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Wharton, Francis

(Encyclopedia)Wharton, Francis, 1820–89, American clergyman and lawyer, b. Philadelphia, grad. Yale, 1839. Admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1843, he became an authority on criminal law and wrote A Treatise on ...

Beverley

(Encyclopedia)Beverley, town, East Riding of Yorkshire, NE England. Beverley is primarily a market town with some shipbuilding and such light industries as the manufa...

Stewart, William Morris

(Encyclopedia)Stewart, William Morris, 1827–1909, American lawyer and political leader, b. Wayne co., N.Y. After migrating to California in 1850 he engaged in mining and held several state elective offices. He mo...

Test Act

(Encyclopedia)Test Act, 1673, English statute that excluded from public office (both military and civil) all those who refused to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, who refused to receive the communion acc...

Douglas, Sir Howard

(Encyclopedia)Douglas, Sir Howard, 1776–1861, British general and colonial administrator. He was a distinguished teacher of military strategy and an important authority on military and naval engineering. After a ...

Al-Fasi, Isaac ben Jacob ha-Kohen

(Encyclopedia)Al-Fasi, Isaac ben Jacob ha-Kohen äl-fäˈsē [key], 1013–1103, prominent Jewish Talmudic scholar of the very late Gaonic period, b. near Fès, N Africa. He headed the rabbinical school at Fès unt...

Constitutional Union party

(Encyclopedia)Constitutional Union party, in U.S. history, formed when the conflict between North and South broke down the older parties. The Constitutional Union group, composed of former Whigs and remnants of the...

Nicolls, Richard

(Encyclopedia)Nicolls, Richard, 1624–72, first English governor of New York, b. Bedfordshire, England. He served in the English civil war as a royalist and followed the Stuarts into exile, where he entered the se...

whistle-blowing

(Encyclopedia)whistle-blowing, exposure of fraud and abuse by an employee. The federal law that legitimated the concept of the whistle-blower, the False Claims Act (1863, revised 1986), was created to combat fraud ...

Franklin, State of

(Encyclopedia)Franklin, State of, government (1784–88) formed by the inhabitants of Washington, Sullivan, and Greene counties in present-day E Tennessee after North Carolina ceded (June, 1784) its western lands t...