discipline." The "Act of Security" of 1705, as incorporated | diritto, libertà (Milan, 1893); F. Nippold, Die Theorie der Trennung

in the Act of Union 1706, speaking of it “as now by law established," says that "Her Majesty . . . doth hereby establish and confirm " it, and finally declares this act, "with the Establishment therein contained," to be a fundamental and essential condition of the Union." Nevertheless, the conditions of establishment in the Scottish Kirk are much easier than those of the Church of England. It is bound by the statutes sanctioning its doctrine and order, but within these limits its legislative and judicial freedom is unimpaired. A royal commissioner is present at the meetings of the general assembly, but he need not be a member of the Kirk; and there is no constitutional tie between the crown and the Kirk such as there is in England. There is what may accurately be described as a state endowment, the bulk of the property of the Old Church having been conferred upon

the Scottish Kirk.

Colonies.

Not unnaturally the organization of Anglican Churches in the colonies was followed in some cases by their establishment, which included endowment. It was so, for example, The in the East and West Indies; and the disestablishment 1873, by a re-establishment of the Church in Barbados by the colonial legislature. India is the only other part of the empire (outside Great Britain) in which there is to-day a religious

of the West Indian Church in 1868 was followed, in

establishment.

Disestablishment.

Disestablishment is in theory the annulling of establishment; but since an established Church is usually rich, disestablishment generally includes disendowment, even where there is no state endowment of religion. It is, in short, the abrogation of establishment, coupled with such a confiscation of Church property as the state thinks good in the interests of the community. The disestablishment of the West Indian Church in 1868 has already been referred to; in 1869 the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill was passed. Private bills relating to Scotland have more than once been brought forward. In 1895 the Liberal government introduced a suspensory bill, intended as the preliminary step towards disestablishing and disendowing the Church in Wales; it was withdrawn, however, in the same session, and the question of Welsh disestablishment slumbered until in 1906 a royal commission was appointed by the Liberal government to inquire into the subject, and in 1909 a bill was introduced on much the same lines as in 1895.

von Kirche und Staat (Bern, 1881); W. Warburton, Alliance between
1788); Church Problems (ed. by H. H. Henson) (London, 1900);
Church and State (London, 1741) (Works, vol. iv., ed. Hurd, London,
Essays on Establishment and" Disendowment W. R. Anson,
Law and Custom of the Constitution, vol. ii. chap. ix. (Oxford, 1892);
Phillimore, Ecclesiastical Law (London, 1895); J. S. Brewer, En-
Dibdin, London, 1885); A. T. Innes, Law of Creeds in Scotland
dowments and Establishment of the Church of England (ed. by L. T
(Edinburgh, 1867); E. A. Freeman, Disestablishment and Dis-
endowment (London, 1883); G. Harwood, Disestablishment (London,
1876); Annales de l'école libre des Sciences politiques, tom. i. (Paris,
1885), art. La Séparation de l'Église et de l'État en Angleterre,'
by L. Ayral.
(W. Ě. Co.)
ESTABLISHMENT OF A PORT, the technical expression for
the time that elapses between the moon's transit across the
meridian at new or full moon at a given place and the time of
high water at that place. The interval (constant at any one place)
Foreland). At London Bridge it is 1 hr. 58 mins. (See also TIDE.)
may vary from 6 mins. (Harwich) to 11 hrs. 45 mins. (North

