turf as Mr F. Robinson. He died in London on the 9th of May 1895, and was succeeded as 4th baronet by his son, Sir Robert Peel (b. 1867).
Sir Frederick Peel (1823–1906), the prime minister’s second son, was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, becoming a barrister in 1849. He entered parliament in that year, and with the exception of the period between 1857 and 1859 he remained in the House of Commons until 1865. In 1851–1852 and again in 1853–1855 he was under-secretary for the colonies; from 1855 to 1857 he was under-secretary for war; and from 1859 to 1865 he was secretary to the treasury. He became a privy councillor in 1857 and was knighted in 1869. Sir Frederick Peel’s chief service to the state was in connexion with the railway and canal commission. He was appointed a commissioner on the inception of this body in 1873, and was its president until its reconstruction in 1888, remaining a member of the commission until his death on the 6th of June 1906.
The third son was Sir William Peel (1824–1858), and the youngest Viscount Peel (q.v.). Sir William was a sailor, who distinguished himself in the Crimea, where he gained the Victoria Cross, and also during the Indian Mutiny, being wounded at the relief of Lucknow. He died on the 27th of April 1858. Sir William wrote A Ride through the Nubian Desert (1852), giving an account of his travels in 1851.
Two of Sir Robert Peel’s brothers were also politicians of note. William Yates Peel (1789–1858), educated at Harrow and at St John’s College, Cambridge, was a member of parliament from 1817 to 1837, and again from 1847 to 1852; he was under-secretary for home affairs in 1828, and was a lord of the treasury in 1830 and again in 1834–1835. Jonathan Peel (1799–1879) was first a soldier and then a member of parliament during the long period between 1826 and 1868, first representing Norwich and then Huntingdon. From 1841 to 1846 he was surveyor-general of the ordnance, and in 1858–1859 and again in 1866–1867 he was a very competent and successful secretary of state for war. General Peel was also an owner of racehorses, and in 1844 his horse Orlando won the Derby, after another horse, Running Rein. had been disqualified.
For the history of the Peel family see Jane Haworth, A Memoir of the Family of Peel from the year 1600 (1836).
PEEL, a seaport and watering-place of the Isle of Man, on the W. coast, 1112 m. W.N.W. of Douglas by the Isle of Man railway. Pop. (1901), 3304. It lies on Peel Bay, at the mouth of the small river Neb, which forms the harbour. The old town consists of narrow streets and lanes, but a modern residential
quarter has grown up to the east. On the west side of the
river-mouth St Patrick’s Isle is connected with the mainland
by a causeway. It is occupied almost wholly by the ruins of
Peel castle. St Patrick is said to have founded here the first
church in Man, and a small chapel, dedicated to him, appears
to date from the 8th or 10th century. There is a round tower,
also of very early date, resembling in certain particulars the
round towers of Ireland. The ruined cathedral of St German
has a transitional Norman choir, with a very early crypt beneath,
a nave with an early English triplet at the west end, transepts,
and a low and massive central tower still standing. There
are remains of the bishops’ palace, of the so-called Fenella’s
tower, famous through Scott’s Peveril of the Peak, of the palace
of the Lords of Man, of the keep and guardroom above the
entrance to the castle, and of the Moare or great tower, while
the whole is surrounded by battlements. There are also a lar e
artificial mound supposed to be a defensive earthwork of higher
antiquity than the castle, and another mound known as the
Giant’s Grave. The guardroom is associated with the ghostly
apparition of the Moddey Dhoo (black dog), to which reference
is made in Peveril of the Peak. In 1397 Richard II. condemned
the earl of Warwick to imprisonment in Peel Castle for conspiracy,
and in 1444 Eleanor, duchess of Gloucester, received
a like sentence on the ground of having compassed the death
of Henry VI by magic. Peel has a long-established fishing
industry, which, however, has declined in modern times. In
the town the most notable building is the church of St German,
with a fine tower and spire Peel was called by the Northmen
Holen (island, i.e. St Patrick’s Isle); the existing name is Celtic,
meaning “fort” (cf. the peel towers of the borderland of England
and Scotland).
