RIXDOLLAR, a silver coin current on the Continent, of varying value.

RIZZIO, DAVID, favourite of Mary, Queen of Scots, born in Turin; the son of a dancing-master; was employed by the queen as her secretary, and being offensive to the nobles, was by a body of them dragged from the queen’s presence and stabbed to death, 9th March 1566.

ROANNE (31), an old French town in the department of Loire, on the river Loire, 49 m.  NW of St. Etienne; has interesting ruins, a college flourishing cotton and hat factories, dye-works, tanneries, &c.

ROANOKE (16), a flourishing city of Virginia, U.S., on the Roanoke River; has rapidly sprung into a busy centre of steel, iron, machinery, tobacco, and other factories.

ROARING FORTIES, a sailor’s term for the Atlantic lying between 40 deg. and 50 deg.N. latitude, so called from the storms often encountered there.

ROB ROY, a Highland freebooter, second son of Macgregor of Glengyle; assumed the name of Campbell on account of the outlawry of the Macgregor clan; traded in cattle, took part in the rebellion of 1715, had his estates confiscated, and indemnified himself by raiding (1671-1734).

ROBBEN ISLAND, a small island at the entrance of Table Bay, 10 m.  NW. of Cape Town; has a lunatic asylum and a leper colony.

ROBBIA, LUCA DELIA, Italian sculptor, born in Florence, where he lived and worked all his days; executed a series of bas-reliefs for the cathedral, but is known chiefly for his works in enamelled terra-cotta, the like of which is named after him, “Robbia-ware” (1400-1482).

ROBERT I. See BRUCE.

ROBERT II., king of Scotland from 1371 to 1390, son of Walter Stewart and Marjory, only daughter of Robert the Bruce; succeeded David II., and became the founder of the Stuart dynasty; was a peaceable man, but his nobles were turbulent, and provoked invasions on the part of England by their forays on the Borders (1316-1390).

ROBERT III., king of Scotland from 1390 to 1406, son of Robert II.; was a quite incompetent ruler, and during his reign the barons acquired an ascendency and displayed a disloyalty which greatly diminished the power of the Crown both in his and succeeding reigns; the government fell largely into the hands of the king’s brother, the turbulent and ambitious Robert, Duke of Albany; an invasion (1400) by Henry IV. of England and a retaliatory expedition under Archibald Douglas, which ended in the crushing defeat of Homildon Hill (1402), are the chief events of the reign (1340-1406).

ROBERT THE DEVIL, the hero of an old French romance identified with Robert, first Duke of Normandy, who, after a career of cruelty and crime, repented and became a Christian, but had to expiate his guilt by wandering as a ghost over the earth till the day of judgment; he is the subject of an opera composed by Meyerbeer.

ROBERTS, DAVID, painter, born in Edinburgh; began as a house-painter; became a scene-painter; studied artistic drawing, and devoted himself to architectural painting, his first pictures being of Rouen and Amiens cathedrals; visiting Spain he published a collection of Spanish sketches, and after a tour in the East published in 1842 a magnificently-illustrated volume entitled the “Holy Land, Syria, Idumaea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia;” a great number of his pictures are ecclesiastical interiors (1796-1864).