throughout the country and to Great Britain, enjoying for a few years an extraordinary vogue, not only in schools, but in all classes and ages of society. In the United States inter-city and inter-state matches were not unknown. According to the generally recognized rules a competitor who misspelled a word retired, and the match was won by the side having the greatest number of survivors at the close. The use of the word " bee " as an assemblage of persons for the purpose of joint work or play originated in America in colonial times, and was taken from the labour of the bees of a hive. Familiar examples of it are husking-bee and quilting-bee, assemblages of villagers for the purpose of helping a neighbour with the husking of the corn or his wife with her quilt-making.
SPELLO (anc. Hispellum, q.v.), a town of Umbria, in the province of Perugia, from which it is 22 m. S.E. by rail, 1030 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901), 5571. It is picturesquely situated on the slope of a mountain. The Cappella Baglioni in the church of S. Maria Maggiore contains some of Pinturicchio's finest frescoes (1501), "The Annunciation," "The Adoration" and "Christ in the Temple." The rich background with gold decoration in relief is characteristic. There is also a late altar-piece by Perugino (1521) and a fine early Renaissance canopy by Rocco da Vicenza (1515). In the sacristy is a crucifix in silver by Paolo Vanni of Perugia (1398). The holy-water basin is formed of a sepulchral cippus of the Roman period. S. Andrea contains a large altarpiece by Pinturicchio (1508), upon which a letter from G. Baglioni to the artist is painted.
See G. Urbini, in L'Arte (1897), ii. 367 sqq., (1898), iii. 16 sqq.
SPELMAN, SIR HENRY (c. 1564–1641), English antiquary, wag the eldest son of Henry Spelman, of Congham, Norfolk, and the grandson of Sir John Superman (c. 1495–1544), judge of the king's bench, Born probably in 1564, he was educated at Walsingham School, and proceeded in 1580 to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1583. His father had died in 1581,
and on Spelman devolved the management of the family estates. He became a member of Lincoln's Inn, but in 1590 he returned to Norfolk, where he married Eleanor l'Estrange. He became guardian to his brother-in-law, Sir Hamon l'Estrange, on whose property at Hunstanton he resided for some time. He occupied himself with the history and antiquities of his native county, writing an account of Norfolk for John Speeds's Theatre of Great
Brilaine. He belonged to the Society of Antiquaries, of which Sir Robert Cotton and William Camden were also members. The society gradually declined, and Spelman's efforts to revive it in 1614 were frustrated by James I. Having bought in 1594 the remainder of the two leases of two abbeys of which the Crown was the lessor, he became involved in prolonged litigation over them, and a judgment given against him by Bacon makes it interesting to find Spelman subsequently among the petitioners
who alleged corruption against the lord chancellor. His
experience in this process no doubt combined with a scandal connected with a church and parsonage in the possession of his uncle Francis Sanders to occasion his pamphlet De non temerandis
ecclesiis (1613–1616), which induced many lay owners of ecclesiastical spoils to make restitution, and Spelman himself acted accordingly. This tract led up to his History and Fate of
Sacrilege,[1] which was in the hands of the printer when the Great Fire broke out. The book was supposed to have perished, but Bishop Gibson discovered part of it in the Bodleian Library. It was printed, not, however, under his editorship, in 1698, with the statement on the title-page that it was " wrote in 1632." Spelman had conceived the idea of a work on the foundations of English law, based on early charters and records, but finding that there were no adequate means of determining the exact meaning of the Anglo-Saxon and Latin law terms employed in the documents, he began to compile a glossary, the first volume of which, Archaeologus in modum glossarii, was published at his own expense in 1626. He continued to work at the subject until 1638. A second volume, Glossarium archaiologicum (1664), appeared after his death. His Codex legum veterum statutorum regni Angliae, quae ab ingressu Gulielmi I usque ad annum
nonum Henry III. edita sunt was published by David Wilkins in his Leges anglo-saxonicae (1721). Spelman's most important work, Concilia, decreta, leges, constitutiones in re ecclesiarum
orbis britannica, is an attempt to place English church history on a basis of genuine documents. The first volume, which occupied him seven years, came down to 1066 and was published in 1636. A second volume was edited by Sir William Dugdale in 1664. Spelman entered parliament as member for Castle Rising in 1597, and in 1604 was high sheriff of his county. In 1612 he settled in London near his friend Sir Robert Cotton. In 1617 he served on a commission to inquire into disputed Irish estates, and later took part in three legal inquiries into the exactions levied on behalf of the Crown in the civil and ecclesiastical courts. He was member of parliament for Worcester in 1625. In 1627 he became treasurer of the Guiana Company, and he was also an energetic member of the council for New England. His general services to the state were recognized in 1636 by a gift of money, and two years later by the offer of the mastership of Sutton's Hospital, Charterhouse. He died in London in October 1641, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His later years had been spent in the house of his son-in-law, Sir Ralph Whitfield.
