This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
  
AMES—AMESBURY
851

the opposition was renewed, but this time abortively. He was installed at Franeker on the 7th of May 1622, and delivered a most learned discourse on the occasion on “Urim and Thummin.” He soon brought renown to Franeker as professor, preacher, pastor and theological writer. He prepared his Medulla Theologiae, a manual of Calvinistic doctrine, for his students. His De Conscientia, ejus Jure et Casibus (1632), an attempt to bring Christian ethics into clear relation with particular cases of conduct and of conscience, was a new thing in Protestantism. Having continued twelve years at Franeker (where he was rector in 1626), his health gave way, and he contemplated removal to New England. But another door was opened for him. He yearned for more frequent opportunities of preaching to his fellow-countrymen, and an invitation to Rotterdam gave him such opportunity. His friends at Franeker were passionately opposed to the transference, but ultimately acquiesced. At Rotterdam he drew all hearts to him by his eloquence and fervour in the pulpit, and his irrepressible activity as a pastor. Home-controversy engaged him again, and he prepared his Fresh Suit against Ceremonies—the book which made Richard Baxter a Nonconformist. It ably sums up the issues between the Puritan school and that of Hooker. It was posthumously published. He did not long survive his removal to Rotterdam. Having caught a cold from a flood which inundated his house, he died in November 1633, at the age of fifty-seven, apparently in needy circumstances. He left, by a second wife, a son and a daughter. His valuable library found a home in New England.

Few Englishmen have exercised so formative and controlling an influence on European thought and opinion as Ames. He was a master in theological controversy, shunning not to cross swords with the formidable Bellarmine. He was a scholar among scholars, being furnished with extraordinary resources of learning. His works, which even the Biographia Britannica (1778) testifies were famous over Europe, were collected at Amsterdam in 5 vols. 4to. Only a very small proportion was translated into his mother tongue. His Lectiones in omnes Psalmos Davidis (1635) is exceedingly suggestive and terse in its style, reminding of Bengel’s Gnomon, as does also his Commentarius utriusque Epist. S. Petri. His “Replies” to Bishop Morton and Dr Burgess on “Ceremonies” tell us that even kinship could not prevent him from “contending earnestly for the faith.”

See John Quick’s MS. Icones Sacrae Anglicanae, which gives the fisherman anecdote on the personal authority of one who was present; Life by Nethenus prefixed to collected edition of Latin works (5 vols., Amsterdam, 1658); Winwood’s Memorials, vol. iii. pp. 346-347; Neal’s Puritans, i. 532: Fuller’s Cambridge (Christ’s College); Hanbury’s Hist. Memorials, i. 533; Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. vi., fourth series, 1863, pp. 576-577.

AMES, a city of Story county, Iowa, U.S.A., about 35 m. N. of Des Moines, at the intersection of two lines of the Chicago & North-Western railway. Pop. (1890) 1276; (1900) 2422; (1910 U. S. census) 4223. The city is the seat of the state college of agriculture and mechanic arts; this institution, opened in 1869, has for its use about 1175 acres of land, on which the state has erected, at a cost of $1,200,000, thirty-two college buildings, besides dwelling-houses and buildings for farm purposes. On the college campus are beautiful groves containing several hundred varieties of trees, and in a central position stands a campanile with excellent chimes. The college offers four-year courses in agronomy, animal husbandry, dairying, domestic economy, general science, veterinary medicine, and civil, mechanical, electrical and mining engineering. In 1909–1910 it had an enrollment of 2631 students (including 796 in the winter short course) and a library of 23,000 volumes. The cost of instruction and experimentation is met by the income from national grants (under the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1882) and by state appropriations. Ames has a Carnegie library, and owns and operates its electric-lighting plant and waterworks. It was laid out as a town in 1864 and was named in honour of Oakes Ames, at the time one of the proprietors of the Cedar Rapids & Missouri River railway (now part of the Chicago & North-Western); five years later it was incorporated.

