In 1290 Hertfordshire returned two members to parliament, and in 1298 the borough of Hertford was represented. St Albans, Bishop Stortford and Berkhampstead acquired representation in the 14th century, but from 1375 to 1553 no returns were made for the boroughs. St Albans regained representation in 1553 and Hertford in 1623. Under the Reform Act of 1832 the county returned three members. St Albans was disfranchised on account of bribery in 1852. Hertford lost one member in 1868, and was disfranchised by the act of 1885.
Antiquities.—Among the objects of antiquarian interest may be mentioned the cave of Royston, doubtless once used as a hermitage; Waltham Cross, erected to mark the spot where rested the body of Eleanor, queen of Edward I., on its way to Westminster for interment; and the Great Bed of Ware referred to in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and preserved at Rye House. The principal monastic buildings are the noble pile of St Albans abbey; the remains of Sopwell Benedictine nunnery near St Albans, founded in 1140; the remains of the priory of Ware, dedicated to St Francis, and originally a cell to the monastery of St Ebrulf at Utica in Normandy; and the remains of the priory at Hitchin built by Edward II. for the Carmelites. Among the more interesting churches may be mentioned those of Abbots Langley and Hemel Hempstead, both of Late Norman architecture; Baldock, a handsome mixed Gothic building supposed to have been erected by the Knights Templars in the reign of Stephen; Royston, formerly connected with the priory of canons regular; Hitchin of the 15th century; Hatfield, dating from the 13th century but in the main later; Berkhampstead, chiefly in the Perpendicular style, with a tower of the 16th century. Sandridge church shows good Norman work with the use of Roman bricks; Wheathampstead church, mainly very fine Decorated, has pre-Norman remains. The remains of secular buildings of importance are those of Berkhampstead castle, Hertford castle, Hatfield palace of the bishops of Ely, the slight traces at Bishop Stortford, and the earthworks at Anstey. Among the numerous mansions of interest, Rye House, erected in the reign of Henry VI., was tenanted by Rumbold, one of the principal agents in the plot to assassinate Charles II. Moor Park, Rickmansworth, once the property of St Albans abbey, was granted by Henry VII. to John de Vere, earl of Oxford, and was afterwards the property of the duke of Monmouth, who built the present mansion, which, however, was subsequently cased with Portland stone and received various other additions. Knebworth, the seat of the Lyttons, was originally a Norman fortress, rebuilt in the time of Elizabeth in the Tudor style and restored in the 19th century. Hatfield House is the seat of the marquis of Salisbury; but its earlier history is of great interest, as is that of Theobalds near Cheshunt. Panshanger House, until recently the principal seat of the Cowpers, is a splendid mansion in Gothic style erected at the beginning of the 19th century. The manor of Cashiobury House, the seat of the earls of Essex, was formerly held by the abbot of St Albans, but the mansion was rebuilt in the beginning of the 19th century from designs by Wyatt. Gorhambury House, near St Albans, the seat of the earl of Verulam, formerly the seat of the Bacons, and the residence of the great chancellor, was rebuilt at the close of the 18th century. At Kings Langley and Hunsdon were also former royal residences.
See Sir H. Chauncy, Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire (London, 1700, 2nd ed., Bishop Stortford, 1826); N. Salmon, History of Hertfordshire (London, 1728); R. Clutterbuck, History and Antiquities of the County of Hertford (London, 1815-1827); W. Berry, Pedigrees of the Hertfordshire Families (London, 1844); J. E. Cussans, History of Hertfordshire (London, 1870-1881); Victoria County History, Hertfordshire (London, 1902, &c.); see also “Visitation of Hertfordshire, 1572-1634,” in Harleian Society’s Publ. vol. xvii., and various papers in Middlesex and Hertfordshire Notes and Queries (1895-1898), which in January 1899 was incorporated in the Home Counties Magazine.
HERTHA, or Nerthus, in Teutonic mythology, the goddess of fertility, “Mother Earth.” Tacitus states that many Teutonic tribes worshipped her with orgies and mysterious rites celebrated at night. The chief seat of her cult was an island which has not been identified. A single priest performed the service. Her veiled statue was moved from place to place by sacred cows on which none but the priest might lay hands. At the conclusion of the rites the image, its vestments and its vehicle were bathed in a lake.
