Part 16

The laws of Ceylon being derived from the Roman-Dutch law, the writ of _habeas corpus_ is not indigenous: but, under s. 49 of the Supreme Court Ordinance 1889, the court or a judge has power to grant and issue "mandates in the nature of writs of _habeas corpus_." The chartered high courts in India have power to issue and enforce the writ of _habeas corpus_. The earliest record of its use was in 1775, when it was directed to Warren Hastings. It has been used to test the question whether Roman Catholic religious orders could enter India, and in 1870 an attempt was made thereby to challenge the validity of a warrant in the nature of a _lettre de cachet_ issued by the viceroy (Ind. L. Rep. 6 Bengal, 392, 456, 498), and it has also been applied to settle controversies between Hindus and missionaries as to the custody of a young convert (_R._ v. _Vaughan_, 1870, 5 Bengal, 418), and between a Mahommedan husband and his mother-in-law as to the custody of a girl-wife (_Khatija Bibi_, 1870, 5 Bengal, 557).

_United States._--Before the Declaration of Independence some of the North American colonies had adopted the act of 1679; and the federal and the other state legislatures of the United States have founded their procedure on that act. The common law as to the writ of _habeas corpus_ has been inherited from England, and has been generally made to apply to commitments and detentions of all kinds. Difficult questions, unknown to English law, have arisen from the peculiar features of the American state-system. Thus the constitution provides that "the privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_ shall not be suspended unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it"; and it has been the subject of much dispute whether the power of suspension under this provision is vested in the president or the congress. The weight of opinion seems to lean to the latter alternative. Again, conflicts have arisen between the courts of individual states and the courts of the union. It seems that a state court has no right to issue a _habeas corpus_ for the discharge of a person held under the authority of the federal government. On the other hand, the courts of the union issue the writ only in those cases in which the power is expressly conferred on them by the constitution.

AUTHORITIES.--Paterson, _Liberty of the Subject_ (1877); Short and Mellor, _Crown Practice_ (1890); American: Church on _Habeas Corpus_ (2nd ed. 1893). (W. F. C.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Hallam, _Const. Hist._ vol. i., c. vii. (12th ed.) p. 384.

[2] Hallam, _Const. Hist._ vol. ii., c. viii. (12th ed.) p. 2.

[3] _Ibid._ c. ix. (12th ed.) p. 98.

[4] _Ibid._ vol. iii., c. xiii. (12th ed.) p. 12.

[5] Dicey, _Law of the Constitution_ (6th ed.), p. 217.

[6] Dicey, Law of the Constitution (6th ed.), p. 195.

HABERDASHER, a name for a tradesman who sells by retail small articles used in the making or wearing of dress, such as sewing cottons or silks, tapes, buttons, pins and needles and the like. The sale of such articles is not generally carried on alone, and a "haberdashery counter" usually forms a department of drapers' shops. The word, found in Chaucer, and even earlier (1311), is of obscure origin; the suggestion that it is connected with an Icelandic _haprtask_, "haversack," is, according to the _New English Dictionary_, impossible. _Haperlas_ occurs in an early Anglo-French customs list, which includes articles such as were sold by haberdashers, but this word may itself have been a misspelling of "haberdash." The obscurity of origin has left room for many conjectures such as that of Minsheu that "haberdasher" was perhaps merely a corruption of the German _Habt ihr das?_ "Have you that?" or _Habe das, Herr_, "Have that, sir," used descriptively for a general dealer in miscellaneous wares. The Haberdashers' Company is one of the greater Livery Companies of the City of London. Originally a branch of the mercers, the fraternity took over the selling of "small wares," which included not only articles similar to those sold as "haberdashery" now, but such things as gloves, daggers, glass, pens, lanterns, mousetraps and the like. They were thus on this side connected with the Milliners. On the other hand there was early a fusion with the old gild of the "Hurers," or cap makers, and the hatters, and by the reign of Henry VII. the amalgamation was complete. There were long recognized two branches of the haberdashers, the haberdashers of "small wares," and the haberdashers of hats (see further LIVERY COMPANIES). The haberdashers are named, side by side with the _capellarii_, in the White Book (_Liber Albus_) of the city of London (see _Munimenta Gildhallae Londiniensis_, ed. H. T. Riley, Rolls Series, 12, 1859-1862), and a haberdasher forms one of the company of pilgrims in the _Canterbury Tales_ (Prologue, 361).

