418 



GRENVILLE-MURRAY 



GREUZE 



he became in 1782 a member of the House of Com- 

 mons and secretary to his eldest brother, Earl 

 Temple (afterwards Marquis of Buckingham), just 

 appointed Lord-lieutenant of Ireland. Soon after 

 he became Paymaster-general of the Army, and in 

 1789 was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. 

 But in 1790, on his appointment as Secretary of 

 State for the Home Department, he was raised to 

 the peerage with the title of Baron Grenville. He 

 became Foreign Secretary in the ensuing year. He 

 resigned office, along with Pitt, in 1801, on the 

 refusal of George III. to give Ids assent to the 

 Catholic Emancipation Bill, of the aims of which 

 Grenville was one of the principal supporters. In 

 1806 he formed the government of ' All the Talents,' 

 which, before its dissolution in the following year, 

 passed the act for the abolition of the slave-trade. 

 From 1809 to 1815 he acted along with Earl Grey, 

 and he generally supported Canning. Lord Gren- 

 ville was an able speaker and an excellent scholar, 

 and, though he was not of first-rate abilities, his 

 conscientiousness, industry, and knowledge of 

 affairs gave him much influence among the peers 

 and as a statesman. He died at Dropmore, Buck- 

 inghamshire, 12th January 1834. 



Grenville-Miirray. See MURRAY. 



Grestiain, SIR THOMAS, founder of the Royal 

 Exchange, was born in 1519, the only son of Sir 

 Richard Gresham, an opulent merchant of Norfolk 

 ancestry, who in 1537 was elected Lord Mayor of 

 London. Apprenticed awhile to his uncle, Sir John 

 Gresham, a wealthy London mercer, and then sent 

 to study at Gonviile Hall, Cambridge, in 1543 he 

 was admitted a member of the Mercers' Company, 

 and in 1551 was employed as ' king's merchant ' at 

 Antwerp. In two years he paid off a heavy loan, 

 entirely restored the king's credit, and introduced 

 a new system of finance. As a Protestant, he got 

 his dismissal from Queen Mary, but, on presenting 

 a memorial of his past services, was soon reinstated. 

 By Queen Elizabeth he was in 1559 knighted and 

 appointed for a short time English ambassador at 

 the court of the regent at Brussels. The troubles 

 in the Netherlands compelled him, in 1567, to with- 

 draw finally from Antwerp, to which city he had 

 made more than forty journeys on state service ; in 

 one, in 1560, he was thrown from his horse and 

 lamed for life. In 1569, by his advice, the state was 

 induced to borrow money from London merchants, 

 instead of from foreigners, to the great advantage 

 of the mercantile body. Having in 1564 lost his 

 only son, Richard, in 1566-71 he devoted a portion 

 of his great wealth to the erection of an Exchange 

 (q. v. ), in imitation of that of Antwerp, for the 

 London merchants, who were wont to meet in the 

 open air. Renowned for his hospitality and liber- 

 ality, he frequently entertained foreign personages 

 of distinction, and erected a magnificent mansion at 

 Osterly Park, near Brentford, where he was visited 

 by Queen Elizabeth. For the endowment of a 

 college in London he directed by his will that his 

 town-mansion in Bishopsgate Street should be con- 

 verted into a residence and lecture-rooms for seven 

 professors, to be salaried out of the Royal Exchange 

 revenues. Gresham College gave place to the 

 Excise Office in 1768, and the lectures were delivered 

 in a room in the Exchange till 1843, when the lec- 

 ture-hall in Basinghall Street was built out of the 

 accumulated fund. The subjects of lectures (all of 

 which since 1876 are delivered in English only, not 

 Latin ) are divinity, physic, astronomy, geometry, 

 law, rhetoric and music. Gresham also provided 

 for the erection and support of eight almshouses, 

 and made many other charitable bequests. He died 

 suddenly, 21st November 1579. See his Life by 

 Dean Burgon (2 vols. 1839). For Gresham's Law, 

 see BIMETALLISM. 



