"Shire" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... son Wilfrid. First to God; then to the king; then to the atheling, the king's son, and then to father and mother; then to the shire reeve and the ealdorman, if so be that they are loyal; and then to helpless woman and friendless poor man. But to the weak first of all, against whomsoever will wrong them, whether it be the ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... taxation was unequal and extortionate. Redress for such evils would now naturally have been sought from Parliament; but the weakness of the Crown gave the great nobles power to rob the freeholders of their franchise and return the knights of the shire. Nor could redress be looked for from the Court. The murder of Suffolk was the act of Kentishmen, and Suffolk's friends still held control over the royal councils. The one hope of reform lay in arms; and in the summer of 1450, while the last ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... whom such Commission or Commissions shall be Directed or four of them at the least shall have full power and authority to Inquire of such Offences and of every of them by the Oaths of Twelve good and Lawfull Inhabitants in the Shire Limited in their Commission in such like manner and form as if such offence had been Committed Upon the Land within the same Shire, And that every Indictment found and presentd before such Commissioners of any Treasons, Felonies, Robbery, Murthers, Manslaughters or such ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... taken a share in every passing pleasure. It is his maxim that "he that works hard can afford to play." He is, therefore, an attendant at all the country fairs and wakes, and has signalized himself by feats of strength and prowess on every village green in the shire. He often makes his appearance at horse-races, and sports his half guinea, and even his guinea at a time; keeps a good horse for his own riding, and to this day is fond of following the hounds, and is generally ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... the Holy War, the doubters having been dispersed, three or four thrust themselves into Mansoul. Now, to whose house should these Diabolic doubters go, but to that of Old Evil-questioning. So he made them welcome. Well, said he, be of what shire yon will, you have the very length of my foot, are one with my heart. So they thanked him. I, said one, am an election-doubter; I, said another, am a vocation-doubter; then said the third, I am a salvation-doubter; and the fourth said, I am a grace-doubter. I am persuaded you are down boys, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that had been a very glorious year. To talk of Stackallan was, indeed, a thing of beauty. But in that year Mr. Hittaway had made himself very useful in London. Since that they had been at delicious shooting lodges in Ross and Inverness-shire, had visited a millionaire at his palace amidst the Argyle mountains, had been feted in a western island, had been bored by a Dundee dowager, and put up with a Lothian laird. But the thing had been almost always done, and ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... at Dover that Mr. Edw. Montagu did go beyond sea when he was here first the other day, and I am apt to believe that he went to speak with the King. This day one told me how that at the election at Cambridge for knights of the shire, Wendby and Thornton by declaring to stand for the Parliament and a King and the settlement of the Church, did carry it against all expectation against Sir Dudley North and Sir Thomas Willis! I supped to-night ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... derived from history, and is an appellation truly British, signifying royalty, Lanc being the Celtic term for a spear, and lod or lot implying a people. Hence the name of Lancelot's shire, or Lancashire. From the foregoing it is supposed that he resided in the region of Linius, and that he was the monarch of these parts, being ruler over the whole, or the greater part, of what is ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... I saw this opening rose That holds the summer in its hand, And with its beauty overflows And sweetens half a shire of land, It was a black and cindered thing, Drearily rocking in the cold, The relic of a vanished spring, A rose ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... sure, and the Elton estates run half the shire with your Gloucester property; never was there a more ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... collars for instance, advertised as being so similar to linen that only an expert could tell the difference. That was Strong's invention. Before he invented the Piccadilly collar so-called, paper collars had a brilliant glaze that would not have deceived the most recent arrival from the most remote shire in the country. Strong devised some method by which a slight linen film was put on the paper, adding strength to the collar and giving it the appearance of the genuine article. You bought a pasteboard box containing a dozen of these collars for something like the price you paid for the washing of ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... sovereign as able administrators. Gradually, with prolonged peace, the hereditary element choked and swamped the nominated element. The abbots disappeared, the lords multiplied. The peer ceased to be the leader of a shire, and sank into a mere idle landowner. Wealth alone grew at last to be a title to the peerage. The House of Lords became a House of Landlords. And the English people submitted to the claim of irresponsible wealth ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... of a man with the chest of him slipped down below his belt, and what was he but bragging about the rich people he came of, and the rich soil they flourished on, its apple-orchards and honey-flowers and its grass knee-deep in June. 'Do you know,' said I, 'I would not give a yard's breadth of the shire of Argyll anywhere north of Knapdale at its rockiest for all your lush straths, and if it comes to antique pedigrees here am I, Clan Diarmid, with my tree going down to Donacha Dhu of Lochow.' That was insolence, ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... of executive routine the sheriff alone was responsible; he collected the revenue, he led the militia, he organised the Watch and Ward and Hue and Cry which were the medieval equivalents for a constabulary; finally, he presided over the shire moot in which the freeholders gathered at stated intervals to declare justice and receive it. The shires were periodically visited by Justices in Eyre (analogous to the Frankish missi) who heard complaints against the sheriff, inspected his administration, tried criminals, and heard those ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... curious fact, that when the foundation-stone was laid, an old soldier from Ross-shire, the last living veteran of the gallant band who fought under Wolfe, was present at the ceremony, being then in his ninety-fifth year. Everybody who has seen or read of Quebec must remember the magnificent towering rock overhanging the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... call yourself a Mackenzie of Megasky! What has become of family pride? Why, you yourselves have Gruagach of the Red Hand in the hall, and