HABINGTON, WILLIAM (1605-1654), English poet, was born at Hendlip Hall, Worcestershire, on the 4th of November 1605. He belonged to a well-known Catholic family. His father, Thomas Habington (1560-1647), an antiquary and historical scholar, had been implicated in the plots on behalf of Mary queen of Scots; his uncle, Edward Habington, was hanged in 1586 on the charge of conspiring against Elizabeth in connexion with Anthony Babington; while to his mother, Mary Habington, was attributed the revelation of the Gunpowder Plot. The poet was sent to the college at St Omer, but, pressure being brought to bear on him to induce him to become a Jesuit, he removed to Paris. He married about 1632 Lucy, second daughter of Sir William Herbert, first Baron Powys. This lady he had addressed in the volume of lyrical poems arranged in two parts and entitled _Castara_, published anonymously in 1634. In 1635 appeared a second edition enlarged by three prose characters, fourteen new lyrics and eight touching elegies on his friend and kinsman, George Talbot. The third edition (1640) contains a third part consisting of a prose character of "A Holy Man" and twenty-two devotional poems. Habington's lyrics are full of the far-fetched "conceits" which were fashionable at court, but his verse is quite free from the prevailing looseness of morals. Indeed his reiterated praises of Castara's virtue grow wearisome. He is at his best in his reflective poems on the uncertainty of human life and kindred topics. He also wrote a _Historie of Edward the Fourth_ (1640), based on notes provided by his father; a tragi-comedy, _The Queene of Arragon_ (1640), published without his consent by his kinsman, the earl of Pembroke, and revived at the Restoration; and six essays on events in modern history, _Observations upon History_ (1641). Anthony à Wood insinuated that during the Commonwealth the poet "did run with the times, and was not unknown to Oliver the usurper." He died on the 30th of November 1654.

The works of Habington have not been collected. _The Queene of Arragon_ was reprinted in Dodsley's "Old Plays," vol. ix. (1825); _Castara_ was edited by Charles Elton (1812), and by E. Arber with a compact and comprehensive introduction (1870) for his "English Reprints."

HABIT (through the French from Lat. _habitus_, from _habere_, to have, hold, or, in a reflective sense, to be in a certain condition; in many of the English senses the French use _habitude_, not _habit_), condition of body or mind, especially one that has become permanent or settled by custom or persistent repetition, hence custom, usage. In botany and zoology the term is used both in the above sense of instinctive action of animals and tendencies of plants, and also of the manner of growth or external appearance of a plant or animal. From the use of the word for external appearances comes its use for fashion in dress, and hence as a term for a lady's riding dress and for the particular form of garment adopted by the members of a religious order, like "cowl" applied as the mark of a monk or nun.

HABITAT (a French word derived from _habiter_, Lat. _habitare_, to dwell), in botany and zoology, the term for the locality in which a particular species of plants or animals thrives.

HABSBURG, or HAPSBURG, the name of the famous family from which have sprung the dukes and archdukes of Austria from 1282, kings of Hungary and Bohemia from 1526, and emperors of Austria from 1804. They were also Roman emperors and German kings from 1438 to 1806, and kings of Spain from 1516 to 1700, while the minor dignities held by them at different times are too numerous to mention.

