STAFFA ("pillar Island"), an uninhabited islet of basaltic formation off the W. coast of Scotland, 54 m. W. of Oban; 1 m. in circumference, and girt with precipitous cliffs, except on the sheltered NE., where there is a shelving shore; is remarkable for its caves, of which Fingal's Cave is the most famous, having an entrance 42 ft. wide and 66 ft. high, and penetrating 227 ft.
STAFFORD (20), county town of Staffordshire, on the Sow, 29 m. NNW.
of Birmingham; has two fine old churches, St. Mary's and St. Chad's, interesting architecturally, King Edward's grammar school, and Stafford Castle finely situated on the outskirts; is an important railway centre, and noted for its boot and shoe manufactures.
STAFFORDSHIRE (1,083), a midland mining and manufacturing county of England, wedged in on the N. between Cheshire (W.) and Derby (N.), and extending southward to Worcester, with Shropshire on the W., and Leicester and Warwick on the E.; with the exception of the wild and hilly "moorland" in the N. consists of an undulating plain crossed by the Trent, and intersected in all directions by canals and railways; embraces two rich coal-fields, one in the "Black Country" of the S., where rich deposits of iron-stone are also worked, and one in the N., embracing the district of the "Potteries"; famous breweries exist at Burton; Wolverhampton is the largest town.
STAGIRITE, THE, ARISTOTLE (q. v.), so called from his native place Stagira.
STAHL, FRIEDRICH JULIUS, writer of jurisprudence, born at Munich, of Jewish parents; embraced Christianity; wrote "The Philosophy of Law"; became professor thereof at Berlin; was a staunch Lutheran, and a Conservative in politics (1802-1861).
STAHL, GEORG ERNEST, a German chemist, born at Anspach; was professor of Medicine at Halle; author of the theory of PHLOGISTON (q. v.) and of ANIMISM (q. v.) (1650-1735).
STAINES (5), a pretty little town of Middlesex, on the Thames (spanned here by a fine granite bridge), 6 m. SE. of Windsor; St. Mary's church has a tower designed by Inigo Jones; has breweries, mustard-mills, and other factories; in the neighbourhood are RUNNYMEDE and COOPER'S HILL (q. v.).
STAIR, JOHN DALRYMPLE, 1ST EARL OF, eldest son of James Dalrymple (1619-1695) of Stair (a distinguished lawyer in his day, who rose to be President of the Court of Session; wrote a well-known work, "Institutes of the Law of Scotland"; as a Protestant supported the Prince of Orange, and by him was raised to the peerage as viscount in 1690); adopted law as a profession, and was called to the bar in 1672; got into trouble with Claverhouse, and was fined and imprisoned, but in 1687 was received into royal favour, became Lord Advocate, a Lord Ordinary in the Court of Session, and subsequently as Secretary of State for Scotland was mainly responsible for the MASSACRE OF GLENCOE (q. v.); was created an earl in 1703, and later was active in support of the union of the English and Scottish Parliaments (1648-1707).
STAIR, JOHN DALRYMPLE, 2ND EARL OF, second son of preceding; entered the army at 19, and fought with his regiment, the Cameronians, at Steinkirk; studied law for some time at Leyden, but went back to the army, and by 1701 was a lieutenant-colonel in the Scots Foot Guards, and in 1706 colonel of the Cameronians; fought with distinction under Marlborough at Venlo, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and, as commander of a brigade, at the siege of Lille and at Malplaquet; was active in support of the Hanoverian succession, and subsequently in the reigns of George I.
and II. filled important diplomatic and military posts (1673-1747).
STALACTITE, a cone of carbonate of lime attached like an icicle to the roof of a cavern, and formed by the dripping of water charged with the carbonate from the rock above; Stalagmite being the name given to the cone formed on the floor by the dripping from a stalactite above.
STALYBRIDGE (44), a manufacturing town of Cheshire and Lancashire, on both banks of the Tame, 7 m. E. by N. of Manchester; is of modern growth, and noted for its large cotton-yarn and calico factories, iron-foundries and machine-shops.
STAMFORD (8), an interesting old town, partly in Lincolnshire and partly in Northamptonshire, on the Welland, 12 m. WNW. of Peterborough; was one of the five Danish burghs, and is described in DOMESDAY BOOK (q. v.); a massacre of Jews occurred here in 1140, and in Plantagenet times it was a place of ecclesiastical, parliamentary, and royal importance; figures in the Wars of the Roses and the Civil War of Charles I.'s time; has three fine Early English churches, a corn exchange, two handsome schools, Browne's Hospital, founded in Richard III.'s reign, and Burghley House, a noble specimen of Renaissance architecture; the _Stamford Mercury_ (1695) is the earliest provincial newspaper; the district is mainly agricultural.