he, I can tell you, is a very different sort of spectre from me. Pre-Christian, you know—one of the oldest ghosts in Ross-shire. But as to 'hard on a family,' why, ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... Wonders of the Peak in Darby-shire, Commonly called The Devil's Arse of Peak. In English and Latine. The Latine Written by Thomas Hobbes of Malmsbury. The English by a Person of Quality. London, Printed for William Crook at the Green Dragon ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... veins of the same kind, only two or three feet wide, may be seen in the bed of the Water of Leith, traversing the horizontal strata, the one is above St Bernard's well, the other immediately below it. But, more particularly, in the shire of Ayr, to the north of Irvine, there are to be seen upon the coast, between that and Scarmorly, in the space of about twenty miles, more than twenty or thirty such dykes (as they are called) of whin-stone. Some of them are of a great thickness; ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... soveriegn, sovereign authority; authority &c 737; master &c 745; direction &c 693. [nations] national government, nation, state, country, nation- state, dominion, republic, empire, union, democratic republic; kingdom, principality. [subdivisions of nations] state government [Lat.], state; shire [Brit.]; province [Can.]; county [Ire.]; canton [Switz.]; territory [Austral.]; duchy, archduchy, archdukedom^; woiwodshaft; commonwealth; region &c 181; property &c 780. [smaller subdivisions] county, parish city, domain, tract, arrondissement [Fr.], mofussil^, commune; wappentake, hundred, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... little town of Norton, in a famous western shire, There dwelt a sightless maiden with her venerated sire. To him she was the legacy her mother had bequeathed; To her he was the very sun that ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... and Devonshire, in the reign of Ethelwolph. But Alfred first divided the whole kingdom into shires, the shires into tithings, lathes, or wapentacks, the tithings into hundreds, and the hundreds into tenths. Each division had a court subordinate to those that were superior, the highest in each shire being the shire-gemot, or folck-mote, which was held twice a year, and in which the bishop or his deputy, and the ealderman, or his viceregent, the sheriff, presided. See Seldon on the Titles of Honor; Speman's Glossary, ad. noviss. Squires on the Government of the English ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... freeholders.[I] Amongst others, my father, who was in good odour at the castle, was deemed a likely person to be intrusted with so precious a privilege as a right to vote for any tool of the earl who might be brought forward as a candidate for representing the shire in Parliament. The factor was despatched to Bellerstown to offer this high behest to the poor parson, whose ready compliance was expected, as a matter of course. But he calmly and peremptorily refused the proffered ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... was a sort of gentleman farmer in —shire; and I, by his express desire, succeeded him in the same quiet occupation, not very willingly, for ambition urged me to higher aims, and self-conceit assured me that, in disregarding its voice, I was burying my talent in the earth, and hiding my light under a bushel. My mother had done her utmost ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... word with you: Let there be letters writ to every shire Of the King's grace and pardon; the griev'd commons Hardly conceive of me—Let it be nois'd That thro' our intercession this revokement And ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... the shire which he inhabited is called Halgoland. He says that no human being abode in any fixed habitation to the north of him. There is a port to the south of this land, which is called Sciringes-heal. Thither he said that a man could not sail in a month, if he watched in the night, and every day had ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... Club had its first headquarters in Shire Lane, near Temple Bar, at the establishment of Christopher Cat, a pastrycook who helped to enliven the inner man by delicious meat pies dubbed "Kit-Cats." Hence the name of that notable coterie of Whigs ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the conduct of the ostensible business of the House of Commons. Lowther was a man of ancient descent, ample estate, and great parliamentary interest. Though not an old man, he was an old senator: for he had, before he was of age, succeeded his father as knight of the shire for Westmoreland. In truth the representation of Westmoreland was almost as much one of the hereditaments of the Lowther family as Lowther Hall. Sir John's abilities were respectable; his manners, though sarcastically noticed in contemporary lampoons as too formal, were eminently courteous; his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... trade in their market be those that are witty and true to us, and I will lay my crown to pawn it will do. There are two that are come to my thoughts already, that I think will be arch at this work, and they are Mr. Penny-wise-pound-foolish, and Mr. Get-i'the-hundred-and-lose-i'the- shire; nor is this man with the long name at all inferior to the other. What, also, if you join with them Mr. Sweet-world and Mr. Present-good; they are men that are civil and cunning, but our true friends ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... Johanna had suffered from fever, and were relieved that the time of inaction was over when they embarked in the Pioneer on the 1st of May, and in due time ascended the Zambesi, and again the Shire, but very slowly, for much time was consumed in cutting wood for the engines, every stick in the mud costing three days' labour, and in three weeks going only six or seven miles, seeing numerous crocodiles and hippopotami ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of being the owner of a winner of the Derby. The horse was run in his name. Thoughts as to great successes crowded themselves upon his heated brain. What might not be open to him? Parliament! The Jockey Club! The mastership of one of the crack shire packs! Might it not come to pass that he should some day become the great authority in England upon races, racehorses, and hunters? If he could be the winner of a Derby and Leger he thought that Glasslough and Lupton would snub him no longer, that even Tregear would ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... and swift to west the ghastly war flame spread; High on St. Michael's Mount it shone: it shone on Beachy Head. Far on the deep the Spaniard saw, along each southern shire, Cape beyond cape, in endless range, those twinkling points of fire." ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... of Lord Byron,' said the dapper-looking individual, mouthing his words and smirking—'the illustrious poet, which have been just brought from Greece, and are being conveyed to the family vault in —-shire.' ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... a very nice fellow." Prudence looked over at the parade of "Shire" teams as they started for the fields. "Alice and he are engaged to ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... made from Clow's Cross to Gunthorpe Sluice, in place of the winding course of the old Shire Drain; besides which, a bridge was erected at Cross Keys, or Sutton Wash, and an embankment was made across the Salt Marshes, forming a high road, which, with the bridges previously erected at Fossdyke and Lynn, effectually connected the counties of ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... remarkable changes. His wig has been laid aside, and his hair, though somewhat thinner, has returned to public view. And he has had the honor of appearing at court in the uniform of a cornet of the Clavering troop of the——shire Yeomanry Cavalry, being presented to the sovereign by ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I thought then to myself, as I did at Rumanika's, when I first viewed the Mfumbiro cones, and gathered all my distant geographical information there, that these highly saturated Mountains of the Moon give birth to the Congo as well as to the Nile, and also to the Shire branch ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... much. I was sure the wretch was going wrong, and if I hadn't insisted on pulling him up and asking a respectable-looking body where the house was I believe we should have been wandering about the next shire at this moment. I've ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... only child of the late Lord of the Isles, was the great heiress of the day. It is true that the hereditary possession of Skye, Staffa, Mull, Arran, and Bute went, with the title, to the Marquis of Auldreekie, together with the counties of Caithness and Ross-shire. But the property in Fife, Aberdeen, Perth, and Kincardineshire, comprising the greater part of those counties, and the coal-mines in Lanark, as well as the enormous estate within the city of Glasgow, were unentailed, and ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... and Splendour of the Church, he was too good a Christian and citizen not to shrink from seeing his native land laid waste by the blind savageness of a Civil War. And although, he paid Cess and Ship-money without murmuring, and, on being chosen a Knight of the Shire, did zealously speak up in the Commons House of Parliament on the King's side (refusing nevertheless to make one of the lip-serving crowd of courtiers of Whitehall), and although, when churchwarden in his parish, he ever preserved the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... I answered her, "though it is doubtful if Scott ever was in Galloway. But he had seen Criffel across from Dumfries-shire, and the castle of Ellangowan is certainly described from the ruins of Caerlaverock, opposite New Abbey. Besides, had he not good old Joseph Train, the Castle Douglas exciseman, to tell him everything—than whom no ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... came down, with wild talk of Aquardente from the north and Bottetort from the south- west combining to slaughter their sovereign, the King's writ would continue to run though the king that writ it were under the earth: it was unlikely that a shire would be let fall to a nameless outlaw when five hundred men out of Kings-hold could keep it where it was. But a name would come by marriage as well as by birth. All his terms with his penned Countess would have been, amnesty ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... need of a fleet. Charles, without asking any grant from Parliament, undertook to levy a tax called "ship-money" in every shire. John Hampden, a country gentleman, refused to pay it. The judges gave a verdict against him, but he won ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... but in their own language, Welatibi."[8] Their country was called Wilcia,[9] and, as a branch of them were settled in Batavia about 560, it does not seem very improbable that from them were derived the Wilsaeton of the Anglo-Saxon chronicles, meaning the Wilts seated, or settlers in Wilts-shire. The name, as Eginhard has noticed, is Slavic, and is an adoption of welot or weolot, a giant, to denote the strength and fierceness which rendered them formidable neighbours. Heveldi seems to be the same word made ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... Gridiron: Walpole was a member of the Kit Cat club, which originally met at the pie shop of Christopher Cat in Shire Lane. The "Second Edition" probably refers to the fact that the Order of the Bath was reintroduced for Walpole's benefit in June 1724. (See also Key, p. 19.) There is intentional confusion with Estcourt, who as providore of the Beefsteak club wore ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... called the Curl appeared in the potato in Lancashire in 1764. It was in that Shire the potato was first planted in England; and we are told the Curl appeared in those districts of it in which it was first planted. The nature of the disease is indicated by its name. The stalk became discoloured ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... in that quarter. Among other misfortunes disease attacked and carried off several of the chief Europeans of the party. The earnest enthusiastic Bishop himself died there in his Master's cause, and left his bones in the swamps of the Shire River. ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... night of May 17, 1915, the Fourth Cameron Highlanders, a Territorial battalion, met with disaster. The men composing this unit were from Inverness-shire, Skye, and the Outer Islands. Many of them had been gamekeepers and hence were accustomed to outdoor life and the handling of guns, all of which aided them in saving the remnant of their command. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... Penelope Mansion—Mrs. Dredge she thought quite beneath her notice, Mrs. Mortlock was slightly more tolerated, but Miss Slowcum never really unbent to either of these ladies. As she said to herself, she could never forget that she came of the Slowcums of ——shire that her father had been Captain Slowcum of the Royal Navy, and that, all things considered, her true position in society was with the county folk. What, therefore, could a lady of such patrician birth have in common with a Mrs. Mortlock or a Mrs. Dredge? Alas! however, ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... then Mun, I never wear it, but when I go to be drunk, and give my Voice for a Knight o'th' Shire, and here at London in Term time, and that but eight times in Eight Visits to Eight several Ladies ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... know he made Misselton his market-town very soon after he had offered to Miss Matty; and I don't think he has been into Cranford above once or twice since—once, when I was walking with Miss Matty, in High Street, and suddenly she darted from me, and went up Shire Lane. A few minutes after I was startled by meeting ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a new offence in America, and deprives the American subject of a constitutional trial by a jury of the vicinage, by authorising the trial of any person charged with the committing of any offence described in the said act, out of the realm, to be indicted and tried for the same in any shire or county ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... "tarry a bit, I have more to say to thee. Prayers and provender, thou knowst—I'll come anon. So, sir, didst say yonder beggarly Flemings haggle at thy price for thy Southdown fleeces. Weight of dirt forsooth! Do not we wash the sheep in the Poolhole stream, the purest water in the shire?" ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... lived in H...shire, a widow; her son, my cousin Fred, was preparing for the Army. I wanted a change, and went by advice to stay there. Fred was a year older than me, wild and baudy to the day of his death, he talked from boyhood incessantly ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Concord, and, finally, in 1651, in Chelmsford. It may be noted in passing that Devonshire, particularly in the first part of the seventeenth century, was not an obscure part of England to hail from, for it was the native shire of England's first great naval heroes and circumnavigators of the globe, such as Drake ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Italy, he is reported to have met the great poet Petrarch, who told him the story of the Patient Griselda. In 1381, he was made Comptroller of Customs in the great port of London— an office which he held till the year 1386. In that year he was elected knight of the shire— that is, member of Parliament for the county of Kent. In 1389, he was appointed Clerk of the King's Works at Westminster and Windsor. From 1381 to 1389 was probably the best and most productive period of his life; for it was in this period that he wrote the House ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... to an end by exclamations and inquiries about the other; of whom, however, she could only tell her nieces what they already knew, that Mr. Denny had brought him from London, and that he was to have a lieutenant's commission in the ——shire. She had been watching him the last hour, she said, as he walked up and down the street, and had Mr. Wickham appeared, Kitty and Lydia would certainly have continued the occupation, but unluckily no one passed windows now except a few of the officers, who, in comparison with the stranger, were become ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... poor cockney journeyman out a ten miles' walk almost before daylight, on the rare summer holiday mornings, to angle with rude tackle in reservoir or canal—should be dragged through such mire as this in many an English shire in our day. If English landlords want to go on shooting game much longer, they must give up selling it. For if selling game becomes the rule, and not the exception (as it seems likely to do before long), good-bye ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... appeared there was no want; and Mr. Abbingdon himself coming home that night, the commission and proclamation being shown unto him, he denied any such men to be in his house, and voluntarily to die at his own gate, if any such were to be found in his house, or in that shire. But this liberal or rather rash speech could not cause the search so slightly to be given over; the cause enforced more respect than words of that or any such like nature; and proceeding on according to the trust ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... God and without hope in the world. The country on which he confessed that he now looked back with so much shame and detestation was not England or Bedfordshire, but the wicked life he had lived in that land and in that shire. And when Charity asked him as to whether he was a married man and had a family, she knew quite well that he was, only she made a pretence of asking him those domestic questions in order thereby to start ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... is quite irresistible, and, were all smooth and straightforward in her history, there could be no reason why—pshaw! I am as foolish as the lad himself. Sir Richard Assheton, the proudest man in the shire, would disown his son if he married against his inclinations. No, my pretty youthful pair, since nothing but misery awaits you, I advise you to make the most of your brief season of happiness. I should certainly do so were the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of the Shire River and international boundary with Mozambique 37 m highest point: Sapitwa (Mount Mlanje) ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... on their shoulders, as they do a Knight of the Shire, and away we went like the wind, over houses and fields, over cities and kingdoms, over seas and mountains, but I was unable to notice particularly anything, because of the rapidity ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... scholars were not behindhand in the expression of their favour and good opinion of me and my son, and they stood stoutly and generally for my son to be one of the knights for the county. Thus was my interest at this time sufficient to make another to be knight of the shire; yet when my condition fell, my interest fell with it, and I was looked upon as a stranger among them. Such is the course and vicissitude of worldly things; therefore ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... sworne: entered into the detestable Art of witchcraft, which they studied and practised so long time, that in the end they had seduced by their sorcery a number of other to be as bad as themselues: dwelling in the boundes of Lowthian, which is a principall shire or parte of Scotland, where the Kings Maiestie vseth to make his cheefest residence or abode: and to the end that their detestable wickednes which they priuilye had pretended against the Kings Maiestie, the Common-weale ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... Ross of Rarichies, from whom the Old Rosses of Balnagown, of whom the last representative in the male line was the late George Ross of Pitcalnie. This Hugh obtained the lands of Philorth in Aberdeen-shire, and between 1362 and 1372 he exchanged them with his brother, Earl Hugh, for the lands of North Argyle, including the Castle of Ellandonnan. The territories exchanged included Strathglass, Kintail, and other ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... the Mid-lands now th'industrious Muse doth fall, That Shire which we the Heart of England well may call, As she herself extends (the midst which is Deweed) betwixt St. Michael's Mount and Barwick-bordering Tweed, Brave Warwick that abroad so long advanc'd ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... languidly echoing to the roof from the padded dais where the Lord High Chancellor looks into the lantern that has no light in it and where the attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and begging through the round of every man's acquaintance, which gives to monied ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... since they were probably brought directly. They have a certain fitness, as affectionate memorials of the Old Country lingering in the hearts of the exiles. Thus, though St. Botolph was of the fenny shire of Lincoln, and the new comers to the Massachusetts Bay named their little peninsula Suffolk, the county of the "South-folk," we do not quarrel with them for calling their future city "Bo's or Botolph's town," out of hearts which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... assisted them with clothes, arms, and ammunition, together with some officers, amongst whom was colonel Bucan, appointed to act as their chief commander. This officer, at the head of fifteen hundred men, advanced into