Notwithstanding the large area occupied by bogs, the climate is generally healthy, and less moist than that of several neighbouring districts. The whole of the county would appear to have been covered formerly by a vast forest, and the district bordering on Tipperary is still richly wooded. The soil naturally is not of great fertility except in special cases, but is capable of being rendered so by the judicious application of bog and lime manures according to its special defects. It is generally either a deep bog or a shallow gravelly loam. On the borders of the Slieve Bloom Mountains there are some very rich and fertile pastures, and there are also extensive grazing districts on the borders of Westmeath, which are chiefly occupied by sheep. Along the banks of the Shannon there are some fine tracts of meadow land. With the exception of the tract occupied by the Bog of Allen, the remainder of the county is nearly all under tillage, the most productive portion being that to the north-west of the Hill of Croghan. The percentage of tillage to pasture is roughly as 1 to 2¼. Oats, barley and rye, potatoes and turnips, are all considerably grown; wheat is almost neglected, and the acreage of all crops has a decreasing tendency. Cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry are bred increasingly; dairies are numerous in the north of the county, and the sheep are pastured chiefly in the hilly districts.
The county is traversed from S.E. to N.W. by the Portarlington, Tullamore, Clara and Athlone line of the Great Southern and Western railway, with a branch from Clara to Banagher; from Roscrea (Co. Tipperary) a branch of this company runs to Parsonstown (Birr); while the Midland Great Western has branches from its main line from Enfield (Co. Kildare) to Edenderry, and from Streamstown (Co. Westmeath) to Clara. The Grand Canal runs through the length of the county from east to west, entering the Shannon at Shannon harbour.
The population (65,563 in 1891; 60,187 in 1901), decreasing through emigration, includes about 89% of Roman Catholics. The decrease is rather below the average. The chief towns are Tullamore (the county town, pop. 4639) and Birr or Parsonstown (4438), with Edenderry and Clara. Philipstown near Tullamore was formerly the capital of the county and was the centre of the kingdom of Offaly. The county comprises 12 baronies and 46 civil parishes. It returns two members to parliament, for the Birr and Tullamore divisions respectively. Previous to the Union, King’s County returned six members to parliament, two for the county, and two for each of the boroughs of Philipstown and Banagher. Assizes are held at Tullamore and quarter sessions at Parsonstown, Philipstown and Tullamore. The county is divided into the Protestant dioceses of Killaloe, Meath and Ossory; and the Roman Catholic dioceses of Ardagh, Kildare and Leighlin, Ossory and Clonfert.
King’s County, with portions of Tipperary, Queen’s County and Kildare, at an early period formed one kingdom under the name of Offaly, a title which it retained after the landing of the English. Subsequently it was known as Glenmallery, Western Glenmallery pretty nearly corresponding to the present King’s County, and Eastern Glenmallery to Queen’s County. By a statute of 1556 the western district was constituted a shire under the name of King’s County in honour of Philip, consort of Queen Mary—the principal town, formerly the seat of the O’Connors, being called Philipstown; and the eastern district at the same time received the name of Queen’s County in honour of Mary. Perhaps the oldest antiquarian relic is the large pyramid of white stones in the Slieve Bloom Mountains called the Temple of the Sun or the White Obelisk. There are a considerable number of Danish raths, and a chain of moats commanding the passes of the bogs extended throughout the county. On the borders of Tipperary is an ancient causeway leading presumably to a crannog or lake-dwelling. The most important ecclesiastical ruins are those of the seven churches of Clonmacnoise (q.v.) on the Shannon in the north-west of the county, where an abbey was founded by St Kieran in 648, and where the remains include those of churches, two round towers, crosses, inscribed stones and a castle. Among the more famous religious houses in addition to Clonmacnoise were Durrow Abbey, founded by St Columba in 550; Monasteroris founded in the 14th century by John Bermingham, earl of Louth; and Seirkyran Abbey, founded in the beginning of the 5th century. The principal old castles are Rathmore, probably the most ancient in the county; Banagher, commanding an important pass on the Shannon; Leap Castle, in the Slieve Bloom Mountains; and Birr or Parsonstown, now the seat of the earl of Rosse.
