Northamptonshire, or NORTHANTS, a mid-land county of England, 67 miles long, and 25 where broadest, is surrounded by the counties of Rutland, Lincoln, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, Buckingham, Oxford, and Warwick. Area, 984 sq. m., or 629,912 acres, of which more than half is pasture. Pop. (1801) 131,757; (1841) 199,208; (1881) 272,558; (1891) 302,184. In the north-east near
Peterborough the county is flat, and forms part of the Bedford Level (q.v.), but elsewhere the surface is undulating, the highest ground—about 800 feet above the sea-level—being found in the neighbourhood of Daventry. It is traversed by the London and North-Western, Midland, and Great Northern railways, and communication by water is maintained by the Nen and the Welland, which are the chief rivers, as also by the Grand Junction, Union, and Oxford canals. The soil, a black, peaty mould in the north-east, and a brown loam on the uplands, is on the whole very productive. Corn and green crops are largely grown, but, as compared with the previous year, the area of land devoted to those crops in 1889 showed a decrease of 9680 acres. On the broad pastures many cattle are grazed, and dairy-farming is carried on, but, although Northants is a great hunting county, the breeding of horses is not much encouraged. The principal minerals are limestone, which is quarried in the north-east, and ironstone of excellent quality, which is found near Kettering and Wellingborough; in 1889 the amount of ore produced was 1,257,080 tons, whilst 230,820 tons of pig-iron were made. The manufactures are inconsiderable apart from those noticed under Northampton. The county comprises twenty hundreds, the municipal boroughs of Brackley, Daventry, Higham Ferrers, Northampton, Peterborough, and Stamford (the last two extending into Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire), and has in all 344 civil parishes, with parts of four others, almost entirely in the diocese of Peterborough. The parliamentary divisions are four, each returning one member, whilst the county council (exclusive of that for the Soke of Peterborough, which has forty members) numbers sixty-eight. In history the principal incidents connected with the county, omitting those noticed under Northampton (its capital), have been the battles of Edgecote (1469) and Naseby (1645), the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots at Fotheringay Castle (1587), and the imprisonment of Charles I. at Holmby House (1647). Of its natives, besides Richard III. and (perhaps) Catharine Parr, the best known are Archbishop Chichele (the founder of All-Souls' College at Oxford), Sir Christopher Hatton (the courtier), Catesby (of Gunpowder Plot renown), Thomas Fuller, James Harrington, Bishop Cumberland, Dryden, Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, William Law, Gill and Carey (the eminent Baptists), Doddridge (the Nonconformist), James Hervey, Cartwright ('the father of Reform'), Dr Paley, William Lisle Bowles, Clare (the peasant poet), the Earl of Cardigan (leader of the Balaclava charge), and Dean Mansel. See the county histories by Bridges (2 vols. 1791), Baker (2 vols. 1822-41), and Whellan (2d ed. 1874).—Hampshire (q.v.) is the county of Southampton.