Juxon, WILLIAM, one of the figures on the last 'memorable scene' of Charles I., was born at Chichester in 1582. From Merchant Taylors' School he passed to St John's College, Oxford, and succeeded Laud as its president in 1621. Already he had held livings at St Giles, Oxford, and Somerton in Oxfordshire, and through Laud's influence he became successively dean of Worcester, prebendary of Chichester, dean of the Chapel Royal, and Bishop of London. In 1635 also he was made Lord High Treasurer—'a dignity,' Laud writes proudly, 'held by no churchman since Henry VII.'s time.' In Charles's vacillation about the fate of Strafford, Juxon advised him to refuse his assent to the bill, 'seeing that he knew his lordship to be innocent.' He ministered to the king in his last moments, and it was into his hands that Charles delivered his George with the word 'Remember.' During the Commonwealth Juxon amused himself with his pack of hounds at his country-house in Gloucestershire, and four months after the Restoration was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. He died at Lambeth, 4th June 1663.

K

is the eleventh letter in our alphabet. The symbol was derived from the Egyptian hieroglyphic picture of a bowl (see ALPHABET). When taken over by the Phœnicians the letter was called kaph, 'the hand,' the two slanting strokes being probably supposed to represent the forefinger and the thumb. With little change of form or name it was transmitted to Greece as kappa, and then with the other Greek letters it passed into the primitive alphabet of Italy, where it was retained by the Umbrians and the Oscans, but ultimately discarded by the Etruscans and the Romans. That it belonged originally to the Latin alphabet is proved by its occurrence in two or three of the earliest Latin inscriptions, and by its retention in certain conventional archaic abbreviations, such as KAL for calendar. It was not used in classical Latin, since after the invention of G (see G) it was superfluous, the letter C having acquired precisely the same sound, that of the sharp guttural mute, which is formed by raising the tongue to the back of the palate. Hence this sound came to be denoted by C in the Latin alphabet and in all the alphabets derived directly from it, such as Italian, French, and Spanish; while the symbol k was retained in the alphabets which were directly or remotely influenced by the Greek, such as Coptic, Russian, Wallachian, Servian, Runic, Gothic, and German. Thus in French the letter k is only used in modern loan-words, such as kepi, or kilomètre; while in German c is confined, for the most part, to words derived from Latin or French, such as criminal, civil, consul, or canal.

In England, where the two influences met and encountered each other, the usage is conflicting. In the southern or Saxon shires, into which the alphabet was introduced by Roman monks, c was at first universal, k being unknown before the 12th century. In the northern or Anglian shires, which possessed the runes, a script ultimately of Greek origin (see RUNES), k is found in very early MSS., such as the Rushworth Gospels. To the Northumbrian missionaries, to whom the conversion of Germany is chiefly due, may be attributed the use of k instead of c in the German alphabet. After the Norman conquest of England the phonetic power of c became uncertain, owing to the introduction of its French value of s in such words as city, and hence in the 12th and following centuries the use of k began to spread from the northern counties to the east midlands, and then to East Anglia, being employed in the first instance before the vowels e and i, where the value of c was most ambiguous. Hence in Middle English we find k in the words Kent, keen, kith, kin, king, keep, and key; and also before n in the words knave, knee, knead, know, knot, and knight, in all of which k had formerly been employed. It is also used in words of Scandinavian, Dutch, or northern origin, such as ken, keg, kid, kill, kilt, kindle, kirk, kipped, kink, and in such modern loan-words as Koran, kangaroo, and kaleidoscope. But on the whole the usage in English accords more with Latin and French than with Greek, German, and Russian.