EYRE, EDWARD JOHN (1815-1901), British colonial governor, the son of a Yorkshire clergyman, was born on the 5th of August 1815. He was intended for the army, but delays having arisen in producing a commission, he went out to New South Wales, where he engaged in the difficult but very necessary undertaking of transporting stock westward to the new colony of South Australia, then in great distress, and where he became magistrate and protector of the aborigines, whose interests he warmly advocated. Already experienced as an Australian traveller, he undertook the most extensive and difficult journeys in the desert country north and west of Adelaide, and after encountering the greatest hardships, proved the possibility of land communication between South and West Australia. In 1845 he returned to England and published the narrative of his travels. In 1846 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of New Zealand, where he served under Sir George Grey. After successively governing St Vincent and Antigua, he was in 1862 appointed acting-governor of Jamaica and in 1864 governor. In October 1865 a negro insurrection broke out and was repressed with laudable vigour, but the unquestionable severity and alleged illegality of Eyre’s subsequent proceedings raised a storm at home which induced the government to suspend him and to despatch a special commission of investigation, the effect of whose inquiries, declared by his successor, Sir John Peter Grant, to have been “admirably conducted,” was that he should not be reinstated in his office. The government, nevertheless, saw nothing in Eyre’s conduct to justify legal proceedings; indictments preferred by amateur prosecutors at home against him and military officers who had acted under his direction, resulted in failure, and he retired upon the pension of a colonial governor. As an explorer Eyre must be classed in the highest rank, but opinions are always likely to differ as to his action in the Jamaica rebellion. He died on the 30th of November 1901.
EYRE, SIR JAMES (1734-1799), English judge, was the son of the Rev. Thomas Eyre, of Wells, Somerset. He was educated at Winchester College and at St John’s College, Oxford, which, however, he left without taking a degree. He was called to the bar at Gray’s Inn in 1755, and commenced practice in the lord mayor’s and sheriffs’ courts, having become by purchase one of the four counsel to the corporation of London. He was appointed recorder of London in 1763. He was counsel for the plaintiff in the case of Wilkes v. Wood, and made a brilliant speech in condemnation of the execution of general search warrants. His refusal to voice the remonstrances of the corporation against the exclusion of Wilkes from parliament earned him the recognition of the ministry, and he was appointed a judge of the exchequer in 1772. From June 1792 to January 1793 he was chief commissioner of the great seal. In 1793 he was made chief justice of the common pleas, and presided over the trials of Horne Tooke, Thomas Crosfield and others, with great ability and impartiality. He died on the 1st of July 1799 and was buried at Ruscombe, Berkshire.
See Howell, State Trials, xix. (1154—1155); Foss, Lives of the Judges.
EYRIE, the alternative English form of the words Aerie or Aery, the lofty nest of a bird of prey, especially of an eagle, hence any lofty place of abode; the term is also used of the brood of the bird. The word derives from the Fr. aire, of the same meaning, which comes from the Lat. area, an open space, but was early connected with aërius, high in the air, airy, a confusion that has affected the spelling of the word. The forms “eyrie” or “eyry” date from a 17th century attempt to derive the word from the Teutonic ey, an egg.
EZEKIEL (יחזקאל, “God strengthens” or “God is strong”; Sept. Ἰεζεκιήλ; Vulg. Ezechiel), son of Buzi, one of the most vigorous and impressive of the older Israelite thinkers. He was a priest of the Jerusalem temple, probably a member of the dominant house of Zadok, and doubtless had the literary training of the cultivated priesthood of the time, including acquaintance with the national historical, legal and ritual traditions and with the contemporary history and customs of neighbouring peoples. In the year 597 (being then, probably, not far from thirty years of age) he was carried off to Babylonia by Nebuchadrezzar with King Jehoiachin and a large body of nobles, military men and artisans, and there, it would seem, he spent the rest of his life. His prophecies are dated from this year (“our captivity,” xl. 1), except in i. 1, where the meaning of the date “thirtieth year” is obscure; it cannot refer to his age (which would be otherwise expressed in Hebrew), or to the reform of Josiah, 621 (which is not elsewhere employed as an epoch); possibly the reference is to the era of Nabopolassar (626 according to the Canon of Ptolemy), if chronological inexactness be supposed (34 or 33 years instead of 30), a supposition not at all improbable. That the word “thirtieth” is old, appears from the fact that a scribe has added a gloss (vv. 2, 3) to bring this statement into accord with the usual way of reckoning in the book: the “thirtieth” year, he explains, is the fifth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin. The exiles dwelt at Tell-abib (“Hill of the flood”), one of the mounds or ruins made by the great floods that devastated the country,[1] near the “river” Chebar (Kebar), probably a large canal not far south of the city of Babylon. Here they had their own lands, and some form of local government by elders, and appear to have been prosperous and contented; probably the only demand made on them by the Babylonian government was the payment of taxes.
Ezekiel was married (xxiv. 18), had his own house, and comported himself quietly as a Babylonian subject. But he was a profoundly interested observer of affairs at home and among the exiles: as patriot and ethical teacher he deplored alike the political blindness of the Jerusalem government (King Zedekiah revolted in 588) and the immorality and religious superficiality and apostasy of the people. He, like Jeremiah, was friendly to Nebuchadrezzar, regarding him as Yahweh’s instrument for the chastisement of the nation. Convinced that opposition to Babylonian rule was suicidal, and interpreting historical events, in the manner of the times, as indications of the temper of the deity, he held that the imminent political destruction of the nation was proof of Yahweh’s anger with the people on account of their moral and religious depravity; Jerusalem was hopelessly corrupt and must be destroyed (xxiv.). On the other hand, he was equally convinced that, as his predecessors had taught (Hos. xi. 8, 9; Isa. vii. 3 al.), Yahweh’s love for his people would not suffer them to perish utterly—a remnant would be saved, and this remnant he naturally found in the exiles in Babylonia, a little band plucked from the burning and kept safe in a foreign land till the wrath should have passed (xi. 14 ff.). This conception of the exiles as the kernel of the restored nation he further set forth in the great vision of ch. i., in which Yahweh is represented as leaving Jerusalem and coming to take up his abode among them in Babylonia for a time, intending, however, to return to his own city (xliii. 7).
This, then, was Ezekiel’s political creed—destruction of Jerusalem and its inhabitants, restoration of the exiles, and meantime submission to Babylon. His arraignment of the Judeans is violent, almost malignant (vi. xvi. al.). The well-meaning but weak king Zedekiah he denounces with bitter scorn as a perjured traitor (xvii). He does not discuss the possibility of successful resistance to the Chaldeans; he simply assumes that the attempt is foolish and wicked, and, like other prophets, he identifies his political programme with the will of God. Probably his judgment of the situation was correct; yet, in view of Sennacherib’s failure at Jerusalem in 701 and of the admitted strength of the city, the hope of the Jewish nobles could not be considered wholly unfounded, and in any case their patriotism (like that of the national party in the Roman siege) was not unworthy of admiration. The prophet’s predictions of disaster continued, according to the record, up to the investment of the city by the Chaldean army in 588 (i.-xxiv.); after the fall of the city (586) his tone changed to one of consolation (xxxiii.-xxxix.)—the destruction of the wicked mass accomplished, he turned to the task of reconstruction. He describes the safe and happy establishment of the people in their own land, and gives a sketch of a new constitution, of which the main point is the absolute control of public religion by the priesthood (xl.-xlviii.).