ESTAING, CHARLES HECTOR, COMTE D' (1729-1794), French admiral, was born at the château of Ruvel, Auvergne, in 1729. He entered the army as a colonel of infantry, and in 1757 he accompanied count de Lally to the East Indies, with the rank of brigadier-general. In 1759 he was made prisoner at the siege of Madras, but was released on parole. Before the ratification of his exchange he obtained command of some vessels, and conducted various naval attacks against the English; and having, on his return to France in 1760, fallen accidentally into their hands, he was, on the ground of having broken his parole, thrown into prison at Portsmouth, but as the charge could not be properly substantiated he was soon afterwards released. In 1763 he was named lieutenant-general in the navy, and in 1777 viceadmiral; and in 1778 he obtained the command of a fleet intended to assist the United States against Great Britain. He sailed on the 13th of April, and between the 11th and the 22nd of July, blockaded Howe at Sandy Hook, but did not venture to attack him, though greatly superior in force. In concert with the American generals, he planned an attack on Newport, preparatory to which he compelled the British to destroy some war vessels that were in the harbour; but before the concerted attack could take place, he put to sea against the English fleet, under Lord Howe, when owing to a violent storm, which arose suddenly and compelled the two fleets to separate before engaging in battle, many of his vessels were so shattered that he found it necessary The case of the Irish Church will illustrate the process of disto put into Boston for repairs. He then sailed for the West Indies establishment, although, of course, the precise details would vary on the 4th of November. After a feeble attempt to retake in other cases. The Irish Church Act was passed in 1869 by Santa Lucia from Admiral Barrington, he captured St Vincent Gladstone's first government, after considerable opposition, and Grenada. On the 6th of July 1779 he fought a drawn battle and provided that from January 1, 1871, the union created by with Admiral John Byron, who retired to St Christopher. statute between the Churches of England and Ireland should be Though superior in force, D'Estaing would not attack the English dissolved, and the Church of Ireland should " cease to be estab-in the roadstead, but set sail to attack Savannah. All his attempts, lished by law." Existing ecclesiastical corporations were dissolved, and their rights ceased, compensation being given to all individuals and their personal precedence being secured for life. All rights of patronage, including those of the crown, were abolished, with compensation in the case of private patrons; and the archbishops and bishops ceased to have the right of summons to the House of Lords. All laws restraining the freedom of action of the Church were repealed; the ecclesiastical law, however, to subsist by way of contract amongst the members of the Church (until altered by a representative body). Provision was made for the incorporation by charter of the representative body of the Church, should such a body be found, with power to hold landed property. All existing ecclesiastical property was vested in a commission, which was to give compensation for life interests, to transfer to the new representative body the churches, glebe houses, and £500,000 in compensation for endowments by private persons since 1660, and to hold the rest for such purposes as parliament might thereafter determine.

AUTHORITIES.-F. R. Dareste, Les Constitutions modernes (Paris, 1891); H. Geffcken, Church and State, trans. by E. F. Taylor (London, 1877); P. Schaff, Church and State in the United States (Papers of the American Hist. Association, vol. ii. No. 4), (New York, 1888); L. Minghetti, Stato e Chiesa (Milan, 1878), French translation, with Introd. by E. de Laveleye (Paris, 1882); C. Cadorna, Religione,

as well as those of the Americans, against the town were repulsed with heavy loss, and he was finally compelled to retire. He returned to France in 1780. He was in command of the combined fleet before Cadiz when the peace was signed in 1783; but from that time his chief attention was devoted to politics. In 1787 he was elected to the assembly of the notables; in 1789 he was appointed commandant of the national guard; and in 1792 he was chosen admiral by the National Assembly. Though in favour of national reform he continued to cherish a strong feeling of loyalty to the royal family, and on the trial of Marie Antoinette in 1793 bore testimony in her favour. On this account, and because of certain friendly letters which had passed between him and the queen, he was himself brought to trial, and was executed on the 28th of April 1794.

See Marins et soldats français en Amérique, by the Viscomte de Noailles (1903); Beatson, Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain, vol. v.

ESTATE (through O. Fr. estat, mod. état, from Lat. status, state, condition, position, stare, to stand), the state or condition in which a man lives, now chiefly used poetically and in such phrases as "man's estate," or "of high estate "; has superseded most of the uses of the word except (1) in property and (2) in constitutional law.

state

1. In the law of property the word is employed in several | 168, ed. 1875), "turns the feudal council into an assembly of senses. In the widest sense a man's estate comprises his entire belongings; so much of it as consists of land and certain other interests associated therewith is his "real estate "; the rest is his " personal estate." The word is more particularly applied to interests in land, and in popular and general use "an estate means the land itself. The strict technical meaning of an estate" is an interest in lands, and this conception lies at the root of the English theory of property in land. "The first thing that the student has to do," says Joshua Williams (Law of Real Property)," is to get rid of the idea of absolute ownership. Such an idea is quite unknown to the English law. No man is in law the absolute owner of lands. He can only hold an estate in them." That is, the notion of tenure, of holding by a tenant from a lord, prevails. The last lord of all from whom all land was ultimately held was the king. Persons holding directly from the king and granting to others were the king's tenants in capite, and were the mesne lords of their tenants.

