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Shire   /ʃaɪr/   Listen
Shire

noun
1.
A former administrative district of England; equivalent to a county.
2.
British breed of large heavy draft horse.  Synonym: shire horse.



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"Shire" Quotes from Famous Books



... bore a title "applied to dwellings of the Elfin race." It is further stated that one popular belief in the Scottish Highlands is that the Fians are still lying in the hill of Tomnahurich, near Inverness, and that "others say they are lying in Glenorchy, Argyleshire."[30] Now, both the Inverness-shire mound and the mounds in Glenorchy are also popularly regarded as the abodes of Fairies.[31] The vitrified fort on Knock-Farril, in Ross-shire, is said to have been one of Fin McCoul's castles;[32] and ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie

... then Mun, I never wear it, but when I go to be drunk, and give my Voice for a Knight o'th' Shire, and here at London in Term time, and that but eight times in Eight Visits to Eight several Ladies ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... deputed by the king to govern a county or shire: the title is not used in the British Peerage; his rank is equal ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... court week, and the grand jury was in session. There were many people in the streets of the shire town. They moved with a slow foot, some giving their animation to squints of curiosity and shouts of recognition, some to profanity and plug tobacco. Squire Day and Colonel Judson were to argue the famous maple-sugar case, and many causes of local ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... called a Leinster dialect, founded on the literary language, with peculiarities of its own. The Scottish Gaelic has at least four marked dialects: Northern, spoken in Sutherland, part of Caithness, and Ross; Western, spoken in Inverness-shire and Argyle and in the Islands; and the rather broken-down dialects of Arran and of Perthshire, but the speakers of these are not very unintelligible to one another. Even Manx has a tendency to a “north side” and a “south side” dialect. Welsh has two fairly well marked dialects, of North ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner

... state of consternation by the proposal to provide them with the accommodation of a railway. The line from London to Birmingham would naturally have passed close to the handsome town of Northampton, and was so projected; but the inhabitants of the shire, urged on by the local press, and excited by men of influence and education, opposed the project, and succeeded in forcing the promoters, in their survey of the line, to pass the town at a distance. When the first railway through Kent was projected, the line ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... a lot lately, and Miss Bertram asked me the other day if I'd like any other job for the winter as there's hardly enough work for me in the garden now. And yesterday I saw a chap in the village I used to know. He's a recruiting sergeant for the ——shire regiment, and he wants me to enlist straight away. I wouldn't have given it a thought only what you said about serving the Queen has stuck to me, and it does seem a chance, and somehow that song has been in my head ever since I ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre

... the deep the Spaniards saw Along each southern shire, Cape after cape in endless range, Those twinkling points ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... without drawing bridle, and went almost too fast to observe sufficiently its very beautiful situation; past noble country-seats, bower and hall, we drove; and at last wound our solitary way along a cross-road, among some pastoral hills, that reminded us more of Dumfries-shire than any country we have ever seen. The road ascended gradually for many miles; and on crowning the elevation, we caught a very noble extensive view of a rich, flat, thickly-wooded plain, that bore a great resemblance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... shire of Derby, with its many rich examples, can present to view nothing equal in historic and legendary interest to this old mansion. Its turrets and towers, its windows and its walls, its capacious kitchens, and its fine halls and banqueting rooms—unspoiled by the hands of the "restorer"—have gained ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... Doctor talked most of the time to Lady Vandrift: his discourse was of picture-galleries, which Amelia detests, but in which she thinks it incumbent upon her, as Sir Charles's wife, to affect now and then a cultivated interest. Noblesse oblige; and the walls of Castle Seldon, our place in Ross-shire, are almost covered now with Leaders and with Orchardsons. This result was first arrived at by a singular accident. Sir Charles wanted a leader—for his coach, you understand—and told an artistic friend ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... we may add that nothing can exceed the terror in which cannibal nations are held by other African tribes. It was common on the River Shire to hear Manganja and Ajawa people speak of tribes far away to the north who eat human bodies, and on every occasion the fact was related with the utmost horror ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... be more unsavory and far from all civility:—'I remember,' says he, 'in the first year of queen Mary's reign a knight of Yorkshire was chosen speaker of the parliament, a good gentleman and wise, in the affairs of his shire, and not unlearned in the laws of the realm; but as well for lack of some of his teeth as for want of language, nothing well spoken, which at that time and business was most behoveful for him to have been: this man, after he had made his oration to ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... wished to visit home for a day or two before going on to Paris. So leaving Charlton to carry news of them to the French capital, so soon as he could persuade himself to leave the English one, they with little Fleda in company posted down to Carleton, in shire. ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... Sovereign," spake the Sheriff, "in Sherwood Forest in our own good shire of Nottingham, liveth a bold outlaw whose name is ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... last, being the first day permissible under the statute, the nomination of a Knight to serve in Parliament for the Shire of Barks, was held in the county town. The proceedings were marked by a pleasing unanimity, and an outburst of popular enthusiasm which seriously tried the resources of the local police. There was only one candidate—TOBY once more M.P. The nomination paper was signed by Mr. Punch, Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various

... called not myself to this place," he urged, "God and the people of these kingdoms have borne testimony to it." His rule had been accepted by London, by the army, by the solemn decision of the judges, by addresses from every shire, by the very appearance of the members of the Parliament in answer to his writ. "Why may I not balance this Providence," he asked, "with any hereditary interest?" In this national approval he saw a call from God, a Divine Right ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... appeared there was no want; and Mr. Abbingdon himself coming home that night, the commission and proclamation being shown unto him, he denied any such men to be in his house, and voluntarily to die at his own gate, if any such were to be found in his house, or in that shire. But this liberal or rather rash speech could not cause the search so slightly to be given over; the cause enforced more respect than words of that or any such like nature; and proceeding on according to the trust reposed in him in the gallery over the gate there were found two ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea

... fifteenth century; and from the arms, Quarterly or and gules within a border engrailed sable, charged with escallops argent, no doubt belonged to the ancient family of Heveningham of that place; probably Sir John Heveningham, knight of the shire for the county of Suffolk in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various

... in their Address. But it seems they went too far, in speaking of a Supply, before they had consulted this Gentleman, how far the safety of the Nation would admit it. I find plainly by his temper, that if matters had come to an accommodation, and a bargain had been a bargain, the Knights of the Shire must have been ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden

... and superstitions; the hardy Gael, still ignorant of any but the language of Ossian and his burr-tongued Lowland neighbors; the people of each of Ireland's many counties, clinging still to feud, fun, and their ancient Erse tongue, together with representatives from every English shire, and the remnants of Indian tribes and Esquimaux hordes,—offer an opportunity for study of the differences of race, full of picturesque interest, and scarcely to be met ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... by Edward the Confessor. He hired a fleet of Danish pirate ships from the Irish coast, joined King Gruffydd in Wales, and marched with him into Herefordshire, determining to make war upon King Edward. Here they began with a victory about two miles from Hereford over the Earl of that shire who was a Frenchman, and tried to make his men fight on horseback in the French fashion, which they did not understand,—the English way being for the great men to ride to the field of battle, but there to dismount and fight with their heavy axes on foot. Earl Ralph, the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher

... never was there spirit more dauntless and fiery in the field; never temper kindlier and more generous with friends and foes. Miles of the ridge and furrow, stiff fences of terrible blackthorn, double posts and rails, yawners and croppers both, tough as Shire and Stewards could make them, awaited him on the morrow; on his beautiful lean head capfuls of money were piled by the Service and the Talent; and in his stride all the fame of the Household would be centered ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... I read your letter of May 24, I called to mind, a story which I heard long ago, concerning one of the Lord Duffus, (in the shire of Murray) his predicessors of whom it is reported, that upon a time, when he was walking abroad in the fields near to his own house, he was suddenly carried away, and found the next day at Paris in the French ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey

... most famous preachers, actors, and statesmen. In fact, we went to the top and bottom of everything, from the dome of St. Paul to the tunnel under the Thames, just then in the process of excavation. We drove through the parks, sailed up and down the Thames, and then visited every shire but four in England, in all of which we had large meetings, Mr. Birney and Mr. Stanton being the chief speakers. As we were generally invited to stay with Friends, it gave us a good opportunity to see the leading families, such as the Ashursts, the Alexanders, the Priestmans, the Braithwaites, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... among its ancestral trees—or the faint, misty smoke-cloud, that indicated some hamlet or small town. Save these, the landscape swept on unbroken, until it ended at the horizon in the high range of the D—shire hills. ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... on occasion of any quarrel between them, was "I, that might have married the famous Mr. Bickerstaff, to be treated in this manner!" The club at the Trumpet consists of a set of persons almost as well worth knowing as himself. The cavalcade of the justice of the peace, the knight of the shire, the country squire, and the young gentleman, his nephew, who came to wait on him at his chambers, in such form and ceremony, seem not to have settled the order of their precedence to this hour;[130] and I should hope that the upholsterer and his companions, who used to sun themselves ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... "Rat me, if good sack and good stories make not a man forget all else beside! Colonel Verney, I wish you, as lieutenant of this shire, to ride with me to this Chickahominy village where I have promised an audience to the half king of the tribe. Plague on the unreasonable vermin! Why can they not give way peaceably? If the colony needs and ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... greet my wistful eyes In quiet little Bramble-Rise, Once fairest of its shire; How alter'd is each pleasant nook, The dumpy church used not to look So dumpy in ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker

... have, therefore, listed Dr. Samuel Johnson in some of my memorandums of the principal planters and favourers of the enclosures, under a name which I took the liberty to invent from the Greek, Papadendrion. Lord Auchinleck and some few more are of the list. I am told that one gentleman in the shire of Aberdeen, viz. Sir Archibald Grant, has planted above fifty millions of trees on a piece of very wild ground at Monimusk: I must enquire if he has fenced them well, before he enters my list; for, that is the soul of enclosing. I began myself to plant a little, our ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... chaplain of the fort was the Rev. James Grant, a young clergyman, related to several of the more respectable families in the district, who was afterwards appointed minister of the parish of Laggan, in Inverness-shire. At Fort-Augustus, he had recommended himself to the affections of Miss Macvicar, by his elegant tastes and accomplished manners, and he now became the successful suitor for her hand. They were married in 1779, and Mrs Grant, to approve herself a useful helpmate to her husband, began ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... Northumbrians, Danes, Welshmen, and these main folk-right divisions remain even when tribal kingdoms disappear and the people is concentrated in one or two realms. The chief centres for the formulation and application of folk-right were in the 10th and 11th centuries the shire-moots, while the witan of the realm generally placed themselves on the higher ground of State expediency, although occasionally using folk-right ideas. The older law of real property, of succession, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... common people should do their pilgrimage with community of interest as well as danger, and in easy, tale-telling conference with those of higher station. The franklin, with white beard and red face, has been lord of the sessions and knight of the shire. The merchant, with forked beard and Flaundrish beaver hat, discourses learnedly of taxes and ship-money, and was doubtless drawn from an existing original, the type of a class. Several of the personages belong to the guilds which were so famous ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... House of Commons we may go back to the thirteenth century. In 1254 the king summoned to Parliament not only the bishops, abbots, earls, and barons, but also two knights from every shire. Then, in an irregular Parliament, convened in 1265 by Simon de Montfort, a great baronial leader against the king, two burgesses from each of twenty-one towns for the first time sat with the others and helped to decide ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... made from Clow's Cross to Gunthorpe Sluice, in place of the winding course of the old Shire Drain; besides which, a bridge was erected at Cross Keys, or Sutton Wash, and an embankment was made across the Salt Marshes, forming a high road, which, with the bridges previously erected at Fossdyke and Lynn, effectually connected the counties of Norfolk and Lincoln. The result of ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... quick. For twenty thousand dollars," he proceeded, referring to his figures, "we get his house, barns, corrals, and all his rolling stock. His growing crops and machinery. The bunch of old cows and calves he's pleased to call his 'herds.' Also three teams of Shire-bred heavy draft horses, and six hundred and forty acres of first-class wheat land and grazing that only needs capital and hustle to set right on top. I don't guess it'll worry us any to hand it all ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... born. For we Englishmen be born under the domination of the moon, which is never steadfast but ever wavering, waxing one season and waneth and decreaseth another season. And that common English that is spoken in one shire varieth from another, insomuch that in my days happened that certain merchants were in a ship in Thames for to have sailed over the sea into Zealand, and for lack of wind they tarried at Foreland, and went to land for to refresh them. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... where Earl Hakon's power was greatest, and where it was expected that Hakon himself might at that time be staying. Steering in among the skerries Olaf made a landing on the island of Moster, in the shire of Hordaland. Here he raised his land tent and planted in front of it the cross, together with his own standard; and when all the men were ashore he had his priests celebrate the mass. He met with no opposition, for the people of the place were then busy on their fields, and there ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... Henry's family must be so charming: an old castle, too, was her delight; she would feel quite at home while wandering through its long galleries; and she quite loved old pictures, and armour, and tapestry; and then her thoughts reverted to her father's magnificent mansion in D—-shire. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... upon the 'good men and true' who were impaneled to 'pass' between the subject and the sovereign; and the thunder of the Exchequer at Westminster might be silenced by the honesty, the firmness, or the obstinacy, of one sturdy knight or yeoman in the distant shire. ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner

