is drawn to certain points of importance in the hope that it may be clear that the problems cannot be discussed usefully in the formal manner which is too frequently adopted. Our knowledge of valency cannot be expressed in a few symbols or in a few formal statements. (H. E. A.)
VALENS, East Roman emperor from 364 to 378, owed his
elevation in the thirty-sixth year of his age to his brother
Valentinian, who chose him to be his associate in the empire,
of which a formal division into East and West was now once
for all definitively arranged (see Valentinian I.). Valens had
been attached to Julian’s bodyguard, but he did not inherit the military ability of his father, Gratian of Pannonia, who had risen from the ranks to a high position. A revolt headed by Procopius in the second year of his reign, and backed up by
the public opinion of Constantinople and the sympathy of the
Gothic princes and chiefs on the Danube, seemed so alarming
to him that he thought of negotiation; but in the following
year the revolt collapsed before the firmness of his ministers
and generals. In the year 366 Valens at one stroke reduced the
taxes of the empire by one-fourth, a very popular measure,
though one of questionable policy in the face of the threatening
attitude of the Goths on the lower Danube. Before venturing
on a campaign against them, Valens received baptism from
Eudoxus, the bishop of Constantinople and the leader of the
Arian party. After some small successes over the Goths, won
by his generals (367–9), Valens concluded a peace with them,
which lasted six years, on a general understanding that the
Danube was to be the boundary between Goths and Romans.
On his return to Constantinople in 369–70 Valens began to
persecute his orthodox and Catholic subjects, but he lacked
the energy to carry out his edicts rigorously.
In the years 371 to 377 Valens was in Asia Minor, most of the time at the Syrian Antioch. Though anxious to avoid an Eastern war, because of danger nearer home from the restless- ness of the Goths, he was compelled to take the field against Shapur II. who had invaded and occupied Armenia. It seems that Valens[1] crossed the Euphrates in 373, and in Mesopotamia his troops drove back the king of Persia to the farther bank of the Tigris. But the Roman success was by no means decisive, and no definite understanding as to boundaries was come to with Persia. Valens returned to Antioch, where in the winter of 373–4 he instituted a persecution of magicians and other people whom he foolishly believed to imperil his life. Between 374 and 377 we read of grievous complaints of injustice and extortion perpetrated under legal forms, the result probably of the recent panic, and pointing to an increasing weakness and timidity at headquarters. Although preparations were made for following up the war with Persia and securing the frontier, a truce was patched up, rather to the disadvantage of the empire, Armenia and the adjacent country being half conquered and annexed by Shapur. The armies of Rome, in fact, were wanted in another quarter. The Huns, of whom we now hear for the first time, were beginning in 376 to press the Goths from the north, and the latter asked leave of the emperor to cross the Danube into Roman territory. This they were allowed to do, on the condition that they came unarmed, and their children were transported to Asia as hostages. The conditions, however, were not observed by the imperial generals, who for their own profit forced the new settlers to buy food at famine prices. Accordingly, the enraged Goths, under their chief Fritigern, streamed across the Balkans into Thrace and the country round Adrianople, plundering, burning and slaughtering as they went. They were driven back for a time, but returned in the spring of 378 in greater force, with a contingent of Huns and Alans; and again, after some repulses, they penetrated to the neighbourhood of Adrianople. Valens, who had now returned to Constantinople, left the capital in May 378 with a strong and well-officered army. Without awaiting the arrival of his nephew Gratian, emperor of the West, who had just won a great victory over one of the barbarous tribes of Germany in Alsace, Valens attacked the enemy at once, although his troops had to go into action heated and fatigued by a long march on a sultry August day. The battle, which was fought on confined ground in a valley, was decided by a cavalry charge of the Alans and Sarmatians, which threw the Roman infantry into confusion and hemmed it in so closely that the men could scarcely draw their swords. The slaughter, which continued till the complete destruction of the Roman army, was one of the greatest recorded in antiquity. Valens either perished on the field, or, as some said, in a cottage fired by the enemy. From the battle of Adrianople the Goths permanently established themselves south of the Danube.
See Ammianus Marcellinus, bks. 26–31 ; E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ed. Bury, London, 1896), chs. 25–26; W. Judeich in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft (1891), pp. 1–21.
VALENTIA, SIR FRANCIS ANNESLEY, Viscount (1585–1660), Anglo-Irish statesman, son of Robert Annesley of Newport Pagnel in Buckinghamshire, was born in 1585, and settled in
Ireland at an early age, acquiring property in various parts of
the island. His friendship with the lord deputy, Sir Arthur
Chichester, procured for him government employment and the
favour of King James I., who conferred on him a grant of the
land and fort of Mountnorris, county Armagh, in 1612. He
was returned to the Irish parliament by the county Armagh in
1614, and four years later was appointed secretary for Ireland,
being created a baronet in 1620. In the following year he
received, by an unusual patent, a reversionary grant of the
viscountcy of Valencia after the death without male issue of a
kinsman (Sir Henry Power, created viscount of Valentia in 1621),
the then living viscount. In 1625 Sir Francis Annesley was
elected member for the county of Carmarthen in the English
parliament; and in the same, year he was made vice-treasurer
and receiver-general of Ireland. In 1628 he was created Baron
Mountnorris in the peerage of Ireland. He strongly opposed
the policy of Lord Falkland, who became lord deputy in 1622,
and procured his recall in 1629. When Sir Thomas Wentworth,
afterwards the famous earl of Strafford, went to Ireland in 1633,
he took action against Mountnorris, whom he accused of corruption and malversation of public money. The two men became violent opponents, and at a dinner at the lord chancellor’s house
in April 1635 Mountnorris used insulting and threatening language in reference to the lord deputy. Wentworth brought
him before a court-martial on a charge of insubordination as an officer in the army, and by this tribunal Mountnorris was condemned to death. The sentence was not carried out, but he
was imprisoned and deprived of all his offices on the report of
a committee appointed by the privy council to inquire into the
charges of corruption. The vindictiveness of the proceedings
against Mountnorris, which afterwards constituted one of the
counts in the impeachment of Strafford, has been strongly
condemned by some historians and extenuated by others;
that the trial by court-martial and the sentence were at all events
not illegal, has been shown by S. R. Gardiner. Mountnorris
was not long detained in prison, and in 1640 his relations with
Strafford were examined by a committee of the Long Parliament,
which pronounced the sentence passed on him unjust and
illegal. In 1642 he succeeded, under the above-mentioned
reversion, to the title of viscount of Valentia. During the
Commonwealth he again held the post of secretary in Ireland
to the lord deputy, Henry Cromwell, with whom he was on
friendly terms. Valentia died in 1660. His wife was Dorothy,
daughter of Sir John Phillipps of Picton, Pembrokeshire, by
whom he was the father of Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey
(q.v. for later history).
See S. R. Gardiner, History of England, vol. viii. (London, 1883–84); Strafford’s Letters and Dispatches, edited by W. Knowler (2 vols., Dublin, 1740); G. E. C., Complete Peerage, vol. v. (London, 1893).
VALENTINE, or Valentinus, the name of a considerable number of saints. The most celebrated are the two martyrs whose festivals fall on the 14th of February—the one, a Roman
- ↑ Amm. Marc. xxix. 1 ; the narrative is brief and not very clear.