Estates in land may be classified according to (1) the quantity of their interest or duration, (2) the time of enjoyment, and (3) the number and connexion of the tenants. According to (1), an estate may be either a freehold of inheritance or a freehold not of inheritance. A freehold of inheritance may be (a) an estate in fee simple, which is the largest estate a man can hold in English law, and comes close to the idea of absolute ownership, repudiated by Williams; an estate in fee simple is inheritable by a man's heirs generally, he has full powers of disposition over it, and may alienate the whole or part. (b) It may also be in limited fees, which are again subdivided into (i.) qualified or base fee, (ii.) fee conditional, so called at the common law, afterwards, on the passing of the statute De Donis Conditionalibus, fee tail, which may be general as to the heirs of a man's body, or special, as to the heirs male (or female) of his body. A freehold not of inheritance may be either (1) conventional, as an estate for life, which may be either an estate for one's own life or for the life of another (pur autre vie); (2) legal, or created by operation of law, as tenancy in tail after possibility of issue extinct (ie. where an estate is given to a man and the heirs of his body by his present wife, and the wife dies without issue, the husband becomes tenant in tail after possibility of issue extinct); tenancy by curtesy (see CURTESY); tenancy in dower (see DOWER),

Estates not of freehold or less than freehold are subdivided into (i.) estates for years (often called estates for a term of years, the instrument creating it being termed a lease or demise, and the estate itself a leasehold interest); (ii.) estates at will, that is, where lands or tenements are let by one man to another to have and to hold at the will of the lessor; (iii.) estates at sufferance, where one comes into possession of land under a lawful title, and continues in possession after his title has determined.

estates, and draws the constitution of the third estate from the
ancient local machinery which it concentrates." This is, allowing
for differences of detail, true of other countries as well as England.
To the two estates already existing, clergy and nobles, is added
a third, that of the commons (burgesses and knights of the shire)
in England, that of the roturiers in France (known as the tiers
état). This division into three estates became the norm, but it
was not universal, nor inevitable. Even in England there was
a tendency to create other estates, the king for instance treating
with the merchants separately for grants of money to be raised
by taxing the general body of merchants in the country; and
there was a similar tendency on the part of the lawyers. But
for the accident of their sitting and voting together, the burgesses
and knights of the shire would also have formed separate estates.
In Aragon the cortes contained four estates (brazos or arms),
the clergy, the great barons (ricos hombres), the minor barons
(knights or infanzones), and the towns. The Swedish diet had
also four-clergy, barons, burghers and peasants.
The system of estates, based on the medieval conception of
society as divided into definite orders, formed the basis of
whatever constitutional forms survived in Europe till the French
Revolution. In England, of course, it had early become ob-
scured, the House of Commons representing the whole nation
outside the narrow order of the peers. The creation of an estate
of lesser nobles or landowners had been prevented by the
fusion of the knights of the shire with the burgesses; the spiritual
estate was ruled out by the determination of the clergy to
deliberate and tax themselves in their own convocation, leaving
the bishops, as spiritual peers, to represent their interests in
parliament.

The phrase "the three estates of the realm" still survives, but to most men it conveys no clear meaning. The erroneous conception early arose-Hallam says it was current among the popular lawyers of the 17th century-that the "three estates were king, lords and commons, as representing the three great divisions of legislative authority. Such a conception might be possible in Hungary, where the crown of St Stephen symbolizes not so much the royal power as the co-ordination of the powers of all the organs of the state, including the king; but in England the king represents the whole nation and in no sense a separate interest within it, which is the essence of an estate. The phrase three estates as applied to the English constitution at present is, in fact, misleading. It is now usually understood of the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, and the commons.

The conception of the "three estates of the realm" as the great divisions of legislative authority led in England to the coining of the phrase "fourth estate," to indicate some power of corresponding magnitude in the state distinct from them. Fielding thus spoke of "the mob," and Hazlitt of Cobbett; but the phrase is now usually applied to the press, a usage

According to (2), estates are either in possession or in expect-originating in a speech by Burke (Carlyle, Hero-worship, Lect. v.). ancy. Estates in expectancy are either (a) in remainder, which may be vested or contingent, or (b) in reversion (see REMAINDER, REVERSION).

