a municipal and parliamentary borough, and manufacturing town of England, county of Chester, on the Bollin, 17 miles S. by E. from Manchester, and 167 from London by railway. It is pleasantly situated on a declivity near the borders of Macclesfield Forest, and consists of four principal streets which meet in the market-place. The town is well supplied with water, brought from springs in the neighbouring hills; and baths and wash-houses have lately been established. The townhall is a commodious and handsome Grecian building of recent erection, having, besides the courts of justice, offices, &c., a large assembly hall. The old church of St Michael, founded by Eleanor, queen of Edward I., in 1278, but since almost entirely rebuilt, is a large structure, partly Gothic, and has a massive tower, formerly surmounted by a lofty steeple. Several of the other churches are handsome buildings. The Independents, Methodists, Baptists, Roman Catholics, and others, have places of worship here. The free grammar school, founded in 1602 by Sir John Percival, and refounded by Edward VI., has a revenue of about £1,500. A commercial school has recently been established on this foundation. There are also national, infant, charity, and other schools. A school of design was established here in 1851; and a subscription library, founded in 1770, now contains upwards of 20,000 volumes. The staple manufacture of Macclesfield is silk in all its various branches. About seventy mills are employed in throwing silk; besides which there are numerous establishments in which broad silks, handkerchiefs, and similar goods are made. The mills are mostly situate on the Bollin. The cotton manufacture has recently been introduced, and is now in a very flourishing condition. There are also several dye-works, foundries, and breweries in the town. Coal, slate, and stone are found in the vicinity. The Macclesfield Canal, which passes the town, unites the Grand Trunk and the Peak Forest canals, and thus affords water communication with most parts of England. Macclesfield was first incorporated by charter in 1260, by Prince Edward, son of Henry III., as Earl of Chester, but it had no voice in parliament till the Reform Bill granted it the privilege of returning two members. It is divided into six wards, and is governed by a mayor, 12 aldermen, and 36 councillors. Market-days, Tuesday and Saturday. Pop. (1861) 39,048.

M'CRIE, THOMAS, D.D., author of the Life of Knox, was born at Dunse, in North Britain, in the month of November 1772. His parents belonged to the class of Seceders known in Scotland as Antiburghers, and he was educated with a view to the ministry in that persuasion. After passing through the ordinary course of education afforded in a country town, he came to Edinburgh, and enrolled himself as a student in the university, in the winter of 1788. During that and the two following sessions he pursued the course of literary and philosophical study prescribed to students intending to devote themselves to the ministry; and in 1791 he entered the theological class at Whitburn, under the Rev. Archibald Bruce, the teacher or professor of divinity to the Associate Antiburgher Synod. As the attendance upon this course was only for a limited period each year, it was usual for the students, whose means were generally very scanty, to employ the intervals in teaching. In this way Mr M'Crie, in the autumn of 1791, proceeded to Brechin, and opened a school in connection with the Associate Antiburgher congregation in that town; and he continued there, excepting the time annually required at Whitburn in the three following sessions (1792 to 1794) for completing the regular course of theological study.

In September 1795, Mr M'Crie was licensed to preach by the Associate presbytery of Kelso. In the beginning of the next year he received a call from the Second Associate Congregation of Antiburghers in Edinburgh; and some scruples having been obviated by an act of the Associate Synod, dated 3rd May 1796, he was ordained to that charge on the 23rd of that month. In this pastoral relationship he continued for upwards of ten years, evidently with the sincere attachment of his people.

At this period Mr M'Crie, by diligent and assiduous study, was acquiring that profound theological knowledge, and that fund of literary and ecclesiastical information, for which in after life he was so distinguished. The proceedings of the religious body with whom he was connected may also have had some effect in directing his pursuits towards subjects connected with the history, constitution, and polity of the Reformed church.

Mr M'Crie was one of five ministers who protested against what they considered to be a spirit of innovation on the part of the Synod, while engaged in the revision and enlargement of the Judicial Act and Testimony, which had hitherto served as the bond of ministerial and religious communion, "in order, as it was expressed, to adapt it more to the circumstances of the present time." The result of their proceedings was a sentence of deposition by the Associate Synod; and, in the case of Mr M'Crie, a litigation in the Court of Session. The task devolved upon Mr M'Crie to publish an explanation of the controversy between the Synod and them; and this appeared in 1807. Although of a controversial nature, respecting differences which attracted no very great share of public notice at the time, this Statement involves the discussion of principles which have since been much more widely agitated by the Voluntary question; and it has been appealed to by the friends of the Established Church, as explaining and enforcing the true grounds of connexion between the church and state, and as an able and elaborate argument of the obligation on civil rulers to make suitable provision for the religious interests of the community.

In the comparatively obscure and humble situation in which Mr M'Crie was now placed, he was enabled to devote his leisure hours to his favourite literary pursuits. The Life of John Knox, containing Illustrations of the History of the Reformation in Scotland, appeared in the beginning of 1812, in 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 580, and a new edition appeared in an enlarged and corrected form in 1813.

