OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Clare, John

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​CLARE, JOHN (1793–1864), English poet, commonly known as “the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet,” the son of a farm labourer, was born at Helpstone near Peterborough, on the 13th of July 1793. At the age of seven he was taken from school to tend sheep and geese; four years later he began to work on a farm, attending in the winter evenings a school where he is said to have learnt some algebra. He then became a pot-boy in a public-house and fell in love with Mary Joyce, but her father, a prosperous farmer, forbade her to meet him. Subsequently he was gardener at Burghley Park. He enlisted in the militia, tried camp life with gipsies, and worked as a lime burner in 1817, but in the following year he was obliged to accept parish relief. Clare had bought a copy of Thomson’s Seasons out of his scanty earnings and had begun to write poems. In 1819 a bookseller at Stamford, named Drury, lighted on one of Clare’s poems, The Setting Sun, written on a scrap of paper enclosing a note to his predecessor in the business. He befriended the author and introduced his poems to the notice of John Taylor, of the publishing firm of Taylor & Hussey, who issued the Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery in 1820. This book was highly praised, and in the next year his Village Minstrel and other Poems were published. He was greatly patronized; fame, in the shape of curious visitors, broke the tenor of his life, and the convivial habits that he had formed were indulged more freely. He had married in 1820, and an annuity of 15 guineas from Lord Exeter, in whose service he had been, was supplemented by subscription, and he became possessed of £45 annually, a sum far beyond what he had ever earned, but new wants made his income insufficient, and in 1823 he was nearly penniless. The Shepherd’s Calendar (1827) met with little success, which was not increased by his hawking it himself. As he worked again on the fields his health temporarily improved; but he soon became seriously ill. Lord Fitzwilliam presented him with a new cottage and a piece of ground, but Clare could not settle in his new home. Gradually his mind gave way. His last and best work, the Rural Muse (1835), was noticed by “Christopher North” alone. He had for some time shown symptoms of insanity; and in July 1837 he was removed to a private asylum, and afterwards to the Northampton general lunatic asylum, where he died on the 20th of May 1864. Clare’s descriptions of rural scenes show a keen and loving appreciation of nature, and his love-songs and ballads charm by their genuine feeling; but his vogue was no doubt largely due to the interest aroused by his humble position in life.
See the Life of John Clare, by Frederick Martin (1865); and Life and Remains of John Clare, by J. L. Cherry (1873), which, though not so complete, contains some of the poet’s asylum verses and prose fragments.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Claremont

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​CLAREMONT, a city of Sullivan county, New Hampshire, U.S.A., situated in the W. part of the state, bordering on the Connecticut river. Pop. (1890) 5565; (1900) 6498 (1442 foreign-born); (1910) 7529. Area, 6 sq. m. It is served by two branches of the Boston & Maine railway. In Claremont is the Fiske free library (1873), housed in a Carnegie building (1904). The Stevens high school is richly endowed by the gift of Paran Stevens, a native of Claremont. The city contains several villages, the principal being Claremont, Claremont Junction and West Claremont. Sugar river, flowing through the city into the Connecticut and falling 223 ft. within the city limits, furnishes good water-power. Among the manufactures are woollen and cotton goods, paper, mining and quarrying machinery, rubber goods, linens, shoes, wood trim and pearl buttons. The first settlement here was made in 1762, and a township was organized in 1764; in 1908 Claremont was chartered as a city. It was named from Claremont, Lord Clive’s country place.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Clarendon, Constitutions of

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​CLARENDON, CONSTITUTIONS OF, a body of English laws issued at Clarendon in 1164, by which Henry II. endeavoured to settle the relations between Church and State. Though they purported to declare the usages on the subject which prevailed in the reign of Henry I. they were never accepted by the clergy, and were formally renounced by the king at Avranches in September 1172. Some of them, however, were in part at least, as they all purported to be, declaratory of ancient usage and remained in force after the royal renunciation. Of the sixteen provisions the one which provoked the greatest opposition was that which declared in effect that criminous clerks were to be summoned to the king’s court, and from there, after formal accusation and defence, sent to the proper ecclesiastical court for trial. If found guilty they were to be degraded and sent back to the king’s court for punishment. Another provision, which in spite of all opposition obtained a permanent place in English law, declared that all suits even between clerk and clerk concerning advowsons and presentations should be tried in the king’s court. By other provisions appeals to Rome without the licence of the king were forbidden. None of the clergy were to leave the realm, nor were the king’s tenants-in-chief and ministers to be excommunicated or their lands interdicted without the royal permission. Pleas of debt, whether involving a question of good faith or not, were to be in the jurisdiction of the king’s courts. Two most interesting provisions, to which the clergy offered no opposition, were: (1) if a dispute arose between a clerk and a layman concerning a tenement which the clerk claimed as free-alms (frankalmoign) and the layman as a lay-fee, it should be determined by the recognition of twelve lawful men before the king’s justice whether it belonged to free-alms or lay-fee, and if it were found to belong to free-alms then the plea was to be held in the ecclesiastical court, but if to lay-fee, in the court of the king or of one of his magnates; (2) a declaration of the procedure for election to bishoprics and royal abbeys, generally considered to state the terms of the settlement made between Henry I. and Anselm in 1107.
Authorities—J. C. Robertson, Materials for History of Thomas Becket, Rolls Series (1875–1885); Sir F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, History of English Law before the Time of Ed. I. (Cambridge, 1898), and F. W. Maitland, Roman Canon Law in the Church of England (1898); the text of the Constitutions is printed by W. Stubbs in Select Charters (Oxford, 1895). (G. J. T.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Claque

