Chapter 19

(W. R. E. H.)

1These words were emended by some authors to readluru mope can ubre, the letters of which can be arranged to givepulvere carbonum.2This represents the composition of English powder at present, and no doubt it has remained the same for a longer time than the above date indicates.3Brown or coco-powder for large charges in guns. The charcoal is not burnt black but roasted until brown, and is made from some variety of straw, not wood.

1These words were emended by some authors to readluru mope can ubre, the letters of which can be arranged to givepulvere carbonum.

2This represents the composition of English powder at present, and no doubt it has remained the same for a longer time than the above date indicates.

3Brown or coco-powder for large charges in guns. The charcoal is not burnt black but roasted until brown, and is made from some variety of straw, not wood.

GUNPOWDER PLOT,the name given to a conspiracy for blowing up King James I. and the parliament on the 5th of November 1605.

To understand clearly the nature and origin of the famous conspiracy, it is necessary to recall the political situation and the attitude of the Roman Catholics towards the government at the accession of James I. The Elizabethan administration had successfully defended its own existence and the Protestant faith against able and powerful antagonists, but this had not been accomplished without enforcing severe measures of repression and punishment upon those of the opposite faith. The beginning of a happier era, however, was expected with the opening of the new reign. The right of James to the crown could be more readily acknowledged by the Romanists than that of Elizabeth: Pope Clement VIII. appeared willing to meet the king half-way. James himself was by nature favourable to the Roman Catholics and had treated the Roman Catholic lords in Scotland with great leniency, in spite of their constant plots and rebellions. Writing to Cecil before his accession he maintained, “I am so far from any intention of persecution as I protest to God I reverence their church as our mother church, although clogged with many infirmities and corruptions, besides that I did ever hold persecution as one of the infallible notes of a false church.” He declared to Northumberland, the kinsman and master of Thomas Percy, the conspirator, “as for the Catholics, I will neither persecute any that will be quiet and give but an outward obedience to the law, neither will I spare to advance any of them that will be of good service and worthily deserved.” It is probable that these small but practical concessions would have satisfied the lay Roman Catholics and the secular priests, but they were very far from contenting the Jesuits, by whom the results of such leniency were especially feared: “What rigour of laws would not compass in so many years,” wrote Henry Tichborne, the Jesuit, in 1598, “this liberty and lenity will effectuate in 20 days, to wit the disfurnishing of the seminaries, the disanimating of men to come and others to return, the expulsion of the society and confusion as in Germany, extinction of zeal and favour, disanimation of princes from the hot pursuit of the enterprise.... We shall be left as a prey to the wolves that will besides drive our greatest patron [the king of Spain] to stoop to a peace which will be the utter ruin of our edifice, this many years in building.” Unfortunately, about this time the Jesuits, who thus thrived on political intrigue, and who were deeply implicated in treasonable correspondence with Spain, had obtained a complete ascendancy over the secular priests, who were for obeying the civil government as far as possible and keeping free from politics. The time, therefore, as far as the Roman Catholics themselves were concerned, was not a propitious one for introducing the moderate concessions which alone James had promised: James, too, on his side, found that religious toleration, though clearly sound in principle, was difficult in practice. During the first few months of the reign all went well. In July 1603 the fines for recusancy were remitted. In January 1604 peaceable Roman Catholics could live unmolested and “serve God according to their consciences without any danger.” But James’s expectations that the pope would prevent dangerous and seditious persons from entering the country were unfulfilled and the numbers of the Jesuits and the Roman Catholics greatly increased. Rumours of plots came to hand. Cecil, though like his master naturally in favour of toleration, with his experience gained in the reign of Elizabeth, was alarmed at the policy pursued and its results, and great anxiety was aroused in the government and nation, which was in the end shared by the king. It was determined finally to return to the earlier policy of repression. On the 22nd of February 1604 a proclamation was issued banishing priests; on the 28th of November 1604, recusancy fines were demanded from 13 wealthy persons, and on the 10th of February 1605 the penal laws were ordered to be executed. The plot, however, could not have been occasioned by these measures, for it had been already conceived in the mind of Robert Catesby. It was aimed at the repeal of the whole Elizabethan legislation against the Roman Catholics and perhaps derived some impulse at first from the leniency lately shown by the administration, afterwards gaining support from the opposite cause, the return of the government to the policy of repression.