STAMFORD (16), a town of Connecticut, situated amid surrounding hills in Long Island Sound, 33 m. NE. of New York; is a summer resort, and has iron and bronze foundries, etc.
STAMFORD BRIDGE, a village of Yorkshire, on the Derwent, 9 m. NE.
of York; the scene of Harold's victory over the invading forces of Harold Haarfager on September 25, 1066.
STAMP ACT, a measure passed by Grenville's Ministry in 1765 enacting that all legal documents used in the colonies should bear Government stamps. The Americans resisted on the ground that taxation without representation in Parliament was unjust. Riots broke out, and the stamped paper was carefully avoided. In 1766 Pitt championed the cause of the colonists, and largely through his eloquence Government in that year was induced to repeal the Act.
STANDING STONES, rude unhewn stones standing singly or in groups in various parts of the world, and erected at remote periods, presumably in memory of some great achievement or misfortune, or as having some monumental reference.
STANDISH, MILES, one of the Puritan fathers, of Lancashire birth, and a cadet of a family of knightly rank in the county; served in the Netherlands as a soldier, and went to America in the Mayflower in 1620, and was helpful to the colony in its relations both with the Indians and the mother-country; is the hero of a poem of Longfellow's.
STANFIELD, CLARKSON, English landscape-painter, born in Sunderland, of Irish descent; began as a scene-painter; his first picture, "Market-boats on the Scheldt," proving a success, he devoted himself to easel-painting, and his principal works were "Wreckers off Fort Rouge,"
"A Calm at Sea," "The Abandoned," "The Bass Rock"; his frequent visits to the Continent supplied him with fresh subjects; and Ruskin says of one of his pictures, "it shows as much concentrated knowledge of the sea and sky as, diluted, would have lasted any of the old masters for life"
(1793-1866).
STANHOPE, LADY HESTER LUCY, born at Chevening, Kent, the eldest daughter of the third Earl of Stanhope, and niece of William Pitt; a woman of unusual force of character and attractiveness; from 1803 to 1806 was, as the confidant and housekeeper of her uncle William Pitt, a leader of society; retired with a Government pension after Pitt's death, but impelled by her restless nature, led an unsettled life in Southern Europe, and finally settled in Syria in 1814, making her home in the old convent of Mar Elias, near Mount Lebanon, where, cut off from Western civilisation, for 25 years she exercised a remarkable influence over the rude tribes of the district; assumed the dress of a Mohammedan chief, and something of the religion of Islam, and in the end came to look upon herself as a sort of prophetess; interesting accounts of her strange life and character have been published by her English physician, Dr. Madden, and others (1776-1839).
STANHOPE, PHILIP HENRY, EARL, historian, born at Walmer, only son of the fourth Earl of Stan hope; graduated at Oxford in 1827, and three years later entered Parliament as a Conservative; held office as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in Peel's Ministry of 1834-35, and as Secretary to the Indian Board of Control during 1845-46; succeeded his father in 1855, before which he was known by the courtesy title of Lord Mahon; literature was his chief interest, and as a historian and biographer he has a deservedly high reputation for industry and impartial judgment; a "History of England from 1713 to 1783," a "History of Spain under Charles II.," "Historical and Critical Essays," and Lives of Pitt, Conde, and Belisarius, are his most important works (1805-1875).
STANISLAS I., LECZINSKI, king of Poland, born in Lemberg; afterwards sovereign of the Duchies of Bar and Lorraine; became the father-in-law of Louis XV. (1677-1766).
STANLEY. ARTHUR PENRHYN, widely known as Dean Stanley, having been dean of Westminster, born at Alderley, in Cheshire, son of the rector, who became bishop of Norwich; was educated at Rugby under Dr. Arnold, and afterwards at Balliol College, Oxford; took orders, and was for 12 years tutor in his college; published his "Life of Dr. Arnold" in 1844, his "Sinai and Palestine" in 1855, after a visit to the East; held a professorship of Ecclesiastical History in Oxford for a time, and published lectures on the Eastern Church, the Jewish Church, the Athanasian Creed, and the Church of Scotland; accompanied the Prince of Wales to the East in 1862, and became dean of Westminster next year in succession to Trench; wrote "Historical Monuments of Westminster Abbey"
and "Christian Institutions"; he had been married to Lady Augusta Bruce, and her death deeply affected him and accelerated his own; he was buried beside her in Henry VII.'s chapel; he was an amiable man, an interesting writer, and a broad churchman of very pronounced views (1815-1881).
