William Collingwood Smith was a noted watercolourist, whose work was often featured in the London Illustrated News.
Leon Maxwell Gellert was born in Adelaide, Australia, into a family of Hungarian origin. He studied at the University of Adelaide and became a teacher. During the First World War, he saw active service in the Mediterranean, but was invalided out of the army in 1916 and returned to teaching. Songs of a Campaign, Gellert's first book of poetry, was published in 1917. Gellert lived in Sydney for many years, working as a journalist. He was the co-editor of Art and Australia from 1922 and became known as a columnist in Sunday newspapers. He died in Adelaide in 1977.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Randall Carline Swingler was born at Aldershot, Hampshire in 1909. He was educated at Winchester College and at New College, Oxford. He was a poet, prose author and journalist, as a well as a flautist to professional standard. A member of the Communist Party, he also edited the Left Review and wrote for the Daily Worker.
John Edgell Rickword was born in Colchester in 1898. He was educated at Colchester Grammar School and Pembroke College, Oxford. He became known as a poet and literary journalist in the early 1920s. Commited to left-wing politics, Rickword joined the Communist Party in 1934 and founded the Left Review the same year. In the late 1940s he developed a new career as a bookseller. Rickword left the Communist Party following the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 but continued to regard himself as a Marxist.
John Kells Ingram was born into a Protestant family in County Donegal, Ireland in 1823. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin, where he co-founded the Dublin Philosophical Society. He became a fellow of Trinity College in 1846 and a professor in 1852, later serving as librarian and vice-provost. From 1847 he was also a member of the Royal Irish Academy, serving as president from 1892 until 1896. His interests were wide-ranging, from geometry to classical literature, but he is best remembered as an economist.
Jean Joseph Louis Blanc was born in Spain in 1811. He was brought up and educated in Corsica. He moved to Paris shortly before the July Revolution of 1830 and became a journalist, historian and leading socialist thinker. Exiled from France, he lived in England from 1848 to 1870, where he became popular in Chartist and in labour circles and was in close contact with other left-wing emigres. He returned to France in 1870 and served in the French National Assembly during 1871-1876.
Alexander Macdonald was born in Lanarkshire in 1821 and worked as a coal and ironstone miner from the age of nine. He studied Greek and Latin at evening classes and was later able to attend Glasgow University (1846-1849), subsequently becoming a teacher. He became a leading trade unionist in the mid 1850s and lobbied strongly for workers' rights. Macdonald entered Parliament in 1874 as MP for Stafford, remaining in post until his death in 1881. His surname was originally spelt McDonald, but he adopted the spelling Macdonald in the 1870s.
Harry Price was born in January 1881 and educated in London and Shropshire. Between 1896 and 1898, Price founded the Carlton Dramatic Society and wrote small plays, and showed early interest in the unusual by experimenting with space-telegraphy between Telegraph Hill, Hatcham and Brockley. He also became interested in numismatics at an early age and was involved with archaeological excavations in Greenwich Park, London and Shropshire between 1902 and 1904 and in Pulborough, Sussex in 1909, culminating with his appointment as honorary curator of numismatics at Ripon Museum in 1904. He married Constance Mary Knight in August 1908.
Price's first major success in psychical research came in 1922 when he exposed the fraudulence of 'spirit' photographs taken by William Hope. During the same year, Price investigated his first séance with Willi Schneider at the home of Baron von Schrenck-Notzing in Munich and published The Revelations of a Spirit Medium. In 1923, the National Laboratory of Psychical Research was established in Bloomsbury and Price had his first sittings with mediums Stella C, Jean Guzik and Anna Pilch. Shortly after, he outlined a scheme for broadcasting experiments in telepathy for the BBC and, in 1925, was appointed foreign research officer to the American Society for Psychical Research, apposition he was to hold until 1931. In 1926, the National Laboratory of Psychical Research moved to new premises in Queensbury Place, South Kensington, and Price was to experience his first sittings with Rudi Schneider in Braunau-am-Inn, Austria, and to conduct his first experiments with Eleanore Zugun in Vienna. One year later, Price publically opened the 'box' of prophetess, Joanna Southcott at a Church Hall in Westminster.