According to (3), estates may be either (i.) in severalty, that is, the holding of an estate by a person in his own right only, without any other person being joined or connected with him in point of interest therein; (ii.) estates in joint tenancy (see JOINT); (iii.) coparcenary (q.v.); and (iv.) tenancy in common, where two or more hold the same land, by several and distinct titles, but with unity of possession. (See also REAL PROPERTY.)

2. In constitutional law an estate is an order or class having a definite share as such in the body politic, and participating either directly or by its representatives in the government. The system of representation by estates took its rise in western Europe during the 13th century, at a time when the feudal system was being broken up through various causes, notably the growing wealth and power of the towns. In the feudal council the clergy and the territorial nobles had alone had a voice; but the 13th century, to quote Stubbs (Const. Hist. ii.

In the constitutional struggles of the European continent, from the Revolution onward, the rival theories of representation by estates and of popular representation have played a great part. The crucial moment of the French Revolution was when the vote according to "order" was rejected and the estates of the clergy and nobles were merged with the tiers état, the states-general thus becoming the National Assembly. This was the precedent followed, generally speaking, during the 19th century in the other countries in which constitutional govern

1 In Scotland the three estates were the prelates, the tenants-inchief and the burgesses, the third estate joining the others for the first time about the beginning of the 14th century. In 1428 commissioners of shires, men elected by the minor tenants-in-chief, were coalesced with the prelates and the three estates were the lords, ordered to appear in parliament; the greater tenants-in-chief then clerical and lay, the commissioners of shires and the burgesses From 1640 to 1660 parliament was reorganized, the prelates being excluded, but at the Restoration the old order was re-established. The Scottish parliament was accustomed to depute much of its work to a committee, composed of members from each of the three orders, and the committee of the estates was very prominent during the struggle between Charles I. and his people.

to ascertain that the person to whom the property is let through his agency is fit to be a tenant. He does not, however, in any way guarantee the payment of the rent. A house agent may not, for or in expectation of payment, prepare any deed relating to the sale or letting of real or personal estate. There is, however, no similar prohibition as to agreements not under seal, and it is a common practice for house agents to charge for the preparation of them.

House agents are usually remunerated by way of commission. The scale adopted by the Institute of Estate and House Agents embodies the rates usually charged. In the absence of express provision upon the subject between the principal and the agent, commission is payable only when the latter has found a purchaser or tenant. If, however, he had found a person willing to buy or take property upon the terms upon which the principal intimated to him his willingness to sell or let it, the principal will be liable to pay the amount of the commission, even though in fact he refuses or is unable to sell or let it. Where the agent can show that he has brought about a sale or tenancy he will be entitled to the commission notwithstanding the fact that another

ment was established. In most of them the medieval estates | ployed to procure a tenant, he must use reasonable diligence lingered on in provincial diets (Landtage),' and the famous Article XIII. of the Federal Act (Bundesakte) of Vienna decreed that assemblies of estates" should be set up, wherever not already existing, in the German states. The efforts of Metternich and the statesmen of his school were directed, not so much to abolishing the constitutional model, as to establishing it, if need were, on traditional and conservative lines. This is what was meant by the famous reply of the emperor Francis I. to the Magyar deputation: "All the world is playing the fool and demanding fanciful constitutions." When the need for making constitutional concessions became urgent, the attempt was accordingly made to base them on the system of estates. But the central diet convoked in 1847 by Frederick William IV. to Berlin, technically a concentration of provincial estates, quickly converted itself as Metternich had prophesied into a national assembly; and precisely the same thing happened in the case of the first Austrian parliament in 1848. In Hungary the revolution was in some respects more conservative in character. The March Laws of 1848 preserved the general character of the House of Magnates, comparable to the British House of Lords, but converted the Lower House from what was practically repre-agent has been paid, or has recovered in an action, commission sentative of the estate of the lesser nobles into a national representative assembly. Of all the sovereign states of Europe only the grand-duchies of Mecklenburg still (1909) retain the ancient system of estates untouched. The diet, which is common to the two duchies, consists of the Ritterschaft, in which all tenants in chivalry (Rittergutsbesitzer), whether noble or nonnoble, have a voice, and the Landschaft, which consists of the chief magistrates of the towns. The former is taken as representative of the peasant proprietors and copy-holders (Hintersassen), the latter of the burghers.

