OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Compsa

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​COMPSA (mod. Conza), an ancient city of the Hirpini, near the sources of the Aufidus, on the boundary of Lucania and not far from that of Apulia, on a ridge 1998 ft. above sea-level. It was betrayed to Hannibal in 216 B.C. after the defeat of Cannae, but recaptured two years later. It was probably occupied by Sulla in 89 B.C., and was the scene of the death of T. Annius Milo in 48 B.C. Most authorities (cf. Hülsen in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, Stuttgart, 1901, iv. 797) refer Caes. Bell. civ. iii. 22, and Plin. Hist. Nat. ii. 147, to this place, supposing the MSS. to be corrupt. The usual identification of the site of Milo’s death with Cassano on the Gulf of Taranto must therefore be rejected. In imperial times, as inscriptions show, it was a municipium, but it lay far from any of the main high-roads. There are no important ancient remains.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Comyn, John

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​COMYN, JOHN (d. c. 1300), Scottish baron, was a son of John Comyn (d. 1274), justiciar of Galloway, who was a nephew of the constable of Scotland, Alexander Comyn, earl of Buchan (d. 1289), and of the powerful and wealthy Walter Comyn, earl of Mentieth (d. 1258). With his uncle the earl of Buchan, the elder Comyn took a prominent part in the affairs of Scotland during the latter part of the 13th century, and he had interests and estates in England as well as in his native land. He fought for Henry III. at Northampton and at Lewes, and was afterwards imprisoned for a short time in London. The younger Comyn, who had inherited the lordship of Badenoch from his great-uncle the earl of Mentieth, was appointed one of the guardians of Scotland in 1286, and shared in the negotiations between Edward I. and the Scots in 1289 and 1290. When Margaret, the Maid of Norway, died in 1290, Comyn was one of the claimants for the Scottish throne, but he did not press his candidature, and like the other Comyns urged the claim of John de Baliol. After supporting Baliol in his rising against Edward I., Comyn submitted to the English king in 1296; he was sent to reside in England, but returned to Scotland shortly before his death.
Comyn’s son, John Comyn (d. 1306), called the “red Comyn,” is more famous. Like his father he assisted Baliol in his rising against Edward I., and he was for some time a hostage in England. Having been made guardian of Scotland after the battle of Falkirk in 1298 he led the resistance to the English king for about five years, and then early in 1304 made an honourable surrender. Comyn is chiefly known for his memorable quarrel with Robert the Bruce. The origin of the dispute is uncertain. Doubtless the two regarded each other as rivals; Comyn may have refused to join in the insurrection planned by Bruce. At all events the pair met at Dumfries in January 1306; during a heated altercation charges of treachery were made, and Comyn was stabbed to death either by Bruce or by his followers.
Another member of the Comyn family who took an active part in Scottish affairs during these troubled times is John Comyn, earl of Buchan (d. c. 1313). This earl, a son of Earl Alexander, was constable of Scotland, and was first an ally and then an enemy of Robert the Bruce.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Compton, Henry