PEEL. (1) The skin or rind of a fruit; thus “to peel” is to remove the outer covering of anything. The etymology of the word is closely connected with that of “pill,” to plunder,
surviving in “pillage.” Both words are to be referred to
French and thence to Latin. In French peler and piller, though
now distinguished in meaning (the first used of stripping bark
or rind, the second meaning to rob), were somewhat confused
in application, and a similar confusion occurs in English till
comparatively late. The Latin words from which they are
derived are pellis, skin, and pilare, to strip of hair (pilus).
(2) The name of a class of small fortified dwelling-houses built
during the 16th century on the borders between Scotland and
England. They are also known as “bastel-houses,” i.e.
“bastille-houses,” and consist of a square massive tower with
high pitched roof, the lower part being vaulted, the upper
part containing a few living rooms. The entrance is on the
upper floor, access being gained by a movable ladder. The
vaulted ground-floor chamber served for the cattle when there
was danger of attack. The word appears in various forms,
e.g. pele, peil, and Latinized as pelum, &c; “pile” is also found
used synonymously, but the New English Dictionary (s.v. pile)
considers the two words distinct. It seems more probable
that the Word is to be identified with “pale,” a stake (Lat.
palus). The earlier meaning of “peel” is a palisades enclosure
used as an additional defence for a fortified post or as an
independent stronghold.
PEELE, GEORGE (1558–c. 1598), English dramatist, was born in London in 1558. His father, who appears to have belonged to a Devonshire family, was clerk of Christ’s Hospital, and wrote two treatises on book-keeping. George Peele was educated at Christ’s Hospital, and entered Broadgates Hall (Pembroke College), Oxford, in 1571. In 1574 he removed to Christ Church, taking his B.A. degree in 1577, and proceeding M.A. in 1579. In 1579 the governors of Christ’s Hospital requested their clerk to “discharge his house of his son, George Peele.” It is not necessary to read into this anything more than that the governors insisted on his beginning to earn a livelihood. He went up to London about 1580, but in 1583 when Albertus Alasco (Albert Laski), a Polish nobleman, was entertained at Christ Church, Oxford, Peele was entrusted with the arrangement of two Latin plays by William Gager (fl. 1580–1619) presented on the occasion. He was also complimented by Dr Gager for an English verse translation of one of the Iphigenias of Euripides. In 1585 he was employed to write the Device of the Pageant borne before Woolston Dixie, and in 1591 he devised the pageant in honour of another lord mayor, Sir William Webbe. This was the Descensus Astraeae (printed in the Harleian Miscellany, 1808), in which Queen Elizabeth is honoured as Astraea. Peele had married as early as 1583 a lady who brought him some property, which he speedily dissipated. Robert Greene, at the end of his Groats-worth of Wit, exhorts Peele to repentance, saying that he has, like himself, “been driven to extreme shifts for a living.” The sorry traditions of his reckless life were emphasized by the use of his name in connexion with the apocryphal Merrie conceited Jests of George Peele (printed in 1607). Many of the stories had done service before, but there are personal touches that may be biographical. He died before 1598, for Francis Meres, writing in that year, speaks of his death in his Palladis Tamia.
His pastoral comedy of The Araygnement of Paris, presented by the Children of the Chapel Royal before Queen Elizabeth perhaps as early as 1581, was printed anonymously in 1584. Charles Lamb, sending to Vincent Novello a song from this piece of Peele’s, said that if it had been less uneven in execution Fletcher’s Faithful Shepherdess “had been but a second name in this sort of writing” Peele shows considerable art in his flattery. Paris is arraigned before Jupiter for having assigned the apple to Venus. Diana, with whom the final decision rests, gives the apple to none of the competitors but to a nymph called Eliza, whose identity is confirmed by the further
