Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/619

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JEFFRIES JEHOVAH 599 cruelty was all the more offensive because he traded in pardons, and thus enabled rich offend- ' ers to escape. The king called his judge's do- ings " the chief justice's campaign in the west," and rewarded him by making him lord high chancellor of England, Sept. 28, 1685, which office he held until the downfall of the Stuarts. Jn the house of peers he made a bad figure. Attempting to bully the peers, he was firmly met, and so humiliated that he wept. The court of high commission having been revived, Jeffreys was appointed its president, and took part in its worst acts. It was by his advice that the seven bishops were imprisoned and tried. When the king was frightened into a change of policy, Jeffreys became his agent for good purposes. He carried back its charter to the city of London, and was hooted by the peo- ple. When James fled from London, Jeffreys made arrangements to sail for Hamburg, but landed for the indulgence of drunkenness, and was recognized and seized. The mob wished to tear him in pieces, but the authorities suc- ceeded in placing him in the tower, Dec. 13, 1688. There he remained for upward of four months, when he died of the stone. It is as- serted that James II. was so well pleased with him, that he was to have received promotion in the peerage by the title of earl of Flint. Lord Campbell says that " when quite sober he was particularly good as a nisi prius judge." Macaulay says : " His enemies could not deny that he possessed some of the qualities of a great judge. His legal knowledge, indeed, was merely such as he had picked up in practice of no very high kind. But he had one of those happily constituted intellects which, across labyrinths of sophistry, and through masses of immaterial facts, go straight to the true point." His biographer, Mr. Woolrych, says: "His bright sterling talents must be acknowledged ; that intuitive perception which led him to penetrate in a moment the thin veil of hypoc- risy, and show things as they were, must have its meed." In spite of these eulogies, few will dissent from the declaration of Mr. Justice Foster, that he was "the very worst judge that ever disgraced Westminster hall." Though Jeffreys was the father of 12 children, his family became extinct at an early day, and his title disappeared from the peerage in 1703. JEFFRIES, John, an American physician, born in Boston, Feb. 5, 1744, died there, Sept. 16, 1819. Be graduated at Harvard college in 1763, subsequently attended the medical schools of London, and in 1769 received from the uni- versity of Aberdeen the degree of M. D. Re- turning to Boston, he entered upon a lucrative practice, which continued until the evacuation of the town by the British troops, whom he accompanied to Halifax. After serving as surgeon general of the troops in Halifax, he was appointed in 1779 surgeon major of the forces in America, and was present for a short time with the army in Savannah. In the suc- ceeding year he established himself in London in the practice of his profession, and with so much success that he declined the lucrative' post of surgeon general to the forces in India. He also occupied himself much with scientific studies, and in the prosecution of his experi- ments in atmospheric temperature undertook, together with Francois Blanchard, Jan. 7, 1785, a remarkable voyage in a balloon from Dover cliffs across -the British channel, land- ing in the forest of Guines in France. This was the first successful attempt at aerostation on an extended scale, and Dr. Jeffries in con- sequence received many attentions from the learned and scientific societies of Paris and from various eminent personages. In 1789 he returned to Boston, where he practised his profession until the close of his life. He an- nounced a course of lectures in Boston on anat- omy, but such was the prejudice against dis- section that on the evening of the second lecture a mob broke into his anatomical room and bore away the subject, the body of an executed felon presented to him by the governor. The course was never resumed, and the single lecture de- livered is said to have been the first public one on anatomy given in New England. .11 IKISIIAI'II VI . fourth king of Judah, born about 950 B. C., succeeded his father Asa about 915, and died about 890. He fortified himself at first against Ahab, king of IsVael, but after- ward was connected with him by alliance in war and the marriage of their children. He was however zealous in punishing idolatry and improving the administration of justice. He took tribute from the Philistines and Arabians, and maintained a large standing army. He was Ahab's ally at the fatal battle of Ramoth- Gilead, but escaped without hurt. In alliance with Ahaziah, king of Israel, he built a fleet for an expedition to Ophir, but it was wreck- ed. He was successful against the Moabites and Ammonites, accompanied Jehoram of Is- rael in his campaign against Moab, in which they were joined by the king of Edom, and maintained the supremacy of Judah over the latter country. In his last years his son Jeho- ram was associated with him in the govern- ment. The name Jehoshaphat signifies " Jeho- vah judgeth," and the prophet Joel (ch. iii. 2, 12) predicts the judgment of the heathen in the "valley of Jehoshaphat;" not any actual valley, but an ideal scene of Jehovah's righteous judgments on the nations, called in verse 14 " the valley of decision." But in later times the prophecy has been applied to the final judg- ment, and the valley of Jehoshaphat has been localized as the ravine between Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. This application of the name appears in the 4th century, and the be- lief that the final judgment will take place there has led the Jews and the Moslems for centuries to use the sides of the valley as a place of burial. JEHOVAH (Yehoijah), the Hebrew name of the Supreme Being. The pronunciation and derivation of this name are matters of con-