The name Habsburg, a variant of an older form, Habichtsburg (hawk's castle), was taken from the castle of Habsburg, which was situated on the river Aar not far from its junction with the Rhine. The castle was built about 1020 by Werner, bishop of Strassburg, and his brother, Radbot, the founder of the abbey of Muri. These men were grandsons of a certain Guntram, who, according to some authorities, is identical with a Count Guntram who flourished during the reign of the emperor Otto the Great, and whose ancestry can be traced back to the time of the Merovingian kings. This conjecture, however, is extremely problematical. Among Radbot's sons was one Werner, and Werner and his son Otto were called counts of Habsburg, Otto being probably made landgrave of upper Alsace late in the 11th or early in the 12th century. At all events Otto's son Werner (d. 1167), and the latter's son Albert (d. 1199), held this dignity, and both landgraves increased the area of the Habsburg lands. Albert became count of Zürich and protector of the monastery of Säckingen, and obtained lands in the cantons of Unterwalden and Lucerne; his son Rudolph, having assisted Frederick of Hohenstaufen, afterwards the emperor Frederick II., against the emperor Otto IV., received the county of Aargau. Both counts largely increased their possessions in the districts now known as Switzerland and Alsace, and Rudolph held an influential place among the Swabian nobility. After his death in 1232 his two sons, Albert and Rudolph, divided his lands and founded the lines of Habsburg-Habsburg and Habsburg-Laufenburg. Rudolph's descendants, counts of Habsburg-Laufenburg, were soon divided into two branches, one of which became extinct in 1408 and the other seven years later. Before this date, however, Laufenburg and some other districts had been sold to the senior branch of the family, who thus managed to retain the greater part of the Habsburg lands.

Rudolph's brother Albert (d. 1239), landgrave of Alsace, married Hedwig of Kyburg (d. 1260), and from this union there was born in 1218 Rudolph, the founder of the greatness of the house of Habsburg, and the first of the family to ascend the German throne. Through his mother he inherited a large part of the lands of the extinct family of Zähringen; he added in other ways to his possessions, and was chosen German king in September 1273. Acting vigorously in his new office, he defeated and killed his most formidable adversary, Ottakar II., king of Bohemia, in 1278, and in December 1282 he invested his sons, Albert and Rudolph, with the duchies of Austria and Styria, which with other lands had been taken from Ottakar. This was an event of supreme moment in the history of the Habsburgs, and was the first and most important stage in the process of transferring the centre of their authority from western to eastern Europe, from the Rhine to the Danube. On Rudolph's death in July 1291 the German crown passed for a time away from the Habsburgs, but in July 1298 it was secured by his son, Albert, whose reign, however, was short and uneventful. But before 1308, the year of Albert's death, the long and troubled connexion of the Habsburgs with Bohemia had already begun. In 1306 Wenceslas III., the last Bohemian king of the P[vr]myslide dynasty, was murdered. Seizing the opportunity and declaring that the vacant kingdom was an imperial fief, King Albert bestowed it upon his eldest son, Rudolph, and married this prince to Elizabeth, widow of Wenceslas II. and stepmother of Wenceslas III. But Rudolph died in 1307, and his father's attempt to keep the country in his own hands was ended by his murder in 1308.

Albert's successor as German king was Henry of Luxemburg (the emperor Henry VII.), and this election may be said to initiate the long rivalry between the houses of Habsburg and Luxemburg. But the immediate enemy of the Habsburgs was not a Luxemburg but a Wittelsbach. Without making any definite partition, Albert's five remaining sons spent their time in governing their lands until 1314, when one of them, Frederick called the Fair, forsook this comparatively uneventful occupation and was chosen by a minority of the electors German king in succession to Henry VII. At the same time the Wittelsbach duke of Bavaria, Louis, known to history as the emperor Louis the Bavarian, was also chosen. War was inevitable, and the battle of Mühldorf, fought in September 1322, sealed the fate of Frederick. Louis was victorious: his rival went into an honourable captivity, and the rising Habsburg sun underwent a temporary eclipse.