In 1929, Rudi Schneider was brought to London for experiments into his mediumship and Price began his 10 year investigation of hauntings at Borley Rectory in Suffolk. Shortly after, the National Laboratory moved again to Roland Gardens in South Kensington. In 1932, Price, along with C.E.M.Joad, travelled to Mount Brocken in Germany to conduct a 'black magic' experiment in connection with the centenary of Goethe, involving the transformation of a goat into a young man. The following year, Price made a formal offer to the University of London to quip and endow a Department of Psychical Research, and to loan the equipment of the National Laboratory and its Library. The University of London Board of Studies in Psychology responded positively to this proposal and, in 1934, the University of London Council for Psychical Investigation was formed with Price as Honorary Secretary and Editor. Price's psychical research continued with investigations into Karachi's Indian rope trick and the fire-walking abilities of Kuda Bux in 1935. He was also involved in the formation of the National Film Library (British Film Institute) becoming its first chairman (until 1941) and was a founding member of the Shakespeare Film Society. In 1936, Price broadcast from a haunted manor house in Meopham, Kent for the BBC and published The Confessions of a Ghost-Hunter and The Haunting of Cashen's Gap. This year also saw the transfer of Price's library on permanent loan to the University of London, followed shortly by the laboratory and investigative equipment. In 1937, he conducted further televised experiments into fire-walking with Ahmed Hussain at Carshalton and Alexandra Palace, and also rented Borley Rectory for one year. The following year, Price re-established the Ghost Club, with himself as chairman, conducted experiments with Rahman Bey who was 'buried alive' in Carshalton and drafted a Bill for the regulation of psychic practitioners. In 1939, he organised a national telepathic test in the periodical John O'London's Weekly. During the 1940s, Price concentrated on writing and the works The Most Haunted House in England, Poltergeist Over England and The End of Borley Rectory were all published. He died in March 1948.
Publications: The Sceptic (psychic play), 1898; Coins of Kent and Kentish Tokens, 1902; Shropshire Tokens and Mints, 1902; Joint Editor, Revelations of a Spirit Medium, 1922; Cold Light on Spiritualistic Phenomena, 1922; Stella C.; An Account of Some Original Experiments in Psychical Research, 1925; Short-Title Catalogue of Works on Psychical Research, Spiritualism, Magic, etc. 1929; Rudi Schneider: A Scientific Examination of His Mediumship, 1930; Regurgitation and the Duncan Mediumship, 1931; An Account of Some Further Experiments with Rudi Schneider, 1933; Leaves from a Psychist's Case-book, 1933; Psychical Research (talking film), 1935; Confessions of a Ghost-Hunter, 1936; Faith and Fire-Walking, article in Encyclopædia Britannica, 1936; A Report on Two Experimental Fire-Walks, 1936; The Haunting of Cashen's Gap (with R. S. Lambert), 1936; Fifty Years of Psychical Research, 1939; The Most Haunted House in England: Ten Years' Investigation of Borley Rectory, 1940; Search for Truth: My Life for Psychical Research, 1942; Poltergeist over England, 1945; The End of Borley Rectory, 1946; film scenario of Borley hauntings (with Upton Sinclair), 1948; Works translated into eight languages; numerous pamphlets and contributions to British and foreign periodical literature.
