The political importance of the battle was very great, for it gave the death-blow to the cause of the barons who supported Louis, and it fixed Henry III. on the throne. But the defeat and death of the Monk was widely regarded as in a peculiar sense a victory over the powers of evil. The man became within a few years after his death the hero of many legends of piracy and necromancy. It was said that after leaving the cloister he studied the black art in Toledo, which had a great reputation in the middle ages as a school of witchcraft. A French poem written seemingly within a generation after his death represents him as a wizard. In a prose narrative discovered and printed by M. Francisque Michel, it is said that he made his ship invisible by magic spells. A brother wizard in the English fleet, by name Stephen Crabbe, detected him while he was invisible to others. The bold and patriotic Crabbe contrived to board the bewitched flagship, and was seen apparently laying about him with an axe on the water—which the spectators took to be a proof either that he was mad, or that this was the devil in his shape. At last he struck off the head of Eustace, upon which the spell was broken, and the ship appeared. Crabbe was torn to pieces—presumably by the familiar spirits of the Monk—and the fragments were scattered over the water. Saint Bartholomew, whose feast is on the 21st of August, came to encourage the English by his presence and his voice.
Ascertainable fact concerning Eustace is less picturesque, but enough is known to show that he was an adventurous and unscrupulous scoundrel. In his youth he was a monk, and left the cloister to claim an inheritance from the count of Boulogne. Not having received satisfaction he became a freebooter on land and sea, and mercenary soldier. He is frequently mentioned in the Pipe, Patent and Close Rolls. For a time he served King John, but when the king made friends with the count of Boulogne, he fled abroad, and entered the service of the French prince Louis and his father Philip Augustus. Chroniclers lavish on him the titles of “archipirata,” “vir flagitiosissimus et nequissimus,” and poets made him an associate of the devil.
The evidence concerning Eustace is collected by Herren Wendelin Forster and Johann Trost, in their edition of the French poem “Wistasse le moine” (Halle, 1891). See for the battle Sir N. Harris Nicolas, History of the Royal Navy (London, 1847).
DOVER, a city and the county seat of Strafford county, New Hampshire, U.S.A., on the Cochecho river, at the head of navigation, 10 m. N.W. of Portsmouth. Pop. (1890) 12,790; (1900) 13,207, of whom 3298 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 13,247. Land area, 26.4 sq m. It is at the intersection of two branches of the Boston & Maine railway, and is served by several interurban electric lines. The street plan is irregular. Dover has a fine city hall of red brick and freestone; a public library containing (1907) 34,000 volumes, the Wentworth hospital; the Wentworth home for the aged, a children’s and an orphans’ home. The Strafford Savings Bank is said to be the largest and oldest savings institution in the state. Dover has long had a considerable commerce, both by rail and by water, that by water being chiefly in coal and building materials. The navigation of the Cochecho river has been greatly improved by the Federal government, at a cost between 1829 and 1907 of about $300,000, and in 1909 there was a navigable channel, 60-75 ft. wide and 7 ft. deep at mean low water, from Dover to the mouth of the river; the mean range of tides is 6.8 ft. The Cochecho river falls 31½ ft. within the city limits and furnishes water-power for factories; among the manufactures are textiles, boots and shoes, leather belting, sash, doors and blinds, carriages, machinery and bricks. In 1905 Dover ranked fourth among the manufacturing cities of the state, and first in manufactures of woollens; the value of the city’s total factory product in that year was $6,042,901. Dover is one of the two oldest cities in the state. In May 1623 a settlement was established by Edward Hilton on Dover Point, about 5 m. S.E. of the Cochecho Falls; the present name was adopted in 1639, and with the development of manufacturing and trading interests the population gradually removed nearer the falls; Hilton and his followers were Anglicans, but in 1633 they were joined by several Puritan families under Captain Thomas Wiggin, who settled on Dover Neck (1 m. above Dover Point), which for 100 years was the business centre of the town. As the settlement was outside the jurisdiction of any province, and as trouble arose between the two sects, a plantation covenant was drawn up and signed in 1640 by forty-one of the inhabitants. Dissensions, however, continued, and in 1641, by the will of the majority, Dover passed under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts and so remained for nearly half a century. The town, between 1675 and 1725, suffered greatly from Indian attacks, particularly from that of the 28th of June 1689 at Cochecho Falls. Dover was first chartered as a city in 1855. Within the original territory of the town were included Newington, set off in 1713, Somersworth (1729), Durham (1732), Medbury (1755), Lee, set off from Durham in 1766, and Rollinsford, set off from Somersworth in 1849.
See Jeremy Belknap, History of New Hampshire (Philadelphia, 1784-1792); and Rev. Dr A. H. Quint’s Historical Memoranda of Persons and Places in Old Dover, N.H., edited by John Scales (Dover, 1900).
DOVER, a town of Morris county, New Jersey, U.S.A., on the Rockaway river and the Morris canal, about 40 m. by rail W.N.W. of Hoboken. Pop. (1900) 5938, of whom 947 were foreign-born; (1905) 6353; (1910) 7468. The area of the town is 1.72 sq. m. Dover is at the junction of the main line and the Morris & Essex division of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railway (which has large repair shops here), and is also served by the High Bridge branch of the Central of New Jersey, and by an electric line connecting with neighbouring towns. The town is situated about 570 ft. above sea-level. Building stone, used extensively for railway bridges, and iron ore abound in the vicinity. The river furnishes good water-power, and the town has various manufactures, including stoves and ranges, boilers, bar iron, rivets, steel castings, rock drills, air compressors, silk hose and underwear, organzine or thrown silk, and overalls. The waterworks are owned by the town, water being obtained from wells varying in depth from 193 to 213 ft. Dover was settled as early as 1748, and was separated from Randolph township and incorporated as a town in 1869.