It was in May 1603 that Catesby told Percy, in reply to the latter’s declaration of his intention to kill the king, that he was “thinking of a most sure way.” Subsequently, about the 1st of November 1603, Catesby sent a message to his cousin Robert Winter at Huddington, near Worcester, to come to London, which the latter refused. On the arrival of a second urgent summons shortly afterwards he obeyed, and was then at a house at Lambeth, probably in January 1604, initiated by Catesby together with John Wright into the plot to blow up the parliament house. Before putting this plan into execution, however,it was decided to try a “quiet way”; and Winter was sent over to Flanders to obtain the good offices of Juan de Velasco, duke of Frias and constable of Castile, who had arrived there to conduct the negotiations for a peace between England and Spain, in order to obtain the repeal of the penal laws. Winter, having secured nothing but vain promises from the constable, returned to England about the end of April, bringing with him Guy Fawkes, a man devoted to the Roman Catholic cause and recommended for undertaking perilous adventures. Subsequently the three and Thomas Percy, who joined the conspiracy in May, met in a house behind St Clement’s and, having taken an oath of secrecy together, heard Mass and received the Sacrament in an adjoining apartment from a priest stated by Fawkes to have been Father Gerard. Later several other persons were included in the plot, viz. Winter’s brother Thomas, John Grant, Ambrose Rokewood, Robert Keyes, Sir Everard Digby, Francis Tresham, a cousin of Catesby and Thomas Bates Catesby’s servant, all, with the exception of the last, being men of good family and all Roman Catholics. Father Greenway and Father Garnet, the Jesuits, were both cognisant of the plot (seeGarnet, Henry). On the 24th of May 1604 a house was hired in Percy’s name adjoining the House of Lords, from the cellar of which they proposed to work a mine. They began on the 11th of December 1604, and by about March had got half-way through the wall. They then discovered that a vault immediately under the House of Lords was available. This was at once hired by Percy, and 36 barrels of gunpowder, amounting to about 1 ton and 12 cwt., were brought in and concealed under coal and faggots. The preparations being completed in May the conspirators separated. Fawkes was despatched to Flanders, where he imparted the plot to Hugh Owen, a zealous Romanist intriguer. Sir Edmund Baynham was sent on a mission to Rome to be at hand when the news came to gain over the pope to the cause of the successful conspirators. An understanding was arrived at with several officers levied for the service of the archduke, that they should return at once to England when occasion arose of defending the Roman Catholic cause. A great hunting match was organized at Danchurch in Warwickshire by Digby, to which large numbers of the Roman Catholic gentry were invited, who were to join the plot after the successful accomplishment of the explosion of the 5th of November, the day fixed for the opening of parliament, and get possession of the princess Elizabeth, then residing in the neighbourhood; while Percy was to seize the infant prince Charles and bring him on horseback to their meeting-place. Guy Fawkes himself was to take ship immediately for Flanders, spread the news on the continent and get supporters. The conspirators imagined that a terrorized and helpless government would readily agree to all their demands. Hitherto the secret had been well kept and the preparations had been completed with extraordinary success and without a single drawback; but a very serious difficulty now confronted the conspirators as the time for action arrived, and disturbed their consciences. The feelings of ordinary humanity shrunk from the destruction of so many persons guiltless of any offence. But in addition, among the peers to be assassinated were included many Roman Catholics and some lords nearly connected in kinship or friendship with the plotters themselves. Several appeals, however, made to Catesby to allow warning to be given to certain individuals were firmly rejected.

On the 26th of October Lord Monteagle, a brother-in-law of Francis Tresham, who had formerly been closely connected with some of the other conspirators and had engaged in Romanist plots against the government, but who had given his support to the new king, unexpectedly ordered supper to be prepared at his house at Haxton, from which he had been absent for more than a year. While at supper about 6 o’clock an anonymous letter was brought by an unknown messenger which, having glanced at, he handed to Ward, a gentleman of his service and an intimate friend of Winter, the conspirator, to be read aloud. The celebrated letter ran as follows:—

“My lord, out of the love I bear to some of your friends, I have a care for your preservation. Therefore I would advise you, as you tender your life, to devise some excuse to shift of your attendance of this Parliament, for God and man hath concurred to punish the wickedness of this time. And think not slightly of this advertisement, but retire yourself into your country, where you may expect the event in safety, for though there be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow the Parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them. This counsel is not to be contemned, because it may do you good and can do you no harm, for the danger is past as soon as you have burnt the letter: and I hope God will give you the grace to make good use of it, to whose holy protection I commend you.”

The authorship of the letter has never been disclosed or proved, but all evidence seems to point to Tresham, and to the probability that he had some days before warned Monteagle and agreed with him as to the best means of making known the plot and preventing its execution, and at the same time of giving the conspirators time to escape (seeTresham, Francis).

Monteagle at once started for Whitehall, found Salisbury and other ministers about to sit down to supper, and showed the letter, whereupon it was decided to search the cellar under the House of Lords before the meeting of parliament, but not too soon, so that the plot might be ripe and be fully disclosed. Meanwhile Ward, on the 27th of October, as had evidently been intended, informed Winter that the plot was known, and on the 28th Winter informed Catesby and begged him to give up the whole project. Catesby, however, after some hesitation, finding from Fawkes that nothing had been touched in the cellar, and prevailed upon by Percy, determined to stand firm, hoping that the government had put no credence in Monteagle’s letter, and Fawkes returned to the cellar to keep guard as before. On the 4th the king, having been shown the letter, ordered the earl of Suffolk, as lord chamberlain, to examine the buildings. He was accompanied by Monteagle. On arriving at the cellar, the door was opened to him by Fawkes. Seeing the enormous piles of faggots he asked the name of their owner, to which Fawkes replied that they belonged to Percy. His name immediately aroused suspicions, and accordingly it was ordered that a further search should be made by Thomas Knyvett, a Westminster magistrate who, coming with his men at night, discovered the gunpowder and arrested Fawkes on the threshold.

The opinion that the whole plot was the work of Salisbury, that he acted as anagent provocateurand lured on his victims to destruction, repeated by some contemporary and later writers and recently formulated and urged with great ability, has no solid foundation. Nor is it even probable that he was aware of its existence till he received Monteagle’s letter. Even after its reception complete belief was not placed in the warning. A search was made only to make sure that nothing was wrong and guided only by Monteagle’s letter, while no attempt was made to seize the conspirators. The steps taken by Salisbury after the discovery of the gunpowder do not show the possession of any information of the plot or of the persons who were its chief agents outside Fawkes’s first statement, and his knowledge is seen to develop according to the successive disclosures and confessions of the latter. Thus on the 7th of November he had no knowledge of themine, and it is only after Fawkes’s examination by torture on the 9th, when the names of the conspirators were drawn from him, that the government was able to classify them according to their guilt and extent of their participation. The inquiry was not conducted by Salisbury alone, but by several commissioners, some of whom were Roman Catholics, and many rivals and secret enemies. To conceal his intrigue from all these would have been impossible, and that he should have put himself in their power to such an extent is highly improbable. Again, the plan agreed upon for disclosing the plot was especially designed to allow the conspirators to escape, and therefore scarcely a method which would have been arranged with Salisbury. Not one of the conspirators, even when all hope of saving life was gone, made any accusation against Salisbury or the government and all died expressing contrition for their crime. Lastly Salisbury had no conceivable motive in concocting a plot of this description. His political power and position in the new reign had been already secured and by very different methods. He was now at the height of his influence, having been created Viscount Cranbornein August 1604 and earl of Salisbury in May 1605; and James had already, more than 16 months before the discovery of the plot, consented to return to the repressive measures against the Romanists. The success with which the conspirators concealed their plot from Salisbury’s spies is indeed astonishing, but is probably explained by its very audacity and by the absence of incriminating correspondence, the medium through which the minister chiefly obtained his knowledge of the plans of his enemies.

