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The History Channel - Encyclopedia Category: History and Culture > History Date & country: 02/12/2007, UK Words: 25833

Greenwell, Dora
(1821-1882) English poet. Her writings, which have been compared with Christina Rossetti's, are marked by intense religious feeling. Her books of verse include Carmina Crucis 1869 and Camera Obscura 1876. The...

Greenwich Village
In New York City, USA, a section of lower Manhattan (from 14th Street south to Houston Street and from Broadway west to the Hudson River), which from the late 19th century became the bohemian and...

Greenwich, Treaty of
Treaty 1543 between the Scots and Henry VIII under which the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VI, would marry Mary Queen of Scots. The Scots reneged and Henry's attempts to enforce the treaty by a...

Greenwood, Arthur
(1880-1954) British Labour politican. A wartime member of Lloyd George's secretariat, he was member of Parliament for Nelson and Colne 1922-31, and for Wakefield 1932-54. He became deputy leader of the...

Greenwood, Arthur Herbert
(1880-1963) US politician. A lawyer and prosecuting attorney (1916-18), he served as a Democrat representative of Indiana in the US House of Representatives (1923-39) becoming majority whip in 1937....

Greenwood, Walter
(1903-1974) English novelist of the Depression. Personal experience lent authenticity to Love on the Dole 1933, dramatized 1934 and filmed 1941. His other novels, which usually have an element of propaganda,...

Greet, (Philip) Ben
(1857-1936) English actor and theatre manager. He founded the Woodland Players in 1886 and started a long tradition of open-air performances of Shakespeare. He also produced 24 Shakespeare plays at the Old...

Gregoire, Henri
(1750-1831) French politician and ecclesiastic. Born near Luneville, France, and educated for the church, he was a member of the States General of 1789, and was one of the clergy who supported the revolution,...

Gregoriana
Jesuit college founded in Rome as the Collegium Romanum by St Ignatius Loyola in 1551. In 1584 it was made into a university by Pope Gregory XIII. It was the earliest modern seminary and the model...

Gregorovius, Ferdinand
(1821-1891) German historian. Born at Neidenburg, Germany, and educated at Königsberg, he subsequently lived mostly in Italy, devoting himself to the study of Italian history. His Geschichte der Stadt Rom im...

Gregory (I) the Great
(c. 540-604) Pope from 590 who asserted Rome's supremacy and exercised almost imperial powers. In 596 he sent St Augustine to England. He introduced the choral Gregorian chant into the liturgy. His feast day is...

Gregory II
(669-731) Italian pope. He sent Boniface as a missionary to Germany and did all in his power to promote Christianity among the heathen. By his conflict with the Emperor Leo the Isaurian concerning sacred...

Gregory IX
(1147-1241) Pope from 1227. He excommunicated Frederick II for refusing to take part in the crusades, absolved him in 1230, but again excommunicated him in 1239. The emperor marched on Rome in 1241, but Gregory...

Gregory of Nyssa
(died c. 395) Catholic saint, younger brother of St Basil and one of the Cappadocian Fathers of the early Christian church. In 372 Basil consecrated him bishop of Nyssa in Lower Armenia. His writings are...

Gregory of Tours, St
(c. 538-594) French Christian bishop of Tours from 573, author of a History of the Franks. His feast day is 17 November. ...

Gregory Thaumaturgus
(c. 213-270) Catholic saint and father of the Greek church. Born in Pontus, he was a disciple of the theologian Origen, and became bishop of Neocaesarea in 240. His writings include a Confession of Faith and a...

Gregory the Illuminator
(c. 240-322) Catholic saint and Christian apostle of Armenia. He eventually succeeded in converting King Tividates of Armenia to Christianity which then became the official religion of the country. The sermons...

Gregory VII
(c. 1020-1085) Pope from 1073 and Catholic saint. He was chief minister to several popes before his election to the papacy, and was one of the great ecclesiastical reformers. He aroused the imperial wrath by...

