essays on physical and mental philosophy, commentaries on Aristotle and Boethius, French, poems, works on husbandry, translations from Greek authors. He was fairly familiar with both Hebrew and Greek, and, with the assistance of John of Basingstoke, who followed him, with one interval, as archdeacon of Leicester, translated the 'Testamenta XII Patriarcharum,' which Basingstoke had brought from Constantinople. He also translated the treatise ascribed to Dionysius Areopagita, and is said to have done the same for Suidas. It is hardly conceivable that all the treatises ascribed to him are really his, and he has been, probably, credited with a good deal that is not his own, such as treatises on 'Magick,' &c. Musick (especially playing on the harp) is reckoned among his accomplishments. It is said that Bishop Williams of Lincoln (afterwards archbishop of York) contemplated an edition of the entire works in three folio volumes.
His personal influence during his lifetime was scarcely inferior. His letters give ample proof of this. We find him comforting a nobleman about his spiritual state, advising the king about the value of the royal anointing, and the archbishop as to his conduct at a critical time, warning and consoling Simon de Montfort, whose sons he had educated, giving directions as to the proper treatment of the Jews, intimate with the queen, and using his influence to restrain the king from oppressive acts. Matthew Paris (v. 407), by no means generally favourable to him, as he considered him a persecutor of monks, thus sums up his character: 'He was a manifest confuter of the pope and the king, the blamer of prelates, the corrector of monks, the director of priests, the instructor of clerks, the support of scholars, the preacher to the people, the persecutor of the incontinent, the sedulous student of all scripture, the hammer and the despiser of the Romans. At the table of bodily refreshment he was hospitable, eloquent, courteous, pleasant, and affable. At the spiritual table, devout, tearful, and contrite. In his episcopal office he was sedulous, venerable, and indefatigable.' Adam de Marisco speaks of his courage, Tyssyngton of his subtilty in interpreting scripture.
To give a complete list of his works and of the various manuscripts which contain them would be impossible within the present limits. The list in Pegge's life occupies twenty-five closely printed quarto pages. Brown, in the appendix to his 'Fasciculus rerum expetendarum et fugiendarum' (London, 1690), pp. 250-414), has printed a selection of his letters, a few of the 'Dicta,' some sermons, and the 'Constitutiones rectoribus ecclesiarum … directæ.' A complete collection of the letters was edited by H. R. Luard in the Rolls Series in 1861. The translation of the 'Commentary of Dionysius Areopagita de Mystica Theologia' was printed, Strasburg, 1502. Some of his 'Opuscula' were printed at Venice, 1514; the commentary on the 'Posterior Analytics' of Aristotle, Venice, 1494,1497, 1499, and since; the 'Compendium Sphæræ Mundi,' and other tracts on 'Physical Science,' at Venice, 1508' and 1514 (there were other editions in 1518 and 1531); 'Libellus de Phisicis unus,' Nuremberg, 1503; the commentary on the Libri Physici of Aristotle, Venice, 1506; 'De Doctrina Cordis,' and 'Speculum Concionatorum,' at Naples, 1607. The translation of the 'Testamenta XII Patriarcharum' was first printed, probably in 1520 without date or place, at Haguenau, 1532, and frequently since (see Sinker's edition, p. xvi); an English translation by Anthony Gilby [q. v.] appeared in 1581, a Welsh one in 1522, and a French one (part only) in 1555; a fragment of the 'De Cessatione Legalium' at London, 1658. Of his English translations from the French 'The Boke of Husbondry and of Plantynge of Trees and Vynes,' by Walter de Henley [q. v.], was printed by W. de Worde, and the poem 'Le Chasteau d'Amour,' first printed in a private issue by Mr. J. O. Halliwell in 1849, was edited bv Mr. R. F. Weymouth for the Philological Society in 1864. His 'Carmina Anglo-Normannica' were published by the Caxton Society in 1844.
[Brown's Fasciculus, &c, London, 1690; Wharton's Anglia Sacra, ii. 325-48 (he prints a metrical Life by Richard, a monk of Bardney, but this is mere romance, though the author may have had some authority for putting a portion of the bishop's early life at Lincoln); Matthew Paris, Chronica majora; Annales Monastici; Epistolæ Adami de Marisco in Mon. Franc, vol. i.—these all in the Rolls Ser.; Chronicon de Lanercost(Stevenson), pp. 43-6; Tanner's Bibliotheca; Pegge's Life of Grosseteste, London, 1793; Luard's Preface to Roberti Grosseteste Epistolæ in the Rolls Ser.; Perry's Life and Times of Bishop Grosseteste, London, S.P.C.K., 1871.]
GROSVENOR, GRAVENOR, or GRAVENER, BENJAMIN, D.D. (1676–1758), dissenting divine, was born in London on 1 Jan. 1676. His father, Charles Gravener, a prosperous upholsterer, at the Black Swan, Watling Street, became embarrassed in later life, and was supported by his son, who altered the spelling of his name (in 1710) to Gravenor, and then to Grosvenor (first used 1712, but not finally adopted till 1716). He was early exercised on religious matters, and ascribes the removal of his difficulties to a