On the arrest of Fawkes the other conspirators, except Tresham, fled in parties by different ways, rejoining each other in Warwickshire, as had been agreed in case the plot had been successful. Catesby, who with some others had covered the distance of 80 m. between London and his mother’s house at Ashby St Legers in eight hours, informed his friends in Warwickshire, who had been awaiting the issue of the plot, of its failure, but succeeded in persuading Sir Everard Digby, by an unscrupulous falsehood, to further implicate himself in his hopeless cause by assuring him that both James and Salisbury were dead; and, according to Father Garnet, this was not the first time that Catesby had been guilty of lies in order to draw men into the plot. He pushed on the same day with his companions in the direction of Wales, where, it was hoped, they would be joined by bands of insurgents. They arrived at Huddington at 2 in the afternoon. On the morning of the 7th the band, numbering about 36 persons, confessed and heard Mass, and then rode away to Holbeche, 2 m. from Stourbridge, in Staffordshire, the house of Stephen Littleton, who had been present at the hunting at Danchurch (seeDigby, Everard), where they arrived at 10 o’clock at night, having on their way broken into Lord Windsor’s house at Hewell Grange and taken all the armour they found there. Their case was now desperate. None had joined them: “Not one came to take our part,” said Sir Everard Digby, “though we had expected so many.” They were being followed by the sheriff and all the forces of the county. All spurned them from their doors when they applied for succour. One by one their followers fled from the house in which the last scene was to be played out. They now began to feel themselves abandoned not only by man but by God; for an explosion of some of their gunpowder, on the morning of the 8th, by which Catesby and some others were scorched, struck terror into their hearts as a judgment from heaven. The assurance of innocence and of a just cause which till now had alone supported them was taken away. The greatness of their crime, its true nature, now struck home to them, and the few moments which remained to them of life were spent in prayer and in repentance. The supreme hour had now arrived. About 11 o’clock the sheriff and his men came up and immediately began firing into the house. Catesby, Percy and the two Wrights were killed, Winter and Rokewood wounded and taken prisoners with the men who still adhered to them. In all eight of the conspirators, including the two Winters, Digby, Fawkes, Rokewood, Keyes and Bates, were executed, while Tresham died in the Tower. Of the priests involved, Garnet was tried and executed, while Greenway and Gerard succeeded in escaping.

So ended the strange and famous Gunpowder Plot. However atrocious its conception and its aims, it is impossible not to feel, together with horror for the deed, some pity and admiration for the guilty persons who took part in it. “Theirs was a crime which it would never have entered into the heart of any man to commit who was not raised above the lowness of the ordinary criminal.” They sinned not against the light but in the dark. They erred from ignorance, from a perverted moral sense rather than from any mean or selfish motive, and exhibited extraordinary courage and self-sacrifice in the pursuit of what seemed to them the cause of God and of their country. Their punishment was terrible. Not only had they risked and lost all in the attempt and drawn upon themselves the frightful vengeance of the state, but they saw themselves the means of injuring irretrievably the cause for which they felt such devotion. Nothing could have been more disastrous to the cause of the Roman Catholics than their crime. The laws against them were immediately increased in severity, and the gradual advance towards religious toleration was put back for centuries. In addition a new, increased and long-enduring hostility was aroused in the country against the adherents of the old faith, not unnatural in the circumstances, but unjust and undiscriminating, because while some of the Jesuits were no doubt implicated, the secular priests and Roman Catholic laity as a whole had taken no part in the conspiracy.

Bibliography.—The recent controversy concerning the nature and origin of the plot can be followed inWhat was the Gunpowder Plot?by John Gerard, S.J. (1897);What Gunpowder Plot was, by S. R. Gardiner (a rejoinder) (1897);The Gunpowder Plot ... in reply to Professor Gardiner, by John Gerard, S.J. (1897);Thomas Winter’s Confession and the Gunpowder Plot, by John Gerard, S.J. (with facsimiles of his writing) (1898);Eng. Hist. Rev.iii. 510 and xii. 791;Edinburgh Review, clxxxv. 183;Athenaeum1897, ii. 149, 785, 855; 1898, i. 23, ii. 352, 420;Academy, vol. 52 p. 84;The Nation, vol. 65 p. 400. A considerable portion of the controversy centres round the question of the authenticity of Thomas Winter’s confession, the MS. of which is at Hatfield, supported by Professor Gardiner, but denied by Father Gerard principally on account of the document having been signed “Winter” instead of “Wintour,” the latter apparently being the conspirator’s usual style of signature. The document was deposited by the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury for inspection at the Record Office, and was pronounced by two experts, one from the British Museum and another from the Record Office, to be undoubtedly genuine. The cause of the variation in the signature still remains unexplained, but ceases to have therefore any great historical importance. The bibliography of the contemporary controversy is given in the article on Henry Garnet in theDictionary of National Biographyand inThe Gunpowder Plotby David Jardine (1857), the latter work still remaining the principal authority on the subject; add to these Gardiner’sHist. of England, i., where an excellent account is given;History of the Jesuits in England, by Father Ethelred Taunton (1901); Father Gerard’sNarrative in Condition of the Catholics under James I.(1872), and Father Greenway’s Narrative inTroubles of our Catholic Forefathers, 1st series (1872), interesting as contemporary accounts, but not to be taken as complete or infallible authorities, of the same nature beingHistoria Provinciae Anglicanae Societatis Jesu, by Henry More, S.J. (1660), pp. 309 et seq.; also History of Great Britain, by John Speed (1611), pp. 839 et seq.;Archaeologia, xii. 200, xxviii. 422, xxix. 80;Harleian Miscellany(1809), iii. 119-135, orSomers Tracts(1809), ii. 97-117; M. A. Tierney’s ed. ofDodd’s Church History, vol. iv. (1841);Treason and Plot, by Martin Hume (1901);Notes and Queries, 7 ser. vi., 8 ser. iv. 408, 497, v. 55, xii. 505, 9 ser. xi. 115;Add. MSS. Brit. Mus.6178;State Trials, ii.;Calendar of State Pap. Dom.(1603-1610), and the official account,A True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings against the late most Barbarous Traitors(1606), a neither true nor complete narrative however, now superseded as an authority, reprinted asThe Gunpowder Treason ...with additions in 1679 by Thomas Barlow, bishop of Lincoln. A large number of letters and papers in the State Paper Office relating to the plot were collected in one volume in 1819, called theGunpowder Plot Book; these are noted in their proper place in the printed calendars of State Papers, Domestic Series; see also articles onFawkes, Guy;Tresham, Francis;Monteagle, William Parker, 4th Baron;Percy, Thomas;Catesby, Robert;Garnet, Henry;Digby, Sir Everard.

