourable to legal pursuits: he seems to have given a de¬ 
cided preference to polite literature and antiquities, but these 
pursuits were cut short by an early marriage, which induced 
him to settle upon his estate, and take the management of 
it in his own hands. He did not, however, abandon his 
antiquarian pursuits, and while he was yet a very young 
man, he drew up a treatise in the Latin language, entitled 
“ Aspilogia,” relative to armorial bearings, and made tran¬ 
scripts of several charters of monasteries in Norfolk and 
Suffolk. He was also associated to the original society 
of antiquarians, and became the intimate friend of Cotton, 
Camden, and other favourers of that class of studies. In 
1604 he was elected high sheriff of the county, and about 
the same time communicated to Speed a description of Nor¬ 
folk, for his work entitled, “ The Theatre of Great Britain.” 
In 1607 he was nominated by the king one of the commis¬ 
sioners for settling the titles to lands and manors in certain 
counties of Ireland, and on this occasion he went thrice 
to that country. Farming, in time, became irksome, because 
he probably found it unprofitable: he sold off his stock, 
let his estates, and came with his family to London, and he 
chose as the particular object of his studies, the antiquities 
of English law, as deducible from English records; but he 
was diverted from his object by an incidental subject. Dur¬ 
ing his residence on his estate, he had purchased the lands 
of two suppressed monasteries, and being involved in a 
troublesome law-suit in order to defend his title, he began to 
entertain scruples concerning the secularization of property 
once belonging to the church. He now, 1613, drew up a 
work with the title “De non temerandis Ecclesiis; Churches 
not to be violated; a Tract of the Rights and Respects due 
to Churches, &c.” He practised what he pleaded for in 
theory, and being possessed of an impropriation in Norfolk, he 
devoted the profits of it to the augmentation of the vicarage. 
By king James he was knighted, and on the revival of the 
society of antiquarians in 1614, he attended as one of the 
old members ; on which occasion he wrote “ A Discourse 
concerning the Original of the four Law Terms of the 
Year.” He also wrote a tract in answer to an apology for 
archbishop Abbot, who had accidentally killed his game- 
keeper, in which he maintained that the prelate by that act 
had ceased from his office. Having in the mean time con¬ 
tinued his enquiries into legal antiquities, he found that the 
knowledge of the Saxon language was absolutely necessary 
to his purpose, which he accordingly set about obtaining, 
and in 1621 he printed a specimen of his proposed work, 
which was so much approved, that several eminent scholars 
urged him to its completion. In 1626 he published the first 
part, under the title of “ Archeologus, in modum Glossarii 
ad rem antiquam posteriorem.” Notwithstanding the ap¬ 
plause of the learned, the author was not encouraged by the 
sale of his work to publish the second part during his life, 
which he had fully prepared for the press. It was, however, 
given to the world after his decease, and the whole was 
entitled “ Glossarium Archaiologicorum.” The object of 
this work is the explanation of obsolete words occurring in 
ouc 