Gregory XI
(1330-1378) French pope. Born at Limousin, France, he reformed the monastic orders, tried to make peace between England and France, and at the entreaty of St Catherine of Siena transferred the papal see from...

Gregory XIII
(1502-1585) Pope from 1572 who introduced the reformed Gregorian calendar, still in use, in which a century year is not a leap year unless it is divisible by 400. ...

Gregory XVI
(1765-1846) Pope from 1831. He entered the Camaldolese order, and later was sent to Rome and created cardinal. He suppressed revolution in the Papal States, but his rule...

Gregory, Augusta
(1852-1932) Irish dramatist and folklorist. She was associated with W B Yeats in creating the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1904. Her plays include the comedy Spreading the News (1904) and the...

Gregory, Augustus Charles
(1819-1905) English-born explorer and surveyor in Australia who in 1855-56 led an expedition of scientific exploration which crossed from Victoria River, on the northwest coast of Australia, to Rockhampt ...

Grein, Jacob Thomas (Jack)
(1862-1935) Dutch-born British critic, theatre manager, and dramatist. He established the Independent Theatre Club in London in 1891 to stage quality plays that would not be performed in the commercial...

Grekov, Boris Dmitriyevich
(1882-1953) Soviet historian. He was a pupil of Vasili Klyuchevski. His chief field of research was medieval Russian history, in his works Kievan Russia (1939), Peasants in Russia from the Earliest Times to the...

Grenada
Island country in the Caribbean, the southernmost of the Windward Islands. Government The constitution, which dates from full independence in 1974, provides for a system modelled on that of Britain,...

grenade
Small missile, containing an explosive or other charge, usually thrown (hand grenade) but sometimes fired from a rifle. Hand grenades are generally fitted with a time fuse of about four seconds: a...

Grendel
In the Old English epic poem Beowulf, the male monster that the hero has to kill. ...

Grenfell, George
(1849-1906) English explorer and missionary. In 1874 he went to Cameroon with the Baptist Missionary Society, and explored the country. Four years later he was sent to the lower Congo River, where he made an...

Grenfell, Joyce
(1910-1979) English entertainer. Her comic monologues gently mocked the habits and manners of middle-class, English schoolmistresses and ageing spinster daughters. Her own one-woman shows included Joyce...

Grenfell, Julian Hanry Francis
(1888-1915) English soldier and poet. On the day he was fatally wounded during World War I, his poem `Into Battle` was published in The Times. This verse, and his memory, had a strong effect on many of his...

Grenfell, Wilfred Thomason
(1865-1940) English physician and missionary. His pioneering work in Labrador greatly improved the lot of the local fishermen. He built hospitals, nursing stations, orphanages, schools, and stores. He owned and...

Grenville, George
(1712-1770) English Whig politician, prime minister, and chancellor of the Exchequer, whose introduction of the Stamp Act of 1765 to raise revenue from the colonies was one of the causes of the American...

Grenville, Kate
(1950) Australian writer. Her novel The Idea of Perfection (1999), a modern small-town Australian comedy of manners, won the 2001 Orange Prize for women's fiction, and her historical novel The Secret...

Grenville, Richard
(c. 1541-1591) English naval commander and adventurer who died heroically aboard his ship The Revenge when attacked by Spanish warships. Grenville fought in Hungary and Ireland (1566-69), and was knighted about...

Grenville, William Wyndham
(1759-1834) British Whig politician, home secretary from 1791, foreign secretary from 1794; he resigned along with Prime Minister Pitt the Younger in 1801 over George III's refusal to assent to Catholic...

Gresham, Thomas
(c. 1519-1579) English merchant financier who founded and paid for the Royal Exchange and propounded Gresham's law:`bad money tends to drive out good money from circulation`. He also founded Gresham College in...

Gresham, Walter Q(uintin)
(1832-1895) US jurist and public official. He served as federal district judge (1869-83), postmaster general (1883-84), and secretary of the treasury (1893-95). Having fallen out with the Republicans over...

Gretna Green
Village in Dumfries and Galloway region, Scotland, where runaway marriages were legal after they were banned in England in 1754; all that was necessary was the couple's declaration, before...