Louis Saul Sterling was born in New York on 16 May 1879. In 1903 he left the United States for London, where he began working as a travelling representative for Gramophone and Typewriter Ltd. The following year, Sterling became manager of the British Zonophone Company, which produced playing machines and disc records. In 1905 Sterling established the Sterling Record Company, which was bought, within a few months, by the Russell Hunting Record Company. Sterling became the managing director of the firm. By 1908 Sterling had formed the Rena Manufacturing Company which produced playing machines and records. In 1909 the Columbia Phonograph Company bought Rena and Sterling was appointed Columbia's British Sales Manager. At Columbia during the First World War, 1914-1918, Sterling introduced the production of patriotic war songs and original cast recordings of songs from London shows. By the end of the war Sterling was the managing director of the Columbia Graphophone Company Ltd. When Columbia bought out its American parent company in 1927, Sterling was made chairman of its New York board. During the early 1930s Sterling became the managing director of Electrical and Musical Industries Ltd, (EMI), which had merged with Columbia. Sterling also served on the board of the merchant bank, S G Warburg. On leaving EMI he served as a director of the music publishers Chapell and Co and later became the managing director and then chairman of the electrical engineers, AC Cosser Ltd. Sterling established a number of charitable organisations including the Sterling Club in 1937 and the Sir Louis Sterling Charitable Trust in 1938. Later he became involved in Jewish charitable work and was President of the British Committee for Technical Development in Israel. Sterling's main interest outside business was collecting books. Although he started collecting books in 1917, the majority of the items in his collection were purchased in the 1920s and 1930s. By 1956 the collection had grown to over 5000 books and manuscripts. In 1945 Sterling approached the University of London about donating his collection to the library. Under the direction of John Hayward a team from the University Library catalogued the collection at the Sterling home. On 30 October 1956 the Sterling collection was in place in the University of London Library and formally opened. Sterling was knighted in 1937 and he received an honorary D. Litt from the University of London in 1947. Sterling died in London on 2 June 1958.
Paul Tabori, author and journalist, was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1908 and was educated in Switzerland, Hungary and Germany. He graduated as a Doctor of Economic and Political Science at the University of Budapest and received his PhD at the Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. Between the two world Wars, he lived in seventeen countries as a foreign correspondent and screenwriter.
In 1937 he settled in London where he became assistant editor of World Review; diplomatic correspondent of Britanova; film critic of the Daily Mail; regular BBC broadcaster to occupied Europe; and chief European feature writer for Reuter's. From 1943 to 1948 he was a contracted writer to Sir Alexander Korda's London Films and between 1950 and 1951 he worked in Hollywood. Up to the 1970s, Tabori had written over thirty theatrical features and more than a hundred television films. These included the Rhinegold Christmas Show Silent Night; nine half-hour films for the Errol Flynn Theatre of which he was the story editor, and many other television serials. He also devised and was co-ordinating producer of the first international television series, 'A Day of Peace', in which eleven countries took part.
Tabori also published over forty books, and his novels and non-fiction publications were translated into over nineteen languages. He was active in the International PEN Club for twenty years, holding various offices. He also served as Executive Director of the International Writer's Guild of Great Britain between 1954 and 1966. Tabori was also a co-founder and board member of the International Writer's Fund.
Laterly, Tabori taught at Fairfield Dickinson University, at City College of New York, and was also visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Tabori was also close friends with psychic researcher Harry Price, becoming Price's literary executor after his death in 1948, and was the author of Harry Price: The Biography of a Ghost-Hunter in 1950 and of other works concerning Price's investigations.
Information not available at present.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
The Republic of Venice was created around 1140. It was headed by the Doge, and led by the Great Council, who controlled all political and administrative business. Ludovico Manin, the last doge, was deposed by Napoléon Bonaparte on May 12, 1797.