The plural form ESTATES or STATES (Fr. états, Ger. Stände) is the name commonly given to an assembly of estates (assemblée des états, Ständeversammlung). When such an assembly is not merely local or provincial it is called the estates-general or states-general (états généraux), e.g. in France the assembly of the deputies of the three estates of the realm as distinct from the provincial estates which met periodically in the so-called pays d'états.

For further details about the estates in England and elsewhere see W. Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. ii. (1896); H. Hallam, The Middle Ages (1855); F. W. Maitland, Constitutional History of England (1908); A. Luchaire, Histoire des institutions monarchiques de la France (1883-1885); G. Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte (Kiel, 1865-1878); and A. S. Rait, The Scottish Parliament (1901). See also REPRESENTATION.

ESTATE AND HOUSE AGENTS. A person exercising the calling of a house agent in England is required, under a penalty of £20, to take out yearly a licence upon which £2 is charged as a duty of excise, unless he is licensed as an auctioneer or appraiser, or is an agent employed in the management of landed estates, or a solicitor or conveyancer who has taken out his annual certificate as such. In this connexion a person is deemed to be a house agent if he advertises for sale or for letting, or in any way negotiates for the selling or letting of any furnished house or part of any furnished house (any storey or flat rated and let as a separate tenement being for this purpose a house); subject, however, to the qualification that no one is to be deemed to be a house agent by reason of his letting, or offering to let, or in any way negotiating for the letting of, any house the annual rent or value of which does not exceed £25.

A house agent who is merely instructed to act in the usual way of his calling has no authority to bind his employer by a contract. His business is to endeavour to find a person willing to become a purchaser or tenant and then to communicate his offer to the owner. Unless express authority is given to the agent to sell or let, and for that purpose to enter into a binding contract, the principal reserves his right to accept or refuse the offer. As a rule, a house or estate agent has no authority to receive payment on behalf of the principal. Where he is emThese diets are, wherever they still exist, survivals of the "parliaments" of separate territorial units.

in respect of the same sale or tenancy. The agent's authority may be revoked at any time; but, where he has already performed the service for which he was employed, the principal cannot defeat his right to be paid the amount of the commission by subsequently revoking his authority. If the agent is unsuccessful in finding a purchaser or tenant, as the case may be, he will not, as a rule, have any right to remuneration for his efforts in the matter.

Most auctioneers, in addition to holding auctions, carry on . the business of house and estate agency. The number of licences issued to house agents and appraisers in England for the year ended 31st March 1899 was 4429, and for the year ended 31st March 1909, 4618. The number of licences issued to auctioneers in England for the corresponding periods was 6389 and 6543 respectively. (H. HA.)

ESTATE DUTY. For purposes of the national revenue in the United Kingdom, the Finance Act 1894 imposed on all property passing by death after the 1st of August 1894 a duty called estate duty, in lieu of certain other duties previously payable. The objects of the act were-(1) simplification of the death duties and equalization as between real and personal property, and (2) aggregation of all the property passing on a death, and taxation at rates graduated according to the value of the whole. Before the act a duty (probate duty) was taken on the free personal property of deceased persons in the hands · of the executor or administrator, without regard to the subsequent distribution. The legacy and succession duties were levied on distribution of the property passing on the death, from the persons taking any property under the will or intestacy of the deceased, or under settlement, or by devolution of title on his death. These two latter duties were mutually exclusive, and together covered practically all property passing by death. They were levied at rates graduated according to consanguinity. In 1888 an attempt was made to equalize the rates of the death duties as between property which paid the probate and legacy duties, and property which paid succession duty only. But the Finance Act 1894 replaced the probate duty by a duty extending to all property real or personal passing on or by reference to death, whether by disposition of the deceased or not, without regard to its tenure or destination. The Finance Acts of 1907 and 19091910 increased the scale of duties laid down in 1894.