For more than a century after Frederick's death in 1330 the Habsburgs were exiles from the German throne. But they were not inactive. In 1335 his two surviving brothers, Albert and Otto, inherited Carinthia and part of Carniola by right of their mother, Elizabeth; in 1363 Albert's son Rudolph received Tirol; and during the same century part of Istria, Trieste and other districts were acquired. All King Albert's six sons had died without leaving male issue save Otto, whose family became extinct in 1344, and Albert, the ancestor of all the later Habsburgs. Of Albert's four sons two also left no male heirs, but the remaining two, Albert III. and Leopold III., were responsible for a division of the family which is of some importance. By virtue of a partition made upon their brother Rudolph's death in 1365 Albert and his descendants ruled over Austria, while Leopold and his sons took Styria, Carinthia and Tirol, Alsace remaining undivided as heretofore.

Towards the middle of the 15th century the German throne had been occupied for nearly a hundred years by members of the Luxemburg family. The reigning emperor Sigismund, who was also king of Hungary and Bohemia, was without sons, and his daughter Elizabeth was the wife of Albert of Habsburg, the grandson and heir of Duke Albert III., who had died in 1395. Sigismund died in December 1437, leaving his two kingdoms to his son-in-law, who was crowned king of Hungary in January 1438 and king of Bohemia in the following June. Albert was also chosen and crowned German king in succession to Sigismund, thus beginning the long and uninterrupted connexion of his family with the imperial throne, a connexion which lasted until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. He did not, however, enjoy his new dignities for long, as he died in October 1439 while engaged in a struggle with the Turks. Albert left no sons, but soon after his death one was born to him, called Ladislaus, who became duke of Austria and king of Hungary and Bohemia. Under the guardianship of his kinsman, the emperor Frederick III., the young prince's reign was a troubled one, and when he died unmarried in 1457 his branch of the family became extinct, and Hungary and Bohemia passed away from the Habsburgs, who managed, however, to retain Austria.

Leopold III., duke of Carinthia and Styria, who was killed in 1386 at the battle of Sempach, had four sons, of whom two only, Frederick and Ernest, left male issue. Frederick and his only son, Sigismund, confined their attention mainly to Tirol and Alsace, leaving the larger destinies of the family in the hands of Ernest of Carinthia and Styria (d. 1424) and his sons, Frederick and Albert and after the death of King Ladislaus in 1457 these two princes and their cousin Sigismund were the only representatives of the Habsburgs. In February 1440 Frederick of Styria was chosen German king in succession to his kinsman Albert. He was a weak and incompetent ruler, but a stronger and abler man might have shrunk from the task of administering his heterogeneous and unruly realm. Although very important in the history of the house of Habsburg, Frederick's long reign was a period of misfortune, and the motto which he assumed, A.E.I.O.U. (_Austriae est imperare orbi universo_), seemed at the time a particularly foolish boast. He acted as guardian both to Ladislaus of Hungary, Bohemia and Austria, and to Sigismund of Tirol, and in all these countries his difficulties were increased by the hostility of his brother Albert. Having disgusted the Tirolese he gave up the guardianship of their prince in 1446, while in Hungary and Bohemia he did absolutely nothing to establish the authority of his ward; in 1452 the Austrians besieged him in Vienna Neustadt and compelled him to surrender the person of Ladislaus, thus ending even his nominal authority. When the young king died in 1457 the Habsburgs lost Hungary and Bohemia, but they retained Austria, which, after some disputing, Frederick and Albert divided between themselves, the former taking lower and the latter upper Austria. This arrangement was of short duration. In 1461 Albert made war upon his brother and forced him to resign lower Austria, which, however, he recovered after Albert's death in December 1463. Still more unfortunate was the German king in Switzerland. For many years the Swiss had chafed under the rule of the Habsburgs; during the reign of Rudolph I. they had shown signs of resentment as the kingly power increased; and the struggle which had been carried on for nearly two centuries had been almost uniformly in their favour. It was marked by the victory of Morgarten over Duke Leopold I. in 1315, and by that of Sempach over Leopold III. in 1386, by the conquest of Aargau at the instigation of the emperor Sigismund early in the 15th century, and by the final struggle for freedom against Frederick III. and Sigismund of Tirol. Taking advantage of some dissensions among the Swiss, the king saw an opportunity to recover his lost lands, and in 1443 war broke out. But his allies, the men of Zürich, were defeated, and when in August 1444 some French mercenaries, who had advanced to his aid, suffered the same fate at St Jakob, he was compelled to give up the struggle. A few years later Sigismund became involved in a war with the same formidable foemen; he too was worsted, and the "Perpetual Peace" of 1474 ended the rule of the Habsburgs in Switzerland. This humiliation was the second great step in the process of removing the Habsburgs from western to eastern Europe. In 1453, just after his coronation as emperor at Rome, Frederick legalized the use of the title archduke, which had been claimed spasmodically by the Habsburgs since 1361. This title is now peculiar to the house of Habsburg.

