by the latter company. Water communication with Dublin is furnished by the Royal Canal, traversing the centre of the county. A branch of the Grand Canal reaches Kilbeggan in the south.
The population (68,611 in 1891; 61,629 in 1901) decreases in excess of the average shown by the Irish counties, and emigration is considerable. About 92% of the total are Roman Catholics, and about 86% constitute the rural population. The principal towns are Athlone (pop. 6617), of which the part formerly in Roscommon was added to Westmeath by the Local Government (Ireland) Act of 1898, and Mullingar (4500), the county town. Castlepollard and Moate are lesser market towns. By the Redistribution Act of 1885 Westmeath was formed into two parliamentary divisions, North and South, each returning one member, Athlone being included in the county representation. The county is divided into twelve baronies. Assizes are held at Mullingar and quarter sessions at Mullingar and Moate. The county is in the Protestant dioceses of Dublin, Killaloe and Ossory, and in the Roman Catholic dioceses of Kildare and Leighlin, Killaloe and Ossory.
Westmeath was severed from Meath (q.v.) in 1543. The plan for the insurrection of 1641 was concerted in the abbey of Multifarnham, and both in the wars of this period and those of 1688 the gentry of the county were so deeply implicated that the majority of the estates were confiscated. There are a considerable number of raths or encampments: one at Rathconrath is of great extent; another at Ballymore was fortified during the wars of the Cromwellian period and those of 1688, and was afterwards the headquarters of General Ginkell, when preparing to besiege Athlone; and there is a third of considerable size near Lough Lene. The ruins of the Franciscan abbey of Multifarnham, founded in 1 236 by William Delaware, picturesquely situated near Lough Dereveragh, include a tower 93 ft. in height.
WESTMINSTER, MARQUESSES AND DUKES OF. The
title of marquess of Westminster was bestowed in 1831 upon
Robert Grosvenor, 2nd Earl Grosvenor (1767–1845), whose
grandson, Hugh Lupus Grosvenor (1825–1899), was created
duke of Westminster in 1874. The family of Grosvenor is of great
antiquity in Cheshire, the existence of a knightly house of this
name (Le Grosvenur) in the palatine county being proved by
deeds as early as the 12th century (see The Ancestor, vi. 19).
The legend of its descent from a nephew of Hugh Lupus, earl of
Chester, perpetuated in the name of the first duke, and the
still more extravagant story, repeated by the old genealogists
and modern “peerages,” of its ancestors, the “grand huntsmen”
(gros veneurs) of the dukes of Normandy, have been
exploded by the researches of Mr W. H. B . Bird (see “The
Grosvenor Myth” in The Ancestor, vol. i . April 1902). The
ancestors of the dukes of Westminster, the Grosvenors of Eaton,
near Chester, were cadets of the knightly house mentioned
above, and rose to wealth and eminence through a series of
fortunate marriages. Their baronetcy dates from 1622.
Sir Thomas Grosvenor, the 3rd baronet (1656–1700), in 1676
married Mary (d. 1730), heiress of Alexander Davies (d. 1665),
a scrivener.
