SHOREDITCH or SHORDYCH, SIR JOHN DE (d. 1345), a baron of the exchequer and doctor of civil and canon law, was possibly a son of Benedict de Shoreditch, who received from Edward I a grant of houses in the parish of St. Olave in the London Jewry, formerly belonging to a Jew called Jorum Makerel (Foss; Abbrev. Rot. Orig. i. 74). He appears as an advocate in the court of arches in the reign of Edward II, who in 1324 appointed him an envoy to the king of France, and whom he was about to accompany to France in 1325 (WALSINGHAM, i. 175; Fœdera, ii. 559, 606). He was made chief clerk of the common bench with a salary of a hundred marks a year, and received from the king the manor of Passenham in Northamptonshire; but in the early years of Edward III Queen Isabella put him out of his office and despoiled him of a great part of his manor. He complained of these losses in the parliament of November 1330, and the king promised him compensation (Rot. Parl. ii. 41). On 20 Sept. 1329, being styled one of the king's clerks, though not apparently in orders, he was appointed to treat with France, and was engaged on that business until 1331, receiving 201. for his expenses beyond sea in 1332 (Fœdera, ii. 772 sqq. 836), in which year he was engaged on the marriage of the king's sister Eleanor to the Count of Gueldres. In 1334 he appears as a knight, was probably at that time a member of the king's council, and on 26 March was appointed with others to treat with France (ib. pp. 880 sq.) He was employed in 1335 to negotiate with the Duke of Austria concerning a proposed marriage for the king's daughter Joan [see under EDWARD III], and on 10 Nov. 1336 was appointed second baron of the exchequer (Cal. Rot. Pat. p. 126), but seems to have held the office not very long, for his name does not appear in the list of 1342 (Foss). Other public business was committed to him by the king, and he is said to have defended Edward's assumption of title and arms of the king of France in answer to, and apparently in the presence of, Philip VI in 1339 (GEOFFREY LE BAKER, p. 66). In 1343 he was sent with others to Clement VI at Avignon with letters from the king and the magnates

of England remonstrating against the abuse of papal provisions, and, when the pope said that he had only appointed two foreigners to English benefices, answered, 'Holy Father, you have provided the cardinal of Périgord to the deanery of York, and the king and all the nobles of England reckon him a capital enemy of the king and kingdom.' The pope seems to have been taken aback, and the cardinals were much moved and distressed at his boldness. He obtained license from the pope to depart, left Avignon in haste lest he should be stopped, and went to Bordeaux on other business for the king. In December he was appointed to hear all complaints and appeals in Aquitaine that might be made to Edward as king of France. On 10 July 1345 he was smothered secretly by four of his servants in his house near Ware in Hertfordshire. His murderers were arrested, confessed their guilt, and were drawn,hanged, and beheaded on the 18th in London, their heads being fixed on stakes above Newgate. A Nicholas de Shordych occurs as a commissioner of array for Middlesex in 1352.

vol. ii. passim, Record ed.; Murimuth, pp. 143, [Foss's Judges, iii. 506; Rymer's Fœdera, 149, 171, 229-30 (Rolls Ser.)]

W. H.

SHORT, AUGUSTUS (1802–1883), first bishop of Adelaide, Australia, third son of Charles Short, barrister, of the Middle Temple, was born on 11 June 1802. In 1809 he entered Westminster school, where his early days were the most wretched' in his life, though relieved by the kindness of Charles Thomas Longley [q. v.], afterwards archbishop of Canterbury. He was withdrawn for a time to a school at Langley Broom, near Slough, but returned to Westminster in 1811. He passed to Christ Church, Oxford, in May 1820, where he was placed under his cousin, Thomas Vowler Short [q. v.], and took a first-class in classics in 1823. He graduated B.A. in 1824 and M.A. in 1826. Short was at first occupied in private tuition, but he was ordained deacon at Oxford in 1826, and priest in 1827, and was licensed to the curacy of Culham, Oxfordshire. He resigned in 1829, on becoming tutor and lecturer at Christ Church; he was appointed librarian and censor in 1833, and in 1843 was select preacher to the university. In 1835 he accepted the living of Ravensthorpe, Northamptonshire, and married Millicent Phillips. The parish had been neglected, but Short rapidly organised it on a satisfactory basis. He had many friends among the tractarians, and wrote a defence of 'Tract XC.;' but he voted for the condemnation of W. G. Ward's 'Ideal of a Chris