KINGSDOWN, THOMAS PEMBERTON LEIGH, Baron (1793-1867), the eldest son of Thomas Pemberton, a chancery barrister, was born in London on the 11th of February 1793. He was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1816, and at once acquired a lucrative equity practice. He sat in parliament for Rye (1831-1832) and for Ripon (1835-1843). He was made a king’s counsel in 1829. Of a retiring disposition, he seldom took part in parliamentary debates, although in 1838 in the case of Stockdale v. Hansard he took a considerable part in upholding the privileges of parliament. In 1841 he accepted the post of attorney-general for the duchy of Cornwall. In 1842 a relative, Sir Robert H. Leigh, left him a life interest in his Wigan estates, amounting to some £15,000 a year; he then assumed the additional surname of Leigh. Having accepted the chancellorship of the duchy of Cornwall and a privy councillorship, he became a member of the judicial committee of the privy council, and for nearly twenty years devoted his energies and talents to the work of that body; his judgments, more particularly in prize cases, of which he took especial charge, are remarkable not only for legal precision and accuracy, but for their form and expression. In 1858, on the formation of Lord Derby’s administration, he was offered the Great Seal, but declined; in the same year, however, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Kingsdown. He died at his seat, Lorry Hill, near Sittingbourne, Kent, on the 7th of October 1867. Lord Kingsdown never married, and his title became extinct.
See Recollections of Life at the Bar and in Parliament, by Lord Kingsdown (privately printed for friends, 1868); The Times (8th of October 1867).
KING’S EVIL, an old, but not yet obsolete, name given to the scrofula, which in the popular estimation was deemed capable of cure by the royal touch. The practice of “touching” for the scrofula, or “King’s Evil,” was confined amongst the nations of Europe to the two Royal Houses of England and France. As the monarchs of both these countries owned the exclusive right of being anointed with the pure chrism, and not with the ordinary sacred oil, it has been surmised that the common belief in the sanctity of the chrism was in some manner inseparably connected with faith in the healing powers of the royal touch. The kings both of France and England claimed a sole and special right to this supernatural gift: the house of France deducing its origin from Clovis (5th century) and that of England declaring Edward th e Confessor the first owner of this virtue. That the Saxon origin of the royal power of healing was the popular theory in England is evident from the striking and accurate description of the ceremony in Macbeth (act vi. scene iii.). Nevertheless the practice of this rite cannot be traced back to an earlier date than the reign of Edward III. in England, and of St Louis (Louis IX.) in France; consequently, it is believed that the performance of healing by the touch emanated in the first instance from the French Crusader-King, whose miraculous powers were subsequently transmitted to his descendant and representative, Isabella of Valois, wife of Edward II. of England. In any case, Queen Isabella’s son and heir, Edward III., claimant to the French throne through his mother, was the first English king to order a public display of an attribute that had hitherto been associated with the Valois kings alone. From his reign dates the use of the “touch-piece,” a gold medal given to the sufferer as a kind of talisman, which was originally the angel coin, stamped with designs of St Michael and of a three-masted ship.
The actual ceremony seems first to have consisted of the sovereign’s personal act of washing the diseased flesh with water, but under Henry VII. the use of an ablution was omitted, and a regular office was drawn up for insertion in the Service Book. At the “Ceremonies for the Healing” the king now merely touched his afflicted subject in the presence of the court chaplain who offered up certain prayers and afterwards presented the touch-piece, pierced so that it might be suspended by a ribbon round the patient’s neck. Henry VII.’s office was henceforth issued with variations from time to time under successive kings, nor did it disappear from certain editions of the Book of Common Prayer until the middle of the 18th century. The practice of the Royal Healing seems to have reached the height of its popularity during the reign of Charles II., who is stated on good authority to have touched over 100,000 strumous persons. So great a number of applicants becoming a nuisance to the Court, it was afterwards enacted that special certificates should in future be granted to individuals demanding the touch, and such certificates are occasionally to be found amongst old parish registers of the close of the 17th century. After the Revolution, William of Orange refused to touch, and referred all applicants to the exiled James II. at St Germain; but Queen Anne touched frequently, one of her patients being Dr Samuel Johnson in his infancy. The Hanoverian kings declined to touch, and there exists no further record of any ceremony of healing henceforward at the English court. The practice, however, was continued by the exiled Stuarts, and was constantly performed in Italy by James Stuart, “the Old Pretender,” and by his two sons, Charles and Henry (Cardinal York).