Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/745

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
GRA
705
GRA

butions made in this century to the literature of natural science. In 1827 Dr. Grant was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons, he then, it is understood, having intended to settle as a lecturer in Edinburgh. The foundation of University college, London, and the offer of the chair of comparative anatomy and zoology in the new institution, changed his views. He accepted the appointment, and delivered his first course of lectures in the autumn of 1828. His classes, not being compulsory on medical students, have not been numerously attended, but they have included those who were most likely to profit by them; and it may be safely asserted that they have exercised a strong influence on the progress of the natural sciences in this country. A portion of his lectures, published in 1835 in the form of a treatise on comparative anatomy, which at the period of its issue was the best work on the subject that had appeared in the English language—was translated into German. Besides instructing his pupils at University college, Dr. Grant has delivered many popular courses of lectures at the cheap institutions in London, and in the English provinces. In 1836 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in the following year professor of physiology in the Royal Institution. As a member of the council of the Geological and Zoological Societies, he has taken a prominent part in the proceedings of these learned bodies. The high value set upon his researches by foreign savans is evidenced by the enthusiastic terms in which they have been spoken of by the great Geoffrey St. Hilaire.—G. B—n.

GRANT, Sir William, of the family of the Grants of Baldornie, was born in 1755 at Elchies, on the Spey, in Morayshire. Left early an orphan by the death of his parents he was educated at the expense of an uncle, a rich London merchant, at Elgin grammar-school, and afterwards at Aberdeen and Leyden universities. In 1775 he sailed to Canada, and served in defence of Quebec against the American Montgomery and Arnold. On the retreat of the enemy, he was appointed attorney-general, though not yet called to the English bar, and for eight years held that office. For four years after his return to Lincoln's inn, and call to the bar in 1787, he held no briefs; but Pitt, discovering his abilities in an interview he had with him on the subject of the bill for the regulation of the Canadas, put him into parliament for Shaftesbury in November, 1790. In the following April, the new member signalized himself by a great maiden speech in defence of the premier's anti-Russian armaments; in December, 1792, he opposed negotiations with France; and in 1793 was rewarded by Pitt with a judgeship for Carmarthen, Pembroke, and Cardigan. On his being made a K.C. in 1795, he confined himself to the chancery bar; in the same year he was appointed solicitor-general to the queen; in 1798, chief-justice of Chester; and in 1799, solicitor-general. His argument in Thellusson's case against the testator's disposition, showed his right to the post. On the 30th May, 1801, he succeeded Sir Pepper Arden as master of the rolls. He still remained in the commons, and by his influence there caused the rejection, in March, 1807, of Romilly's bill for making land liable for debts. It was on this occasion that he invented the phrase, "wisdom of our ancestors." His humanity, however, made him so happily inconsistent, that he aided Romilly in his measure for abolishing the penalty of death for stealing articles over a shilling in value. With political questions mooted in parliament he but seldom interfered, except when the fate of an administration depended on the debate. Grant's last great speech in the commons was in defence of the resolutions respecting the regency, and it was a triumphant effort of argumentative eloquence. At the dissolution in 1812, he retired from parliament, and in December, 1817, from the bench. He occupied his leisure either with the society of the neighbourhood of Walthamstow, where he lived, or with the study of literature, and especially poetry, to which he had been addicted even in his active years. The attacks of rheumatism drove him, in his seventy-sixth year, to the warmer climate of Dawlish; and there he died on the 25th May, 1832. As a debater, says Lord Brougham—"His style was of the closest and severest reasoning ever heard in any popular assembly." In politics he was a rigid and an almost superstitious conservative. As a judge, though leaning rather too much to the side of strict interpretation, he was considered incomparable for a combination of learning, intuitive and undoubting sagacity, powers of analysis, apt diction, patience and courtesy.—W. S., L.