tian Church.' In 1846 he delivered at Oxford the Bampton lecture on The Witness of the Spirit with our Spirit.' In 1847 the colonial sees of Capetown, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Newcastle were founded, and Short was offered the choice of Adelaide and Newcastle. He chose the former, and was consecrated and created D.D. of Oxford on 16 June 1847. He sailed in September, and reached his diocese in December. There were on his arrival but five clergy in South Australia, and the bishop's difficulties were further increased in 1851 by the discontinuance of the vote for maintenance of public worship. The young diocese was thus cast entirely upon its own resources. But Short visited England in 1853, found that the diocese could be organised with a constitution of its own, and proceeded to set its affairs in order. In this he was completely successful, and showed himself a very capable administrator. He did his best to meet the needs of scattered communities in the bush, was keenly interested in work for the aborigines, did much for the organisation of education in the colony, and secured the building of Adelaide Cathedral. He came to England for the Lambeth conference of 1878. Short was attacked by heart disease in 1881, and resigned the see. He left Australia in 1882, amid general expressions of respect, and took up his residence in London; but his malady returned, and he died on 5 Oct. 1883. He published a volume of sermons in 1838, besides his Bampton lectures in 1846.

His eldest brother, CHARLES WILLIAM SHORT (1799-1857), born in 1799, joined the Coldstream guards as ensign in 1814, was present with his regiment at Quatre Bras and in the defence of Hougomont at Waterloo, and served in the army of occupation. In 1837 he left the army as captain and lieutenantcolonel, and entered mercantile pursuits. In 1852 he went to live at Odiham in Hampshire, where, as in London, he was conspicuous for his religious and philanthropic activity. He published treatises on the duties of the soldier, which had a wide circulation. He died at Odiham on 19 Jan. 1857.

[F. T. Whittington's Augustus Short, First Bishop of Adelaide, 1888; Times, 8 Oct. 1883; Gent. Mag. 1857, i. 364; Welch's Alumni Westmon. p. 486; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 17151886; Mennell's Australasian Biography.]

A. R. B.

SHORT, JAMES (1710-1768), optician, was the son of William Short, a joiner in Edinburgh, where he was born on 10 June 1710. At the age of ten, both parents having died, he was placed in Heriot's Hospital,

and, after two years, his talents caused him to be sent to the Edinburgh high school. Here he gained distinction in classics, entered the university of Edinburgh in 1726, and in due course graduated M.A. His relatives aspiring to the ministry for him, he proceeded to the divinity hall, and qualified in 1731 for a preacher in the church of Scotland. Attendance at the mathematical lectures of Colin Maclaurin [q. v.], however, diverted his purpose, never strong. Maclaurin noticed his abilities, permitted him in 1732 to use his college rooms for an optical workshop, and in 1734 informed James Jurin [q. v.]: Mr. Short, who had begun with making glass specula, is now employing himself to improve the metallic. By taking care of the figure he is enabled to give them larger apertures than others have done; and upon the whole, they surpass in perfection all that I have seen of other workmen.'

Short had cleared 500l. by the business when, in 1736, Queen Caroline (1683–1737) [q. v.] summoned him to London to give lessons in mathematics to William Augustus, duke of Cumberland (1721-1765) [q.v.] While in London he effected some improvements in his methods, which he vigorously carried out on his return to Edinburgh, late in the same year. On 24 March 1737 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and in 1739 made a survey of the Orkneys for James Douglas, fourteenth earl of Morton [q. v.] He then finally settled in London, but frequently revisited Edinburgh, for the last time in 1766. He died of intestinal mortification at Newington Butts, London, on 14 June 1768, leaving a fortune of 20,0007.

Short was the first to give to specula a true parabolic figure, and the lasting quality of the polish which he imparted to them is proved by the good condition of some which still survive. But, through jealousy of his inventions, he had his tools destroyed before his death. The Gregorian form of construction was almost exclusively employed by him; a Cassegrain, owned at one time by Alexander Aubert [q. v.], formed a wellknown exception. His most celebrated instrument was a Gregorian of eighteen inches aperture, completed in 1752 for the king of Spain. The price paid was 1,2007. He made besides several reflectors of twelve-feet focus, for one of which he received from Lord Thomas Spencer in 1743 six hundred guineas. A nine-inch Newtonian by him at Greenwich was remarkable for being no more than eight diameters, or six feet long. It, however, compared unfavourably in performance with William Herschel's seven-foot.

