From discoveries of celts, flint arrow-heads, and other similar remains, it is probable that Lancaster was an old British town. Its Roman name is unknown, but inscribed Roman altars, tombstones, Samian ware, and other pottery, and the remains of the old fortress preceding the castle, and of other buildings, leave no doubt that it was a Roman station of great importance. It was constituted a borough in the fourth year of Richard I., and it first returned members to parliament in the twenty-third year of Edward I. The privilege was withdrawn for some years before 1547, but from that time was enjoyed without interruption until 1867, when it was disfranchised for corrupt practices. The town was plundered and burned by the Scots in 1329 and 1389, was nearly depopulated during the Wars of the Roses, was captured by the Parliamentary forces in 1643, and retaken by the Royalists under the earl of Derby in the same year, was held by the Parliamentary troops in 1648, and was partly destroyed by fire in 1698. It was entered by the rebels in 1715, and again by a larger force of them in 1745.

See Clarke. Lancaster, 1807, 2d ed. 1811; Lancaster Records, 1869; Hall, Lancaster Castle, 1843; Simpson, History and Antiquities of Lancaster, 1852; and a paper on “Roman Lancaster,” by W. Thompson watkin, in Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1876.

LANCASTER, the shire city of Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, U.S., is situated on the Conestoga river, 68 miles west of Philadelphia by rail. It was founded in 1730 and incorporated as a borough in 1742, was the State capital from 1799 to 1812, and in 1812 became a city. It is laid out on the rectangular plan, and is unusually well built. The city is the seat of numerous charitable and educational institutions. Among the latter is Franklin and Marshall College, the chief educational establishment of the Reformed Church, which also maintains a theological seminary in connexion with it. The court-house is an imposing edifice, erected in 1853 at a cost of $166,000. The county jail is a massive sandstone structure, with a tower 110 feet high, built at a cost of $110,000 in 1851. Lancaster is the centre of one of the wealthiest agricultural regions in the United States. Its cotton, iron, and other mills are numerous and large, and it contains one of the most extensive watch factories in the country. Its tobacco trade requires nearly 100 large warehouses for its accommodation. A valuable trade in coal, lumber, leather, and grain is also carried on. James Buchanan, the fifteenth president of the United States, lived in Lancaster, and is buried there. The population in 1880 numbered 25,846.

LANCASTER, the chief city in Fairfield county, Ohio, United States, is situated on the Hocking river, about 30 miles south-east of Columbus. It is a well-built little manufacturing town, busy with foundries, flouring-mills, and various manufactures, such as agricultural implements and machinery. The court-house cost $150,000; and the city hall and public schools are also fine buildings. The neighbouring country is fertile, being especially noted for its grain, live stock, and vineyards. The population in 1880 was 6803.

LANCASTER, House of. The name House of Lancaster is commonly used to designate the line of kings immediately descended from John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III. But the history of the family and of the title goes back a whole century further to the reign of Henry III., who created his second son, Edmund, earl of Lancaster, in 1267. This Edmund received in his own day the surname of Crouchback, not, as was afterwards supposed, from a personal deformity, but from having worn a cross upon his back in token of a crusading vow. He is not a person of much importance in history except in relation to a strange theory raised in a later age about his birth, which we shall notice presently. His son Thomas who inherited the title, took the lead among the nobles of Edward H.’s time in opposition to Piers Gaveston and the Spensers, and was beheaded for treason at Pontefract. At the commencement of the following reign his attainder was reversed and his brother Henry restored to the earldom, who, being appointed guardian to the young king Edward III., assisted him to throw off the yoke of Mortimer. On this Henry’s death in 1345 he was succeeded by a son of the same name, sometimes known as Henry Tort-Col or W r ryneck, a very valiant commander in the French wars, whom the king, for his greater honour, advanced to the dignity of a duke. The title was new in those days, for only one duke had ever been created in England before, and that was fourteen years previously, when the king’s son Edward, so well known in history as the Black Prince, was made duke of Cornwall. This Henry Wryneck died in 1361 without heir male. Of his two daughters, Maud, the elder, was twice married, but died childless little more than a year after her father. The second, Blanche, became the wife of John of Gaunt, who thus succeeded to the duke’s inheritance in her right; and on the 13th November 1362, when King Edward attained the age of fifty, he was created duke of Lancaster, his elder brother, Lionel, being at the same time created duke of Clarence. It was from these two dukes that the rival houses of Lancaster and York derived their respective claims to the crown. As Clarence was King Edward’s third son, while John of Gaunt was only his fourth, it ought to have followed in ordinary course that on the failure of the elder line the issue of Clarence should have taken precedence of that of Lancaster in the succession. But the rights of Clarence were conveyed in the first instance to an only daughter, and the ambition and policy of the house of Lancaster, profiting by advantageous circumstances, enabled them not only to gain possession of the throne but to maintain themselves in it for three generations before they were dispossessed by the representatives of the elder brother.