the shire of Murray, in hopes of being joined by other malcontents; but he was surprised and routed by sir Thomas Livingstone, while major Ferguson destroyed the places they possessed in the Isle of Mull; so that the highlanders were obliged to retire and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... had followed her all the way from Warren's Grove. Lydia Purcell had always been very particular whom she engaged to work on Mrs. Bell's farm, generally confining herself to men from the same shire. But shortly before the old lady's death, being rather short of hands to finish the late harvest, a tramp from some distant part of the country had offered his services. Lydia, driven to despair to get a certain job finished before the weather ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... is this your justice! If I go to London myself for it, the King shall know how his commission—how a man may be robbed, and the justices prove that he ought to be hanged at back of it; that in his good shire of Somerset—" ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the top and bottom of everything, from the dome of St. Paul to the tunnel under the Thames, just then in the process of excavation. We drove through the parks, sailed up and down the Thames, and then visited every shire but four in England, in all of which we had large meetings, Mr. Birney and Mr. Stanton being the chief speakers. As we were generally invited to stay with Friends, it gave us a good opportunity to see the leading families, such as the Ashursts, the ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl; wide awake and longing to get up, but not daring to do so for fear of the unseen power in the next room—a certain ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... his retreat in the woods by a footpath, and was striving to keep company with the others, on his way to hear and to decide the disputes of his neighbors, as a petit juror. Fifty similar little knots of countrymen might have been seen, on that morning, journeying toward the shire-town ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... disturbed area, 84 per cent. of the observers heard the sound. The percentage varies in different counties, from 93 in Inverness-shire to 77 in the counties of Perth and Aberdeen; but the records in the more distant regions are too few to allow of ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... discharge of my official duties in this state, I had occasion to visit two counties in 1846 in which there were no organized common schools.[30] They were not, however, without places of instruction, for in the shire town of each of those counties there were a billiard-room, bar-rooms, and bowling-alleys. I was forcibly impressed with the remark of an Indian chief residing in one of those counties. As he was passing along the streets one day, he discovered a second ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... eyes and sang of blood, wood, white shirts, and thorns; of the throng that would arise from the burial-ground, in which there were more graves than molehills in the shire. He cried against the heathenism of the Church, the wickedness of Church tithes, and against ungodly ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... gentleman riding before him was my lord's chaplain, Father Holt; that he was now to be called Master Harry Esmond; that my Lord Viscount Castlewood was his patron; that he was to live at the great house of Castlewood, in the province of ——shire, where he would see Madame the Viscountess, who was a grand lady, and that he was to be educated for the priesthood. And so, seated on a cloth before Blaise's saddle, Harry Esmond was brought to London, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... the dignity of the knight so incensed him that he applied to a lawyer at Warwick to put the severity of the laws in force against the rhyming deer-stalker. Shakespeare did not wait to brave the united puissance of a knight of the shire and a country attorney. He forthwith abandoned the pleasant banks of the Avon and his paternal trade; wandered away to London; became a hanger-on to the theatres; then an actor; and finally wrote for the stage; and thus, through the persecution ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... song. The pastoral habits of the people led them to seek recreation in listening to, and in rehearsing the tales of other times; and the senachie and the bard were held in high esteem" (Inverness-shire, ibid., xiv. 168). "In the winter months, many of them are in the habit of visiting and spending the evenings in each other's houses in the different hamlets, repeating the songs of their native bard ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... his twelfth year, his father, who had been brought up to farm-work, and possessed considerable practical knowledge of agriculture, was offered the charge of a farm at Moy in Ross-shire, belonging to Lord Seaforth of Brahan Castle. The farm was of about 300 acres, situated on the banks of the river Conan, some five miles from the town of Dingwall. The family travelled thither in a ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... d'Arthur. Many other works followed in the same "King's English"; his successor at the printing press, Wynkyn de Worde, continued in the same line; and when, less than sixty years after the first English book was printed, Tyndale's translation of the New Testament had found its way to every shire in England, there was no longer room for doubt that the East-Midland dialect had become the standard of the English nation. We have been speaking and writing that dialect ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... and am certain, that my generous Clarinda[73] will not think my silence, for now a long week, has been in any decree owing to my forgetfulness. I have been tossed about through the country ever since I wrote you; and am here, returning from Dumfries-shire, at an inn, the post office of the place, with just so long time as my horse eats his corn, to write you. I have been hurried with business and dissipation almost equal to the insidious decree of the Persian monarch's mandate, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... was one of the two Knights of the Shire for Devon in the Convention Parliament, the other being the Lord General Monk. The Restoration was gladly welcomed by him, but he 'spoke repeatedly in favour of pardon and amnesty, and when necessity arose, he seems to ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... particular description of some Country, as of England, France, or any shire or prouince in them: as in the ...
— A Briefe Introduction to Geography • William Pemble