Short made numerous communications to the Royal Society between 1736 and 1763. Several related to his observations of auroras, eclipses, and occultations; others were of greater interest. For an hour near sunrise on 23 Oct. 1740 he viewed Venus attended by a satellite showing an identical phase (Phil. Trans. xli. 646). The illusion is difficult to explain. On 7 Dec. 1749 he described a kind of equatoreal instrument, of which he had constructed three, one bought by Count Bentinck for the prince of Orange (ib. xlvi. 241). He observed the transit of Mercury on 6 May 1753 (ib. xlviii. 192), and the transit of Venus on 6 June 1761 at Savile House, by the command of the Duke of York, who, with several other members of the royal family, was present on the occasion (ib. lii. 178). From a discussion of observations of the same occurrence made in various parts of Europe and at the Cape of Good Hope, Short deduced a solar parallax of 865, long accepted as authoritative (ib. lii. 611, liii. 300). He, moreover, determined the difference of longitude between the observatories of Greenwich and Paris by observations of four transits of Mercury (ib. liii. 158). A sealed paper delivered by him to the Royal Society on 30 April 1752 was opened after his death and read publicly on 25 Jan. 1770. It described a method of working object-lenses to a truly spherical form (ib. lix. 507). His workshop was in Surrey Street, Strand. Besides being versed in mathematics and optics, he was a good general scholar.

[Lord Buchan in Trans. Antiquarian Society of Scotland, 1792, vol. i.; Phil. Trans. abridged (Hutton), xi. 649, Chambers's Biogr. Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen (Thomson); Irving's Book of Scotsmen; Thomson's Hist. of the Royal Society; Gent. Mag. 1768, p. 303; Kitchiner's Practical Observations on Telescopes, 1818, pp. 30, 39-46, including a table of Short's Gregorians from the Nautical Almanac for 1787; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Hutton's Phil. and Math. Dict. ii. 497.]

A. M. C.

SHORT, THOMAS, M.D. (1635-1685), physician, son of the Rev. William Short, was born at Easton, Suffolk, in 1635. He was sent to the grammar school of Bury St. Edmunds, and thence to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he was admitted a sizar on 25 Feb. 1649-50, aged 14 (MAYOR, Admissions, i. 94). He graduated B.A. in 1653, and was created M.D. by royal mandate on 26 June 1668. He settled in London and was admitted a candidate at the College of Physicians in December 1668, but was not elected a fellow till 26 July 1675. He had joined the church of Rome, and, in accor

dance with an order of the House of Lords for the ejection of Roman catholics, was summoned to attend a meeting of the College of Physicians on 14 April 1679. He did so, but the feeling of the college was against intolerant proceedings; a quorum was not present, and no steps were taken. He attained considerable practice, and Thomas Sydenham [q. v.], who had met him in consultation, found his 'genius disposed for the practice of physick' (Works, ed. Pechey, 1729, p. 339), and praises both his learning and sagacity. Sydenham prefixed to 'A Treatise of the Gout and Dropsy' a letter to Short in which occurs a famous passage on posthumous fame which Fielding quoted in Tom Jones.' Short died on 28 Sept. 1685, and is buried in St. James's Chapel, London. Bishop Burnet, who thought that Charles II died of poison, also believed that Short was poisoned by his co-religionists for asserting that the king was poisoned (Own Time, i. 609). Richard Lower (1631-1691) [q. v.] and Walter Needham [q. v.] seem to have been unable to resist an opportunity of imposing upon the whig historian's credulity.

[Munk's Coll. of Phys. i. 377; Burnet's History of his own Time, London, 1724; ‘A Pindarick elegy on the universally lamented death of Dr. Short,' 1685, fol.; Dodd's Church History, vol. ii.] N. M.

SHORT, THOMAS (1690 ?-1772), physician, was born about 1690 in the south of Scotland, and, after graduating in medicine, settled in practice at Sheffield. In 1713 one William Steel communicated to him the secret of making cerated glass of antimony a cure for dysentery, which he afterwards published. He made several journeys to visit the mineral springs of Yorkshire and of other parts of England. He published in 1725' A Rational Discourse on the Inward Uses of Water,' and in 1730 A Dissertation upon Tea.' In 1750 he published New Observations on the Bills of Mortality,' in which he adds something to the remarks of Graunt and Sir William Petty [q. v.], and treats the whole subject in relation to a book published anonymously by him the year before, A General Chronological History of the Air,' in two volumes, dedicated to Dr. Mead. He spent eighteen years on these works. In 1750 he also issued Discourses on Tea, Sugar, Milk, made Wines. Spirits, Punch, Tobacco,' &c., and in 1751 Medicina Britannica,' an interesting and lucid herbal for the use of general readers. His Treatise on the different Sorts of cold Mineral Waters in England' appeared in 1766, and is an original work showing careful obser

vation. A further Discourse on Milk' appeared in 1766, and in 1767 he published A Comparative History of the Increase and Decrease of Mankind, in which he advocates early marriages, denounces alcohol' as a Stygian poison,' and collects much historical and medical information. All his books were published in London. He died in 1772.