For this purpose all property passing on a death is aggregated to form one estate, on the capital value of which the duty is charged, at rates graduated from 1 to 15% according to the aggregate value. Besides the property of which the deceased was competent to dispose at his death, the aggregated estate includes property in which he had an interest ceasing on his death, from the cesser of which a benefit accrues, or which was disposed of by him within twelve months of death, or at any time, with reservation of an interest to himself. The extent to

Italy, and it first comes to the front in the wars between the Guelphs and Ghibellines; as leaders of the former party its princes received at different times Ferrara, Modena, Reggio and other fiefs and territories.

which property is deemed to pass on the cesser of a limited | played a great part in the history of medieval and Renaissance interest is measured by the proportion of the income to which the interest extended, without regard to the tenure of the deceased or his successor. Property may therefore be included in the aggregate estate at its capital value owing to the passing of a life-interest only, the property being settled so that the absolute ownership does not pass at all. But when the duty has once been paid on property passing under a settlement, the property does not again become chargeable until it passes on the death of a person who is or has been competent to dispose of it. To compensate for this advantage, when property passing under a settlement made after the act pays the estate duty, a further duty of 2% (settlement estate duty) is taken, except where the only subsequent life-interest is that of the wife or husband of the deceased.

The rate of duty being fixed according to the aggregate capital value of the whole estate, the charge is distributed according to the different modes of disposition of the property comprised in the estate. The duty on the personalty which passes to the executor as such is paid by him, as the probate duty was, and comes out of the general estate. For the other property passing, trustees, or any person to whom it passes for a beneficial interest in possession, are made accountable, and are required to bring in an account of the property and pay the duty. The duty is a first charge on such property, and, when it is paid by a person having a life-interest only, he may charge the corpus of the property with it. The duty on real property included in an account is payable by eight yearly or sixteen half-yearly instalments, becoming due twelve months after the death, and bearing interest at 3% from that date. On other property, except in a few special cases, the duty bears interest at 3% from the date of the death. When the estate duty has been paid no further duty is chargeable on property comprised in the estate which passes to lineal relations of the deceased. But on property passing to collaterals or strangers legacy or succession duty, as the case may be, is payable by the devisees or successors, at a rate (which is the same whichever duty be payable) fixed according to consanguinity.

For a detailed account of the provisions of the act of 1894 and subsequent amending acts, and of the practical working of the duty, reference is made to Austen-Cartmell, Finance Acts (1894-1907); Hanson, Death Duties (London, 1904); Soward, Handbook to the Estate Duty (4th ed., London, 1900); and to the reports of the commissioners of Inland Revenue for 1894-1895 and subsequent

years.

ESTCOURT, RICHARD (1668-1712), English actor, began by playing comedy parts in Dublin. His first London appearance was in 1704 as Dominick, in Dryden's Spanish Friar, and he continued to take important parts at Drury Lane, being the original Pounce in Steele's Tender Husband (1705), Sergeant Kite in Farquhar's Recruiting Officer, and Sir Francis Gripe in Mrs Centlivre's Busybody. He was an excellent mimic and a great favourite socially. Estcourt wrote a comedy, The Fair Example, or the Modish Citizen (1703), and Prunella (1704), an interlude. ESTE, one of the oldest of the former reigning houses of Italy. It is in all probability of Lombard origin, and descended, according to Muratori, from the princes who governed in Tuscany in Carolingian times. The lordship of the town of Este was first acquired by Alberto Azzo II., who also bore the title of marquis of Italy1 (d. c. 1097); he married Kunitza or Kunégonda, sister of Welf or Guelph III., duke of Carinthia. Welf died without issue, and was succeeded by Welf IV., son of Kunitza, who married a daughter of Otto II., duke of Bavaria, and who obtained the duchy of Bavaria in 1070. Through him the house of Este became connected with the princely houses of Brunswick and Hanover, from which the sovereigns of England are descended. The Italian titles and estates were inherited by Folco I. (1060-1135), son of Alberto Azzo by his second wife Gersende, daughter of Herbert I., count of Maine. The house of Este i.e. Margrave of the Empire (marchio Sancti Imperii) in Italy. (See MARQUESS.)