... concerning this singular person, whose name was Patterson, than I had been able to acquire during my short conversation with him. He was (as I may have somewhere already stated) a native of the parish of Closeburn, in Dumfries-shire, and it is believed that domestic affliction, as well as devotional feeling, induced him to commence the wandering mode of life, which he pursued for a very long period. It is more than twenty years since Robert Patterson's death, which took place on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... 'Sir Richard of Edinburgh, where are ye? A wise man in this war! I'll give thee Bristow and the shire The ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... gracious gaiety and plucky endurance of hardships. In the beginning of August his hopes had again turned to Poole Ewe, but learning for a second time that no French ship could land on the closely guarded coast, he and his friends determined to remain in the northern straths of Inverness-shire till the Government troops should withdraw from the Great Glen—the chain of lakes which now forms the Caledonian Canal—and thus leave the way clear into Badenoch, where Lochiel and Macpherson of ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... then, erected by nature almost into a fortress, the founders of the Icelandic constitution chose for the meetings of their Thing, [Footnote: From thing, to speak. We have a vestige of the same word in Dingwall, a town of Ross-shire.] or Parliament, armed guards defended the entrance, while the grave bonders deliberated in security within: to this day, at the upper end of the place of meeting, may be seen the three hammocks, where sat in state the chiefs and judges of ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... I become, that I thought less of that possible three thousand pounds than of the fact that I was likely to go to Yorkshire, the county of Charlotte's birth, the county where she was now staying. I reminded myself that it was the largest shire in England, and that of all possible coincidences of time and place, there could be none more unlikely than the coincidence that would bring about a meeting between ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... at a church in This attractive little shire, He beheld a smallish urchin Shooting arrows at the spire; In a spirit of derision, "Look alive!" the eagle said; And, with infinite precision, Dropped ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... was as dumpish as ever. Eat he would not, drink he would not, nor would he sit at the same table with those who ate and drank with such gladness. I remembered Mr. Fearing at the House Beautiful when I was present at a communion season some time back in Ross-shire. The church was half full of Mr. Fearing's close kindred that communion morning. For, all that the minister himself could do, and all that the assisting minister could do—no! to the table those self-examined, self-condemned, fear-filled ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... this subject sometimes find their way into the newspapers, and a couple of paragraphs from the Liverpool Mercury may be quoted. On November 18th, 1876, it was stated that "in a church in the Black Isle, Ross-shire, on a recent Sunday, a woman who had been guilty of transgressing the seventh commandment was condemned to the 'cutty-stool,' and sat during the whole service with a black shawl thrown over her head." A note in the issue for 22nd February, ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... had prepared for his friends. After they had taken their repast, Rosader rampired up[2] the house, lest upon a sudden his brother should raise some crew of his tenants, and surprise them unawares. But Saladyne took a contrary course, and went to the sheriff of the shire and made complaint of Rosader, who giving credit to Saladyne, in a determined resolution to revenge the gentleman's wrongs, took with him five-and-twenty tall[3] men, and made a vow, either to break into the house and take Rosader, or else to coop him in till he made him yield by famine. In ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... obedience to Leicester; a thing never done before in the country, and entirely illegal. It would not even be tolerated in England, he said, if a private gentleman should receive a military appointment in Warwickshire or Norfolk without the knowledge of the lord-lieutenant of the shire. He had treated the contumacious Sonoy with mildness during a long period, but without effect. He had abstained from violence towards him, out of reverence to the Queen, under whose sacred name he sheltered himself. Sonoy had not desisted, but had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Anne Baker, Joan Willimot, and Ellen Greene, who in their confessions implicated the Flowers (they belonged to parishes neighbor to that of Belvoir, which lies on the shire border) and whose testimony against them figured in their trials, were at the same time (Feb.-March, 1618/19) under examination in that county. Whether these women were authors or victims of the Belvoir suspicions we do not know. As we have their damning confessions, there is small ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... number of three thousand of them. Manie of the Englishmen also that came with them to the field, were saued by the enimies, to the end they might gaine somewhat by their ransomes, [Sidenote: Simon Dun.] as William Mallet shirife of the shire, with his wife, and two of their children, Gilbert de Gaunt, and diuers other. This slaughter chanced on a saturdaie, being the nineteenth day of September; a dismall daie ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (1 of 12) - William the Conqueror • Raphael Holinshed
... is superimposed upon the Gault and Upper Greensand beds, which are confined to the western portion of the county. Its upper layer passes into a sandy limestone, known as Totternhoe stone, which has furnished materials for many churches in the shire. Ashwell, Pirton and Tring may be named as neighbourhoods where this stratum may ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... Welshmen, and these main folk-right divisions remain even when tribal kingdoms disappear and the people is concentrated in one or two realms. The chief centres for the formulation and application of folk-right were in the 10th and 11th centuries the shire-moots, while the witan of the realm generally placed themselves on the higher ground of State expediency, although occasionally using folk-right ideas. The older law of real property, of succession, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... into hours when all other men in land slept in their beds. And, at that date, he had a many letters to indite, because the choosing of burgesses for the Parliament was going forward, and he had ado in some burghs to make the citizens choose the men that he bade them have. He gave to each shire and burgh long thought and minute commands. He knew the mayor of each town, and had note-books telling him the opinions and deeds of every man that had freedom to elect all over England. And into each man he ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... Charles beheaded, and the Fifth Monarchy men creating chaos in their noisy efforts to establish the Kingdom of God on earth, he lapsed into an obscurity that endured until the Restoration. Then he reemerged, not as a veteran living at ease on laurels well won, but as a wandering beggar, roving from shire to shire in quest of alms, which he implored to the accompaniment of fearsome music ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... is a gentleman of Worcestershire, of ancient descent, a baronet, his name is Sir Roger de Coverley. His great-grandfather was inventor of that famous country-dance which is called after him. All who know that shire are very well acquainted with the parts and merits of Sir Roger. He is a gentleman that is very singular in his behaviour, but his singularities proceed from his good sense, and are contradictions to the manners of the world, only as he thinks the world is in the wrong. ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... the king heard that, he went ( then went he) westward with his army to Ashdown. 2.Lovest thou me more than these? 3.The men said that the shire which they lived in was called Halgoland. 4.All things were made (wyrcan) by God. 5.They were fighting for two days with (against) the Danes. 6.King Alfred fought with the Danes, and gained the ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... much real harm in it. There's one or two dirty literary gents who should be in a navvies' battalion, but they're about as dangerous as yellow Kaffir dogs. I've learned a lot and got all the arguments by heart, but you might plant a Biggleswick in every shire and it wouldn't help the Boche. I can see where the danger lies all the same. These fellows talked academic anarchism, but the genuine article is somewhere about and to find it you've got to look in the big industrial districts. We had faint ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... would go like the snow off the dyke. But for all I could do, the evil got in among us, and we had no less than three contested bastard bairns upon our hands at one time, which was a thing never heard of in a parish of the shire of Ayr since the Reformation. Two of the bairns, after no small sifting and searching, we got fathered at last; but the third, that was by Meg Glaiks, and given to one Rab Rickerton, was utterly refused, though the fact was not denied; but he was a termagant fellow, and snappit ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... it the day, when he is but the name o' the man he yince was. For fifty years since there was nae lad like Walter Skirving cam into Dumfries High Street frae Stewartry or frae Shire. No a fit in buckled shune sae licht as his, his weel-shapit leg covered wi' the bonny 'rig-an'-fur' stockin' that I knitted mysel' frae the cast on o' the ower-fauld [over-fold] to the bonny white forefit that ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... Hampshire youth treasured it as the highest honor when a word of praise fell from him as to their management of their horses, or their breaking of their lances. So he lived and so he died, the most revered and the happiest man in all his native shire. ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... powers. From the point of view of subsequent institutional history the most important features of the Anglo-Saxon governmental system were kingship, the witenagemot, and the units of local administration—shire, hundred, borough, and township.[2] ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... under her government. These were the means, and the only means, which she had at her command for carrying her decrees into execution, for resisting foreign enemies, and for crushing domestic treason. There was not a ward in the city, there was not a hundred in any shire in England, which could not have overpowered the handful of armed men who composed her household. If a hostile sovereign threatened invasion, if an ambitious noble raised the standard of revolt, she could have recourse only to the trainbands of her capital and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... extended over the last half of the fourteenth century, when public events were of considerable historical importance. It was then that parliamentary history became interesting. Until then the barons, clergy, knights of the shire, and burgesses of the town, summoned to assist the royal councils, deliberated in separate chambers or halls; but in the reign of Edward III. the representatives of the knights of the shires and the burgesses ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... called by the title of Old Mortality, was we'll known in Scotland about the end of the last century. His real name was Robert Paterson. He was a native, it is said, of the parish of Closeburn, in Dumfries-shire, and probably a mason by profession—at least educated to the use of the chisel. Whether family dissensions, or the deep and enthusiastic feeling of supposed duty, drove him to leave his dwelling, and adopt the singular mode of life in ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... whole business to find desolate corners, where I could camp without the fear of interruption; and hence, being in another part of the same shire, I bethought me suddenly of the Pavilion on the Links. No thoroughfare passed within three miles of it. The nearest town, and that was but a fisher village, was at a distance of six or seven. For ten miles of length, and from a depth varying from ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for awhile in so doing. Arnulf is famous at Pembroke.[52] Roger the Poitevin, so called from his marriage, had been lord of that land between Mersey and Ribble, which afterwards went to patch up the modern shire of Lancaster. Presently the brothers quarrelled. Robert of Belleme refused to give Arnulf and Roger any share in their father's inheritance. Then they forsook him, and Arnulf took an active part against him on behalf of Duke Robert. We read ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... by Lord Howard came: not from Elizabeth, but from England. Volunteers poured in from every shire,—men in velvet gowns and gold chains, men in frieze jackets and leather jerkins. The "delicate-handed, dilettante" Earl of Oxford; the "Wizard" Earl of Northumberland, just come to his title; the eccentric Earl George of Cumberland; ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... we omit, among Meg's steady customers, "faithful amongst the unfaithful found," the copper-nosed sheriff-clerk of the county, who, when summoned by official duty to that district of the shire, warmed by recollections of her double-brewed ale, and her generous Antigua, always advertised that his "Prieves," or "Comptis," or whatever other business was in hand, were to proceed on such a day and hour, "within the house of ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... thickness, furnished, says Sir Roderick Murchison, between the years 1814 and 1826, no less than seventy thousand tons of coal. Such is its extent, too, that nearly thirty miles from the pit's mouth (in Ross-shire under the Northern Sutor) I have found it still existing, though in diminished proportions, as a decided coal seam, which it must have taken no small amount of vegetable matter to form. And almost on the other side of the world, nearly five thousand miles from the Sutherland beds, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... existence, Wi' nae converse but Gallowa' bodies, Wi' nae kenn'd face but Jenny Geddes, Jenny, my Pegasean pride! Dowie she saunters down Nithside, And aye a westlin leuk she throws, While tears hap o'er her auld brown nose! Was it for this, wi' cannie care, Thou bure the Bard through many a shire? At howes, or hillocks never stumbled, And late or early never grumbled?