As for John of Gaunt himself, it can hardly be said that this sort of politic wisdom is very conspicuous in him. His ambition was generally more manifest than his discretion; but fortune favoured his ambition, even as to himself somewhat beyond expectation, and still more in his posterity. Before the death of his father he had become the greatest subject in England, his three elder brothers having all died before him. He had even added to his other dignities the title of king of Castile, having married, after his first wife’s death, the daughter of Peter the Cruel. The title, however, was an empty one, the throne of Castile being actually in the possession of Henry of Trastamara, whom the English had vainly endeavoured to set aside. His military and naval enterprises were for the most part disastrous failures, and in England he was exceedingly unpopular. Nevertheless during the later years of his father’s reign the weakness of the king and the declining health of the Black Prince naturally threw the government very much into his hands. He even aimed, or was suspected of aiming, at the succession to the crown; but in this hope he was disappointed by the action of the Good Parliament a year before Edward’s death, in which it was settled that Richard the son of the Black Prince should be king after his grandfather. Nevertheless the suspicion with which he was regarded was not altogether quieted when Richard came to the throne, a boy in the eleventh year of his age. The duke himself complained in parliament of the way he was spoken of out of doors, and at the outbreak of Wat Tyler’s insurrection the peasants stopped pilgrims on the road to Canterbury and made them swear never to accept a king of the name of John. On gaining possession of London they gave still more emphatic proof of their dislike to him by burning his magnificent palace of the Savoy. The young king himself shared the general feeling, and after a few years John of Gaunt ceased for a time to have much influence. Richard found a convenient way to get rid of him by sending him to Castile ta make good his barren title, and on this expedition he was away three years. He succeeded, however, so far as to make a treaty with his rival, King John, son of Henry of Trastamara, for the succession, by virtue of which his daughter Catherine became queen of Castile some years later. After his return the king seems to have segarded him with greater favour, created him duke of Aquitaine, and employed him in repeated embassies to France, which at length resulted in a treaty of peace, and Richard’s marriage to the French king’s daughter.

Another marked incident of his public life was the support which he gave on one occasion to the Reformer Wycliffe. How far this was due to religious and how far to mere political considerations may be a question; but it is certain that, in one way or another, not only John of Gaunt but his immediate descendants, the three kings of the house of Lancaster, all took deep interest in the religious movements of the times. A reaction against Lollardy, however, had already begun in the days of Henry IV., and both he and his son were obliged to discountenance opinions which were believed to be politically and theologically dangerous.

Accusations had been made against John of Gaunt more than once during the earlier part of Richard II.’s reign of entertaining designs to supplant his nephew on the throne. But these Richard never seems to have wholly credited, and during his three years’ absence his younger brother, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, showed himself a far more dangerous intriguer. Five confederate lords with Gloucester at their head took up arms against the king’s favourite ministers, and the Wonderful Parliament put to death without remorse almost every agent of his former administration that had not fled the country. Gloucester even contemplated the dethronement of the king, but found that in this matter he could not rely on the support of his associates, one of whom was Henry, earl of Derby, the duke of Lancaster’s son. Richard soon afterwards, by declaring himself of age, shook off his uncle’s control, and within ten years the acts of the Wonderful Parliament were reversed by a parliament no less arbitrary. Gloucester and his allies were then brought to severe account; but the earl of Derby and Thomas Mowbray, earl of Nottingham, were taken into favour as having opposed the more violent proceedings of their associates. As if to show his entire confidence in both these noblemen, the king created the former duke of Hereford and the latter duke of Norfolk. But within three months after the one duke accused the other of treason, and the truth of the charge, after much consideration, was referred to trial by battle according to the laws of chivalry. But when the combat was about to commence it was interrupted by the king, who, to preserve the peace of the kingdom, decreed by his own mere authority that the duke of Hereford should be banished for ten years—a term which was immediately after reduced to five—and the duke of Norfolk for life.

