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DEPOSITION DEPTFORD 27 province, and president of the king's council, in which latter capacity in 1701 he acted as colonial governor. He was also colonel of the forces of the city and county of New York, and treasurer of the provinces of New York and New Jersey. He was the intimate friend of William Penn, and of the colonial governor, the earl of Bellamont. The mansion erected by him in Pearl street in 1695, which was at one time the headquarters of General Wash- ington, remained standing till 1856. HI. Arent Schnyler, a loyalist officer, grandson of the pre- ceding, born in New York, June 27, 1736, died at Dumfries, Scotland, in November, 1832. He entered the 8th or king's regiment of^ foot in 1755, served in various parts of North America under his uncle, Col. Peter Schuyler, and commanded at Detroit, Michilimackinac, and various places in Upper Canada, during the American revolutionary war. It was through his eiforts that the Indians were allied with the British during the war. Having risen to the rank of colonel, and commanded his regiment for many years, he retired to Dumfries. He was on terms of friendship with Burns, who addressed to him one of his fugitive pieces, and with whom he once carried on a poetical con- troversy in the columns of the " Dumfries Jour- nal." At his death he had held the king's com- mission upward of 77 years, and was probably at the time the oldest officer in the service. IV. John Watts, an American military and histor- ical writer, born in New York, March 9, 1821. He was commissioned as brevet major general by the New York legislature, and has published " Life of Gen. Torstensen" (1855), "The Dutch at the North Pole and the Dutch in Maine" (1857), "Early Settlement of Acadia by the Dutch" (1858), " The Dutch Battle of the Bal- tic" (1858), "History of Carausius" (1858), "The Ancient, Mediseval, and Modern Nether- landers" (1859), "Winter Campaigns the Test of Generalship" (1862), "Practical Strategy" (1863), " Secession in Switzerland and the United States compared" (1864), and "Deci- sive Conflicts of the late Civil War " (1868). DEPOSITION, in law, the testimony of a wit- ness reduced to writing in due form of law, taken by virtue of a commission or other au- thority of a competent tribunal. When taken by commission, depositions are usually in an- swer to questions upon the examination in chief, and upon cross-examination, prepared and submitted to the court from which the commission issues. In other cases they are taken by consent of counsel or in due course of law, the privilege of cross-examination being always preserved, except in some cases where depositions of matters within the knowledge of persons of great age are allowed to be taken for the purpose of perpetuating their testimony, and in cases where immediate death by vio- lence is expected. This must, when possible, be sworn to and signed by the witness. In the United States, compulsory process is usually allowed to procure this evidence. In ecclesias- tical law, deposition is the act of depriving a clergyman by a competent tribunal of his cleri- cal orders, in punishment of some offence, and to prevent his acting in his clerical character. DEPPING, Georges Bernard, a miscellaneous writer, born at Munster in Westphalia, May 11, 1784, died in Paris, Sept. 5, 1853. He went to Paris in 1803, and during the rest of his life was engaged in writing books on a variety of subjects and preparing articles for various periodicals and cyclopaedias. Among his works were two juvenile books which obtained great popularity, and were translated into several languages: Les soirees deliver, ou entretiens (Tun pere avec ses enfants sur le genie, les moeurs et Vindustrie des divers peuples de la terre (2 vols., 3d ed., 1832), and Merveilles et fieautes de la nature en France (2 vols., 1835). He assisted Malte- Brun in his geographical works, and wrote descriptive sketches of Switzerland, Greece, England, and other countries. His most im- portant historical works are : Histoire generale de VEspagne (2 vols., 1811); Histoire des ex- peditions maritimes des Normands et de leur etablissement en France au dixieme siecle (1826) ; Histoire du commerce entre le Levant et VEurope, depuis les croisades jusqu 1 a lafon- dation des colonies d'Amerique (2 vols., 1832); Les Juifs 'dans le moyen age (1834) ; and His- toire de la Normandie sous le regne de Guil- laume le Conquer ant et de ses successeurs (2 vols., 1835). Several of these have been trans- lated into other languages. He also wrote several books of travel, made various transla- tions, edited the Romancero castellano and other works, contributed to the Biographie universelle and the Encyclopedic portative, and published an autobiography in German entitled Erinnerungen aus dem Leben eines Deutschen in Paris. An account of his life and works, by Alfred Maury, was published in Paris in 1854. DEPTFORD, a town and naval arsenal in Kent and Surrey, England, on the right bank of the Thames, at the mouth of the Ravens- bourne, on the Croydon and Greenwich rail- ways, and at the junction of the Croydon and Surrey canals, 3 m. 8. E. of London bridge, and contiguous to Greenwich; pop. about 40,- 000. It contains a royal naval school incor- porated in 1840, and two ancient hospitals for decayed pilots and shipmasters or their wid- ows. Its principal feature was formerly the dockyard, established by Henry VIIL, enclo- sing an area of 31 acres, with three slips for ships of the line on the river front, two for smaller vessels opening into a basin 260 by 220 ft., and two dry docks, one communicating with the basin, and the other, a double dock, with the Thames. This famous yard, in which Peter the Great worked as a shipwright, and near which Queen Elizabeth visited Sir Francis Drake on board the Pelican, was closed in 1869. The victualling yard for the royal navy, which adjoins it, is still open, and contains sheep and cattle pens, slaughter houses, salting