is a term applied to one who flees from justice, or who wilfully neglects or refuses to appear and answer for a transgression in obedience to the process of a competent court. The punishment consequent on such contumacy is termed outlawry, and consists in an exclusion from the benefits and protection of the law, thus disqualifying the defendant from maintaining any action real or personal. From the Conquest until nearly the reign of Mary, an outlaw might be lawfully killed like a wild beast by any one who met him. This was especially the case if he resisted seizure; "but when once taken," says Bracton (iii. c. 14), "his life and death were in the king's hands; and if any man then killed him, he must answer for it, as in the case of any other homicide." Sufficient notice of the process of the court, and satisfactory evidence of his disobedience, is essential before a person can be outlawed. As a security for making the defendant aware of the process of court, three successive writs of capias are issued against him, and failing his appearance, a writ of exigent, requiring the sheriff to call him in five successive courts, is then sued out; and if he does not render himself up at the fifth call, judgment of outlawry is at once pronounced against him. At the same time that the exigent is issued, moreover, it is provided, as an additional security, that the sheriff shall make three proclamations of the defendant in notorious places in the county of his residence a month before the sentence of outlawry. In the case of contumacy on prosecutions for civil actions and inferior crimes, only one writ of capias is necessary before the exigent is awarded. Outlawry entails the forfeiture of the goods and chattels of the outlaw. It was formerly necessary for the outlaw to be restored to his law by the crown; but in modern times it is usual for the courts to reverse outlawries upon motion.

OVADA, a town of the kingdom of Sardinia, division of Alessandria, stands on the Orba, 9 miles S.W. of Acqui, and 20 S. of Alessandria. For the most part it is well built; and contains several churches, convents, schools, and hospitals, and a theatre. One of the churches is a handsome building. Manufactures of cloth, vermicelli, hardware, and silk, are carried on; and there is some trade in wine and silk. Pop. 6177.

OVAR, a town of Portugal, province of Beira, stands near the mouth of a river of the same name, 15 miles N. of Aveiro, and 22 S. of Oporto. It is well built, but unhealthy; and consists of one long street, well paved and clean. There is a harbour and a mole. The inhabitants are engaged in fishing, and carry on some trade. Pop. 10,500.

OVATION (ovatio) was a lesser triumph allowed to Roman commanders for victories won without the effusion of much blood, or for defeating a mean and inconsiderable enemy. The show generally began at the Alban Mountain, whence the general with his retinue made his entry into the city on foot, with many flutes or pipes sounding in concert as he passed along, and wearing a garland of myrtle as a token of peace. The term ovation, according to Servius, is derived from ovis, a sheep, because on this occasion the conqueror sacrificed a sheep, as in a triumph he sacrificed a bull. Festus, however, derives it from ovo, "I exuls," "I cry O!" while Dionysius maintains it to be a corruption of the Greek bacchaliana ovo. The senate, knights, and principal plebeians assisted at the procession, which concluded at the Capitol, where rams were sacrificed to Jupiter. The first ovation was granted to Publius Postumius Tubero, for his victory over the Sabines in the 253rd year of Rome. (Pliny, Hist. Nat. xv. 29.)

OVERALL, JOHN, an English bishop of some celebrity during his day, was born in 1559. He was elected a scholar of St John's College, Cambridge, but afterwards removed to Trinity, of which he became a fellow. In 1596 he was made regius professor of divinity, when he took his degree of Doctor, and about the same time was elected master of Catherine Hall. In 1601 he was promoted to the deanery of St Paul's, London, by the recommendation of his patron, Sir Fulke Greville, and Queen Elizabeth; and in the beginning of King James's reign he was chosen prolocutor of the lower House of Convocation. In 1612 he was appointed one of the first governors of the Charter-House Hospital, then just founded by Mr Thomas Sutton. In April 1614 he was made bishop of Litchfield and Coventry; and in 1618 he was translated to Norwich, where he died in May 1619, at the age of about sixty. He was buried in that cathedral, where he lay unnoticed and forgotten till some years after the restoration of Charles II., when Cosin, Bishop of Durham, who had been his secretary, erected a monument, with a Latin inscription in which he is said to be "Vir undeoque doctissimus, et omni encomio major."

Wood observes, that he had the character of being the best scholastic divine in England; and Cosin, who perhaps may be thought to rival him in that sort of learning, calls himself his scholar, and declares that he derived all his knowledge from the good bishop. Overall cultivated a particular friendship with Gerard Vossius and Grotius, and some of his letters to those learned men are printed in the Epistolae Praestantium Virorum. The bishop is known in England chiefly by his Convocation Book, 1606, Concerning the Government of God's Catholic Church and the Kingdoms of the Whole World, 4to, London, 1600; reprinted at Oxford in 1844; in which the author discusses the rights of civil and ecclesiastical governors. This work was solemnly approved by the convocations of Canterbury and York, and was afterwards published by Archbishop Sancroft, but it led to a stir he did not contemplate. (See Macaulay's History of England, vol. iv.)