... not make a jury, as appeared at the intended trial of Mr. Price and other Protestants at Wicklow, who could not be tried for want of freeholders—yet, notwithstanding the paucity of these, they made a shift to return knights of the shire. The common way of election was thus:—The Earl of Tyrconnell, together with the writ for election, commonly sent a letter, recommending the persons he designed should be chosen; the sheriff or mayor being his creature, on receipt of this, called ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... the previous year he had heard a story told identical with one he had heard forty years before from a different man thirty miles away; and this story contained old Gaelic words the meaning of which the teller did not know. A gamekeeper from Ross-shire also testified to similar customs at his native place: the assemblies of the young to hear their elders repeat, on winter nights, the tales they had learned from their fathers before them, and the renown of the travelling tailor and shoemaker. When ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... Sussex, as through every other English shire, will find many reminders of the Great War in church, churchyard or village green. Some are imposing or beautiful, some, alas, are neither, or are out of keeping with the quiet peace of their surroundings. ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... are waiting to hear of her almsgiving to the poor—that she would weep over a mouse in a trap, or a beaten puppy, says Chaucer. A good ruler of her house? again, doubtless. But when Chaucer met her the house was ruling itself somewhere at the 'shire's ende'. The world was full of fish out of water in the fourteenth century, and, by seynt Loy, said Madame Eglentyne, swearing her greatest oath, like Chaucer's monk, she held that famous text not worth an oyster. So ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... into some improprieties of conduct, ill-chosen company, late hours, and inconsiderate expense. My growing debts might be secret; but my frequent absence was visible and scandalous: and a tour to Bath, a visit into Buckingham-shire, and four excursions to London in the same winter, were costly and dangerous frolics. They were, indeed, without a meaning, as without an excuse. The irksomeness of a cloistered life repeatedly tempted me to wander; but my chief pleasure was that of travelling; ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... the king heard that, he went ( then went he) westward with his army to Ashdown. 2.Lovest thou me more than these? 3.The men said that the shire which they lived in was called Halgoland. 4.All things were made (wyrcan) by God. 5.They were fighting for two days with (against) the Danes. 6.King Alfred fought with the Danes, and gained the victory; but the Danes retained possession ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith

... London, printed for Michael Johnson, bookseller: and are to be sold at his shops in Litchfield and Uttoxiter in Stafford-shire; and Ashby-de-la-Zouch, ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell

... after the manner of young apprentices, toiling in a watch and clock-maker's shop in the town of Devonport, heard one day the fame of great Sir Joshua's achievements in London sounding through the county—became conscious that the good folks of the shire took pride in the son of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds, Master of Plympton Grammar School. Why should not he, the apprentice, become as great, or nearly so, a credit to Devonport, his birthplace, as was Sir Joshua to Plympton, his birthplace? ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... great heiress of the day. It is true that the hereditary possession of Skye, Staffa, Mull, Arran, and Bute went, with the title, to the Marquis of Auldreekie, together with the counties of Caithness and Ross-shire. But the property in Fife, Aberdeen, Perth, and Kincardineshire, comprising the greater part of those counties, and the coal-mines in Lanark, as well as the enormous estate within the city of Glasgow, were unentailed, and went to the Lady Glencora. She was a fair ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... military skill in the astonishingly rapid marches, by which he avoided fighting to disadvantage, than even in the field of victory. By one of those hurried marches, from the banks of Loch Katrine to the heart of Inverness-shire, he was enabled to attack, and totally to defeat, the Covenanters, at Aulderne though he brought into the field hardly one half of their forces. Baillie, a veteran officer, was next routed by him, at the village of Alford, in Strathbogie. Encouraged by these repeated and splendid successes, Montrose ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott

... young child, I remember residing with an uncle and aunt who lived in ——shire. I think I remained there near a twelvemonth. I am ignorant of the cause of my being so long left there by my parents, who, though they were remarkably fond of me, never came to see me during all that time. As I did not know I ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... of a minister well esteemed for his piety and diligence, was born September 7, 1700, at Ednam, in the shire of Roxburgh, of which his father was pastor. His mother, whose name was Hume, inherited as co-heiress a portion of a small estate. The revenue of a parish in Scotland is seldom large; and it was probably in commiseration of the difficulty with which Mr. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... in Scotland?' she said after she had given him her hand. 'Lady Helen told me last week she expected you in Ross-shire.' ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... dear—didn't know the country a bit. And it's not more than seven miles, you know, if it's as much. I was sure the wretch was going wrong, and if I hadn't insisted on pulling him up and asking a respectable-looking body where the house was I believe we should have been wandering about the next shire at this moment. I've no ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... Dun-church and Coach-batch. Tradition, too, indicates the existence of an old March or Debateable Land; for south of Rug-by begins the scene of the deeds of Guy Earl of Warwick, the slayer of the Dun Cow. Probably, too, the Bevis of Hampton was a similar[28] North-amp-ton-shire hero, notwithstanding the claim ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... it was: for she had the prettiest black mole upon her left ancle, it does me good to think on't! His father was squire What-d'ye-call-him, of what-d'ye-call-em shire. What think you, little Judith? do ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... chaplain, Father Holt—that he was now to be called Master Harry Esmond—that my Lord Viscount Castlewood was his parrain—that he was to live at the great house of Castlewood, in the province of ——shire, where he would see Madame the Viscountess, who was a grand lady. And so, seated on a cloth before Blaise's saddle, Harry Esmond was brought to London, and to a fine square called Covent Garden, near to which his ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... last word, oh, Nance, what is it? It begins with M o, and ends with r e—r e is the end of the shire, of course. Merionithshire? No, it is M o, so must be Monmouthshire or Montgomeryshire, stay, there is a t in the middle. Mrs. Besborough Power, Carne—I will try Carne anyway," and next day she wrote to her sister addressing ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... Fieldhead. A genteel foraging party besieged Shirley in her castle, and compelled her to surrender at discretion. An uncle, an aunt, and two cousins from the south—a Mr., Mrs., and two Misses Sympson, of Sympson Grove, ——shire—came down upon her in state. The laws of hospitality obliged her to give in, which she did with a facility which somewhat surprised Caroline, who knew her to be prompt in action and fertile in expedient where a victory was to be gained ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... which he, with his brothers-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury and Bishop of Durham, and the Earl of Warwick, alias the King of the Isle of Wight, were on their way to the Parliament that was summoned anent the King's marriage. The unwilling knights of the shire and burgesses of Northampton who would have to assist in the money grant had asked his protection; and all were to start early on the Monday—for Sunday was carefully observed as a holiday, and the whole party ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... I answered her, "though it is doubtful if Scott ever was in Galloway. But he had seen Criffel across from Dumfries-shire, and the castle of Ellangowan is certainly described from the ruins of Caerlaverock, opposite New Abbey. Besides, had he not good old Joseph Train, the Castle Douglas exciseman, to tell him everything—than whom no man knew ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... Shire Council (9 seats; members elected by popular vote to serve one-year terms) elections: last held NA December 1999 (next to be held NA December 2000) election results: percent of vote - NA; ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... invite th' attentive Ear, Lords loudly laugh, as loud the Bullies swear: The Country Knight o'th' Shire sells his Estate, And here with Heart intrepid meets his Fate; So they withdrew to quench their glowing Flame, And to preserve the Honour of her Name; For oh! sad Fate as they ascend the Stairs, At the Room Door her good Mamma appears, Soon as she spies ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous

... Johanna had suffered from fever, and were relieved that the time of inaction was over when they embarked in the Pioneer on the 1st of May, and in due time ascended the Zambesi, and again the Shire, but very slowly, for much time was consumed in cutting wood for the engines, every stick in the mud costing three days' labour, and in three weeks going only six or seven miles, seeing numerous crocodiles and hippopotami by ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Oliver Haworth of Haworth, a great family in those times. He was a knight of the shire, and had refused a baronetage, and, it was said, had his eye on a peerage. The other sister was married to Sir William Walsingham, a wealthy baronet; and the third and youngest, Miss Janet, was still unmarried, and at home at Cloudesly ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... business to find desolate corners, where I could camp without the fear of interruption; and hence, being in another part of the same shire, I bethought me suddenly of the Pavilion on the Links. No thoroughfare passed within three miles of it. The nearest town, and that was but a fisher village, was at a distance of six or seven. For ten miles of length, and from a depth varying from three miles to half a mile, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in Hyde Park; and among the gay young officers in their scarlet uniforms, faced with black, in their buff waistcoats and gold buttons, none was so conspicuous for martial bearing as Lord Onord, although classed by his uncle 'among the knights of shire who had never in their lives ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... (as 'tis the Humour of our Sex) made her the more Inquisitive; and being Jealous that it was from a Mistress, employ'd her Maid to steal it, and if she found it such, to bring it her: accordingly it succeeded, for Frankwit having drank hard with some of the Gentlemen of that Shire, found himself indisposed, and soon went to Bed, having put the Letter in his Pocket: The Maid therefore to Moorea contrived that all the other Servants should be out of the Way, that she might plausibly officiate in the Warming the Bed of the indisposed Lover, but likely, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... of the same kind, only two or three feet wide, may be seen in the bed of the Water of Leith, traversing the horizontal strata, the one is above St Bernard's well, the other immediately below it. But, more particularly, in the shire of Ayr, to the north of Irvine, there are to be seen upon the coast, between that and Scarmorly, in the space of about twenty miles, more than twenty or thirty such dykes (as they are called) of whin-stone. Some of them ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... published by M. Haverty, we learn that, in 1515, a few years before the revolt of Luther, the island was divided into more than sixty separate states, or "regions," "some as big as a shire, some more, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... cases pointing to this new father-force asserting itself and pushing aside the earlier order. Again I can give one or two examples only. Among Wayao and Mang'anja of the Shire highlands, south of Lake Nyassa, a man on marrying leaves his own village and goes to live in that of his wife; but, as an alternative, he is allowed to pay a bride-price, in which case he takes his wife away to his home.[192] Whenever we find the payment ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... breakfasted at the same table as myself and my family. I found he was an entire stranger to the district, and he volunteered the statement that he had never been in Yorkshire before his present visit. An enthusiast upon Yorkshire scenery, I was anxious to know what he had seen of the beautiful broad shire. "I've been nowhere," he replied, "except to a little place ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... the only town of any importance on the road. It is pleasantly seated in a valley, is of no great size, is but meanly built, though extremely neat, has a cathedral and a bishop, and is the shire-town of Hampshire. The assizes were sitting, and Southampton was full of troops that had been sent from Winchester, in order to comply with a custom which forbids the military to remain near the courts of justice. England is full ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... eagle and child (by the way, that is the Derby crest, and a favourite sign of inns in the north of England) on our authority. "I tell the tale as 'twas told to me," by the schoolmaster of Naemanslaws, in the shire of Ayr; and if the incident never occurred, then must he have been one of the greatest liars that ever taught the young idea how to shoot. For our single selves, we are by nature credulous. Many extraordinary things happen in this life, and though "seeing is believing," ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... as the day: For swift to east and swift to west the warning radiance spread; High on St. Michael's mount it shone, it shone on Beachy Head. Far on the deep the Spaniards saw, along each southern shire, Cape beyond cape, in endless rage, those twinkling points of fire: The fisher left his skiff to rock on Tamar's glittering waves; The rugged miners poured to war from Mendip's sunless caves. O'er Longleat's towers, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various