The next subject in which Dr M'Crie engaged was a Life of Andrew Melville, the able and intrepid assertor of Presbytery; which might serve as a continuation to his former work, by giving an account of ecclesiastical transactions in Scotland during the latter part of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century. This work was published in 1819, in 2 vols. 8vo.

In 1817 Dr M'Crie took occasion, in a review of the

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1 The fifth edition, carefully revised by the author, and containing his last corrections, was published in 1831, 2 vols. 8vo. 2 The title is, The Life of Andrew Melville; containing Illustrations of the Ecclesiastical and Literary History of Scotland during the latter part of the Sixteenth and beginning of the Seventeenth Century. With an Appendix consisting of original papers. A second edition, revised, was published in 1824, also in 2 vols. 8vo. first series of the Tales of my Landlord, to offer an elaborate defence of the Covenanters. Sir Walter Scott, who had not then stood forth as the acknowledged author of the Waverley Novels, was persuaded by the editor of the Quarterly Review to become the reviewer of his own work, when he took the opportunity of vindicating his statements in answer to the article in the magazine.

In February 1816, Dr M'Crie succeeded the Reverend Archibald Bruce, Antiburgher minister at Whitburn, as professor of divinity. On the union of the two seceding bodies, under the designation of the "Associate Synod of Original Seceders," Dr M'Crie resigned the divinity chair to the Rev. Dr Paxton, author of Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures; and resuming his literary labours, he next published, in 1821, Two Discourses on the Unity of the Church. This was followed in 1825 by a volume entitled Memoirs of Mr William Veitch and George Brosson, written by themselves: with other Narratives Illustrative of the History of Scotland, from the Restoration to the Revolution: to which are added, Biographical Sketches and Notes, 8vo, pp. 540.

The next subject of his investigation led to the publication, in 1827, of a History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Italy in the Sixteenth Century, including a Sketch of the Reformation in the Grisons. 8vo, pp. 434. Also, in 1829, as a sequel to that work, a History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Spain in the Sixteenth Century. 8vo, pp. 424. These volumes undoubtedly form a valuable accession to the history of the Reformation throughout Europe, although the author laboured under great disadvantages in having but limited access to original sources of information, compared to what was within his reach in matters of our own ecclesiastical history. Both volumes, however, present masterly sketches of the periods of which they treat, and no subsequent historian has arisen to give a more extended history of the suppressed reformation on the continent.

Dr M'Crie was induced to undertake a life of John Calvin the Reformer, which had been looked for from his hand, and which he himself had long contemplated; and he had made some progress in writing the introductory portion at the time when his earthly labours were brought to a close in the summer of 1835. He was interred in the New Greyfriars burying-ground.

A detailed and interesting Life by his eldest son, the Rev. Dr M'Crie, appeared in 1840. To his care we are also indebted for the publication of a posthumous volume of Sermons, 1836; a collection of his Miscellaneous Writings, 1841; sketches of Lectures on Esther; and a complete edition of his works in crown 8vo.

In private life, Dr M'Crie was dignified, kind, affable, and free from everything like display or desire of notoriety; being remarkable for his cordiality of manners, cheerfulness of temper and conversation, and his unaffected simplicity. As a preacher, his style of address was rather unprepossessing, partly from want of action, and partly from his slow, monotonous, and somewhat constrained delivery, as if afraid to speak out in the natural tone of his voice. But any deficiency of artificial eloquence was amply compensated for by his profound and luminous expositions of Scripture, expressed in clear and energetic language; and several of his printed discourses make good his claim to stand in the first rank of Scottish preachers. In his literary character, by which he will be known in after times, it will be acknowledged that his mind was of no ordinary cast. With extensive erudition, and habits of indefatigable research, he combined sound judgment, and a singular acuteness and sagacity of intellect. His learning was both profound and extensive, as he was not only skilled in what are called the learned languages, but was conversant with most of those of modern Europe. Still, with all his natural love of literary pursuits, he kept such employment in subservience to his duty as a diligent and faithful minister of Christ. For nearly forty years he laboured with the most affectionate solicitude for the spiritual interests of his flock, and much of his time was devoted to them in his week-day ministrations. It was chiefly a consideration of the paramount importance of such a charge, we imagine, that caused him to decline the prospect of a chair in the University of Edinburgh. There is every reason also to believe, that had his life been spared a few months longer, the honorary office of Historiographer-Royal for Scotland would have been conferred, unsolicited, upon him, as a public testimony due to him. He has been styled by Hallam the "Hildebrand of the Reformation"; but it must be confessed that his warm championship of Knox was the result of profound conviction and untiring research. The philosophic wisdom and candour that pervade his writings are rarely to be found in the productions of men subjected, as he was early and for a long period, to neglect and poverty for conscience sake.