STANLEY, HENRY MORTON, African explorer, born in Denbigh, Wales, in humble circumstances, his parental name being Rowlands, he having assumed the name of Stanley after that of his adopted father, Mr. Stanley, New Orleans; served in the Confederate army; became a newspaper foreign correspondent, to the _New York Herald_ at length; was summoned to go and "find Livingstone"; after many an impediment found Livingstone on 10th November 1871, and after staying with him, and accompanying him in explorations, returned to England in August next year; in 1874 he set out again at the head of an expedition, solved several problems, and returned home; published "Congo and its Free State," "In Darkest Africa," &c.; represents Lambeth, North, in Parliament, having been elected in 1895; _b_. 1840.
STANNARY, a general term used to cover the tin mines of a specified district, the miners themselves, and such customs and privileges as appertain to the workers and the mines. In England the term is specially associated with the stannaries of Devon and Cornwall, which by an Act of Edward III. were conferred in perpetuity upon the Prince of Wales as Duke of Cornwall, who holds the title of Lord Warden of the Stannaries.
Special Stannary Courts for the administration of justice amongst those connected with the mines are held in the two counties, and are each presided over by a warden and a vice-warden. Up to 1752 representative assemblies of the miners, called Stannary Parliaments, were held. Appeals from the Stannary Courts may be made now to the higher courts of England.
STAR-CHAMBER, a court which originated in the reign of Edward III., and consisted practically of the king's ordinary council, meeting in the Starred Chamber, and dealing with such cases as fell outside the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery; was revived and remodelled by Henry VII., and in an age when the ordinary courts were often intimidated by powerful offenders, rendered excellent service to the cause of justice; was further developed and strengthened during the chancellorship of Wolsey, and in the reign of James I. had acquired jurisdiction as a criminal court over a great variety of misdemeanours--perjury, riots, conspiracy, high-treason, &c. Already tending to an exercise of unconstitutional powers, it in the reign of Charles I. became an instrument of the grossest tyranny, supporting the king in his absolutist claims, and in 1641 was among the first of the many abuses swept away by the Long Parliament.
STARS, THE, are mostly suns, but being, the nearest of them, at a distance from us more than 500,000 times our distance from the sun, are of a size we cannot estimate, but are believed to be 300 times larger than the earth; they are of unequal brightness, and are, according to this standard, classified as of the first, second, down to the sixteenth magnitude; those visible to the naked eye include stars from the first to the sixth magnitude, and number 3000, while 20,000,000 are visible by the telescope; of these in the MILKY WAY (q. v.) alone there are 18,000,000; they are distinguished by their colours as well as their brightness, being white, orange, red, green, and blue according to their temperature and composition; they have from ancient date been grouped into constellations of the northern and the southern hemispheres and of the ZODIAC (q. v.), the stars in each of which being noted by the Greek letters, as [Greek: alpha], [Greek: beta], according to their brightness; they all move more or less, and some go round each other, and are called double according as there are two or more of them so revolving; besides stars singly visible there are others called CLUSTERS OR NEBULae (q. v.).
STARS AND STRIPES, the flag of the United States, the stripes representing the original States of the Union, and stars those annexed since.
STATEN ISLAND, 1, belonging to New York State (52), and comprising the county of Richmond; is a picturesque island (14 m. long), 5 m. SW. of New York, separated from Long Island by the Narrows and from New Jersey by the Kill van Kull and Staten Island Sound; pretty watering-villages skirt its shores, and Forts Richmond and Wadsworth guard the entrance to the Narrows. 2, A lofty, precipitous, and rugged island, snow-clad most of the year, belonging to Argentina, lying to the SE. of Tierra del Fuego, from which it is separated by Le Maire Strait (40 m.).
STATES-GENERAL, name given to an assembly of the representatives of the three estates of nobles, clergy, and bourgeoisie, or the _Tiers etat_ as it was called, in France prior to the Revolution of 1789, and which was first convoked in 1302 by Philip IV.; they dealt chiefly with taxation, and had no legislative power; they were convoked by Louis XIII.
in 1614, and dismissed for looking into finance, and not convoked again till the last time in 1789, for the history of which see Carlyle's "French Revolution."
STATES-RIGHTS, doctrine of the contention of the Democrats in the United States that the several States of the Union have all the rights, powers, and privileges not expressly made over to the central government, and by extremists even the right of secession.