Greuze, Jean Baptiste
(1725-1805) French painter. He made his name with sentimental and moralizing genre subjects, such as Paralytic Attended by His Children 1763 (Hermitage, St Petersburg). Very popular in their own day, they...

Greville, Charles Cavendish Fulke
(1794-1865) English diarist. He was private secretary to Earl Bathurst and Clerk of the Council in Ordinary 1821-59, an office which brought him into close contact with all the personalities...

Greville, Fulke
(1554-1628) English poet and courtier. His biography of his friend Philip Sidney, the Life of Sir Philip Sidney (1652), enhanced the posthumous myth surrounding that figure. Greville's other works include...

Grévin, Jacques
(1538-1570) French playwright, poet, and doctor. Like his friend the poet Ronsard, he was an advocate of classical standards in French literature. Among his plays is the tragedy César (1560), which has...

Grew, Joseph Clark
(1880-1965) US diplomat. After World War I, he was secretary to the US Commission to the Versailles Peace Conference and helped to negotiate a treaty with Turkey (1922-23). He was ambassador to Denmark...

grey market
Dealing in shares using methods that are legal but officially frowned upon - for example, before issue and flotation. ...

Grey, (Pearl) Zane
(1872-1939) US author of Westerns. He wrote more than 80 books, including Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), and was primarily responsible for the creation of the Western as a literary genre. ...

Grey, Charles
(1764-1845) British Whig politician. He entered Parliament in 1786, and in 1806 became First Lord of the Admiralty, and foreign secretary soon afterwards. As prime minister 1830-34, he carried the Great...

Grey, Edward
(1862-1933) British Liberal politician, MP for Berwick on Tweed 1885-1916, nephew of Charles Grey. As foreign secretary 1905-16 he negotiated an entente with Russia in 1907, and backed France against...

Grey, George
(1799-1882) British politician. He was appointed judge advocate in 1839, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1841, and, during Lord John Russell's ministry, home secretary in 1846. Under Lord Palmerston he...

Grey, Henry George
(1802-1894) British politician, son of Charles Grey. He served under his father as undersecretary for the colonies 1830-33, resigning because the cabinet would not back t ...

Grey, Lady Jane
(1537-1554) Queen of England for nine days, 10-19 July 1553, the great-granddaughter of Henry VII. She was married in 1553 to Lord Guildford Dudley (died 1554), son of the Duke of Northumberland. Edward VI...

Greys Court
House near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England. The original house was fortified in the 14th century, and part of these fortifications exists today. The present house was built in the 17th...

Grianán of Aileach
Prehistoric cashel or ringfort at the entrance to the Inishowen Peninsula, County Donegal, Republic of Ireland, 10 km/6 mi northwest of Londonderry. Situated on a 240 m-/800 ft-high mound above...

Griboedov, Alexandr Sergeevich
(1798-1829) Russian playwright. His only great work, Woe from Wit (1823), is a satirical verse comedy about Russian high society that was rejected by the censors and not published until 1833. In 1828 Griboedov...

grid system
In archaeology, an excavation technique that aims to include both the vertical and horizontal dimensions by retaining intact baulks (standing sections) of earth between the excavated squares of the...

Gridley, Charles (Vernon)
(1844-1898) US naval officer. Assigned as captain to the Olympia, he was in Manila Bay on 1 May 1898, when Admiral George Dewey gave the famous command, `You may fire when you are ready, Gridley`. Evidently...

Grieg, Nordahl
(1902-1943) Norwegian playwright, novelist, and poet. A tireless worker, his writing, like his journalism, was often sustained by social and political indignation. In Norway he is best remembered as a poet of...

Grier, Robert Cooper
(1794-1870) US Supreme Court justice. He served as president judge of the district court of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania (1833-46), and was appointed by President James Polk to the US Supreme Court...

Grierson, Benjamin Henry
(1826-1911) US soldier. He taught music before joining an Illinois regiment shortly after the outbreak of the American Civil War. Although he claimed to despise horses, he accepted a transfer to the 6th...

