FULHAM, a western metropolitan borough of London, England, bounded N.W. by Hammersmith, N.E. by Kensington, E. by Chelsea, and S.E., S. and S.W. by the river Thames. Pop. (1901) 137,289. The principal thoroughfares are Fulham Palace Road running S. from Hammersmith, Fulham Road and King’s Road, W. from Chelsea, converging and leading to Putney Bridge over the Thames; North End Road between Hammersmith and Fulham Roads; Lillie Road between South Kensington and Fulham Palace Road; and Wandsworth Bridge Road leading S. from New King’s Road to Wandsworth Bridge. In the north Fulham includes the residential district known as West Kensington, and farther south that of Walham Green. The manor house or palace of the bishops of London stands in grounds, beautifully planted and surrounded by a moat, believed to be a Danish work, near the river west of Putney Bridge. Its oldest portion is the picturesque western quadrangle, built by Bishop Fitzjames (1506-1522). The parish church of All Saints, between the bridge and the grounds, was erected in 1881 from designs by Sir Arthur Blomfield. The fine old monuments from the former building, dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries, are mostly preserved, and in the churchyard are the memorials of several bishops of London and of Theodore Hook (1841). The public recreation grounds include the embankment and gardens between the river and the palace grounds, and there are also two well-known enclosures used for sports within the borough. Of these Hurlingham Park is the headquarters of the Hurlingham Polo Club and a fashionable resort; and Queen’s Club, West Kensington, has tennis and other courts for the use of members, and is also the scene of important football matches, and of the athletic meetings between Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and those between the English and American Universities held in England. In Seagrave Road is the Western fever hospital. The parliamentary borough of Fulham returns one member. The borough council consists of a mayor, 6 aldermen and 36 councillors. Area, 1703.5 acres.
Fulham, or in its earliest form Fullanham, is uncertainly stated to signify “the place” either “of fowls” or “of dirt.” The manor is said to have been given to Bishop Erkenwald about the year 691 for himself and his successors in the see of London, and Holinshed relates that the Bishop of London was lodging in his manor place in 1141 when Geoffrey de Mandeville, riding out from the Tower of London, took him prisoner. At the Commonwealth the manor was temporarily out of the bishops’ hands, being sold to Colonel Edmund Harvey. There is no record of the first erection of a parish church, but the first known rector was appointed in 1242, and a church probably existed a century before this. The earliest part of the church demolished in 1881, however, did not date farther back than the 15th century. In 879 Danish invaders, sailing up the Thames, wintered at Fulham and Hammersmith. Near the former wooden Putney Bridge, built in 1729 and replaced in 1886, the earl of Essex threw a bridge of boats across the river in 1642 in order to march his army in pursuit of Charles I., who thereupon fell back on Oxford. Margravine Road recalls the existence of Bradenburg House, a riverside mansion built by Sir Nicholas Crispe in the time of Charles I., used as the headquarters of General Fairfax in 1647 during the civil wars, and occupied in 1792 by the margrave of Bradenburg-Anspach and Bayreuth and his wife, and in 1820 by Caroline, consort of George IV.
FULK, king of Jerusalem (b. 1092), was the son of Fulk IV., count of Anjou, and his wife Bertrada (who ultimately deserted her husband and became the mistress of Philip I. of France). He became count of Anjou in 1109, and considerably added to the prestige of his house. In particular he showed himself a doughty opponent to Henry I. of England, against whom he continually supported Louis VI. of France, until in 1127 Henry won him over by betrothing his daughter Matilda to Fulk’s son Geoffrey Plantagenet. Already in 1120 Fulk had visited the Holy Land, and become a close friend of the Templars. On his return he assigned to the order of the Templars an annual subsidy, while he also maintained two knights in the Holy Land for a year. In 1128 he was preparing to return to the East, when he received an embassy from Baldwin II., king of Jerusalem, who had no male heir to succeed him, offering his daughter Melisinda in marriage, with the right of eventual succession to the kingdom. Fulk readily accepted the offer; and in 1129 he came and was married to Melisinda, receiving the towns of Acre and Tyre as her dower. In 1131, at the age of thirty-nine, he became king of Jerusalem. His reign is not marked by any considerable events: the kingdom which had reached its zenith under Baldwin II., and did not begin to decline till the capture of Edessa in the reign of Baldwin III., was quietly prosperous under his rule. In the beginning of his reign he had to act as regent of Antioch, and to provide a husband, Raymund of Poitou, for the infant heiress Constance. But the great problem with which he had to deal was the progress of the atabeg Zengi of Mosul. In 1137 he was beaten near Barin, and escaping into the fort was surrounded and forced to capitulate. A little later, however, he greatly improved his position by strengthening his alliance with the vizier of Damascus, who also had to fear the progress of Zengi (1140); and in this way he was able to capture the fort of Banias, to the N. of Lake Tiberias. Fulk also strengthened the kingdom on the south; while his butler, Paganus, planted the fortress of Krak to the south of the Dead Sea, and helped to give the kingdom an access towards the Red Sea, he himself constructed Blanche Garde and other forts on the S.W. to overawe the garrison of Ascalon, which was still held by the Mahommedans, and to clear the road towards Egypt. Twice in Fulk’s reign the eastern emperor, John Comnenus, appeared in northern Syria (1137 and 1142); but his coming did not affect the king, who was able to decline politely a visit which the emperor proposed to make to Jerusalem. In 1143 he died, leaving two sons, who both became kings, as Baldwin III. and Amalric I.
Fulk continued the tradition of good statesmanship and sound churchmanship which Baldwin I. and Baldwin II. had begun. William of Tyre speaks of him as a fine soldier, an able politician, and a good son of the church, and only blames him for partiality to his friends, and a forgetfulness of names and faces, which placed him at a disadvantage and made him too dependent on his immediate intimates. Little, perhaps, need be made of these censures: the real fault of Fulk was his neglect to envisage the needs of the northern principalities, and to head a combined resistance to the rising power of Zengi of Mosul.
His reign in Jerusalem is narrated by R. Röhricht (Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem, Innsbruck, 1898), and has been made the subject of a monograph by G. Dodu (De Fulconis Hierosolymitani regno, Paris, 1894).
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FULK (d. 900), archbishop of Reims, and partisan of Charles the Simple in his struggle with Odo, count of Paris, was elected to the see as archbishop in 883 upon the death of Hincmar. In 887 he was engaged in a struggle with the Normans who invaded his territories. Upon the deposition of Charles the Fat he sided with Charles the Simple in his contest for the West Frankish dominions against Count Odo of Paris, and crowned him king in his own metropolitan church at Reims after most of the nobles had gone over to Odo (893). Upon the death of Odo he succeeded in having Charles recognized as king by a majority of the West Frankish nobility. In 892 he obtained special privileges for his province from Pope Formosus, who promised that thereafter, when the archbishopric became vacant, the revenues should not be enjoyed by anyone while the vacancy existed, but should be reserved for the new incumbent, provided the election took place within the canonical limit of three months. From 898 until his death he held the office of chancellor, which for some time afterwards was regularly filled by the archbishop of Reims. In his efforts to keep the wealthy abbeys and benefices of the church out of the hands of the nobles, he incurred the hatred of Baldwin, count of Flanders, who secured his assassination on the 17th of June 900, a crime which the weak Carolingian monarch left unpunished.