AMESBURY, a small town in the Wilton parliamentary division of Wiltshire, England, 8 m. N. of Salisbury, on the London & South-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 1143. It stands on a wooded upland, amid the chalk downs of Salisbury Plain. The church of St Mary is cruciform, with a low square tower, and is largely Early English, with some richly decorated windows in the chancel. A curious two-storeyed building which adjoins the north transept consists of a chapel with a piscina below and a priest’s chamber above. Amesbury Abbey, a beautiful house built by Inigo Jones for the dukes of Queensberry, stands close to the village, in a park watered by the river Avon, here famous for its trout. Stonehenge (q.v.), the greatest surviving megalithic work in the British Isles, is a mile and a half distant; and on a hill near the village is Vespasian’s Camp or the Ramparts, a large earthwork, which is undoubtedly of British, not Roman, origin.

At Amesbury (Ambresberia, Aumbresbery) a witenagemot was held in 932, while about 980 Ælfthryth (Ethelfrida), queen-dowager of Edgar, erected here a nunnery in expiation of the murder of her stepson. The house afterwards acquired such ill repute that in 1177 the nuns were dispersed and the house was attached to the abbey of Fontevrault, by whom it was re-established. From this date, by a succession of royal charters and private gifts, the nunnery amassed vast wealth and privileges, and became a fashionable retreat for ladies of high rank, among whose number were Eleanor, widow of Henry III., and Mary, daughter of Edward I. After the dissolution in 1540 the site was granted to Edward, earl of Hertford, afterwards duke of Somerset and protector of the kingdom. It subsequently passed to the duke of Queensberry. According to the Domesday, Amesbury was a royal manor and did not pay geld, but was under the obligation of providing one night’s entertainment for the king. In 1317 the prioress obtained a Saturday market and a three days’ fair at the feast of St Melor (Meliorus). The market was subsequently changed to Friday, and three additional fairs were granted. Pipeclay abounds in the neighbourhood, and in the 17th century Amesbury was famous for the best pipes in England, many of which are preserved in Salisbury museum.

See Victoria County History—Wiltshire; Sir Richard Colt Hoare, History of Modern Wiltshire (1822–1844).

AMESBURY, a township of Essex county, in N.E. Massachusetts, U.S.A., situated on the Merrimac river, about 6 m. above its mouth. Pop. (1890) 9798; (1900) 9473, of whom 2448 were foreign-born; (1910, U. S. census), 9894. Amesbury is served by two divisions of the Boston & Maine railway, and is connected by electric line with Haverhill and Newburyport, Mass., and with Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, and Salisbury Beach, Mass., two summer resorts. The township covers a land area of about 13 sq. m. The surface is hilly. The Powow river, a small stream, passes through the centre of the township. There is a public library. Among Amesbury’s manufactures are hats, cotton goods, carriages, automobile bodies, carriage and automobile lamps, thermometers, brass castings and motor boats. In 1905 the factory products were valued at $3,614,692. Amesbury was settled about 1644 as a separate part of Salisbury, and in 1654, by mutual agreement of the old and new “towns," became practically independent, although not legally a township until 1666 (named Amesbury, from the English town in Wilts, in 1667). It suffered repeatedly in the course of the colonial Indian wars. Quakers settled here as early as 1701. Josiah Bartlett (1729–1795), a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born here, and is commemorated by a statue (1888) by Karl Gerhardt. Shipbuilding was an important industry in the 18th and especially the first quarter of the 19th century, and the U.S. frigate “Alliance” was built at Salisburypoint in 1778. A nail factory, one of the earliest in the country, was built on the Powow in 1796. The manufacture of iron began about 1710, of hats in 1769, of carriages in 1800 and of cotton goods in 1812. Paul Moody, who with F. C. Lowell constructed in 1814 at Waltham the first successful power-loom in America, was engaged in the manufacture of cotton goods in Amesbury. The township was the home of John G. Whittier from 1836 to 1892; here were written most of the poems of his middle and later life, many of which