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​COMPTON, HENRY (1632–1713), English divine, was the sixth and youngest son of the second earl of Northampton. He was educated at Queen’s College, Oxford, and then travelled in Europe. After the restoration of Charles II. he became cornet in a regiment of horse, but soon quitted the army for the church. After a further period of study at Cambridge and again at Oxford, he held various livings. He was made bishop of Oxford in 1674, and in the following year was translated to the see of London. He was also appointed a member of the Privy Council, and entrusted with the education of the two princesses—Mary and Anne. He showed a liberality most unusual at the time to Protestant dissenters, whom he wished to reunite with the established church. He held several conferences on the subject with the clergy of his diocese; and in the hope of influencing candid minds by means of the opinions of unbiassed foreigners, he obtained letters treating of the question (since printed at the end of Stillingfleet’s Unreasonableness of Separation) from Le Moyne; professor of divinity at Leiden, and the famous French Protestant divine, Jean Claude. But to Roman Catholicism he was strongly opposed. On the accession of James II. he consequently lost his seat in the council and his deanery in the Chapel Royal; and for his firmness in refusing to suspend John Sharp, rector of St Giles’s-in-the-Fields, whose anti-papal writings had rendered him obnoxious to the king, he was himself suspended. At the Revolution Compton embraced the cause of William and Mary; he performed the ceremony of their coronation; his old position was restored to him; and among other appointments, he was chosen as one of the commissioners for revising the liturgy. During the reign of Anne he remained a member of the privy council, and was one of the commissioners appointed to arrange the terms of the union of England and Scotland; but, to his bitter disappointment, his claims to the primacy were twice passed over. He died at Fulham on the 7th of July 1713. He had conspicuous defects both in spirit and intellect, but was benevolent and philanthropic. He was a successful botanist. He published, besides several theological works, A Translation from the Italian of the Life of Donna Olympia Maladichini, who governed the Church during the time of Pope Innocent X., which was from the year 1644 to 1655 (1667), and A Translation from the French of the Jesuits’ Intrigues (1669).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Comptroller

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​COMPTROLLER, the title of an official whose business primarily was to examine and take charge of accounts, hence to direct or control, e.g. the English comptroller of the household, comptroller and auditor-general (head of the exchequer and audit department), comptroller-general of patents, &c., comptroller-general (head of the national debt office). On the other hand, the word is frequently spelt controller, as in controller of the navy, controller or head of the stationery office. The word is used in the same sense in the United States, as comptroller of the treasury, an official who examines accounts and signs drafts, and comptroller of the currency, who administers the law relating to the national banks.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Conacre

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​CONACRE (a corruption of corn-acre), in Ireland, a system of letting land, mostly in small patches, and usually for the growth of potatoes as a kind of return instead of wages. It is now practically obsolete.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Conant, Thomas Jefferson

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​CONANT, THOMAS JEFFERSON (1802–1891), American Biblical scholar, was born at Brandon, Vermont, on the 13th of December 1802. Graduating at Middlebury College in 1823, he became tutor in the Columbian University (now George ​Washington University) from 1825 to 1827, professor of Greek, Latin and German at Waterville College (now Colby College) from 1827 to 1833, professor of biblical literature and criticism in Hamilton (New York) Theological Institute from 1835 to 1851, and professor of Hebrew and of Biblical exegesis in Rochester Theological Seminary from 1851 to 1857. From 1857 to 1875 he was employed by the American Bible Union on the revision of the New Testament (1871). He married in 1830 Hannah O’Brien Chaplin (1809–1865), who was herself the author of The Earnest Man, a biography of Adoniram Judson (1855), and of The History of the English Bible (1859), besides being her husband’s able assistant in his Hebrew studies. He died in Brooklyn, New York, on the 30th of April 1891. Conant was the foremost Hebrew scholar of his time in America. His treatise, The Meaning and Use of “Baptizein” Philologically and Historically Investigated (1860), an “appendix to the revised version of the Gospel by Matthew,” is a valuable summary of the evidence for Baptist doctrine. He translated and edited Gesenius’s Hebrew Grammar (1839; 1877), and published revised versions with notes of Job (1856), Genesis (1868), Psalms (1871), Proverbs (1872), Isaiah i.-xiii. 22 (1874), and Historical Books of the Old Testament, Joshua to II. Kings (1884).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dudweiler

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​DUDWEILER, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the Sulzbach, 4 m. by rail N.E. from Saarbrücken. It has extensive coal mines and ironworks and produces fire-proof bricks. Pop. (1905) 16,320.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Duderstadt

