or DOWAY, a large and strong city of the French Netherlands, situated in E. Long. 3; o. N. Lat. 50. 25. It is situated on the river Scarpe, in a very fertile and pleasant country. The town is large and populous, and exceedingly well fortified. You enter it by fix gates, and the streets from each of these gates lead to the market-place. Here is a venerable old town-house, adorned with the statues of the earls of Flanders, in which the magistrates assemble, and are renewed every thirteen months. Here also are held several country courts for the dependencies of Douay, which contain about 30 villages. The parliament of Douay was at first only a supreme council, established at Tournay in 1668, and erected into a parliament in 1686. But Tournay being taken by the allies in 1709, the parliament was removed to Cambrai; and upon the the yielding of Tournay to the Austrians by the treaty of Utrecht, the parliament was removed to Douay, where it still continues. This city was erected into an university like that of Louvain by Philip II. because of its being in the middle of so many great cities, and Louvain at so great a distance, that the children on that side of the country were generally sent for their education into France. Before the French revolution it contained 14 colleges, all governed and settled after the manner of those at Louvain; and the schools of philosophy, canon and civil law, and physic, were disputed also after the same manner. There was a considerable seminary here of English Roman Catholics, founded by Phillip II. of Spain about the year 1560. There were also a great number of convents; and amongst the rest two English, one of Franciscan friars, the other of Benedictine monks. Douay was taken from the Spaniards by the French king in person in 1667, after a short resistance. That prince made it very strong, and built a fort about a cannon shot below it upon the Scarpe, with sluices, by which the adjacent country could be drowned. The allies laid siege to it in 1710, under the command of the duke of Marlborough; and after a vigorous defence, the town and Fort Scarpe surrendered upon honourable terms. It was retaken by the French in 1712, after the suspension of arms between Great Britain and France.