Samuel Pegge was born 5 November at Chesterfield, Derbyshire. He was educated at Chesterfield and St. John's College, Cambridge from where he graduated BA in 1725 and MA 1729. Pegge was ordained in 1729, became curate at Sundridge, Kent in 1730 and the vicar of Godmersham, Kent in 1731. From 1749 to 1751 he lived in Surrenden, Kent as tutor to the son of Sir Edward Dering. In 1751 he was elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and in the same year he was inducted into the rectory at Brinhill, Lancashire. He remained at Brinhill until 1758, when he exchanged Brinhill for the vicarage of Heath near Whittington, which he held until his death on 14 February 1796. Pegge was also the prebendary of Lichfield from 1757 to 1796. Pegge was interested in collecting English coins and medals. He contributed articles to journals and the encyclopaedias, Archaelogia and Bibliotheca Topographca Britannica. He also published on coinage, the Anglo Saxons, and the life of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln.
Henry Vane was born about 1705. He was Member of Parliament for Launceston 1726-1727, St. Mawes 1727-1741, Ripon 1741-1747 and for County Durham 1747-1753. Vane was Vice Treasurer and Paymaster General from 1742-1744, a Lord of the Treasury 1749-1755 and Lord Lieutenant of County Durham 1753-1758. He succeeded his father in the Peerage as 3rd Baron Barnard on 27 April 1753. He was created Viscount Barnard of Barnards Castle and Earl of Darlington 3 April 1754. Vane died on 6 March 1758.
Born, Rickmansworth, 1900, and educated at Oxford University, where he received a third class in Lit Hum. Worked with Basil Blackwell and Bernard Newdigate at the Shakespeare Head Press before setting up his own press, the Alcuin, in a barn in Chipping Campden. In 1936, Finberg's company moved to Welwyn but foundered in the slump. He then became the director of the Broadwater Press and, in 1944, the editorial director of Burnes, Oates and Washbourne. He also served in an advisory capacity to Her Majesty's Printers and the Ministry of Works; genealogical research on the Duke of Bedford's estates resulting in the publication of his Tavistock Abbey in 1949. After attending meetings of the Devon Association, Finberg struck up a friendship with W.G.Hoskins, lecturer in economic history at Leicester University and co-authored a collection of essays Devonshire Studies. Reader and Head of the Department of English Local History, Leicester University until his retirement in 1965, editing a series of Occasional Papers in Local History and using his earlier publishing experience to launch and edit the Agricultural History Review, which he edited for 11 years; also general editor of the Agrarian History of England project and President of the British Agricultural History Society between 1966 and 1968. He was appointed Professor in 1964. In retirement, Finberg was also active, becoming part-time research assistant at Leeds, working with Maurice Beresford on a handlist of medieval boroughs, and between 1968 and 1969 was a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge. He was a member of a committee of specialist advisors to the Vatican Council on vernacular liturgies. His Manual of Catholic Prayer (1962) was also awarded the Belgian Prix Graphica in 1965. Finberg died in November 1974.
Thomas West was born around 1472. He was a soldier and courtier during the reigns of King Henry VII and King Henry VIII. West was High Sheriff of Surrey and Sussex from 1524, and succeeded to his father's baronetcies in 1526. During the power struggle in 1549 to control the minority government of King Edward VI, West supported John Dudley, Earl of Warwick against Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector. He was rewarded with a knighthood in 1549. He acted as joint Lord-Lieutenant of Sussex from 1551, and declared for Queen Mary I following the death of Edward VI in 1553. He died at Offington, Sussex, in 1554 and was buried at Broadwater.
