[Recorde, Robert], mathematician, born in Pembroke; a physician by profession, and physician to Edward VI. and Queen Mary; his works on arithmetic, algebra, &c., were written in the form of question and answer; died in the debtors' prison (1500-1558).
[Recorder], an English law official, the chief Judicial officer of a city or borough; discharges the functions of judge at the Quarter-Sessions of his district; must be a barrister of at least five years' standing; is appointed by the Crown, but paid by the local authority; is debarred from sitting on the licensing bench, but is not withheld from practising at the bar; the sheriff in Scotland is a similar official.
[Rector], a clergyman of the Church of England, who has a right to the great and small tithes of the living; where the tithes are impropriate he is called a vicar.
[Recusants], a name given to persons who refused to attend the services of the Established Church, on whom legal penalties were first imposed in Elizabeth's reign, that bore heavily upon Catholics and Dissenters; the Toleration Act of William III. relieved the latter, but the Catholics were not entirely emancipated till 1829.
[Red Cross Knight], St. George, the patron saint of England, and the type and the symbol of justice and purity at feud with injustice and impurity.
[Red Cross Society], an internationally-recognised society of volunteers to attend to the sick and wounded in time of war, so called from the members of it wearing the badge of St. George.
[Red Republicans], a party in France who, at the time of the Revolution of 1848, aimed at a reorganisation of the State on a general partition of Property.
[Red River], an important western tributary of the Mississippi; flows E. and SE. through Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana; has a course of 1600 m. till it joins the Mississippi; is navigable for 350 m.
[Red River of the North], flows out of Elbow Lake, Minnesota; forms the boundary between North Dakota and Minnesota, and flowing through Manitoba, falls into Lake Winnipeg after a course of 665 m.; is a navigable river.
[Red Sea], an arm of the Arabian Sea, and stretching in a NW. direction between the desolate sandy shores of Turkey in Asia and Africa; is connected with the Gulf of Aden in the SE. by the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, and in the NW. divides into the Gulfs of Suez and Akaba, between which lies the Sinai Peninsula; the [Suez Canal] (q. v.) joins it to the Mediterranean; is 1200 m. long, and averages 180 in breadth; has a mean depth of 375 fathoms (greatest 1200); receives no rivers, and owing to the great evaporation its water is very saline; long coral reefs skirt its shores, and of many islands Jebel Zugur, in the Farisan Archipelago, and Dahlak are the largest; the dangerous Dædalus Reef is marked by a lighthouse; as a seaway between Europe and the East its importance was greatly diminished by the discovery of the Cape route, but since the opening of the Suez Canal it has much more than regained its old position; owes its name probably to the deep red tint of the water often seen among the reefs, due to the presence of microscopic organisms.