Grierson, George Abraham
(1851-1941) British scholar. His monumental Linguistic Survey of India 1903-18 is the first complete and correlated account of the many languages of the Indian subcontinent, and describes and classifies 179...

Grierson, Robert
(c. 1655-1733) Scottish persecutor of the Covenanters. He was especially active in enforcing the Test Act. ...

grievance
Cause of complaint. Sexual harassment or unfair promotion policies may be a source of grievance for workers. They may take this up through their company's grievance procedure, which will often have...

grievance procedure
Formal arrangements with an employer, usually operating through a trade union, for settling employees' grievances. ...

Grieve, Christopher Murray
Real name of Scottish poet Hugh McDiarmid. ...

grievous bodily harm
In English law, very serious physical damage suffered by the victim of a crime. The courts have said that judges should not try to define grievous bodily harm but leave it to the jury to decide. ...

griffin
Mythical monster, the supposed guardian of hidden treasure, with the body, tail, and hind legs of a lion, and the head, forelegs, and wings of an eagle, though in classical times all four legs were...

Griffin, Bernard William
(1899-1956) English cardinal. Born in Birmingham, he was educated at Oscott College and at the English and Beda Colleges in Rome. He was ordained as a priest in 1924 and was administrator of Father Hudson's...

Griffin, Gerald
(1803-1840) Irish novelist and dramatist. Griffin was born and educated in Limerick. His novels and stories capture a teeming Irish life, turbulent and sentimental by turns, in prose which is often vivid, and...

Griffith, Arthur
(1872-1922) Irish journalist, propagandist and politician. He was active in nationalist politics from 1898 and united various nationalist parties to form Sinn Fein 1905. When the provisional Irish parliament...

Griffiths, James
(1890-1975) Welsh miners' leader and politician. A strong believer in a measure of devolution for Wales, he argued for a separate Welsh Office, and became the first secretary of state for Wales 1964-66. Born...

Griffiths, Trevor
(1935) English playwright and television dramatist. His plays explore revolutionary activity, and include Occupations (1970), The Party (1973), and Comedians (1975). He has also written screenplays for...

Grigson, Geoffrey Edward Harvey
(1905-1985) English poet and critic. Early volumes of verse include Under the Cliff 1943 and The Isles of Scilly 1946. He founded and edited the magazine New Verse 1933-39, and compiled several anthologies....

Griliches, (Hirsh) Zvi
(1930) Lithuanian-born US economist. His specialisms include work in econometric methods, agricultural economics, and the economics of technological change. He taught at the University of Chicago...

Grillparzer, Franz
(1791-1872) Austrian poet and dramatist. His plays include the tragedy Die Ahnfrau/The Ancestress (1817), the classical Sappho (1818), and the trilogy Das goldene Vliess/The Golden Fleece (1821). His two...

Grimald, Nicholas
(1519-1562) English poet and theologian. He is remembered for his contributions to Tottel's Songes and Sonettes (1557). He was also the first poet after the Earl of Surrey to use blank verse. Two Latin...

Grimaldi, Joseph
(1779-1837) English clown. Born in London, he was the son of an Italian actor. He appeared on the stage at two years old. He gave his name `Joey` to all later clowns, and excelled as `Mother Goose`,...

Grimani, Cardinal Domenico
(1461-1523) Italian humanist and patron of the arts. He was the son of Doge Antonio Grimani of Venice and served the papal curia, becoming apostolic secretary in 1491. From 1497-1517 he was patriarch of...

Grimes Graves
Neolithic (New Stone Age) flint mines near Weeting, Norfolk, England. They were a major source of material for flint implements such as axes or other tools, where fresh, large pieces of flint were...

Grimes, William Francis
(1905-1988) British archaeologist. As honorary director of excavations for the Roman and Medieval London Excavation Council from 1946, he was responsible for the exploration of the Walbrook Mithraeum (temple...

Grimké, Angelina Emily
(1805-1879) US abolitionist and women's rights advocate. In 1836 the American Anti-Slavery Society published her Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, an abolitionist pamphlet that brought her both...