This union brought to the Grosvenor family certain lands, then on the outskirts of London, but now covered by some of the most fashionable quarters of the West End. Sir Thomas’s sons, Richard (1689–1732), Thomas (1693–1733) and Robert (d. 1755), succeeded in turn to the baronetcy, Robert being the father of Sir Richard Grosvenor (1731–1802), created Baron Grosvenor in 1761 and Viscount Belgrave and Earl Grosvenor in 1784. The 1st earl, a great breeder of racehorses, was succeeded by his only surviving son Robert (1767–1845), who rebuilt Eaton Hall and developed his London property, which was rapidly increasing in value. In the House of Commons, where he sat from 1788 to 1802, he was a follower of Pitt, who made him a lord of the admiralty and later a commissioner of the board of control, but after 1806 he left the Tories and joined the Whigs. He was created a marquess at the coronation of William IV. in 1831. His son, Richard, the 2nd marquess, (1795–1869), was a member of parliament from 1818 to 1835 and lord steward of the royal household from 1850 to 1852. The latter’s son, Hugh Lupus (1825–1899), created a duke in 1874, was from 1847 to 1869 member of parliament for Chester and from 1880 to 1885 master of the horse under Gladstone, but he left the Liberal party when the split came over Home Rule for Ireland. His great wealth made him specially conspicuous; but he was a patron of many progressive movements. His eldest son, Victor Alexander, Earl Grosvenor (1853–1884), predeceased him, and he was succeeded as 2nd duke by his grandson, Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor (b. 1879), who in 1901 married Miss Com wallis- West. Earl Grosvenor’s widow, Countess Grosvenor, a daughter of the 9th earl of Scarborough, had in 1887 married Mr George Wyndham (b. 1863), a grandson of the 1st baron Leconfield, who subsequently became well known both as a litterateur and as a Unionist cabinet minister. Two other peerages are held by the Grosvenor family. In 1857 Lord Robert Grosvenor (1801–1893), a younger son of the 1st marquess, after having sat in the House of Commons since 1822, was created Baron Ebury. He was an energetic opponent of ritualism in the Church of England; and he was associated in philanthropic work with the earl of Shaftesbury. On his death his son, Robert Wellesley Grosvenor (b. 1834), became the 2nd baron.
In 1886, Lord Richard Grosvenor (b. 1837), a son of the 2nd marquess, was created Baron Stalbridge; from 1S80 to 1885 he had been “chief whip” of the Liberal party. In 1891 he became chairman of the London & North Western railway.
WESTMINSTER, a part of London, England; strictly a
city in the administrative county of London, bounded E. by
“the City,” S. by the river Thames, W. by the boroughs of
Chelsea and Kensington, and N. by Paddington, St Marylebone
and Holborn. Westminster was formed into a borough by
the London Government Act of 1899, and by a royal charter
of the 29th of October 1900 it was created a city. The council
consists of a mayor, 10 aldermen and 60 councillors. The city
comprises the parliamentary boroughs of the Strand, Westminster
and St George’s, Hanover Square, each returning one
member. Area, 2502·7 acres. The City of Westminster, as
thus depicted, extends from the western end of Fleet Street
to Kensington Gardens, and from Oxford Street to the Thames,
which it borders over a distance of 3 m., between Victoria
(Chelsea) Bridge and a point below Waterloo Bridge. It thus
includes a large number of the finest buildings in London, from
the Law Courts in the east to the Imperial Institute in the west,
Buckingham and St James’s palaces, the National Gallery,
and most of the greatest residences of the wealthy classes. But
the name of Westminster is more generally associated with a
more confined area, namely, the quarter which includes the
Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the government and other
buildings in Whitehall, the Roman Catholic Cathedral, and the
parts immediately adjacent to these.
Westminster Abbey.—The Abbey of St Peter is the most widely celebrated church in the British empire. The Thames, bordered in early times by a great expanse of fen
on either hand from Chelsea and Battersea downward,
washed, at the point where the Abbey stands, one
shore of a low island perhaps three-quarters of a mile in Tradition
and
history.circumference, known as Thorney or Bramble islet. Tributary streams from the north formed channels through the marsh, flanking the island north and south, and were once connected by a dyke on the west. These channels belonged to the Tyburn, which flowed from the high ground of Hampstead. Relics of the Roman occupation have been excavated in the former island, and it is supposed that traffic on the Watling Street, from Dover to Chester, crossed the Thames and the marshes by way of Thorney before the construction of London Bridge; the road continuing north-west in the line of the modern Park Lane (partly) and Edgware Road. Tradition places on the island a temple of Apollo, which was destroyed by an earthquake in the reign of the emperor Antoninus Pius. On the site King Lucius is said to have founded a church (c. A.D. 170). The irruption of the Saxons left Thorney desolate. Traditional still, but supported by greater probability, a story states that Sebert,