... people sold their cattle at a very cheap rate. From the southern extremity of the lake two rivers issue forth: one, named after itself, the Nyanja, which passes into the sea on the east coast under another name; and the Shire, which flows into the Zambesi a little below Senna. The Shire is named Shirwa at its point of departure from the lake, and Senhor Candido was informed, when there, that the lake was simply an expansion of the River Nyanja, which comes from the north and encircles the mountain Murombo, the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... and the Elton estates run half the shire with your Gloucester property; never was there ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... Revolution, as well as during the whole reign of Queen Elizabeth. Sir John Davies boasts of the benefits received by the natives, by extending to them the English law, and turning the whole kingdom into shire ground. But the appearance of things alone was changed. The original scheme was never deviated from for a single hour. Unheard-of confiscations were made in the northern parts, upon grounds of plots and conspiracies, never proved upon ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... time also Henry I. granted to the Abbots the Liberty of St. Albans, which gave them the power of trying minor offences, which had hitherto been tried in the civil courts of the hundred and the shire. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... youth. And one example, whether loue or feare doth worke more in a child, for vertue and learning, I will gladlie report: which maie be hard with some pleasure, and folowed with more profit. Before I went into Germanie, I came to Brodegate in Leceter- shire, to take my leaue of that noble Ladie Iane Grey, to whom I was exceding moch beholdinge. // Lady Iane Hir parentes, the Duke and Duches, with all the // Grey. houshould, Gentlemen and Gentlewomen, were huntinge in the Parke: I founde her, in her Chamber, readinge ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham

... attention than they have yet received. The Saunders alias Shakespeare, already mentioned,[281] was possibly a native of another county. But we find some in the shire, contemporary with the poet. Among the "Original Wills at Somerset House there is one of Thomas Shackspeare, Innkeeper," in the suburbs of Oxford. He wished to be buried in the Church of St. Giles, Oxford, bequeathed property to his four children—Robert, Ellen, Mary, and Elizabeth, ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes

... which you penetrate, under archway or by narrow entry, to the High Street, where another and different tide comes and goes, with mild hubbub of carts, carriages, motors—ladies shopping, magistrates and county councillors bent on business of the shire, farmers, traders, marketers. . . . This traffic, too, is all very English ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... success, as we hear of them grounding in action and foundering in a storm. Much, too, was needed in the way of civil re-organization, especially in the districts ravaged by the Danes. In the parts of Mercia acquired by Alfred, the shire system seems now to have been introduced for the first time. This is the one grain of truth in the legend that Alfred was the inventor of shires, hundreds and tithings. The finances also would need careful attention; but the subject is obscure, and we cannot accept Asser's ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... any of those captaines, nor anything that your Lordships spake yesterday before me; but true it is, I spake before the Earle of Essex and Sir John Norris, it was pittie that young captaines should be accepted and the old refused. True it is that I toulde them also that the lieutenants of the shire knew not those captaines so well as ourselves. On my creditt, my meaning was the deputies lieutenants, the which, as it was toulde me, had made all these captaines. My speeches are no lawe, nor scarce good judgment, for the warrs were unknowen to me 22 yeres ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson

... in the shire of Leicester, close by the River Weak—or at least it stood there when last I saw it. It is ten long years since I crossed its drawbridge and not twelve months of my life have ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott

... use of metallic tools was not general. The burning of coal was prohibited in London in the year 1308, by the royal proclamation of Edward I. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the burning of coal was again prohibited in London during the sitting of parliament, lest the health of the knights of the shire should suffer injury during their abode in the metropolis. In the year 1643, the use of coal had become so general, and the price being then very high, many of the poor are said to have perished for want of fuel. At the present day, when the consumption ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... and eat with Pepper: They are commonly discovered by a Nasute Swine purposely brought up; being of a Chessnut Colour, and heady Smell, and not seldom found in England, particularly in a Park of my Lord Cotton's at Rushton or Rusbery in Northampton-shire, and doubtless in other [31]places too were they sought after. How these rank and provocative Excrescences are to be [32]treated (of themselves insipid enough, and only famous for their kindly taking any Pickle or Conditure) that they ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn

... which you read all classes, save perhaps the very poor, fared better in meat and in drink than they have ever done since. The country was covered with woodlands—there were seventy separate forests in England alone, some of them covering half a shire. Within these forests the great beasts of the chase were strictly preserved, but the smaller game, the hares, the rabbits, the birds, which swarmed round the coverts, found their way readily into the poor man's pot. Ale ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Mary A. Angel, in Kirtland on March 31, 1834. His application for a marriage license is still on file among the records of the Probate Court at Chardon, now the shire town of Geauga County, Ohio, and his signature is a proof of his illiterateness, showing that he did not know how to spell his own ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... Because gentlemen dwell with us in the country villages, our cities are less, is nothing to the purpose: put three hundred or four hundred villages in a shire, and every village yield a gentleman, what is four hundred families to increase one of our cities, or to contend with theirs, which stand thicker? And whereas ours usually consist of seven thousand, theirs consist ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... new election comes, you will have two or three boroughs, you know, to choose out of:—but if you stay till then, I had rather you were for the shire. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... year, his father, who had been brought up to farm-work, and possessed considerable practical knowledge of agriculture, was offered the charge of a farm at Moy in Ross-shire, belonging to Lord Seaforth of Brahan Castle. The farm was of about 300 acres, situated on the banks of the river Conan, some five miles from the town of Dingwall. The family travelled thither in a covered cart, a distance of 200 miles, through a very wild and hilly country, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... the Episcopal dwelling, is still the residence of the chief officials attached to the Vladika. The first among these is the vicar—(his other avocations having only permitted the Vladika to officiate on two occasions)—"no baron or squire or knight of the shire," &c. Truly on this occasion the holy father had not been unmindful of himself; and, considering the early hour and dreary state of the weather; was as jovial as the heart could desire. A peculiar leer and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... to Inverness-shire! I'll even go so far as to call on the McTaggarts if you'll undertake that she won't instruct me ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... that's all," said he. "I know a dog that would follow that scent to the world's end. If a pack can track a trailed herring across a shire, how far can a specially-trained hound follow so pungent a smell as this? It sounds like a sum in the rule of three. The answer should give us the—But halloo! here are the accredited representatives of ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... glory of being the owner of a winner of the Derby. The horse was run in his name. Thoughts as to great successes crowded themselves upon his heated brain. What might not be open to him? Parliament! The Jockey Club! The mastership of one of the crack shire packs! Might it not come to pass that he should some day become the great authority in England upon races, racehorses, and hunters? If he could be the winner of a Derby and Leger he thought that Glasslough and Lupton would snub him no longer, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... the assignments of the royal exchequer. In England, for example, when the hide developed from the normal holding of a household into the unit of taxation, the calculation of the geldage in each shire required a sum in division; as we know from the fact that one of the Abacists proposes the sum: "If 200 marks are levied on the county of Essex, which contains according to Hugh of Bocland 2500 hides, how much does each hide pay?"[3*] Exchequer methods up to the sixteenth century ...
— The Earliest Arithmetics in English • Anonymous

... go scatheless, and the remeid is to summon the principal and put him to outlawry for the non-compearance. Now there's four places where a person can be summoned: at his dwelling-house; at a place where he has resided forty days; at the head burgh of the shire where he ordinarily resorts; or lastly (if there be ground to think him furth of Scotland) at the cross of Edinburgh, and the pier and shore of Leith, for sixty days. The purpose of which last provision is evident upon its face: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... disturbed area, 84 per cent. of the observers heard the sound. The percentage varies in different counties, from 93 in Inverness-shire to 77 in the counties of Perth and Aberdeen; but the records in the more distant regions are too few to allow of the ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison

... said she, "that they are distant relations, for the great-grandfather of this Sir Harry, who was knight of the shire in the reign of Charles I., married a daughter of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... Roger helped him for awhile in so doing. Arnulf is famous at Pembroke.[52] Roger the Poitevin, so called from his marriage, had been lord of that land between Mersey and Ribble, which afterwards went to patch up the modern shire of Lancaster. Presently the brothers quarrelled. Robert of Belleme refused to give Arnulf and Roger any share in their father's inheritance. Then they forsook him, and Arnulf took an active part against him on behalf of Duke Robert. We read how, in June, 1103, he seized ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... Gridiron: Walpole was a member of the Kit Cat club, which originally met at the pie shop of Christopher Cat in Shire Lane. The "Second Edition" probably refers to the fact that the Order of the Bath was reintroduced for Walpole's benefit in June 1724. (See also Key, p. 19.) There is intentional confusion with Estcourt, who as providore of the Beefsteak club wore about his neck a small gridiron ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous

... ostensible business of the House of Commons. Lowther was a man of ancient descent, ample estate, and great parliamentary interest. Though not an old man, he was an old senator: for he had, before he was of age, succeeded his father as knight of the shire for Westmoreland. In truth the representation of Westmoreland was almost as much one of the hereditaments of the Lowther family as Lowther Hall. Sir John's abilities were respectable; his manners, though sarcastically ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... in that quarter. Among other misfortunes disease attacked and carried off several of the chief Europeans of the party. The earnest enthusiastic Bishop himself died there in his Master's cause, and left his bones in the swamps of the Shire River. ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne

... throw from their necks the yoke of a rival who had made himself a master, the Council no sooner saw the popular reaction than they proclaimed Mary Queen; and this step was at once followed by a declaration of the fleet in her favour, and by the announcement of the levies in every shire that they would only fight in her cause. As the tidings reached him the Duke's courage suddenly gave way. His retreat to Cambridge was the signal for a general defection. Northumberland himself threw his cap into the air and shouted with his men for Queen Mary. But his submission failed to ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... Damocles of words— Above him, hanging by a single hair, On each harangue depend some hostile Swords; And deems he that we always will forbear? Although Defiance oft declined affords A blotted shield no Shire's true knight would wear: Thersites of the House. Parolles[*B] of Law, The double Bobadill[*C] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... Brora, varying from three feet three to three feet eight inches in thickness, furnished, says Sir Roderick Murchison, between the years 1814 and 1826, no less than seventy thousand tons of coal. Such is its extent, too, that nearly thirty miles from the pit's mouth (in Ross-shire under the Northern Sutor) I have found it still existing, though in diminished proportions, as a decided coal seam, which it must have taken no small amount of vegetable matter to form. And almost on the other side of the world, nearly ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... doctrine that "to govern according to the sense, and agreeably to the interests, of the people is a great and glorious object of government." While he declared himself against the addition of a hundred knights of the shire, he in the very same breath protested that, though the people might be deceived in their choice of an object, he "could scarcely conceive any choice they could make, to be so very mischievous as the existence of any human force capable of resisting it."[1] To us this may seem ...
— Burke • John Morley

... Pre-scientific Englishmen, whom no Electric Spark Had witched with its white radiance, yet sped from height to height Of Albion's long wild sea-coast line the ruddy warning Light. "Cape beyond Cape, in endless range, those twinkling points of fire"[1] Reveille shot from sea to sea, from wave-washed shire to shire, Inland, from hill to hill, it flashed wherever English hand Helpful at need in English cause could grip an English brand. To-day? Well, round our jutting cliffs, across our hollowing bays Thicker the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various

... had seen such churches in the Old Country. Brooklyn Bridge had just been built and it overtopped the town like a syrup pitcher over a plate of pancakes. The tallest business blocks were five or six stories high, and back in Wales old Lord Tredegar, the chief man of our shire, lived in a great castle that was as ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... Lancelot is derived from history, and is an appellation truly British, signifying royalty, Lanc being the Celtic term for a spear, and lod or lot implying a people. Hence the name of Lancelot's shire, or Lancashire. From the foregoing it is supposed that he resided in the region of Linius, and that he was the monarch of these parts, being ruler over the whole, or the greater part, of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... a man be but a Mister, a may behappen to buy and sell a knight of the shire: that is under favour, and a savin and exceptin of your onnurable onnur. For why? I be as ready to a quit my hands of quarrels ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... especially—engages her particular interest. Though she rarely goes out with the guns, her husband declares she is a capital shot, and that she could and would ride to hounds with the most daring of our fox-hunting peeresses, if Norfolk was a hunting shire. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... famous bridge of Doon, Kyle, the central district of the shire of Ayr, marches with Carrick, the most southerly. On the Carrick side of the river rises a hill of somewhat gentle conformation, cleft with shallow dells, and sown here and there with farms and tufts of wood. Inland, it loses itself, joining, I suppose, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... farm and field through all the shire The eye beholds the heart's desire; Ah, let not only mine be vain, For ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman

... thirty-six; Newcastle-on-Tyne and Norwich, each one of twelve; while the village and parochial plays were almost numberless. In Essex alone the list includes twenty-one towns and villages, though it is fair to add that this was a specially enterprising shire. At Lydd and New Romney, companies of players from fourteen neighbouring towns and villages can be traced in the local records that stretch from a year or so before, to eight years ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... That slepen alle night with open eye So priketh hem nature in their corages. Then longen folk to goe on pilgrimages, And specially from every shire's end Of Englelond, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... your duty, son Wilfrid. First to God; then to the king; then to the atheling, the king's son, and then to father and mother; then to the shire reeve and the ealdorman, if so be that they are loyal; and then to helpless woman and friendless poor man. But to the weak first of all, against whomsoever will wrong them, whether it be the ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler

... was that they were really free towns. They had courts of justice of their own, and were free from the Hundred courts, the next court above them being the Shire court, ruled over by the sheriff. So we know that most of the towns whose names end in burgh or borough had for their early citizens men who loved freedom, and worked hard to win ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill

... left a daughter named Lucy, of whom Master Bradene of Northamptonshire is descended. Can F. R. R., or any genealogist, inform me whether this Master Bradene is descended from Simon de Bradney, one of the Knights of the Shire for Somersetshire in the year 1346? In Collins's Somersetshire, vol. iii. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various

... enough of Indian maids, to follow him into the wilderness counted his friends by the score and never lacked for company. The first marriage in Virginia was between a laborer and a waiting maid, and yet there was as great a deal of candy stuff as if it had been the nuptials of a lieutenant of the shire. The brother of my Lord de la Warre stood up with the groom, the brother of my Lord of Northumberland gave away the bride and was the first to kiss her, and the President himself held the caudle to their lips that night. Since that wedding there had been others. Gentlewomen made the Virginia voyage ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... city presented the most important advantages to the General of the Jacobite forces. Seated on the river Tay, and near the sea-coast, it gave the Earl the control of the East Lowlands, of the rich counties of Angus, the Carse of Gowrie, Mearns, Murray, Aberdeen, and Banff, and also of the Shire of Fife. It also cut off the communication between the north and the south of Scotland, so that the friends of Government could neither act nor fly from the enemy. Thus all the usual posts were stopped. The revenues of the public fell into the hands of the insurgents who ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... sweet shire of Cardigan, Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall, An old man dwells, a little man, I've heard he once was tall. Of years he has upon his back, No doubt, a burthen weighty; He says he is three score and ten, But others ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge

... when it became a large-scale organization, able to overcome the dilemma. It was not till thirteenth-century England that a way out was found. Edward I in summoning two burgesses from each borough and two knights from each shire to his model Parliament in 1295, hit on a method of doing business which was destined to revolutionize the art of government. He stipulated that the men chosen by their fellows to confer with him must come, to quote the exact words of the summons, armed with 'full and sufficient power for ...
— Progress and History • Various

... truly the Conqueror in the vulgar sense, was still far from having full possession of his conquest. He had military possession of part of one shire only; he had to look for further resistance, and he met with not a little. But his combined luck and policy served him well. He could put on the form of full possession before he had the reality; he could treat all further resistance as rebellion ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... Naaman, who was jealous for Abana and Pharpar; it is confined to no race nor country, for I know one of Scottish blood but a child of Suffolk, whose fancy still lingers about the hued lowland waters of that shire. ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... not had his morning in his head, and been but a Dumfries-shire hog into the boot, he would have spoken more like a gentleman. But you cannot have more of a sow but a grumph. It's a shame my father's knife should ever slash a haggis for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various

... exclusively agricultural, and these hedges and trees, which are gratefully kept up for the sake of the shade they afford to the cattle, show a very different temper among the farmers from that utilitarianism which marks the men of Leicester shire, Lincoln, Nottingham, Norfolk, or Rutland. There even great land-owners are often obliged to humor their tenants, and keep the unwelcome hedges trimmed so as not to interpose two feet of shade between them and the wheat-crop; and as often as possible hedges are replaced by ugly stone walls or wooden ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... Annie's birthplace, that I came across the missing link in the chain of evidence that fixes the authorship of the song upon Douglas of Fingland. Fingland is in the parish of Dalry, in the adjacent shire of Kirkcudbright, and Douglas was a somewhat ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell

... it now is. The number of Englishmen who were in the habit of reading was probably not a sixth of what it now is. A shopkeeper or a farmer who found any pleasure in literature was a rarity. Nay, there was doubtless more than one knight of the shire whose country seat did not contain ten books, receipt books and books on farriery included. In these circumstances, the sale of the Spectator must be considered as indicating a popularity quite as great as that of the most successful ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... successfully installed, and Mr. Gourlay was showing it to Grant of Loranogie, the foremost farmer of the shire. Mrs. Gourlay, standing by the kitchen table, viewed her new possession with a faded simper of approval. She was pleased that Mr. Grant should see the grand new thing that they had gotten. She listened to the talk of the men with a faint smile about her weary lips, ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... settled, first, in Concord, and, finally, in 1651, in Chelmsford. It may be noted in passing that Devonshire, particularly in the first part of the seventeenth century, was not an obscure part of England to hail from, for it was the native shire of England's first great naval heroes and circumnavigators of the globe, such as Drake ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... the moors of Ross-shire, Lady Tatham too watched. The lodge filled up with guests, and one charming girl succeeded another, by Victoria's careful contrivance. None of your painted and powdered campaigners with minds torn between the desire to "best" a rival, and the terror of their dressmakers' bills; ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... this conflict, to the number of three thousand of them. Manie of the Englishmen also that came with them to the field, were saued by the enimies, to the end they might gaine somewhat by their ransomes, [Sidenote: Simon Dun.] as William Mallet shirife of the shire, with his wife, and two of their children, Gilbert de Gaunt, and diuers other. This slaughter chanced on a saturdaie, being the nineteenth day of September; a dismall ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (1 of 12) - William the Conqueror • Raphael Holinshed

... pack, and take a train, And get me to England once again! For England's the one land, I know, Where men with Splendid Hearts may go; And Cambridgeshire, of all England, The shire for Men who Understand; And of 'that' district I prefer The lovely hamlet Grantchester. For Cambridge people rarely smile, Being urban, squat, and packed with guile; And Royston men in the far South Are black and fierce and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... afterwards worn by his affectionate steward to the close of his life. The death of Scott took place on the 21st of September 1832, and shortly thereafter Laidlaw bade adieu to Abbotsford. He was appointed factor on the Ross-shire property of Mrs Stewart Mackenzie of Seaforth,—a situation which he subsequently exchanged for the factorship of Sir Charles Lockhart Ross of Balnagowan, in the same county. Compelled to resign the latter ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... I know he made Misselton his market-town very soon after he had offered to Miss Matty; and I don't think he has been into Cranford above once or twice since—once, when I was walking with Miss Matty, in High Street, and suddenly she darted from me, and went up Shire Lane. A few minutes after I was ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... years' course of study, he returned to his native town, Braintree, and in 1758 commenced practice in Suffolk county, of which Boston was the shire town. By hard study and hard work he gradually introduced himself into practice, and in 1764 married a young lady far above his station in life. In our perusal and study of eminent men who have risen by their own exertions ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... American subject of a constitutional trial by a jury of the vicinage, by authorising the trial of any person charged with the committing of any offence described in the said act, out of the realm, to be indicted and tried for the same in any shire ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... and number of the English counties or shires. What a dull routine task for them and for you this may be, supplying no food for the intellect, no points of attachment for any of its higher powers to take hold of! And yet in these two little words, 'shire' and 'county,' if you would make them render up even a small part of their treasure, what lessons of English history are contained! One who knows the origin of these names, and how we come to possess such a double nomenclature, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... symbolic animal," said Sir Lulworth; "if it were to typify thick or thin bread and butter surely it ought to have been either as bulky and tubby as a shire cart-horse; or as thin as ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki



Words linked to "Shire" :   shire town, Great Britain, county town, United Kingdom, administrative division, dray horse, U.K., Britain, UK, draft horse, draught horse, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, administrative district, territorial division



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