Grimké, Sarah Moore
(1792-1873) US abolitionist and women's rights activist. In 1836 she published her first major work, Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States, in which she attacked the argument that slavery was justified...

Grimm brothers
Jakob (Ludwig Karl) (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859), philologists and collectors of German fairy tales such as `Hansel and Gretel` and `Rumpelstiltskin`. Joint compilers of an...

Grimshaw, Nicholas Thomas
(1939) English architect. His work has developed along distinctly high-tech lines, for example his Financial Times printing works, London (1988), an uncompromisingly industrial building that exposes...

Grimspound
Bronze Age stronghold near Hamilton Ridge on Dartmoor, Devon, England. The settlement consists of 20 stone huts surrounded by a stone wall about 1.5 m/5 ft high, and is unusual for the strength of...

Grindal, Edmund
(c. 1519-1583) English cleric and archbishop of Canterbury (1575-77). He served as a chaplain to Edward VI and during the reign of Mary I went into exile in Germany where he was influenced by Calvinist views....

Gringore (or Gringoire), Pierre
(c. 1475-c. 1538) French poet and dramatist. His works contain satires on contemporary politics, and his comedies attacked people of all ranks. His chief works are La chasse du cerf...

Grinnell, Josiah (Bushnell)
(1821-1891) US politician, abolitionist, and clergyman. A self-described pioneer, farmer, and radical, he did much to build Iowa agriculturally and through the introduction of the railroads. After being...

Gris, Juan
(1887-1927) Spanish painter, one of the earliest cubists. He developed a distinctive geometrical style, often strongly coloured. He experimented with paper collage and made designs for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets...

grisaille
Monochrome painting in shades of grey, either used as a ground for an oil painting, or as a work of art in its own right simulating the effect of bas relief. The latter technique was...

Griselda
Fictional character of folk-tale origin whose conduct typifies wifely obedience. In the story she is a virtuous and beautiful peasant girl, wooed by the Marquis of Saluzzo. She becomes his wife,...

Grisham, John
(1955) US writer. His courtroom thrillers A Time to Kill (1987), The Firm (1991), The Pelican Brief (1992), The Client (1993), The Chamber (1994), and The Rain Maker (1995) were all bestsellers. Several of...

Griswold v. Connecticut
US Supreme Court decision of 1965 dealing with state bans on the use of birth control. Griswold, the state director of the Planned Parenthood League, was convicted under a Connecticut...

Griswold, John A(ugustus)
(1818-1872) US manufacturer, politician, and philanthropist. After several commercial ventures, he became head of the Rensselaer Iron Works, the Bessemer Steel Works, and other blast furnaces in Troy, New York....

Griswold, Rufus Wilmot
(1815-1857) US anthologist, editor, and literary critic. He was a strong opponent of Americanism in literature and published an anthology of The Poets and Poetry of America (1842). He succeeded Edgar Allan
Grivas, George (Georgios Theodoros)
(1898-1974) Greek Cypriot general who from 1955 led the underground group EOKA's attempts to secure the union (Greek enosis) of Cyprus with Greece. ...

groat
English coin worth four pennies. Although first minted in 1279, the groat only became popular in the following century, when silver groats were produced. Half groats were introduced in 1351. ...

grog
In ceramics, clay that has been fired and ground down into fine granules. Grog may be used as an ingredient in a new clay item, raising the overall firing temperature that it can withstand, and thus...

groin
In architecture, the angular curve made by the intersection of two vaults. In Gothic architecture the groins are always ribbed. See also vault. ...

Grolier, Jean
(1479-1565) French bibliophile and connoisseur of bookbindings. His earlier bindings have simple geometrical designs of interlacing ribbons and solid tools, but later the interlacings grow more complex, are...

Gromyko, Andrei Andreyevich
(1909-1989) President of the USSR 1985-88. As ambassador to the USA from 1943, he took part in the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam conferences; as United Nations representative 1946-49, he exercised the Soviet...