Andrew Bell, born St. Andrews, Scotland, 27th March 1753; entered St. Andrews University aged sixteen to study mathematics and natural philosophy; moved to America and became a tutor to a family that owned a tobacco planation in Virginia. Bell returned to St. Andrews in 1781 where he took orders in the Church of England. After a period at the Episcopal Chapel in Leith he became an army chaplain in India. Eight years later he was appointed superintendent of the Madras Male Orphan Asylum, an institution founded by the East India Company for the sons of its soldiers. The teachers at the Madras Male Orphan Asylum were badly paid and of poor quality. Bell had the idea that some of the teaching could be done by the pupils themselves. He selected a clever eight year old boy who he taught to teach the alphabet by writing on sand. This approach was successful and so he taught other boys how to teach other subjects. Bell called his new system of education, mutual instruction. Bell returned to England in 1796 and the following year published An Experiment in Education, an account of the teaching methods he had developed in Madras. In 1798 St. Botolph's School in Aldgate became the first institution in England to use Bell's system. Other teachers also adopted mutual instruction, including Joseph Lancaster, a young teacher at the Borough School in London. Lancaster amended Bell's methods and gave it the name, the monitorial system. Lancaster was a Quaker and his approach was adopted by other Nonconformist schoolteachers. Some of Bell's supporters in the Church of England became concerned about this development. Sarah Trimmer, who used Bell's methods to teach her twelve children, warned in an article published in the Edinburgh Review that Lancaster's example might increase the growth of nonconformity in England. Bell responded to the fears expressed by Trimmer by publishing Sketch of a National Institution (1808). In this pamphlet Bell urged the Church of England to use his methods throughout the country. Progress was slow and so in 1811 Bell formed the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church. Bell became superintendent of the society and with the help of people such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, the movement grew rapidly. By the time Andrew Bell died on 27th January 1832, the Society for the Promoting the Education of the Poor had established 12,000 schools in Britain.
Born Dublin, June 1943; came to England with his family when he was 11; studied at Xaverian College, Manchester, and read history at Merton College, Oxford, where he became actively involved with politics as a member of the Labour Party and also joined several socialist and Trotskyite groupings. Clinton gained his PhD at Chelsea College, University of London, researching trades council activity (under Ralph Miliband) and industrial relations were to remain his main intellectual interest, publishing the book The Trade Union Rank And File: Trades Councils in Britain 1900-1940 in 1977. In the 1980s, Clinton wrote books on printed ephemera, libraries, unions, housing and safety at work. His large work, Post Office Workers: A Trade Union And Social History was published in 1984. During the 1970s, Clinton was instrumental in setting up the Workers' Socialist League and devoted much time to its campaigning and publications. In 1982, he was elected to Islington council and almost immediately became chief whip; in 1986, he became deputy leader to Margaret Hodge, and leader himself, 1994-1997. As well as politics, Clinton also taught widely, holding temporary posts at Leeds University, the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Imperial College, South Bank Polytechnic, the Institute of Housing, the Irish Studies Centre and North London Polytechnic. In 1988, he took more permanent employment as a history lecturer at Bristol Polytechnic (subsequently the University of the West of England). Clinton's last work Jean Moulin, 1899-1943: The French Resistance And The Republic was published in 2001. He died in January 2005.
The British Linen Company was incorporated by Royal Charter on 5 Jul 1746, 'to do everything that may conduce to the promoting and carrying on' the manufacture of linen.
Thomas Lloyd Humberstone (1876-1957) was a prominent member of the Convocation of the University of London. He gained a degree in science from the University of London in 1899, although his career as a schoolmaster had begun two years previously. He taught at a number of schools, including Dolgelley (1898-1900) and Highgate School (1903) before taking a job in 1904 in the Office of the Academic Register of the University of London. In the previous year, he had founded the reference book of secondary education, the Schoolmasters Yearbook and Directory. Humberstone was a prolific writer on education and on the University of London in particular: he was frequent contributor to journals such as The Journal of Education.
These materials were collected by Dr Harte for his book, The University of London, 1836-1986 - an illustrated history (1986, Athlone Press).
Brabant was a feudal duchy, centred in Louvain and Brussels. Famed for its democratic and constitutionalist tendencies, it was divided into two parts in the 17th century, the northern section remaining under Dutch control, and the southern eventually becoming part of Belgium. Limburg is a province in northeastern Belgium. It is bounded by the Netherlands on the north and east, where the Meuse River marks the frontier. Largely Flemish-speaking, it was formerly part of the feudal duchy of Limburg, which was divided between Belgium and the Netherlands in 1839.