This arbitrary sentence was obeyed in the first instance by both parties, and Norfolk never returned. But Henry, duke of Hereford, whose milder sentence was doubtless owing to the fact that he was the popular favourite, came back within a year, having been furnished with a very fair pretext for doing so by a new act of injustice on the part of Richard. His father, John of Gaunt, had died in the interval, and the king, troubled with a rebellion in Ireland, and sorely in want of money, had seized the duchy of Lancaster as forfeited property. Henry at once sailed for England, and landing in Yorkshire while King Richard was in Ireland, gave out that he came only to recover his inheritance. He at once received the support of the northern lords, and as he marched southwards his followers became more numerous at every turn. The whole kingdom was soon practically at his command, and Richard, by the time he had recrossed the channel to Wales, discovered that his cause was altogether lost. He was conveyed from Chester to London, and forced to execute a deed by which he resigned his crown. This was recited in parliament, and he was formally deposed. The duke of Lancaster then stepped forward and claimed the kingdom as due to himself by virtue of his descent from Henry III.

The claim which he put forward involved, to all appearance, a strange falsification of history, for it seemed to rest upon the supposition that Edmund of Lancaster, and not Edward I., was the eldest son of Henry III. A story had gone about, even in the days of John of Gaunt, who, if we may trust the rhymer Hardyng (Chronicle, pp. 290, 291), had artfully got it inserted in chronicles deposited in various monasteries, that this Edmund, surnamed Crouchback, was really hump-backed, and that he was set aside in favour of his younger brother Edward on account of his deformity. No chronicle, however, is known to exist which actually states that Edmund Crouchback was thus set aside; and in point of fact he had no deformity at all, while Edward was six years his senior. Hardyng’s testimony is, moreover, suspicious as reflecting the prejudices of the Percys after they had turned against Henry IV., for Hardyng himself expressly says that the earl of Northumberland was the source of his information (see note, p. 353 of his chronicle). But a statement in the continuation of the Chronicle called the Eulogium (vol. iii. pp. 369, 370) corroborates Hardyng to some extent; for we are told that John of Gaunt had once desired in parliament that his son should be recognized on this flimsy plea as heir to the crown; and, when the earl of March denied the story and insisted on his own claim as descended from Lionel, duke of Clarence, Richard put an end to the discussion and imposed silence on both parties. However this may be, it is certain that this story, though not directly asserted to be true, was indirectly pointed at by Henry when he put forward his claim, and no one was then bold enough to challenge it.

This was partly due, no doubt, to the fact that the true lineal heir after Richard was then a child, who had just succeeded his father as earl of March. Another circumstance was unfavourable to the house of Mortimer—that it derived its title through a woman. No case precisely similar had as yet arisen, and, notwithstanding the precedent of Henry II., it might be doubted whether succession through a female was favoured by the constitution. If not, Henry could say with truth that he was the direct heir of his grandfather, Edward III. If, on the other hand, succession through females was valid, he could trace his descent through his mother from Henry III. by a very illustrious line of ancestors. And, in the words by which he formally made his claim, he ventured to say no more than that he was descended from the king just mentioned “by right line of the blood.” In what particular way that “right line” was to be traced he did not venture to indicate.

It is unnecessary in this article to relate the history of the three successive kings belonging to the house of Lancaster (Henry 1V., V., and VI.), as a brief epitome of their reigns will be found elsewhere (see vol. xi. pp. 659- 662). With the death of the last-named sovereign the direct male line of John of Gaunt became extinct. But by his daughters he became the ancestor of more than one line of foreign kings, while his descendants by his third wife, Catherine Swynford, conveyed the crown of England to the house of Tudor. It is true that his children by this lady were born before he married her; but they were made legitimate by act of parliament, and, though Henry IV. in confirming the privilege thus granted to them endeavoured to debar them from the succession to the crown, it is now ascertained that there was no such reservation in the original Act, and the title claimed by Henry VII. was probably better than he himself supposed.