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​DUDERSTADT, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, situated in a beautiful and fertile valley (formerly called Goldene Mark) watered by the Hahle, and on the railway Wulften-Leinefelde. Pop. (1905) 5327. It is an interesting medieval town with many ancient buildings. Notable are the two Roman Catholic churches, beautiful Gothic edifices of the 14th century, the Protestant church, and the handsome town-hall. Its chief industries are woollen and cotton manufactures, sugar-refining and cigar-making; it has also a trade in singing-birds. Duderstadt was founded by Henry I. (the Fowler) in 929, passed later to the monastery of Quedlinburg, and then to Brunswick. It was a member of the Hanseatic League, and during the Thirty Years’ War became a stronghold of the Imperialists. It was taken by Duke William of Weimar in 1632; in 1761 its walls were dismantled, and, after being alternately Prussian and Hanoverian, it passed finally in 1866 with Hanover to Prussia.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dudley, Edmund

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​DUDLEY, EDMUND (c. 1462–1510), minister of Henry VII. of England, was a son of John Dudley of Atherington, Sussex, and a member of the great baronial family of Sutton or Dudley. After studying at Oxford and at Gray’s Inn, Dudley came under the notice of Henry VII., and is said to have been made a privy councillor at the early age of twenty-three. In 1492 he helped to negotiate the treaty of Etaples with France and soon became prominent in assisting the king to check the lawlessness of the barons, and at the same time to replenish his own exchequer. He and his colleague Sir Richard Empson (q.v.) are called fiscales judices by Polydore Vergil, and owing to their extortions they became very unpopular. Dudley, who was speaker of the House of Commons in 1504, in addition to aiding Henry, amassed a great amount of wealth for himself, and possessed large estates in Sussex, Dorset and Lincolnshire. When Henry VII. died in April 1509, he was thrown into prison by order of Henry VIII. and charged with the crime of constructive treason, being found guilty and attainted. After having made a futile attempt to escape from prison, he was executed on the 17th or 18th of August 1510. Dudley’s nominal crime was that during the last illness of Henry VII. he had ordered his friends to assemble in arms in case the king died, but the real reason for his death was doubtless the unpopularity caused by his avarice. During his imprisonment he sought to gain the favour of Henry VIII. by writing a treatise in support of absolute monarchy called The Tree of Commonwealth. This never reached the king’s hands, and was not published until 1859, when it was printed privately in Manchester. Dudley’s first wife was Anne, widow of Roger Corbet of Morton, Shropshire, by whom he had a daughter, Elizabeth, who married William, 6th Lord Stourton. By his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Grey, Viscount Lisle, he had three sons: John, afterwards duke of Northumberland (q.v.); Andrew (d. 1559), who was made a knight and held various important posts during the reign of Edward VI.; and Jasper.
See Francis Bacon, History of Henry VII., edited by J. R. Lumby (Cambridge, 1881); and J. S. Brewer, The Reign of Henry VIII., edited by J. Gairdner (London, 1884).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Dudo

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​DUDO, or Dudon (fl. c. 1000), Norman historian was dean of St Quentin, where he was born about 965. Sent in 986 by Albert I. count of Vermandois, on an errand to Richard I., duke of Normandy, he succeeded in his mission, and, having made a very favourable impression at the Norman court, spent some years in that country. During a second stay in Normandy Dudo wrote his history of the Normans, a task which Duke Richard I. had urged him to undertake. Very little else is known about his life, except that he died before 1043. Written between 1015 and 1030, his Historia Normannorum, or Libri III. de moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum, was dedicated to Adalberon, bishop of Laon. Dudo does not appear to have consulted any existing documents for his history, but to have obtained his information from oral tradition, much of it being supplied by Raoul, count of Ivry, a half-brother of Duke Richard I. Consequently the Historia partakes of the nature of a romance, and on this ground has been regarded as untrustworthy by such competent critics as E. Dummler and G. Waitz. Other authorities, however, e.g. J. Lair and J. Steenstrup, while admitting the existence of a legendary element, regard the book as of considerable value for the history of the Normans. Although Dudo was acquainted with Virgil and other Latin writers, his Latin is affected and obscure. The Historia, which is written alternately in prose and in verse of several metres, is divided into four parts, and deals with the history of the Normans from 852 to the death of Duke Richard I. in 996. It glorifies the Normans, and was largely used by William of Jumièges, Wace, Robert of Torigni, William of Poitiers and Hugh of Fleury in compiling their chronicles, and was first published by A. Duchesne in his Historiae Normannorum scriptores antiqui, at Paris in 1619. Another edition is in the Patrologia Latina, tome cxli. of J. P. Migne (Paris, 1844), but the best is perhaps the one edited by J. Lair (Caen, 1865).
See E. Dümmler, “Zur Kritik Dudos von St Quentin” in the Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, Bande vi. and ix. (Göttingen, 1866); G. Waitz, “Über die Quellen zur Geschichte der Begrundung der normannischen Herrschaft in Frankreich,” in the Gottinger gel. Anzeigen (Göttingen, 1866); J. C. H. R. Steenstrup, Normannerne, Band i. (Copenhagen, 1876); J. Lair, Étude critique et historique sur Dudon (Caen, 1865); G. Kortung, Über die Quellen des Roman de Rou (Leipzig, 1867); W. Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen, Band i. (Berlin, 1904); and A. Molinier, Les Sources de l’histoire de France, tome ii. (Paris, 1902).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Greytown