(P. C. Y.)

GUN-ROOM,a ship cabin occupied by the officers below the rank of lieutenant, but who are not warrant officers of the class of the boatswain, gunner or carpenter. In the wooden sailing ships it was on the lower deck, and was originally the quarters of the gunner.

GUNTER, EDMUND(1581-1626), English mathematician, of Welsh extraction, was born in Hertfordshire in 1581. He was educated at Westminster school, and in 1599 was elected a student of Christ Church, Oxford. He took orders, became a preacher in 1614, and in 1615 proceeded to the degree of bachelor in divinity. Mathematics, however, which had been his favourite study in youth, continued to engross his attention, and on the 6th of March 1619 he was appointed professor of astronomy in Gresham College, London. This post he held till his death on the 10th of December 1626. With Gunter’s name are associated several useful inventions, descriptions of which are given in his treatises on theSector, Cross-staff, Bow, Quadrant and other Instruments. He contrived his sector about the year 1606, and wrote a description of it in Latin, but it was more than sixteen years afterwards before he allowed the book to appear in English. In 1620 he published hisCanon triangulorum(seeLogarithms). There is reason to believe that Gunter was the first to discover (in 1622 or 1625) that the magnetic needle does not retain the same declination in the same place at all times. By desire ofJames I. he published in 1624The Description and Use of His Majestie’s Dials in Whitehall Garden, the only one of his works which has not been reprinted. He introduced the words cosine and cotangent, and he suggested to Henry Briggs, his friend and colleague, the use of the arithmetical complement (see Brigg’sArithmetica Logarithmica, cap. xv.). His practical inventions are briefly noticed below:

Gunter’s Chain, the chain in common use for surveying, is 22 yds. long and is divided into 100 links. Its usefulness arises from its decimal or centesimal division, and the fact that 10 square chains make an acre.Gunter’s Line, a logarithmic line, usually laid down upon scales, sectors, &c. It is also calledthe line of linesandthe line of numbers, being only the logarithms graduated upon a ruler, which therefore serves to solve problems instrumentally in the same manner as logarithms do arithmetically.Gunter’s Quadrant, an instrument made of wood, brass or other substance, containing a kind of stereographic projection of the sphere on the plane of the equinoctial, the eye being supposed to be placed in one of the poles, so that the tropic, ecliptic, and horizon form the arcs of circles, but the hour circles are other curves, drawn by means of several altitudes of the sun for some particular latitude every year. This instrument is used to find the hour of the day, the sun’s azimuth, &c., and other common problems of the sphere or globe, and also to take the altitude of an object in degrees.Gunter’s Scale(generally called by seamen theGunter) is a large plane scale, usually 2 ft. long by about 1½ in. broad, and engraved with various lines of numbers. On one side are placed the natural lines (as the line of chords, the line of sines, tangents, rhumbs, &c.), and on the other side the corresponding artificial or logarithmic ones. By means of this instrument questions in navigation, trigonometry, &c., are solved with the aid of a pair of compasses.

Gunter’s Line, a logarithmic line, usually laid down upon scales, sectors, &c. It is also calledthe line of linesandthe line of numbers, being only the logarithms graduated upon a ruler, which therefore serves to solve problems instrumentally in the same manner as logarithms do arithmetically.

Gunter’s Quadrant, an instrument made of wood, brass or other substance, containing a kind of stereographic projection of the sphere on the plane of the equinoctial, the eye being supposed to be placed in one of the poles, so that the tropic, ecliptic, and horizon form the arcs of circles, but the hour circles are other curves, drawn by means of several altitudes of the sun for some particular latitude every year. This instrument is used to find the hour of the day, the sun’s azimuth, &c., and other common problems of the sphere or globe, and also to take the altitude of an object in degrees.

Gunter’s Scale(generally called by seamen theGunter) is a large plane scale, usually 2 ft. long by about 1½ in. broad, and engraved with various lines of numbers. On one side are placed the natural lines (as the line of chords, the line of sines, tangents, rhumbs, &c.), and on the other side the corresponding artificial or logarithmic ones. By means of this instrument questions in navigation, trigonometry, &c., are solved with the aid of a pair of compasses.

GÜNTHER, JOHANN CHRISTIAN(1695-1723), German poet, was born at Striegau in Lower Silesia on the 8th of April 1695. After attending the gymnasium at Schweidnitz, he was sent in 1715 by his father, a country doctor, to study medicine at Wittenberg; but he was idle and dissipated, had no taste for the profession chosen for him, and came to a complete rupture with his family. In 1717 he went to Leipzig, where he was befriended by J. B. Mencke (1674-1732), who recognized his genius; and there he published a poem on the peace of Passarowitz (concluded between the German emperor and the Porte in 1718) which acquired him reputation. A recommendation from Mencke to Frederick Augustus II. of Saxony, king of Poland, proved worse than useless, as Günther appeared at the audience drunk. From that time he led an unsettled and dissipated life, sinking ever deeper into the slough of misery, until he died at Jena on the 15th of March 1723, when only in his 28th year. Goethe pronounces Günther to have been a poet in the fullest sense of the term. His lyric poems as a whole give evidence of deep and lively sensibility, fine imagination, clever wit, and a true ear for melody and rhythm; but an air of cynicism is more or less present in most of them, and dull or vulgar witticisms are not infrequently found side by side with the purest inspirations of his genius.