We subjoin a pedigree of the royal and illustrious houses that traced their descent from John of Gaunt :— [table]

LANCASTER, Sir James, an eminent English seaman of the Elizabethan period. In his early years he was in Portugal as soldier and merchant; in 1591 he made a voyage on his own account to the East Indies; in 1594-95 he had command of an expedition which made an attack on Pernambuco; andin 1600 he was placed at the head of the first fleet sent out by the newly-founded East India Company. During his later years he acted as one of the directors of the company. He died in 1620.

The original journals of Lancaster’s principal voyage, during which he visited Java and Sumatra, have unfortunately been lost; and we only possess the narrative drawn up from them with questionable perspicacity by Purchas. The various portions of Hakluyt and Purchas relating to Lancaster have been edited for the Hakluyt Society by C. R. Markham (1879). The name of Lancaster Sound was bestowed by Baffin in honour of Sir James, on the strait trending westward from Baffin’s Bay.

LANCASTER, Joseph (1778-1838), was born in Southwark in 1778, and was the son of a Chelsea pensioner. He had few opportunities of regular instruction, but he very early showed unusual seriousness and desire for learning. At sixteen he looked forward to the dissenting ministry; but soon after his religious views altered, and he attached himself to the Society of Friends, with which he remained associated for many years, until long afterwards he was disowned by that body. At the age of twenty he began to gather a few poor children under his father’s roof and to give them the rudiments of instruction, without a fee, except in cases in which the parent was willing to pay a trifle. Soon a thousand children were assembled in the Borough Road; and, the attention of the duke of Bedford, Mr Whitbread, and others having been directed to his efforts, he was provided with means for building a schoolroom, and supplying needful materials. The main features of his plan were the employment of older scholars as monitors, and an elaborate system of mechanical drill, by means of which these young teachers were made to impart the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic to large numbers at the same time. The material appliances for teaching were very scanty—a few leaves torn out of spelling-books and pasted on boards, some slates, and a desk spread with sand, on which the children wrote with their fingers. The order and cheerfulness of the school and the military precision of the children’s movements were very striking, and began to attract much public observation at a time when the education of the poor was almost entirely neglected. Lancaster had the skill which gains the loyalty of subordinates, and he succeeded in inspiring his young monitors with fondness for their work and with pride in the institution of which they formed a part. As these youths bècame more trustworthy, he found himself at leisure to accept some of the numerous invitations which crowded upon him, and to expound what he called “his system” by lectures in various towns. In this way many new schools were established, and placed under the care of young men whom he had trained. In a memorable interview with George HL, Lancaster was encouraged by the expression of the king’s wish that every poor child in his dominions should be taught to read the Bible. Royal patronage brought in its train resources, fame, and public responsibility, which proved to be beyond Lancaster’s own powers to sustain or control. He was vain, reckless, and improvident. In 1808 a few noblemen and gentlemen came to his rescue, paid his debts, became his trustees, and founded the society which was at first called the Royal Lancasterian Institution, but was afterwards more widely known as the British and Foreign School Society. With the strongest wish to retain his services and to treat him with liberality, they soon found that he was impatient of control, and that his wild impulses and heedless extravagance made it impossible to work with him. He quarrelled with the committee, set up a private school at Tooting, became bankrupt, and in 1818 emigrated to America. There he met at first with a warm reception, gave several courses of lectures which were well attended, and wrote to friends at home letters full of enthusiasm and of high hopes for future usefulness, not unmingled with bitter denunciations of what he called the ingratitude and treachery of those who had been associated with him in England. But his fame was short-lived. The miseries of debt and disappointment were aggravated by sickness, and he settled for a time in the warmer climate of Caracas. He afterwards visited St Thomas and Santa Cruz, and at length returned to New York, the corporation of which city made him a public grant of 500 dollars in pity for the misfortunes which had by this time reduced him to lamentable poverty. He afterwards visited Canada, where for a time his prospects brightened. He gave lectures at Montreal, and was encouraged to open a school which enjoyed an ephemeral success, but was soon abandoned. A small annuity provided by his friends in England was his only means of support. He formed a plan, however, for returning home and giving a new impetus to his “system,” by which he declared it would be possible “to teach ten thousand children in different schools, not knowing their letters, all to read fluently in three weeks to three months.” But these visions were never realized. He was run over by a carriage in the streets of New York in October 1838, and was so much injured that he died in a few hours.