[Works; Index Cat. Libr. of the Surgeongeneral's Office, Washington; Watt's Bibl. Brit. p. 853 (giving titles of minor works).] N. M.

SHORT, THOMAS VOWLER (17901872), successively bishop of Sodor and Man and of St. Asaph, was the eldest son of William Short, archdeacon of Cornwall, by Elizabeth Hodgkinson. He was born on 16 Sept. 1790 at Dawlish, Devonshire, where his father was then curate. After spending a year at Exeter grammar school Short was sent to Westminster school in 1803, whence he passed with a studentship to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1809. He took a firstclass in classics and in mathematics in 1812; and in the following year was ordained deacon by the bishop of Oxford. He graduated B.A.1813, M.A. 1815, B.D. 1824, D.D. 1837. In 1814 Short became perpetual curate of Drayton, Oxfordshire, but he speedily resigned this cure in order to discharge more fully the duties of a college tutorship. Circumstances, however, led him to become in 1816 the incumbent of Cowley, Oxfordshire; in 1823 of Stockleigh Pomeroy, Devonshire; and in 1826 of Kingsworthy, Hampshire. In 1821 he was Whitehall preacher. At Christ Church he became successively tutor and censor (1816-29), librarian (1822), catechist and Busby lecturer (1825), and in 1823 he served as proctor. He worked hard to improve the examination system at Oxford, but the changes he sought were not effected until after he had ceased to reside. Though Short left Christ Church before the Oxford movement really began, he was intimate with most of its leaders. Pusey, a favourite pupil, always acknowledged his influence, and 'Short held a first place in his affection and respect to the last hour of his life' (LIDDON, Life of Pusey, i. 24). Short examined Newman for his degree, and Keble he numbered among his close friends. It was in 1829 that Short went to reside at Kingsworthy, but in 1834 he accepted an offer from Lordchancellor Brougham of the rectory of St. George's, Bloomsbury. Short made an industrious and useful town incumbent. He was in 1837 appointed deputy-clerk of the closet to the queen, and four years later bishop of Sodor and Man. During an episcopate of five years Short mainly resided in the diocese,

visiting the parishes, promoting the better education of candidates for holy orders, and generally raising the tone of his diocese. In 1846 he was translated, on Lord John Russell's recommendation, to the see of St. Asaph. Here he for many years spent on the needs of the diocese one half of his episcopal income. Short resigned the see in 1870, and died on 13 April 1872. He married, in 1833, Mary (Davies), widow of John Conybeare. In addition to many tracts and single sermons, Short published Twenty Sermons on the Fundamental Truths of Christianity,' Oxford, 1829; Sketch of the History of the Church of England,' Oxford, 1832; Sadoc and Miriam' (anon.), London, 1832; and 'Letters to an Aged Mother' (anon.), London, 1841.

[Memoir prefixed to 9th edition of his Hist. of the Church of England; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715-1886.] A. R. B.

titular abbot of Bective in co. Meath, was SHORTALL, SEBASTIAN (d. 1639), born at Kilkenny. He became a Cistercian

monk at Nucale in Galicia, and worked at philosophy in the seminary of St. Claudius there, and afterwards in the monastery of Mons Ramorum, where Henriquez, the literary historian of the Cistercian order, was then studying theology. Henriquez describes Shortall, whom he classes among Spanish writers, as keen-spirited, vehement in disputation, and efficacious in argument, and as Shortall wrote with ease in all the Latin one of the best poets the order had produced. metres. Many of his poems circulated in manuscript, but none appear to have been printed. The names of a few are given by Henriquez and reproduced by Harris.

Shortall, being sent on a mission to his native country, was captured by the Moors at sea. Having been redeemed, he made his way to Ireland, and died titular abbot of Bective in co. Meath on 3 Dec. 1639.

[Henriquez's Phoenix Reviviscens, Brussels, 1626; Ware's Writers of Ireland, ed. Harris.]

R. B-L.

SHORTLAND, EDWARD (1812-1893), writer on New Zealand, born at Courtlands, Devonshire, in 1812, was third son of Thomas George Short land [q. v.] of Courtlands, and brother of Willoughby Shortland [q. v.], and of Peter Frederick Shortland [q. v.] He was educated at Exeter grammar school and at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1835 and M.A. in 1839. He then studied medicine, and was admitted an extra-licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in 1839. In 1841 he went out, apparently at his brother's suggestion, to New