Günther’s collected poems were published in four volumes (Breslau, 1723-1735). They are also included in vol. vi. of Tittmann’sDeutsche Dichter des 17ten Jahrh.(Leipzig, 1874), and vol. xxxviii. of Kürschner’sDeutsche Nationalliteratur(1883). A pretended autobiography of Günther appeared at Schweidnitz in 1732, and a life of him by Siebrand at Leipzig in 1738. See Hoffmann von Fallersleben,J. Ch. Günther(Breslau, 1833); O. Roquette,Leben und Dichten J. Ch. Günthers(Stuttgart, 1860); M. Kalbeck,Neue Beiträge zur Biographie des Dichters C. Günther(Breslau, 1879).

GÜNTHER OF SCHWARZBURG(1304-1349), German king, was a descendant of the counts of Schwarzburg and the younger son of Henry VII., count of Blankenburg. He distinguished himself as a soldier, and rendered good service to the emperor Louis IV., on whose death in 1347 he was offered the German throne, after it had been refused by Edward III., king of England. He was elected German king at Frankfort on the 30th of January 1349 by four of the electors, who were partisans of the house of Wittelsbach and opponents of Charles of Luxemburg, afterwards the emperor Charles IV. Charles, however, won over many of Günther’s adherents, defeated him at Eltville, and Günther, who was now seriously ill, renounced his claims for the sum of 20,000 marks of silver. He died three weeks afterwards at Frankfort, and was buried in the cathedral of that city, where a statue was erected to his memory in 1352.

See Graf L. Ütterodt zu Scharffenberg,Günther, Graf von Schwarzburg, erwählter deutscher König(Leipzig, 1862); and K. Janson,Das Königtum Günthers von Schwarzburg(Leipzig, 1880).

GUNTRAM,orGontran(561-592), king of Burgundy, was one of the sons of Clotaire I. On the death of his father (561) he and his three brothers divided the Frankish realm between them, Guntram receiving as his share the valleys of the Saône and Rhone, together with Berry and the town of Orleans, which he made his capital. On the death of Charibert (567), he further obtained thecivitatesof Saintes, Angoulême and Périgueux. During the civil war which broke out between the kings of Neustria and Austrasia, his policy was to try to maintain a state of equilibrium. After the assassination of Sigebert (575), he took the youthful Childebert II. under his protection, and, thanks to his assistance against the intrigues of the great lords, the latter was able to maintain his position in Austrasia. After the death of Chilperic (584) he protected the young Clotaire II. in the same way, and prevented Childebert from seizing his dominions. His course was rendered easier by the fact that his own sons had died; consequently, having an inheritance at his disposal, he was able to offer it to whichever of his nephews he wished. The danger to the Frankish realm caused by the expedition of Gundobald (585), and the anxiety which was caused him by the revolts of the great lords in Austrasia finally decided him in favour of Childebert. He adopted him as his son, and recognized him as his heir at the treaty of Andelot (587); he also helped him to crush the great lords, especially Ursion and Berthefried, who were conquered in la Woëvre. From this time on he ceased to play a prominent part in the affairs of Austrasia. He died in 592, and Childebert received his inheritance without opposition. Gregory of Tours is very indulgent to Guntram, who showed himself on occasions generous towards the church; he almost always calls him “good king Guntram,” and in his writings are to be found such phrases as “good king Guntram took as his servant a concubine Veneranda” (iv. 25); but Guntram was really no better than the other kings of his age; he was cruel and licentious, putting hiscubiculariusCondo to death, for instance, because he was suspected of having killed a buffalo in the Vosges. He was moreover a coward, and went in such constant terror of assassination that he always surrounded himself with a regular bodyguard.

See Krusch, “Zur Chronologie der merowingischen Könige,” in theForschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, xxii. 451-490; Ulysse Chevalier,Bio-bibliographie(2nd ed.), s.v. “Guntram.”

(C. Pf.)

GUNTUR,a town and district of British India, in the Madras presidency. The town (pop. in 1901, 30,833) has a station on the Bellary-Bezwada branch of the Southern Mahratta railway. It is situated east of the Kondavid hills, and is very healthy. It appears to have been founded in the 18th century by the French. At the time of the cession of the Circars to the English in 1765, Guntur was specially exempted during the life of Basalat Jang, whose personaljagirit was. In 1788 it came into British possession, the cession being finally confirmed in 1823. It has an important trade in cotton, with presses and ginning factories. There is a second-grade college supported by the American Lutheran Mission. Until 1859, Guntur was the headquarters of a district of the same name, and in 1904 a newDistrict of Gunturwas constituted, covering territory which till then had been divided between Kistna and Nellore. Area, 5733 sq. m. The population on this area in 1901 was 1,490,635. The district is bounded on the E. and N. by the river Kistna; in the W. a considerable part of the boundary is formed by the Gundlakamma river. The greater part consists of a fertile plain irrigated by canals from the Kistna, and producing cotton, rice and other crops.

GUPTA,an empire and dynasty of northern India, which lasted from aboutA.D.320 to 480. The dynasty was founded by Chandragupta I., who must not be confounded with his famous predecessor Chandragupta Maurya. He gave his name to the Gupta era, which continued in use for several centuries, datingfrom the 26th of February,A.D.320. Chandragupta was succeeded by Samudragupta (c.A.D.326-375), one of the greatest of Indian kings, who conquered nearly the whole of India, and whose alliances extended from the Oxus to Ceylon; but his name was at one time entirely lost to history, and has only been recovered of recent years from coins and inscriptions. His empire rivalled that of Asoka, extending from the Hugli on the east to the Jumna and Chambal on the west, and from the foot of the Himalayas on the north to the Nerbudda on the south. His son Chandragupta II. (c.A.D.375-413) was also known as Vikra-Maditya (q.v.), and seems to have been the original of the mythical Hindu king of that name. About 388 he conquered the Saka satrap of Surashtra (Kathiawar) and penetrated to the Arabian Sea. His administration is described in the work of Fa-hien, the earliest Chinese pilgrim, who visited India inA.D.405-411. Pataliputra was the capital of the dynasty, but Ajodhya seems to have been sometimes used by both Samudragupta and Chandragupta II. as the headquarters of government. The Gupta dynasty appears to have fostered a revival of Brahmanism at the expense of Buddhism, and to have given an impulse to art and literature. The golden age of the empire lasted fromA.D.330 to 455, beginning to decline after the latter date. When Skandagupta came to the throne in 455, India was threatened with an irruption of the White Huns, on whom he inflicted a severe defeat, thus saving his kingdom for a time; but about 470 the White Huns (seeEphthalites) returned to the attack, and the empire was gradually destroyed by their repeated inroads. When Skandagupta died about 480, the Gupta empire came to an end, but the dynasty continued to rule in the eastern provinces for several generations. The last known prince of the imperial line of Guptas was Kamaragupta II. (c.535), after whom it passed “by an obscure transition” into a dynasty of eleven Gupta princes, known as “the later Guptas of Magadha,” who seem for the most part to have been merely local rulers of Magadha. One of them, however, Adityasena, after the death of the paramount sovereign in 648, asserted his independence. The last known Gupta king was Jivitagupta II., who reigned early in the 8th century. About the middle of the century Magadha passed under the sway of the Pal kings of Bengal.

See J. F. Fleet,Gupta Inscriptions(1888); and Vincent A. Smith,The Early History of India(2nd ed., Oxford, 1908), pp. 264-295.

GURA, EUGEN(1842-1906), German singer, was born near Saatz in Bohemia, and educated at first for the career of a painter at Vienna and Munich; but later, developing a fine baritone voice, he took up singing and studied it at the Munich Conservatorium. In 1865 he made his début at the Munich opera, and in the following years he gained the highest reputation in Germany, being engaged principally at Leipzig till 1876 and then at Hamburg till 1883. He sang in 1876 in theRingat Bayreuth, and was famous for his Wagnerian rôles; and his Hans Sachs inMeistersinger, as performed in London in 1882, was magnificent. In later years he showed the perfection of art in his singing of GermanLieder. He died in Bavaria on the 26th of August 1906.

GURDASPUR,a town and district of British India, in the Lahore division of the Punjab. The town had a population in 1901 of 5764. It has a fort (now containing a Brahman monastery) which was famous for the siege it sustained in 1712 from the Moguls. The Sikh leader, Banda, was only reduced by starvation, when he and his men were tortured to death after capitulating.

TheDistrictcomprises an area of 1889 sq. m. It is bounded on the N. by the native states of Kashmir and Chamba, on the E. by Kangra district and the river Beas, on the S.W. by Amritsar district, and on the W. by Sialkot, and occupies the submontane portion of the Bari Doab, or tract between the Beas and the Ravi. An intrusive spur of the British dominions runs northward into the lower Himalayan ranges, to include the mountain sanatorium of Dalhousie, 7687 ft. above sea-level. This station, which has a large fluctuating population during the warmer months, crowns the most westerly shoulder of a magnificent snowy range, the Dhaoladhar, between which and the plain two minor ranges intervene. Below the hills stretches a picturesque and undulating plateau covered with abundant timber, made green by a copious rainfall, and watered by the streams of the Bari Doab, which, diverted by dams and embankments, now empty their waters into the Beas directly, in order that their channels may not interfere with the Bari Doab canal. The district contains several largejhilsor swampy lakes, and is famous for its snipe-shooting. It is historically important in connexion with the rise of the Sikh confederacy. The whole of the Punjab was then distributed among the Sikh chiefs who triumphed over the imperial governors. In the course of a few years, however, the maharaja Ranjit Singh acquired all the territory which those chiefs had held. Pathankot and the neighbouring villages in the plain, together with the whole hill portion of the district, formed part of the area ceded by the Sikhs to the British after the first Sikh war in 1846. In 1862, after receiving one or two additions, the district was brought into its present shape. In 1901 the population was 940,334, showing a slight decrease, compared with an increase of 15% in the previous decade. A branch of the North-Western railway runs through the district. The largest town and chief commercial centre is Batala. There are important woollen mills at Dhariwal, and besides their products the district exports cotton, sugar, grain and oil-seeds.

GURGAON,a town and district of British India, in the Delhi division of the Punjab. The town (pop. in 1901, 4765) is the headquarters of the district, but is otherwise unimportant. The district has an area of 1984 sq. m. It is bounded on the N. by Rohtak, on the W. and S.W. by portions of the Alwar, Nabha and Jind native states, on the S. by the Muttra district of the United Provinces, on the E. by the river Jumna and on the N.E. by Delhi. It comprises the southernmost corner of the Punjab province, stretching away from the level plain towards the hills of Rajputana. Two low rocky ranges enter its borders from the south and run northward in a bare and unshaded mass toward the plain country. East of the western ridge the valley is wide and open, extending to the banks of the Jumna. To the west lies the subdivision of Rewari, consisting of a sandy plain dotted with isolated hills. Numerous torrents carry off the drainage from the upland ranges, and the most important among them empty themselves at last into the Najafgarhjhil. This swampy lake lies to the east of the civil station of Gurgaon, and stretches long arms into the neighbouring districts of Delhi and Rohtak. Salt is manufactured in wells at several villages. The mineral products are iron ore, copper ore, plumbago and ochre.