As one of the two rival inventors of what was called the “monitorial” or “mutual” method of instruction, his name was prominent for many years in educational controversy. Dr Andrew Bell {q. v.) had in 1797 published an account of his experiments in teaching; and Lancaster in his first pamphlet, published in 1803, frankly acknowledges his debt to Bell for some useful hints. The two worked independently, but Lancaster was the first to apply the system of monitorial teaching on a large scale. As an economical experiment his school at the Borough Road was a signal success. He had one thousand scholars under discipline, and taught them to read, write, and work simple sums at a yearly cost of less than 5s. a head. His tract Improvements in Education described the gradation of ranks, the system of signals and orders, the functions of the monitors, the method of counting and of spelling, and the curious devices he adopted for punishing offenders. Bell’s educational aims were humbler, as he feared to “elevate above their station those who were doomed to the drudgery of daily labour,” and therefore did not desire to teach even writing and ciphering to the lower classes. The main difference between them was that the system of the one was adopted by ecclesiastics and Conservatives,—the “National Society for the Education of the Poor in the principles of the Established Church” having been founded in 1811 for its propagation; while Lancaster’s method was patronized by the Edinburgh Review, by Whig statesmen, by a few liberal Churchmen, and by Nonconformists generally. It was the design of Lancaster and his friends to make national education Christian, but not sectarian,—to cause the Scriptures to be read, explained, and reverenced in the schools, without seeking by catechisms or otherwise to attract the children to any particular church or sect. This principle, since almost universally adopted by the school boards of England, was at first vehemently denounced as deistic and mischievous, and as especially hostile to the Established Church. To do them justice, it must be owned that the rival claims and merits of Bell and Lancaster were urged with more passion and unfairness by their friends than by themselves. Y et neither is entitled to hold a very high place among the world’s teachers. Bell was cold, shrewd, and self-seeking. Lancaster had more enthusiasm, a genuine and abounding love for children, and some ingenuity in devising plans both for teaching and governing. But he was shiftless, wayward, and unmethodical, and incapable of sustained and high-principled personal effort. His writings were not numerous. They consist mainly of short pamphlets descriptive of the successes he attained at the Borough Road. His last publication, An Epitome of the Chief Events and Transactions of his Own Life, appeared in America in 1833, and is characterized, even more strongly than his former writings, by looseness and incoherency of style, by egotism, and by a curious incapacity for judging fairly the motives either of his friends or his foes.

Subsequent experience has not justified the sanguine estimate of the Edinburgh Reviewer, who so early as 1810 described Lancaster’s method as “a beautiful and inestimable discovery, a plan now brought very near to perfection, by which education could be placed within the reach of all classes.” We have since come to believe that intelligent teaching requires skill and previous training, and that even the humblest rudiments are not to be well taught by those who have only just acquired them for themselves, or to be attained by mere mechanical drill. But in the early stages of national education the monitorial method served a valuable purpose. It brought large numbers of hitherto neglected children under discipline, and gave them elementary instruction at a very cheap rate. Moreover, the educational results attained were in no sense contemptible. The little monitors were often found to make up in brightness, tractability, and energy for their lack of experience, and to teach the arts of reading, writing, and computing with surprising success. And one cardinal principle of Bell and Lancaster is of prime importance. They regarded a school, not merely as a place to which individual pupils should come for guidance from teachers, but as an organized community whose members have much to leanι from each other. They sought to place their scholars from the first in helpful mutual relations, and to make them feel the need of common efforts towards the attainment of common ends.