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218
CANTILUPE, W. DE—CANTON

at Amiens in 1264; he was made chancellor of England in February 1265, but was deprived of this office after Montfort’s death at Evesham, and lived out of England for some time. Returning to England, he was again chancellor of Oxford University, lectured on theology, and held several ecclesiastical appointments. In 1274 he attended the second council of Lyons, and in 1275 he was appointed bishop of Hereford. Cantilupe was now a trusted adviser of Edward I.; he attended the royal councils, and even when differing from the king did not forfeit his favour. The archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Kilwardby, was also his friend; but after Kilwardby’s death in 1279 a series of disputes arose between the bishop and the new archbishop, John Peckham, and this was probably the cause which drove Cantilupe to visit Italy. He died at Orvieto, on the 25th of August 1282, and he was canonized in 1330. Cantilupe appears to have been an exemplary bishop both in spiritual and secular affairs. His charities were large and his private life blameless; he was constantly visiting his diocese, correcting offenders and discharging other episcopal duties; and he compelled neighbouring landholders to restore estates which rightly belonged to the see of Hereford. In 1905 the Cantilupe Society was founded to publish the episcopal registers of Hereford, of which Cantilupe’s is the first in existence.

See the Ada Sanctorum, Boll., 1st October; and the Register of Thomas de Cantilupe, with introduction by W. W. Capes (1906).


CANTILUPE, WALTER DE (d. 1265), bishop of Worcester, came of a family which had risen by devoted service to the crown. His father and his elder brother are named by Roger of Wendover among the “evil counsellors” of John, apparently for no better reason than that they were consistently loyal to an unpopular master. Walter at first followed in his father’s footsteps, entering the service of the Exchequer and acting as an itinerant justice in the early years of Henry III. But he also took minor orders, and, in 1236, although not yet a deacon, received the see of Worcester. As bishop, he identified himself with the party of ecclesiastical reform, which was then led by Edmund Rich and Robert Grosseteste. Like his leaders he was sorely divided between his theoretical belief in the papacy as a divine institution and his instinctive condemnation of the policy which Gregory IX. and Innocent IV. pursued in their dealings with the English church. At first a court favourite, the bishop came at length to the belief that the evils of the time arose from the unprincipled alliance of crown and papacy. He raised his voice against papal demands for money, and after the death of Grosseteste (1253) was the chief spokesman of the nationalist clergy. At the parliament of Oxford (1258) he was elected by the popular party as one of their representatives on the committee of twenty-four which undertook to reform the administration; from that time till the outbreak of civil war he was a man of mark in the councils of the baronial party. During the war he sided with Montfort and, through his nephew, Thomas, who was then chancellor of Oxford, brought over the university to the popular side. He was present at Lewes and blessed the Montfortians before they joined battle with the army of the king; he entertained Simon de Montfort on the night before the final rout of Evesham. During Simon’s dictatorship, the bishop appeared only as a mediating influence; in the triumvirate of “Electors” who controlled the administration, the clergy were represented by the bishop of Chichester. Walter de Cantilupe died in the year after Evesham (1266). He was respected by all parties, and, though far inferior in versatility and force of will to Grosseteste, fully merits the admiration which his moral character inspired. He is one of the few constitutionalists of his day whom it is impossible to accuse of interested motives.

See the Chronica Maiora of Matthew Paris (“Rolls” series, ed. Luard); the Chronicon de Bellis (ed. Halliwell, Camden Society); and the Annales Monastici (“Rolls” series, ed. Luard); also T. F. Tout in the Political History of England, vol. iii. (1905).

CANTO (from the Lat. cantus, a song), one of the divisions of a long poem, a convenient division when poetry was more usually sung by the minstrel to his own accompaniment than read. In music, the canto, in a concerted piece, is that part to which the air is given. In modern music this is nearly always the soprano. The old masters, however, more frequently allotted it to the tenor. Canto fermo, or cantus firmus, is that part of the melody which remains true to the original motive, while the other parts vary with the counterpoint; also in Church music the simple straightforward melody of the old chants as opposed to canto figurato, which is full of embellishments of a florid character (see Plain Song).

CANTON, JOHN (1718–1772), English natural philosopher, was born at Stroud, Gloucestershire, on the 31st of July 1718. At the age of nineteen, he was articled for five years as clerk to the master of a school in Spital Square, London, with whom at the end of that time he entered into partnership. In 1750 he read a paper before the Royal Society on a method of making artificial magnets, which procured him election as a fellow of the society and the award of the Copley medal. He was the first in England to verify Benjamin Franklin’s hypothesis of the identity of lightning and electricity, and he made several important electrical discoveries. In 1762 and 1764 he published experiments in refutation of the decision of the Florentine Academy, at that time generally accepted, that water is incompressible; and in 1768 he described the preparation, by calcining oyster-shell with sulphur, of the phosphorescent material known as Canton’s phosphorus. His investigations were carried on without any intermission of his work as a schoolmaster. He died in London on the 22nd of March 1772.

CANTON (more correctly Kwang-chow Fu), a large and populous commercial city of China, in the province of Kwangtung, situated on the eastern bank of the Pearl river, which at Canton is somewhat broader than the Thames at London Bridge, and is navigable 300 m. into the interior. The Pearl river has an additional course of 80 m. to the sea, the first part of which lies through a rich alluvial plain. Beyond this rises a range of hills terminating in abrupt escarpments along the course of the river. The bold shore thus formed compresses the stream at this point into a narrow pass, to which the Chinese have given the name of Hu-mun, or Tiger’s Gate. This the Portuguese translated into Boca Tigre, whence the designation of “the Bogue,” by which it is commonly known among Europeans. When viewed from the hills on the north, Canton appears to be little more than an expanse of reddish roofs relieved by a few large trees,—two pagodas shooting up within the walls, and a five-storeyed tower near the northern gate, being the most conspicuous objects. These hills rise 1200 ft. above the river. Little or no vegetation is seen on them; and their acclivities, covered for miles with graves and tombs, serve as the necropolis of this vast city. Three or four forts are built on the points nearest the northern walls. Facing the city on the opposite side of the river is the suburb and island of Honan. The part of Canton enclosed by walls is about 6 m. in circumference, and has a partition wall, running east and west, and dividing the city into two unequal parts. The northern and larger division is called the old, and the southern the new city. Including the suburbs, the city has a circuit of nearly 10 m. The houses stretch along the river for 4 m., and the banks are almost entirely concealed by boats and rafts. The walls of the city are of brick, on a foundation of sandstone and granite, are 20 ft. thick, and rise to an average height of 25 ft. On the north side the wall rises to include a hill which it there meets with, and on the other three sides the city is surrounded by a ditch, which is filled by the rising tide, when, for a time, the revolting mass of filth that lies in its bed is concealed from view. There are twelve outer gates—four of which are in the partition wall, and two water gates, through which boats pass from east to west across the new city. The gates are all shut at night, and in the daytime a guard is stationed at them to preserve order. The streets, amounting in all to upwards of 600, are long, straight, and very narrow. They are mostly paved and are not as dirty as those of some of the other cities in the empire; in fact, considering the habits of the people and the inattention of the government to these matters, Canton may be said to be a well-governed and comparatively cleanly city. The houses are in general small, seldom consisting of more than two storeys, the