In 1803 Gurgaon district passed into the hands of the British after Lord Lake’s conquests. On the outbreak of the Mutiny in May 1857, the nawab of Farukhnagar, the principal feudatory of the district, rose in rebellion. The Meos and many Rajput families followed his example. A faithful native officer preserved the public buildings and records at Rewari from destruction; but with this exception, British authority became extinguished for a time throughout Gurgaon. After the fall of the rebel capital, a force marched into the district and either captured or dispersed the leaders of rebellion. The territory of the nawab was confiscated on account of his participation in the Mutiny. Civil administration was resumed under orders from the Punjab government, to which province the district was formally annexed on the final pacification of the country. The population in 1901 was 746,208, showing an increase of 11% in the decade. The largest town and chief trade centre is Rewari. The district is now traversed by several lines of railway, and irrigation is provided by the Agra canal. The chief trade is in cereals, but hardware is also exported.

GURKHA(pronouncedgóorka; from Sans.gāu, a cow, andraks, to protect), the ruling Hindu race in Nepal (q.v.). The Gurkhas, or Gurkhalis, claim descent from the rajas of Chitor in Rajputana. When driven out of their own country by the Mahommedan invasion, they took refuge in the hilly districts about Kumaon, whence they gradually invaded the country to the eastward as far as Gurkha, Noakote and ultimately to the valley of Nepal and even Sikkim. They were stopped by the English in an attempt to push south, and the treaty of Segauli,which ended the Gurkha War of 1814, definitely limited their territorial growth. The Gurkhas of the present day remain Hindus by religion, but show in their appearance a strong admixture of Mongolian blood. They make splendid infantry soldiers, and by agreement with their government about 20,000 have been recruited for the Gurkha regiments of the Indian army. As a rule they are bold, enduring, faithful, frank, independent and self-reliant. They despise other Orientals, but admire and fraternize with Europeans, whose tastes in sport and war they share. They strongly resemble the Japanese, but are of a sturdier build. Their national weapon is thekukri, a heavy curved knife, which they use for every possible purpose.

See Capt. Eden Vansittart,Notes on the Gurkhas(1898); and P. D. Bonarjee,The Fighting Races of India(1899).

GURNALL, WILLIAM(1617-1679), English author, was born in 1617 at King’s Lynn, Norfolk. He was educated at the free grammar school of his native town, and in 1631 was nominated to the Lynn scholarship in Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1635 and M.A. in 1639. He was made rector of Lavenham in Suffolk in 1644; and before he received that appointment he seems to have officiated, perhaps as curate, at Sudbury. At the Restoration he signed the declaration required by the Act of Uniformity, and on this account he was the subject of a libellous attack, published in 1665, entitledCovenant-Renouncers Desperate Apostates. He died on the 12th of October 1679. Gurnall is known by hisChristian in Complete Armour, published in three volumes, dated 1655, 1658 and 1662. It consists of a series of sermons on the latter portion of the 6th chapter of Ephesians, and is described as a “magazine from whence the Christian is furnished with spiritual arms for the battle, helped on with his armour, and taught the use of his weapon; together with the happy issue of the whole war.” The work is more practical than theological; and its quaint fancy, graphic and pointed style, and its fervent religious tone render it still popular with some readers.

See alsoAn Inquiry into the Life of the Rev. W. Gurnall, by H. M’Keon (1830), and a biographical introduction by Bishop Ryle to theChristian in Complete Armour(1865).

GURNARD(Trigla), a genus of fishes forming a group of the family of “mailed cheeks” (Triglidae), and easily recognized by three detached finger-like appendages in front of the pectoral fins, and by their large, angular, bony head, the sides of which are protected by strong, hard and rough bones. The pectoral appendages are provided with strong nerves, and serve not only as organs of locomotion when the fish moves on the bottom, but also as organs of touch, by which it detects small animals on which it feeds. Gurnards are coast-fishes, generally distributed over the tropical and temperate areas; of the forty species known six occur on the coast of Great Britain, viz. the red gurnard (T. pini), the streaked gurnard (T. lineata), the sapphirine gurnard (T. hirundo), the grey gurnard (T. gurnardus), the piper (T. lyra) and the long-finned gurnard (T. obscuraorT. lucerna). Although never found very far from the coast, gurnards descend to depths of several hundred fathoms; and as they are bottom-fish they are caught chiefly by means of the trawl. Not rarely, however, they may be seen floating on the surface of the water, with their broad, finely coloured pectoral fins spread out like fans. In very young fishes, which abound in certain localities on the coast in the months of August and September, the pectorals are comparatively much longer than in the adult, extending to the end of the body; they are beautifully coloured and kept expanded, the little fishes looking like butterflies. When caught and taken out of the water, gurnards emit a grunting noise, which is produced by the vibrations of a diaphragm situated transversely across the cavity of the bladder and perforated in the centre. This grunting noise gave rise to the name “gurnard,” which is probably an adaptation or variation of the Fr.grognard, grumbler, cf. the Fr.grondin, gurnard, fromgronder, and Ger.Knurrfisch. Their flesh is very white, firm and wholesome.