His son, Sir John Spelman (1594–1643), also gained a reputation as a scholar and antiquary. He was knighted in 1641 and served the king actively at the beginning of the Civil War. He edited from MSS. in his father's library Psalterium Davidis latino-saxonicum velus (1640), and wrote a Life of Alfred the Great which was translated into Latin and published in 1678.
Edmund Gibson, bishop of London, published in 1723 The English Works of Sir Henry Spelman, Kt., Published in his Lifetime; together with his Posthumous works relating to the Laws and Antiquities of England. The first section contained De non Temerandis Ecclesiis, already mentioned; The Larger Treatise concerning Tythes, first published in 1646; De sepultura; and Villare anglicum, or a View, of the Towns of England; while the second included The Original, Growth, Propagation and Condition of Feuds and Tenures by Knight-service in England, written in 1639; Two Discourses: i. Of the Ancient Government of England, ii. Of Parliaments; The Original of the Four Terms of the Year, written in 1614 and first printed in 1684; Icenia: a Latin description of Norfolk, and some other treatises. This was a revised edition of an earlier collection (1698), and contained a life of the author, based chiefly on the autobiographical matter prefixed to the Glossary of 1626, and two additional papers, Of the Admiral Jurisdiction, and the Officers thereof, and Of Antient Deeds and Charters. Wilkins's edition of his Concilia was edited by A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs in 1869-1873.
SPENCE, THOMAS (1750–1814), inventor of a system of land nationalization, was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne on the 21st of June 1750, the son of a Scottish netmaker and shoemaker. A dispute in connexion with common land rights at Newcastle impelled him to the study of the land question. His scheme was not for land nationalization proper, but for the establishment of self-contained parochial communities, in which rent
paid to the corporation, in which the absolute ownership of the land was vested, should be the only tax of any kind. His pamphlet, The Meridian Sun of Liberty, which was first hawked in Newcastle, appeared in London in 1793; it was reissued by Mr H. M. Hyndman under the title of The Nationalization of the Land in 1775 and 1882. Spence presently left Newcastle for London, where he kept a bookstall in High Holborn. In 1784 he spent six months in Newgate gaol for the publication of a pamphlet distasteful to the authorities, and in 1801 he was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment for seditious libel in connexion with his pamphlet entitled The Restorer of Society to its Natural State. He died in London on the 8th of September 1814. His admirers formed a " Society of Spencean Philanthropists," of which some account is given in Harriet Martineau's England During the Thirty Years' Peace.
See also Davenport, Life, Writings and Principles of Thomas Spence (London, 1836).
SPENCER, HERBERT (1820–1903), English philosopher, was born at Derby on the 27th of April 1820. His father, William George Spencer, was a schoolmaster, and his parents' religious convictions familiarized him with the doctrines of the
- ↑ This was re-edited as late as 1895, with an appendix bringing the subject up to date, by C. F. S. Warren.