2 Another son of Azzo and Gersende became count of Maine as Hugh III. (d. 1131).

Obizzo I., son of Folco, was the first to bear the title of marquis of Este. He entered into the Guelphic league against the emperor Frederick I., and was comprehended in the treaty of Venice of 1177 by which municipal podestàs (foreigners chosen as heads of cities to administer justice impartially) were instituted. He was elected podestà of Padua in 1178, and in 1184 he was reconciled with Frederick, who created him marquis of Genoa and Milan, a dignity somewhat similar to that of imperial vicar. By the marriage of his son Azzo to the heiress of the Marchesella family (the story that she was carried off to prevent her marrying an enemy of the Este is a pure legend), he came to acquire great influence in Ferrara, although he was opposed by the hardly less powerful house of Torelli.

Obizzo died in 1194 and Azzo V. having predeceased him, the marquisate devolved on his grandson Azzo VI. (1170–1212), who became head of the Guelph party, and to him the people of Ferrara sacrificed their liberty by making him their first lord (1208). But during his lifetime civil war raged in the city, between the Este and the Torelli, each party being driven out again and again. Azzo (also called Azzolino) died in 1212 and was succeeded by Aldobrandino I., who in 1213 concluded a treaty with Salinguerra Torelli, the head of that house, to divide the government of the city between them. On his death in 1215 he was succeeded by his brother Azzo VII. (1205–1264), surnamed Novello, but Salinguerra Torelli usurped all power in Ferrara and expelled Azzo (1222). In 1240 Pope Gregory IX. determined on another war against the emperor Frederick II., but deemed it wise to begin by crushing the chief Ghibelline houses. Thus Azzo found himself in league with the pope and various Guelph cities in his attempt to regain Ferrara. That town underwent a four months' siege, and was at last compelled. to surrender; Salinguerra was sent to Venice as a prisoner, and Azzo ruled in Ferrara once more. The Ghibelline party was annihilated, but the city enjoyed peace and happiness within, although her citizens took part in the wars raging outside. The Guelph cause triumphed, Frederick being defeated several times, and after his death Azzo helped in crushing the terrible Eccelino da Romano (q.v.) who upheld the imperial cause, at the battle of Cassano (1259). He died in 1264 and was succeeded by Obizzo II. (1240-1293) his grandson, who in 1288 received the lordship of Modena, and that of Reggio in 1289. He was a capable but cruel ruler, and while professing devotion to the Guelph cause, did homage to the German king Rudolph I. when he descended into Italy.

Obizzo II. died in 1293 and was succeeded by his son Azzo VIII., but the latter's brothers, Aldobrandino and Francesco, who were to have shared in the government, were expelled and became his bitter enemies. The misgovernment of Azzo led to the revolt of Reggio and Modena, which shook off his yoke. Enemies arose on all sides, and he spent his last years in perpetual fighting. He died in 1308, and having no legitimate children, his brothers, his natural son Fresco, and others disputed the succession. A papal legate was appointed, and though the Este returned they were placed under pontifical tutelage.

The history of the house now becomes involved and of little interest until we come to Nicholas III. (1384-1441), who exercised sway over Ferrara, Modena, Parma and Reggio, waged many wars, was made general of the army of the Church, and in his later years governor of Milan, where he died, not without suspicion of poison. To him succeeded Lionello (1407-1450), a wise and virtuous ruler and a patron of literature and art; then Borso (1413-1471), his brother, who was created duke of Modena and Reggio by the emperor Frederick III., and duke of Ferrara by Ferrara enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity under Borso; the pope. In spite of the wars by which all Italy was torn, he patronized literature, established a printing-press at Ferrara, surrounded himself with learned men, and his court was of

unparalleled splendour. He also protected industry and com- | papal troops. He fought on the side of the French at the battle merce, and ruled with great wisdom. His brother Ercole I. (1431-1505), who succeeded him in 1471, was less fortunate, and had to engage in a war with Venice, owing to a dispute about the salt monopoly, with the result that by the peace of 1484 he was forced to cede the district of Polesine to the republic. But the last years of his life were peaceful and prosperous, so that afterwards men looked back to the days of Ercole I. as to a golden age; his capital was noted both for its luxury and as the resort of men eminent in literature and art. Boiardo the poet was his minister, and Ariosto obtained his patronage.