The volume contains the bookplate of William Lee Antonie, who was a Member of Parliament, and an annotation (probably not in William's hand) which states that the writing of the manuscript appears to be either that of John or Richard Antonie, probably the latter.
No information available at present.
Excise are inland duties levied on articles at the time of their manufacture, notably, alcoholic drinks, but has also included salt, paper and glass. A permanent board of Excise for England and Wales was established in 1683 with separate boards for Ireland in 1682 and Scotland in 1707.
Cosimo de Medici, Duke of Florence from 1537 until his death in 1574, was head of the Florentine Republic, and was assisted in its government by the senate, the assembly and the council. Pisa, intermittently under Florentine control since 1406, was reconquered and occupied by them in 1509.
Rogers Ruding (1751-1820) was educated at Merton College Oxford University, and gained an MA in 1775. A well known numismatist, he was also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Ruding held the living of Malden from 1793. Publications: A proposal for restoring the antient constitution of the mint, so far as relates to the expence of coinage. Together with the outline of a plan for the improvement of the money; and for increasing the difficulty of counterfeiting (London, 1799); Annals of the Coinage of Britain and its dependencies; from the earliest period to the end of the fiftieth year of the reign of his present Majesty (Nichols, Son, and Bentley: London, 1817-19).
Nassau William Senior (1790-1864) was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford University, gaining an MA in 1815. He became a barrister at Lincoln's Inn, London, in 1819. He held the position of Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, 1825-1830 and 1847-1852, and was a member of the Poor Law Commission in 1833, for which he wrote the report (1834). Senior was a Master in Chancery from 1836 to 1855. A list of his publications may be found in the British Library catalogue.
The royal household originated as the sovereign's retinue, and had a purely domestic function until the 12th century, after which it became a mainspring of government. The government departments of the Treasury, the Exchequer and the common law courts all originated there. In the 13th century, under Henry III and Edward I, the Royal Wardrobe became a major financial institution. Used as a war treasury, it acted as paymaster to the major military expeditions commanded by the king. It subsequently declined in importance, being replaced by the Chamber. Separate from the king's Wardrobe was the Great Wardrobe, for army clothing and military stores, peripatetic until 1361 and then at Baynard castle, and the Privy Wardrobe, for bows, arrows, pikes, and other weapons, in the Tower of London.
Petrus Blomevenna (1466-1536) was born at Leyden, and was Prior of the Carthusian monastery of Cologne for 29 years. He composed several religious treatises. Robert de Croy became Bishop of Cambrai in 1519 when his brother Guillaume, who was Bishop of Cambrai and of Toledo, resigned the former office in favour of Robert. Robert died in 1556.
King James VI of Scotland also became King of England in 1603.
In the latter half of the sixteenth century, the craftsmen of Glasgow possessed few governing privileges, most of which belonged exclusively to citizens of merchant rank. Their assertion of rights, however, grew more violent, until eventually the question was submitted to arbitration, the result of which was the award termed 'The Letter of Guildry', which was approved and sanctioned by the Town Council on 16 Feb 1605, and ratified by Parliament in 1672.
The Council of State was set up by Parliamentary ordinance on 13 February 1649 as a successor to the Derby House Committee which had taken over much of the Privy Council's executive role in the State. It was annually renewed by Parliament and insisted on choosing its own President. From May 1649 it was housed at Whitehall. Membership was reduced from 41 to 15 in 1653 when it became the Protector's Council. By 1656 it was being styled the Privy Council. After Richard Cromwell's abdication in 1659 the Council of State was revived and remodelled twice before it relapsed into a Privy Council. It spawned committees, both standing and ad hoc; the former included the Admiralty Committee, set up in 1649.