The reverses suffered by the Habsburgs during the reign of Frederick III. were many and serious, but an improvement was at hand. The emperor died in August 1493, and was followed on the imperial throne by his son Maximilian I., perhaps the most versatile and interesting member of the family. Before his father's death Maximilian had been chosen German king, or king of the Romans, and had begun to repair the fortunes of his house. He had married Mary, daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy; he had driven the Hungarians from Vienna and the Austrian archduchies, which Frederick had, perforce, allowed them to occupy; and he had received Tirol on the abdication of Sigismund in 1490. True it is that upon Mary's death in 1482 part of her inheritance, the rich and prosperous Netherlands, held that her husband's authority was at an end, while another part, the two Burgundies and Artois, had been seized by the king of France; nevertheless, after a protracted struggle the German king secured almost the whole of Charles the Bold's lands for his son, the archduke Philip, the duchy of Burgundy alone remaining in the power of France after the conclusion of the peace of Senlis in 1493. Maximilian completed his work by adding a piece of Bavaria, Görz and then Gradiska to the Habsburg lands.

After Sigismund's death in 1496 Maximilian and Philip were the only living male members of the family. Philip married Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and died in 1506 leaving two sons, Charles and Ferdinand. Charles succeeded his father in the Netherlands; he followed one grandfather, Ferdinand, as king of Spain in 1516, and when the other, Maximilian, died in 1519 he became the emperor Charles V., and succeeded to all the hereditary lands of the Habsburgs. But provision had to be made for Ferdinand, and in 1521 this prince was given the Austrian archduchies, Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola; in the same year he married Anne, daughter of Wladislaus, king of Hungary and Bohemia, and when his childless brother-in-law, King Louis, was killed at the battle of Mohacs in August 1526 he claimed the two kingdoms, both by right of his wife and by treaty. After a little trouble Bohemia passed under his rule, but Hungary was more recalcitrant. A long war took place between Ferdinand and John Zapolya, who was also crowned king of Hungary, but in 1538 a treaty was made and the country was divided, the Habsburg prince receiving the western and smaller portion. However, he was soon confronted with a more formidable foe, and he spent a large part of his subsequent life in defending his lands from the attacks of the Turks.

The Habsburgs had now reached the summit of their power. The prestige which belonged to Charles as head of the Holy Roman Empire was backed by the wealth and commerce of the Netherlands and of Spain, and by the riches of the Spanish colonies in America. In Italy he ruled over Sardinia, Naples and Sicily, which had passed to him with Spain, and the duchy of Milan, which he had annexed in 1535; to the Netherlands he had added Friesland, the bishopric of Utrecht, Gröningen and Gelderland, and he still possessed Franche-Comté and the fragments of the Habsburg lands in Alsace and the neighbourhood. Add to this Ferdinand's inheritance, the Austrian archduchies and Tirol, Bohemia with her dependent provinces, and a strip of Hungary, and the two brothers had under their sway a part of Europe the extent of which was great, but the wealth and importance of which were immeasurably greater. Able to scorn the rivalry of the other princely houses of Germany, the Habsburgs saw in the kings of the house of Valois the only foemen worthy of their regard.