HERTZ, HEINRICH RUDOLF (1857-1894), German physicist, was born at Hamburg on the 22nd of February 1857. On leaving school he determined to adopt the profession of engineering, and in the pursuance of this decision went to study in Munich in 1877. But soon coming to the conclusion that engineering was not his vocation he abandoned it in favour of physical science, and in October 1878 began to attend the lectures of G. R. Kirchhoff and H. von Helmholtz at Berlin. In preparation for these he spent the winter of 1877-1878 in reading up original treatises like those of Laplace and Lagrange on mathematics and mechanics, and in attending courses on practical physics under P. G. von Jolly and J. F. W. von Bezold; the consequence was that within a few days of his arrival in Berlin in October 1878 he was able to plunge into original research on a problem of electric inertia. For the best solution a prize was offered by the philosophical faculty of the University, and this he succeeded in winning with the paper which was published in 1880 on the “Kinetic Energy of Electricity in Motion.” His next investigation, on “Induction in Rotating Spheres,” he offered in 1880 as his dissertation for his doctor’s degree, which he obtained with the rare distinction of summa cum laude. Later in the same year he became assistant to Helmholtz in the physical laboratory of the Berlin Institute. During the three years he held this position he carried out researches on the contact of elastic solids, hardness, evaporation and the electric discharge in gases, the last earning him the special commendation of Helmholtz. In 1883 he went to Kiel, becoming Privatdozent, and there he began the studies in Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory which a few years later resulted in the discoveries that rendered his name famous. These were actually made between 1885 and 1889, when he was professor of physics in the Carlsruhe Polytechnic. He himself recorded that their origin is to be sought in a prize problem proposed by the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1879, having reference to the experimental establishment of some relation between electromagnetic forces and the dielectric polarization of insulators. Imagining that this would interest Hertz and be successfully attacked by him, Helmholtz specially drew his attention to it, and promised him the assistance of the Institute if he decided to work on the subject; but Hertz did not take it up seriously at that time, because he could not think of any procedure likely to prove effective. It was of course well known, as a necessity of Maxwell’s mathematical theory, that the polarization and depolarization of an insulator must give rise to the same electromagnetic effects in the neighbourhood as a voltaic current in a conductor. The experimental proof, however, was still lacking, and though several experimenters had come very near its discovery, Hertz was the first who actually succeeded in supplying it, in 1887. Continuing his inquiries for the next year or two, he was able to discover the progressive propagation of electromagnetic action through space, to measure the length and velocity of electromagnetic waves, and to show that in the transverse nature of their vibration and their susceptibility to reflection, refraction and polarization they are in complete correspondence with the waves of light and heat. The result, was in Helmholtz’s words, to establish beyond doubt that ordinary light consists of electrical vibrations in an all-pervading ether which possesses the properties of an insulator and of a magnetic medium. Hertz himself gave an admirable account of the significance of his discoveries in a lecture on the relations between light and electricity, delivered before the German Society for the Advancement of Natural Science and Medicine at Heidelberg in September 1889. Since the time of these early experiments, various other modes of detecting the existence of electric waves have been found out in addition to the spark-gap which he first employed, and the results of his observations, the earliest interest of which was simply that they afforded a confirmation of an abstruse mathematical theory, have been applied to the practical purposes of signalling over considerable distances (see [Telegraphy], [Wireless]). In 1889 Hertz was appointed to succeed R. J. E. Clausius as ordinary professor of physics in the university of Bonn. There he continued his researches on the discharge of electricity in rarefied gases, only just missing the discovery of the X-rays described by W. C. Röntgen a few years later, and produced his treatise on the Principles of Mechanics. This was his last work, for after a long illness he died at Bonn on the 1st of January 1894. By his premature death science lost one of her most promising disciples. Helmholtz thought him the one of all his pupils who had penetrated farthest into his own circle of scientific thought, and looked to him with the greatest confidence for the further extension and development of his work.
Hertz’s scientific papers were translated into English by Professor D. E. Jones, and published in three volumes: Electric Waves (1893), Miscellaneous Papers (1896), and Principles of Mechanics (1899). The preface contributed to the first of these by Lord Kelvin, and the introductions to the second and third by Professors P. E. A. Lenard and Helmholtz, contain many biographical details, together with statements of the scope and significance of his investigations.
HERTZ, HENRIK (1797-1870), Danish poet, was born of Jewish parents in Copenhagen on the 25th of August 1798. In 1817 he was sent to the university. His father died in his infancy, and the family property was destroyed in the bombardment of 1807. The boy was brought up by his relative, M. L. Nathanson, a well-known newspaper editor. Young Hertz passed his examination in law in 1825. But his taste was all for polite literature, and in 1826-1827 two plays of his were produced, Mr Burchardt and his Family and Love and Policy; in 1828 followed the comedy of Flyttedagen. In 1830 he brought out what was a complete novelty in Danish literature, a comedy in rhymed verse, Amor’s Strokes of Genius. In the same year Hertz published anonymously Gengangerbrevene, or Letters from a Ghost, which he pretended were written by Baggesen, who had died in 1826. The book was written in defence of J. L. Heiberg, and was full of satirical humour and fine critical insight. Its success was overwhelming; but Hertz preserved his anonymity, and the secret was not known until many years later. In 1832 he published a didactic poem, Nature and Art, and Four Poetical Epistles. A Day on the Island of Als was his next comedy, followed in 1835 by The Only Fault. Hertz passed through Germany and Switzerland into Italy in 1833; he spent the winter there, and returned the following autumn through France to Denmark. In 1836 his comedy of The Savings Bank enjoyed a great success. But it was not till 1837 that he gave the full measure of his genius in the romantic national drama of Svend Dyrings Hus, a beautiful and original piece. His historical tragedy Valdemar Atterdag was not so well received in 1839; but in 1845 he achieved an immense success with his lyrical drama Kong René’s Datter (King René’s Daughter), which has been translated into almost every European language. To this succeeded the tragedy of Ninon in 1848, the romantic comedy of Tonietta in 1849, A Sacrifice in 1853, The Youngest in 1854. His lyrical poems appeared in successive collections, dated 1832, 1840 and 1844. From 1858 to 1859 he edited a literary journal entitled Weekly Leaves. His last drama, Three Days in Padua, was produced in 1869, and he died on the 25th of February of the next year.