GURNEY,the name of a philanthropic English family of bankers and merchants, direct descendants of Hugh de Gournay, lord of Gournay, one of the Norman noblemen who accompanied William the Conqueror to England. Large grants of land were made to Hugh de Gournay in Norfolk and Suffolk, and Norwich has since that time been the headquarters of the family, the majority of whom were Quakers. Here in 1770 the brothers John and Henry Gurney founded a banking-house, the business passing in 1779 to Henry’s son, Bartlett Gurney. On the death of Bartlett Gurney in 1802 the bank became the property of his three cousins, of whomJohn Gurney(1750-1809) was the most remarkable. One of his daughters was Elizabeth Fry; another married Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton. Of his sons one was JosephJohn Gurney(1788-1847), a well-known philanthropist of the day; another,Samuel Gurney(1786-1856) assumed on his father’s death the control of the Norwich bank. Samuel Gurney also took over about the same time the control of the London bill-broking business of Richardson, Overend & Company, in which he was already a partner. This business had been founded in 1800 by Thomas Richardson, clerk to a London bill-discounter, and John Overend, chief clerk in the bank of Smith, Payne & Company at Nottingham, the Gurneys supplying the capital. At that time bill-discounting was carried on in a spasmodic fashion by the ordinary merchant in addition to his regular business, but Richardson considered that there was room for a London house which should devote itself entirely to the trade in bills. This, at that time, novel idea proved an instant success. The title of the firm was subsequently changed to Overend, Gurney & Company, and for forty years it was the greatest discounting-house in the world. During the financial crisis of 1825 Overend, Gurney & Company were able to make short loans to many other bankers. The house indeed became known as “the bankers’ banker,” and secured many of the previous clients of the Bank of England. Samuel Gurney died in 1856. He was a man of very charitable disposition, and during the latter years of his life charitable and philanthropic undertakings almost monopolized his attention. In 1865 the business of Overend, Gurney & Company, which had come under less competent control, was converted into a joint stock company, but in 1866 the firm suspended payment with liabilities amounting to eleven millions sterling.

GURNEY, EDMUND(1847-1888), English psychologist, was born at Hersham, near Walton-on-Thames, on the 23rd of March 1847. He was educated at Blackheath and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took a high place in the classical tripos and obtained a fellowship. His work for the schools was done, says his friend F. W. H. Myers, “in the intervals of his practice on the piano.” Dissatisfied with his own executive skill as a musician, he wroteThe Power of Sound(1880), an essay on the philosophy of music. He then studied medicine with no intention of practising, devoting himself to physics, chemistry and physiology. In 1880 he passed the second M.B. Cambridge examination in the science of the healing profession. These studies, and his great logical powers and patience in the investigation of evidence, he devoted to that outlying field of psychology which is called “Psychical Research.” He asked whether, as universal tradition declares, there is an unexplored region of human faculty transcending the normal limitations of sensible knowledge. That there is such a region it was part of the system of Hegel to declare, and the subject had been metaphysically treated by Hartmann, Schopenhauer, Du Prel, Hamilton and others, as the philosophyof the Unconscious or Subconscious. But Gurney’s purpose was to approach the subject by observation and experiment, especially in the hypnotic field, whereas vague and ill-attested anecdotes had hitherto been the staple of the evidence of metaphysicians. The tendency of his mind was to investigate whatever facts may give a colour of truth to the ancient belief in the persistence of the conscious human personality after the death of the body. Like Joseph Glanvill’s, the natural bent of Gurney’s mind was sceptical. Both thought the current and traditional reports of supernormal occurrences suggestive and worth investigating by the ordinary methods of scientific observation, and inquisition into evidence at first hand. But the method of Gurney was, of course, much more strict than that of the author ofSadducismus Triumphatus, and it included hypnotic and other experiments unknown to Glanvill. Gurney began at what he later saw was the wrong end by studying, with Myers, the “séances” of professed spiritualistic “mediums” (1874-1878). Little but detection of imposture came of this, but an impression was left that the subject ought not to be abandoned. In 1882 the Society for Psychical Research was founded. (SeePsychical Research.) Paid mediums were discarded, at least for the time, and experiments were made in “thought-transference” and hypnotism. Personal evidence as to uninduced hallucinations was also collected. The first results are embodied in the volumes ofPhantasms of the Living, a vast collection (Podmore, Myers and Gurney), and in Gurney’s remarkable essay,Hallucinations. The chief consequence was to furnish evidence for the process called “telepathy,” involving the provisional hypothesis that one human mind can affect another through no recognized channel of sense. The fact was supposed to be established by the experiments chronicled in theProceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, and it was argued that similar experiences occurred spontaneously, as, for example, in the many recorded instances of “deathbed wraiths” among civilized and savage races. (Tylor,Primitive Culture, i. chapter xi., especially pp. 449-450, 1873. Lang,Making of Religion, pp. 120-124, 1898.) The dying man is supposed to convey the hallucination of his presence as one living person experimentally conveys his thought to another, by “thought-transference.” Gurney’s hypnotic experiments, marked by great exactness, patience and ingenuity, were undertaken in 1885-1888. Their tendency was, in Myers’s words, “to prove—so far as any one operator’s experience in this protean subject can be held to prove anything—that there is sometimes, in the induction of hypnotic phenomena, some agency at work which is neither ordinary nervous stimulation (monotonous or sudden) nor suggestion conveyed by any ordinary channel to the subject’s mind.” These results, if accepted, of course corroborate the idea of telepathy. (See Gurney, “Hypnotism and Telepathy,”Proceedings S. P. R.vol. iv.) Experiments by MM. Gibert, Janet, Richet, Héricourt and others are cited as tending in the same direction. Other experiments dealt with “the relation of the memory in the hypnotic state to the memory in another hypnotic state, and of both to the normal or waking memory.” The result of Gurney’s labours, cut short by his early death, was to raise and strengthen the presumption that there exists an unexplored region of human faculty which ought not to be neglected by science as if the belief in it were a mere survival of savage superstition. Rather, it appears to have furnished the experiences which, misinterpreted, are expressed in traditional beliefs. That Gurney was credulous and easily imposed upon those who knew him, and knew his penetrating humour, cannot admit; nor is the theory likely to be maintained by those whom bias does not prevent from studying with care his writings. In controversy “he delighted in replying with easy courtesy to attacks envenomed with thatodium plus quam theologicumwhich the very allusion to a ghost or the human soul seems in some philosophers to inspire.” In discussion of themes unpopular and obscure Gurney displayed the highest tact, patience, good temper, humour and acuteness. There never was a more disinterested student. In addition to his work on music and his psychological writings, he was the author ofTertium Quid(1887), a collection of essays, on the whole a protest against one-sided ideas and methods of discussion. He died at Brighton on 23rd June 1888, from the effects of an overdose of narcotic medicine.

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