Gretna Green, a village of Dumfriesshire, 

 near the head of the Solway Firth, 10 miles NNW. 

 of Carlisle. After the abolition of Fleet marriages 

 by Lord Hard wicke's Act (1754), English persons 

 wishing to marry clandestinely had to get out of 

 England, to which alone that act had reference. 

 Thus the practice arose of crossing the Border into 

 Scotland, where Gretna Green, or Springfield, a& 

 the first village, had by 1771 become, in Pennant's 

 wordsj ' the resort of all amorous couples whose 

 union the prudence of parents or guardians pro- 

 hibits.' The ' priest ' or ' blacksmith ' might be any 

 one ferryman, toll-keeper, or landlord; his fee 

 might be anything from half a guinea to 100; and 

 'church' was commonly the toll-house till 1826, 

 and afterwards Gretna Hall. At the toll-house 

 nearly 200 couples were sometimes united in a 

 twelvemonth. Coldstream and Larnberton, in 

 Berwickshire, were chapels-of-ease to Gretna for the 

 eastern Border, as also till 1826 was Portpatrick, 

 in Wigtownshire, for Ireland. One of the earliest 

 Scottish runaway matches on record is Richard 

 Lovell Edgeworth's (1763); amongst his successors 

 were Lords Brougham, Dundonald, Eldon, and 

 Erskine, besides numerous scions of the noble 

 families of Villiers, Fane, Beauclerc, Coventry, 

 Paget, &c. In 1856 all irregular marriages were 

 rendered invalid unless one of the parties had been 

 residing in Scotland for three weeks previously ; 

 this proviso observed, a Gretna Green marriage is- 

 still possible. See P. O. Hutchinson's Chronicles 

 of Gretna Green (2 vols. 1844). 



Gr<$try, ANDRE ERNEST MODESTE, composer, 

 was born at Liege, 8th February 1741, studied at 

 Rome, and settled at Paris, where he became 

 famous as author of more than forty comic operas, 

 of which Le Huron (1768) and Lucile (1769) were 

 the earliest, and Raoul and Richard Ccem-de-Lion 

 among the best known. He was made inspector of 

 the Conservatoire, and a member of the Institute ; 

 later a pension from Napoleon enabled him to 

 retire to Ermenonville, where, in Rousseau's old 

 house, he died, 24th September 1813. His operas 

 are noted for their rich and bright melody, and did 

 much to form the musical taste of the time. He 

 also wrote Mimoires (4 vols. Paris, 1796). See the 

 Lives by Gregoir (1883) and Brenet ( 1884). 



Greuze, JEAN-BAPTISTE, genre- and portrait- 

 painter, was born at Tournus, near Ma.con, on 

 21st August 1725. He received instruction in 

 art from Gromdon, a painter of Lyons, who took 

 him to Paris, where he studied in the life-school of 

 the Academy, and produced a subject-picture of 

 such excellence ' A Father explaining the Bible to 

 his Children ' that much doubt was expressed as 

 to its being the work of so young an artist. His 

 skill, however, was amply proved by productions 

 which followed, and his ' Blind Man Cheated ' pro- 

 cured his admission as an Associate of the Academy 

 in 1755. In that year he visited Italy with the 

 Abbe Gougenot, and on his return exhibited in 

 1757 several Italian subjects, but having failed to 

 comply with the regulations of the Academy he 

 was interdicted from contributing to the salon. 

 Having painted in 1769 his ' Severus reproaching 

 Caracalla,' now in the Louvre, he was readmitted 

 as a genre-painter, instead of to the higher class of 

 historical painters, and upon this he indignantly 

 withdrew. He was the friend of Diderot, who 

 praised his productions in his criticisms of the 

 salon ; but in the days of the Directorate and the 

 classical revival of " David his works were little 

 esteemed ; and he died in poverty in Paris, 21st 

 March 1805. His art possesses charming qualities 

 of delicacy and grace, but is marred by its triviality, 

 by the insincerity of its sentiment, and by its 

 pursuit of mere prettiness. He is seen at his best 