— O had I power like inclination, I'd heeze thee up a constellation, To canter with the Sagitarre, Or loup the ecliptic like a bar; Or turn the pole like any arrow; Or, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Shire Council (9 seats; members elected by popular vote to serve one-year terms) elections: last held NA December 1996 (next to be held NA December 1997) election results : percent of vote - NA; seats ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... accidental impropriety. She too had been informed of the intended match between Sir Harry Benson and Miss Walton. "I have been thinking," said she, "that they are distant relations: for the great- grandfather of this Sir Harry Benson, who was knight of the shire in the reign of Charles the First, and one of the cavaliers of those times, was married to a daughter of the Walton family." Harley answered drily, that it might be so; but that he never troubled himself about those matters. "Indeed," said she, "you are to blame, nephew, for not knowing a little ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... a minister well esteemed for his piety and diligence, was born September 7, 1700, at Ednam, in the shire of Roxburgh, of which his father was pastor. His mother, whose name was Hume, inherited as co-heiress a portion of a small estate. The revenue of a parish in Scotland is seldom large; and it was probably in commiseration of the difficulty with which Mr. Thomson supported his family, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... court week, and the grand jury was in session. There were many people in the streets of the shire town. They moved with a slow foot, some giving their animation to squints of curiosity and shouts of recognition, some to profanity and plug tobacco. Squire Day and Colonel Judson were to argue the famous maple-sugar case, and many causes of ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... overflowings of his Humanity, though at the same time it renders him so popular among all his Country Neighbours, that it is thought to have gone a good way in making him once or twice Knight of the Shire. He cannot forbear this Exercise of Benevolence even in Town, when he meets with any one in his Morning or Evening Walk. It broke from him to several Boats that passed by us upon the Water; but to the Knight's great ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... from cross-road to cross-road, from the High Street of Aberystwith to the High Street of Jedburgh, from country-side to country-side, from shire to shire, from town to town. One market exhausted, they went on to another. Ursus lived in a small van upon wheels, which Homo was civilized enough to draw by day and guard by night. On bad roads, up hills, and where there were too many ruts, or there ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... freeholders, but now being gone, though many counties could not make a jury, as appeared at the intended trial of Mr. Price and other Protestants at Wicklow, who could not be tried for want of freeholders—yet, notwithstanding the paucity of these, they made a shift to return knights of the shire. The common way of election was thus:—The Earl of Tyrconnell, together with the writ for election, commonly sent a letter, recommending the persons he designed should be chosen; the sheriff or mayor being his creature, on receipt of this, called so many of the freeholders of ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... conceal'd from the Diligent Highwaymen is the Landlord's Fee as far as each a Bottle of Wine. This Merry Landlord I thought was very conveniently posted to divert People after their Misfortunes, we never went about to examine him, whether his Demand was customary, or only a Piece of shire Wit, and an extemporary Instance of his prolifick Genius, but sat down, and made our selves most immoderately drunk. The Landlord discanted very copiously upon the ancient and modern Practise of Robbing upon the Road, and seem'd very much inclin'd to lessen the Crime. Formerly, said he, ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... some special writs such as habeas corpus, certiorari and mandamus. But after all, the old Court of Common Pleas was the place where the greater part of the law business of the county was transacted. There were at first four civil terms in the year, and, after Fitchburg became a half shire, there were two more terms held there. The Common Pleas had jurisdiction of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... money on Orientalism, Arbuthnot gave as excuse his incompetency to do anything else. He admitted, indeed, that for the higher walks of life, such as whist and nap, he had no aptitude. Occasionally at Upper House Court, politics were introduced, and Arbuthnot, a staunch Liberal in a shire of Tories, was sometimes rallied upon his opinions by the Conservative Burton and Payne. He took it all, however, as he took everything else, good humouredly, and even made some amiable attempts to convert his opponents. "His Radicalism," says ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... hostess now took pains to impress upon all that only by doing exactly as they pleased, as to going and coming, could they hope to please her. Had she not, by this policy, conquered the cold, Scottish exclusiveness of Inverness-shire, so that the right sort of people fought to be at her house-parties during the shooting, even though she would persist in travelling back and forth to London in gowns that would be conspicuously elaborate at an afternoon ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... people and the circumstances under which they lived were alike favorable to the establishment of the county system pure and simple. To quote the pithy statement of Professor Macy, "The southern county was a modified English shire, with the towns left out. Local government in New England was made up of English towns with the shire ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... the Deerhound and the fashionable Pomeranian, the St. Bernard and the Miniature Black and Tan Terrier, and is perplexed in contemplating the possibility of their having descended from a common progenitor. Yet the disparity is no greater than that between the Shire horse and the Shetland pony, the Shorthorn and the Kerry cattle, or the Patagonian and the Pygmy; and all dog breeders know how easy it is to produce a variety in type and size ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... her sweetest bantering tones, "my servant, as he absurdly calls himself, is really an artist in helping people. I told him this morning that his native shire was his conjurer's hat, when he fetched ham and eggs out of it for poor hungry me. Now he observes that I am coatless and a-cold, and lo, a hat is on my head and a coat on my shoulders. It is marvellous and nothing short of it. Nay, I shall shun him as one in league with the powers of darkness ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... England with William the Norman. Ralph d'Armyn was standard-bearer of the Conqueror, and shared prodigally in the plunder, as appears by Doomsday Book. At the time of the general survey the family of Ermyn, or Armyn, possessed numerous manors in Nottinghamshire, and several in the shire of Lincoln. William D'Armyn, lord of the honour of Armyn, was one of the subscribing Barons to the Great Charter. His predecessor died in the Holy Land before Ascalon. A succession of stout barons and valiant knights maintained the high fortunes of the family; and in the course of the ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli |