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​GREYTOWN (San Juan del Norte), the principal seaport on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, in the extreme south-eastern corner of the republic, and at the mouth of the northern channel of the San Juan river delta. Pop. (1905) about 2500. The town occupies the seaward side of a narrow peninsula, formed by the windings of the river. Most of its houses are raised on piles 2 or 3 ft. above the ground. The neighbourhood is unhealthy and unsuited for agriculture, so that almost all food-stuffs must be imported, and the cost of living is high. Greytown has suffered severely from the accumulation of sand in its once fine harbour. Between 1832 and 1848 Point Arenas, the seaward end of the peninsula, was enlarged by a sandbank more than 1 m. long; between 1850 and 1875 the depth of water over the bar decreased from about 25 ft. to 5 ft., and the entrance channel, which had been nearly 1/2m. wide, was almost closed. Subsequent attempts to improve the harbour by dredging and building jetties have only had partial success; but Greytown remains the headquarters of Nicaraguan commerce with Europe and eastern America. The village called America, 1 m. N., was built as the eastern terminus of a proposed interoceanic canal.
The harbour of San Juan, discovered by Columbus, was brought into further notice by Captain Diego Machuca, who in 1529 sailed down the river from Lake Nicaragua. The date of the first Spanish settlement on the spot is not known, but in the 17th century there were fortifications at the mouth of the river. In 1796 San Juan was made a port of entry by royal charter, and new defences were erected in 1821. In virtue of the protectorate claimed by Great Britain over the Mosquito Coast (q.v.), the Mosquito Indians, aided by a British force, seized the town in 1848 and occupied it until 1860, when Great Britain ceded its protectorate to Nicaragua by the treaty of Managua. This treaty secured religious liberty and trial by jury for all civil and criminal charges in Greytown; its seventh article declared the port free, but was never enforced.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Grey, Sir Edward

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​GREY, SIR EDWARD, 3rd Bart. (1862–), English statesman, was educated at Winchester and at Balliol College, Oxford, and succeeded his grandfather, the 2nd baronet, at the age of twenty. He entered the House of Commons as Liberal member for Berwick-on-Tweed in 1885, but he was best known as a country gentleman with a taste for sport, and as amateur champion tennis-player. His interest in politics was rather languid, but he was a disciple of Lord Rosebery, and in the 1892–1895 Liberal ministry he was under-secretary for foreign affairs. In this position he earned a reputation as a politician of thorough straightforwardness and grit, and as one who would maintain British interests independently of party; and he shared with Mr Asquith the reputation of being the ablest of the Imperialists who followed Lord Rosebery. Though outside foreign affairs he played but a small part in the period of Liberal opposition between 1895 and 1905, he retained public confidence as one who was indispensable to a Liberal administration. When Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s cabinet was formed in December 1905 he became foreign minister, and he retained this office when in April 1908 Mr Asquith became prime minister.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Grew, Nehemiah

