The county was made sliire ground in 1586, and called Armagh after the city, by Sir John Perrott. When James I. proceeded to plant with English and Scotch colonists the vast tracts escheated to the crown in Ulster, the whole of the arable and pasture land in Armagh, estimated at 77,800 acres, was to have been allotted in -sixty-one portions. Nineteen of these, comprising 22,180 acres, were to have been allotted to the church, and forty- two, amounting to 55,620 acres, to English and Scotch colonists, servitors, native Irish, and four corporate towns, the swordsmen to be dispersed throughout Connaught and Munster. This project was not strictly adhered to in the county of Armagh, nor were the Irish swordsmen or soldiers transplanted into Connaught and Munster from this and some other counties.
Armagh is now divided into eight baronies, viz., Armagh, Fews Lower and Upper, Oneiland East and West, Orior Lower and Upper, and Tiranny. It contains twenty-nine parishes and parts of parishes, the greater number of which are in the archdiocese of Armagh, and a few in the diocese of Dromore. The county is in the Belfast military district, having barracks at Armagh and Newry. The constabulary force has its headqnarters at Armagh, the county being divided into five districts. Assizes are held at Armagh, where the county prison, the county infirmary, and _the district lunatic asylum are situated. The only savings bank in the county is at Armagh. There are two poor-law unions, Armagh (partly in Tyrone) and Lurgan (partly in Antrim and Down). The valuation of rateable property in 1872 amounted to 410,757. The chief towns are Armagh, population in 1871, 8946; Lurgan, 10,632; Portadown, 6735 ; and part of Newry, with 5321 inhabi^ tants, the remainder of this place, with 9616 inhabitants, being in the county of Down. The county returns three members to the imperial parliament, two for the county generally, constituency in 1873, 7044; and one for Armagh city, constituency, 621.
In the towns and level parts of the county the Protestant religion, in its two principal forms of the Episcopal and Presbyterian, predominates ; but the Roman Catholic faith is prevalent in the mountainous and less cultivated parts. By the census returns of 1871 the Eoman Catholics number 85,057, or nearly one-half of the gross population. The number of children at school in 1871 amounted to 19,887, of whom 14,838 attended the various "National Schools." There were in the same year twenty-one persons who knew nothing but the native Erse, and 3903 were able to speak both that language and the English.
Armagh
Armagh, a city and parliamentary borough in the above county, 64 miles north of Dublin, in lat. 54 20 55" N., and long. 6 37 57" W. It derives its name of Ard-maclia, or High-Field, from its situation on the sides of a steep hill called Drumsailech, or the Hill of Willows, which rises in the midst of a fertile plain. Of high anti quity, and, like so many other Irish towns, claiming to have been founded by St Patrick, it long possessed the more important distinction of being the metropolis of Ireland ; and, as the seat of a flourishing college, was greatly frequented by students from other lands, among whom the English and Scotch were said to have been so numerous as to give the name of Trian-Sassanagh, or Saxon Street, to one of the quarters of the city. Of a synod that was held here as early as 448, we have interesting memo rials in the Book of Armagh. Exposed to the succes sive calamities of the Danish incursions, the English conquest, and the English wars, and at last deserted by its bishops, who retired to Drogheda, the venerable city sank into an insignificant collection of cabins, with a dilapidated cathedral covered with shingles. From this state of decay, however, it was raised by the unwearied exertions of Primate Eobinson (otherwise Lord Rokeby), which, seconded as they have been by similar devotion on the part of his successors of the Beresford family, have made of Armagh one of the best-built and most respectable towns in the country. As the ecclesiastical metropolis of both the Anglican and Roman organisations, it possesses two cathedrals of which the Catholic. is of the more recent construction and two archiepiscopal palaces. As the county town it has a court-house, a prison, a lunatic asylum, and a county infirmary. Besides these, there is a fever hospital, erected by John George Beresford; a college, which Primate Robinson was very anxious to raise to the rank of a university; a public library founded by him, and containing upwards of 14,000 volumes ; an observatory, which has become famous from the efficiency of its astronomers; and a number of churches and schools. Almost all the buildings are built of the limestone of the district, but the Anglican cathedral is of red sandstone. Population of the parliamentary borough in 1871, 8946.
ARMAGNAC, a district of the south of France, corresponding to a large part of the present department of Gers, with portions of the neighbouring territory, erected in the 10th century into a countship in favour of Bernard the Squint-eyed (le Louche), son of the count of Fezinsac. Tho family thus founded at various times exercised great influence on the destinies of France, especially in the persons of John I. (d. 1373), Bernard VII. (d. 1418), John IV. (d. 1451), and John V. (d. 1473). Under Bernard VII. the name Armagnacs was given to the party of the house of Orleans, which carried on so ruthless a contest with the house of Burgundy during the imbecile reign of Charles VI. In 1444-5, the Emperor Frederick III. of Germany obtained from Charles VII. a large army of Armagnacs to enforce his claims in Switzerland, and the war which ensued took the name of the Armagnac war (Armagnaken- ~krieg In Germany the name of the foreigners, who were completely defeated in the battle of St Jakob on the Birs, not far from Bale, was mockingly corrupted into Arme JacJcen, Poor Jackets, or Arme Gccken, Poor Fools. On the death of Charles of Armagnac, in 1497, the countship was united to the crown by Charles VII., but was again bestowed on Charles, the nephew of that count, by Francis I., who at the same time gave him his sister Margaret in marriage. After the death of her husband, by whom she had no children, she married Henry of Albret, king of Navarre ; and thus the countship of Armagnac came back to the French crown along with the other dominions of Henry IV. In 1645, Louis XIV. erected a countship of Armagnac in favour of Henry of Lorraine, count of Harcourt, in whose family it continued till the Revolution. James of Armagnac, grandson of Bernard VII., was made duke of Nemours in 1462, and was succeeded in the duke dom by his second son, John, who died without issue, and his third son, Louis, in whom the house of Armagnac became extinct in 1503.
which is now divided between Turkey, Russia, and Persia. Its political relations, and consequently its geographical limits, were subject to frequent variation, but in its widest extent it may be described as reaching from the Caucasus in the N. to the Mountains of Kurdistan in the S., and from the Caspian Sea in the E. to Asia Minor in the W., frequently, indeed, somewhat overlapping with the last- mentioned geographical division. From a very early period a distinction was drawn between Greater Armenia (Armenia Major, Medz Hayotz), to -the east of the Euphrates, and Lesser Armenia (Armenia Minor, Phokhr Ilayotz), lying to the west. The former is more properly
Armenia. It consists for the most part of an elevated