Early in his adult life Campbell was appointed by Parliament to be Captain of His Majesty's Foot Guards. In 1658 he was imprisoned for not swearing to a renunciation of the Stuarts. After a further sentence was rescinded in 1662 he was restored his grandfather's title of Earl of Argyll and to his estate. In 1664 he gained a place on the Scottish Privy Council, although he was not too concerned with public affairs, turning his attention instead to raising the fallen estate of the family. He faced more controversy and sentencing after disagreements concerning civil servants and clergy having to declare firm adherence to the Protestant religion. Escaping prison Campbell went on to spend some considerable time in Holland. On hearing of the death of Charles he returned to Scotland to attempt an uprising. He was captured and executed on old sentences of false oaths and treason, being beheaded on 30th June 1685.
The Exchequer was responsible for receiving and dispersing the public revenue. The lower Exchequer, or Exchequer of Receipt, closely connected with the permanent Treasury, was an office for the receipt and payment of money. The upper Exchequer was a court sitting twice a year to regulate accounts. The business of the ancient Exchequer was mainly financial, though some judicial business connected with accounts was also conducted. In time the upper Exchequer developed into the judicial system, while the lower Exchequer became the Treasury.
A sinking fund is a fund accumulated and set aside by a corporation or government agency for the purpose of periodically redeeming bonds, debentures, and preferred stocks. The fund is accumulated from earnings, and payments into the fund may be based on either a fixed percentage of the outstanding debt or a fixed percentage of profits. Sinking funds are administered separately from the corporation's working funds by a trust company or a sinking-fund trustee.
Jedburgh is a royal burgh in the Roxburgh district of Scotland.
The Hohenzollern dynasty was prominent in European history, chiefly as the ruling house of Brandenburg-Prussia (1415-1918) and of imperial Germany (1871-1918). Frederick II (1712-1768), also known as Frederick the Great, was King of Prussia from 1740. He was the eldest son of Frederick William I (1688-1740), the second King of Prussia.
The East India Company acted as an agent of British imperialism in India from the early 18th century to the mid-19th century.
Hermetic philosophy is based on a bundle of manuscript purported to have been written by or to report almost at first hand the activities of the legendary priest, prophet, and sage Hermes Trismegistos. These comprised works of revelation on occult, theological and philosophical subjects, most notably alchemy.
No information was discovered at the time of compilation. This work was published in 1836 by Longman.
Godfrey III (1133-1190) was known as the Duke of Lothier (i.e. Lower Lorraine). Territory in Lower Lorraine was contested by the rival houses of Limburg, with continued fighting until a peace in 1155 which split the duchy into Limburg and Brabant. On the death of Godfrey III, his son Henry I took the title of Duke of Brabant.
Secretary hand was a universal hand which could be written easily and read by all. It rose out of the cursive business hands, and became popular during the fifteenth century. Italic hand was another easily written cursive script. It had a distinctive lean, and could be written rapidly with the minimum number of pen lifts. Italic script came to prominence in the fifteenth century and its use continued into the seventeenth century.
Robert of Gloucester (fl 1260-1300) is only known through his vernacular chronicle of English history. It is thought that he may have been a monk of Gloucester.
The Justice of the Peace is a local magistrate empowered chiefly to administer criminal or civil justice in minor cases.
Thomas Park was born in 1759 and spent his early life training to be an engraver. In 1797 he changed his occupation, turning his total attention instead to literature and antiquities. In 1792 he published his first volume of verse. He went on to publish more verse but mainly he edited many historical and literary works. He died in 1834.
The Mappa Mundi is a thirteenth century map bearing the name of 'Richard de Haldingham e de Lafford', who some scholars have identified as Richard de Bello, Prebendary of Lafford, in the diocese of Lincoln. The map has been dated to around 1290.Drawn on a sheet of vellum, the Mappa Mundi depicts a world with Jerusalem at its centre , based on the writings of the fifth century scholar Orosius. It includes drawings and descriptions illustrating man's history, the marvels of the natural world, and the imagined inhabitants of distant lands, though in other respects is relatively geographically accurate.The map is held at Hereford Cathedral.