GRANVELLE, Antoine Perrenet, Cardinal, was born 20th August, 1517, at Ornans in Burgundy. His father, Nicolas, who was a distinguished lawyer, entered the service of Charles V. in 1519, and in 1530 succeeded to the functions of Gattinara in the imperial ministry. Young Granvelle studied law and theology respectively at Padua and at Louvain, was early initiated by his parent into the arts of diplomacy, and was marked out from the first for a high and brilliant career. Having entered the church, he was made a canon of Liege, and in 1540 was consecrated bishop of Arras. He subsequently found in the service of Charles V. an ample field for the display of his abilities. At the close of the Schmalkaldian war, he managed, in the interest of the emperor, the capitulation of the unfortunate elector of Saxony and landgrave of Hesse, falsifying the deed in order to detain the landgrave in a captivity from which it promised him release. On the death of his father in 1550 he was appointed by the emperor a councillor of state and keeper of the imperial seal. Accompanying the emperor in his disastrous flight from Innspruck, he drew up the famous treaty of Passau, 2nd August, 1552. In 1553 he managed the negotiations connected with the marriage of Philip with Mary, queen of England. After the emperor's abdication of the crown of the Netherlands in favour of Philip in 1555, he entered into the service of the latter, and in 1559 he concluded and signed the peace of Château-Cambresis between France and Spain. When Philip quitted the Netherlands, and devolved the government upon Margaret of Parma, Granvelle became her chief minister, and it was by his advice that the inquisition was introduced into the Low Countries, and that no less than twelve new bishoprics were added to the four existing sees, with a view to the suppression of protestantism. For his services to the Roman cause he was rewarded by Philip with the primacy of Mechlin, and by the pope with a cardinal's hat. The ears of Philip and Margaret, however, were wearied with complaints against him, and they were at length obliged to dismiss him from the Netherlands. In 1564 he took up his abode in Franche-Comte, but Philip could not long dispense with his services, and in 1570 he gave him a commission to Rome, where he negotiated a treaty between Spain, Venice, and the pope against the Turks. He was then made viceroy of the kingdom of Naples to put it into a posture of defence against a Turkish invasion, and continued in that office till 1575, when he was recalled to Madrid, and was made president of the council of state. In 1584 he was elected archbishop of Besançon; and on the 21st September, 1586, he died at Madrid. In the archives of Besançon, where he was buried, are preserved in many volumes his letters and memoirs, collected by the Abbé Boisot, under the title Trésor de Granvelle, many papers of which were published in 1842 in the Documents inédits pour l'Histoire de la France.—P. L.

GRANVILLE, George, Viscount Lansdowne, figures in the collections as one of the English poets, but is chiefly remembered as a friend and patron of poets. He was born in 1667, of a high family noted for its loyalty to the family of Stewart. Receiving his earlier education in France, he was sent at the precocious age of ten to Trinity college, Cambridge, and was known as a university poet before he was twelve. With hereditary loyalty, he offered his services in behalf of James when William of Orange meditated his expedition. His father restrained his ardour, and nothing was left him when the crown changed wearers but to devote himself to literature under a government which he could not serve. He wrote plays and poems, one of the former, the "Heroic Lover," was praised by Dryden, whose later politics were his own, and who, in his commendatory verses, calls him "friend." His poems were a mere faint echo of Waller. On the accession of Anne he appeared at court, and was received with great favour; but on the fall of his political friends from power he retired into private life to court the company of the muse and her cultivators. It was he who introduced Wycherley and the youthful Pope to Bolingbroke. Pope dedicated to him Windsor Forest, and has recorded his sense of the early encouragement which he received, and of the courtly manners of his noble patron, in the well-known passage—

" Granville the polite,
And knowing Walsh would tell me I could write."

After the trial of Sacheverell Granville's friends returned to power, and he was not forgotten. He succeeded Walpole as secretary at war, was raised to the peerage, and step by step advanced to the dignity of treasurer of Queen Anne's household, from which he was naturally removed on the accession of George I. His old loyalty to the Stewarts breaking out anew, he was appre-