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​GREW, NEHEMIAH (1641–1712), English vegetable anatomist and physiologist, was the only son of Obadiah Grew (1607–1688), Nonconformist divine and vicar of St Michael’s, Coventry, and was born in Warwickshire in 1641. He graduated at Cambridge in 1661, and ten years later took the degree of M.D. at Leiden, ​his thesis being Disputatio medico-physica . . . de liquore nervoso. He began observations on the anatomy of plants in 1664, and in 1670 his essay, The Anatomy of Vegetables begun, was communicated to the Royal Society by Bishop Wilkins, on whose recommendation he was in the following year elected a fellow. In 1672, when the essay was published, he settled in London, and soon acquired an extensive practice as a physician. In 1673 he published his Idea of a Phytological History, which consisted of papers he had communicated to the Royal Society in the preceding year, and in 1677 he succeeded Henry Oldenburg as secretary of the society. He edited the Philosophical Transactions in 1678–1679, and in 1681 he published “by request” a descriptive catalogue of the rarities preserved at Gresham College, with which were printed some papers he had read to the Royal Society on the Comparative Anatomy of Stomachs and Guts. In 1682 appeared his great work on the Anatomy of Plants, which also was largely a collection of previous publications. It was divided into four books, Anatomy of Vegetables begun, Anatomy of Roots, Anatomy of Trunks and Anatomy of Leaves, Flowers, Fruits and Seeds, and was illustrated with eighty-two plates, while appended to it were seven papers mostly of a chemical character. Among his other publications were Sea-water made Fresh (1684), the Nature and Use of the Salt contained in Epsom and such other Waters (1697), which was a rendering of his Tractatus de salis . . . usu (1695), and Cosmologia sacra (1701). He died suddenly on the 25th of March 1712. Linnaeus named a genus of trees Grewia (nat. ord. Tiliaceae) in his honour.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Greymouth

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​GREYMOUTH, a seaport of New Zealand, the principal port on the west coast of South Island, in Grey county. Pop. (1906) 4569. It stands on the small estuary of the Grey or Mawhera river, has a good harbour, and railway communication with Hokitika, Reefton, &c., while the construction of a line to connect with Christchurch and Nelson was begun in 1887. The district is both auriferous and coal-bearing. Gold-dredging is a rich industry, and the coal-mines have attendant industries in coke, bricks and fire-clay. The timber trade is also well developed. The neighbouring scenery is picturesque, especially among the hills surrounding Lake Brunner (15 m. S.E.).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Howe, Elias

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​HOWE, ELIAS (1819–1867), American sewing-machine inventor, was born in Spencer, Massachusetts, on the 9th of July 1819. His early years were spent on his father’s farm. In 1835 he entered the factory of a manufacturer of cotton-machinery at Lowell, Massachusetts, where he learned the machinist’s trade. Subsequently, while employed in a machine shop at Cambridge, Mass., he conceived the idea of a sewing machine, and for five years spent all his spare time in its development. In September 1846 a patent for a practical sewing machine was granted to him; and Howe spent the following two years (1847–1849) in London, employed by William Thomas, a corset manufacturer, to whom he had sold the English rights for £250. Years of disappointment and discouragement followed before he was successful in introducing his invention, and several imitations which infringed his patent, particularly that of Isaac Merritt Singer (1811–1875), had already been successfully introduced and were widely used. His rights were established after much litigation in 1854, and by the date of expiration of his patent (1867) he had realized something over $2,000,000 out of his invention. He died in Brooklyn, New York, on the 3rd of October 1867.
See History of the Sewing Machine and of Elias Howe, Jr., the Inventor (Detroit, 1867); P. G. Hubert, Jr., Inventors, in “Men of Achievement” series (New York, 1893).