OVERBURY, SIR THOMAS, an English courtier, famous for his genius and the tragic history of his life, was the son of Nicholas Overbury of Boorton-on-the-Hill in Gloucestershire, and was born in 1581 at Compton Scroten, the Warwickshire seat of his maternal grandfather. The early part of his career was one continued course of success. Having enrolled as a gentleman commoner of Queen's College, Oxford, he distinguished himself in philosophy and logic, took the degree of Bachelor-of-Arts in 1598, and came out into the world adorned with every scholar-like accomplishment. On his removal to London for the purpose of studying law in the Middle Temple, he found favour with the lord treasurer, Sir Robert Cecil, and a prospect of court preferment seemed to be opening up before him. The sudden disappointment of these hopes, by driving him to travel, was only the means of securing his ultimate success. He sojourned in different places both at home and abroad, acquiring foreign languages, inspecting foreign governments, liberalizing his manners and opinions, and marking those varied phases of life which he afterwards described with such fidelity and wit in his book of Characters. After his return to court, his polished bearing, polite attainments, and large experience, recommended him to the friendship of Robert Carr, an acquaintance to whom he had been introduced shortly before in Edinburgh, and who was now the rising favourite of James I. The travelled and accomplished scholar soon became the bosom confidant and indispensable oracle of the illiterate minion. He dictated his love epistles, supplied him with opinions and plans of action, took charge of all his secrets, and with absolute sway ruled the will that ruled the king. The result was, that those who wished to honour and propitiate the favourite, honoured and propitiated the favourite's master. James I. made him a knight in 1608; the court poets, with Ben Jonson at their head, ascribed to him every attainment and every virtue under heaven; statesmen craved his counsel; and princes sought his society.

Sir Thomas Overbury had now climbed to the pinnacle of power, and, like most other successful aspirants, he was seized with a giddiness which suddenly brought him down headlong. His imperious pride could not brook the thought that any one should be a fellow sharer with him in the affection of Carr, now Viscount Rochester. Therefore, although his conscience had not prevented him from writing the letters and sentimental ditties which had won for his friend the unlawful love of the profligate Countess of Essex, yet no sooner was it proposed to close this intrigue by marriage than he took the most decided measures of opposition. He exhorted Carr, by all his hopes of continued prosperity, not to take such a step; he wrote the famous poem called The Wife, for the express purpose of showing him the contrast between a chaste and an immodest spouse; and in express terms he denounced the countess as "a strumpet, and her mother and brother as bawds." It was this interference, and especially the epithets of infamy, that determined his fate. The countess planned a scheme of deadly vengeance; her infatuated lover Rochester, who feared the divulging of the secrets intrusted to his confidant, and her uncle the Earl of Northampton, who aspired to step into the doomed courtier's place, became her accomplices; and it is even said that the king, highly offended at the arrogant bearing of his minion's friend, was privy to the plot. In April 1613, accordingly, Overbury was offered a foreign ambassadorship; by the advice of Rochester he was induced to decline it; and on the 21st of the same month he was apprehended on the charge of disobeying the king's commands, and conveyed a close prisoner to the Tower. The victim was now in the clutches of his murderers, and was destined to expiate his offence by a death of aggravated and protracted pain. He was consigned to a dismal dungeon; his condition was deceitfully kept secret from his friends; not even a priest was allowed access to him; and a ruffian named Weston, who had been hired expressly on account of his knowledge of drugs, was appointed to be sole attendant. Then a process of slow poisoning was commenced. The daily food of the unconscious prisoner was tainted with deadly powders; the very water that he drank was poisoned, and inflamed the ever-burning thirst it was intended to allay; for three months and six days his strong constitution continued to be racked and wasted under the combined action of different drugs; and on the 15th September 1613, when he had become a mere skeleton, covered with a mass of sores, a clyster put an end to his life. The murderers, although successful at first in concealing their guilt, and although favoured by certain unaccountable circumstances connected with the deed, were at length, after the lapse of two years, overtaken by retribution. They were all tried and condemned. The four under-assassins, including Weston, suffered the penalty of the law; and Carr and his wife, now the Earl and Countess of Somerset, although pardoned by the king, were afterwards punished, the former by the loss of the royal favour, the latter by a most painful and loathsome death.

The tragic fate of Sir Thomas Overbury drew atten-