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​CLAQUE (Fr. claquer, to clap the hands), an organized body of professional applauders in the French theatres. The hiring of persons to applaud dramatic performances was common in classical times, and the emperor Nero, when he acted, had his performance greeted by an encomium chanted by five thousand of his soldiers, who were called Angustals. The recollection of this gave the 16th-century French poet, Jean Daurat, an idea which has developed into the modern claque. Buying up a number of tickets for a performance of one of his plays, he distributed them gratuitously to those who promised publicly to express their approbation. It was not, however, till 1820 that a M. Sauton seriously undertook the systematization of the claque, and opened an office in Paris for the supply of claqueurs. By 1830 the claque had become a regular institution. The manager of a theatre sends an order for any number of claqueurs. These people are usually under a chef de claque, whose duty it is to judge where their efforts are needed and to start the demonstration of approval. This takes several forms. Thus there are commissaires, those who learn the piece by heart, and call the attention of their neighbours to its good points between the acts. The rieurs are those who laugh loudly at the jokes. The pleureurs, generally women, feign tears, by holding their handkerchiefs to their eyes. The chatouilleurs keep the audience in a good humour, while the bisseurs simply clap their hands and cry bis! bis! to secure encores.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Clara, Saint

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​CLARA, SAINT (1194–1253), foundress of the Franciscan nuns, was born of a knightly family in Assisi in 1194. At eighteen she was so impressed by a sermon of St Francis that she was filled with the desire to devote herself to the kind of life he was leading. She obtained an interview with him, and to test her resolution he told her to dress in penitential sackcloth and beg alms for the poor in the streets of Assisi. Clara readily did this, and Francis, satisfied as to her vocation, told her to come to the Portiuncula arrayed as a bride. The friars met her with lighted candles, and at the foot of the altar Francis shore off her hair, received her vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and invested her with the Franciscan habit, 1212. He placed her for a couple of years in a Benedictine convent in Assisi, until the convent at St Damian’s, close to the town, was ready. Her two younger sisters, and, after her father’s death, her mother and many others joined her, and the Franciscan nuns spread widely and rapidly (see Clares, Poor). The relations of friendship and sympathy between St Clara and St Francis were very close, and there can be no doubt that she was one of the truest heirs of Francis’s inmost spirit. After his death Clara threw herself wholly on the side of those who opposed mitigations in the rule and manner of life, and she was one of the chief upholders of St Francis’s primitive idea of poverty (see Franciscans). She was the close friend of Brother Leo and the other “Companions of St Francis,” and they assisted at her death. For forty years she was abbess at St Damian’s, and the great endeavour of her life was that the rule of the nuns should be purged of the foreign elements that had been introduced, and should become wholly conformable to St Francis’s spirit. She lived just long enough to witness the fulfilment of her great wish, a rule such as she desired being approved by the pope two days before her death on the 11th of August 1253.
The sources for her life are to be found in the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum on the 11th of August, and sketches in such Lives of the Saints as Alban Butler’s. See also Wetzer und Welte, Kirchen-lexicon (2nd ed.), art. “Clara.”  (E. C. B.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barring-out

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​BARRING-OUT, a custom, formerly common in English schools, of barring the master out of the school premises. A typical example of this practice was at Bromfield school, Cumberland, where William Hutchinson says “it was the custom, time out of mind, for the scholars, at Fasting’s Even (the beginning of Lent) to depose and exclude the master from the school for three days.” During this period the school doors were barricaded and the boys armed with mock weapons. If the master’s attempts to re-enter were successful, extra tasks were inflicted as a penalty, and willingly performed by the boys. On the third day terms of capitulation, usually in Latin verse, were signed, and these always conceded the immediate right to indulge in football and a cockfight. The custom was long retained at Eton and figures in many school stories.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barrington, Daines

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​BARRINGTON, DAINES (1727–1800), English lawyer, antiquary and naturalist, was born in 1727, fourth son of the first Viscount Barrington. He was educated for the profession of the law, and after filling various posts, was appointed a Welsh judge in 1757 and afterwards second justice of Chester. Though an indifferent judge, his Observations on the Statutes, chiefly the more ancient, from Magna Charta to 21st James I., cap. 27, with an appendix, being a proposal for new-modelling the Statutes (1766), had a high reputation among historians and constitutional antiquaries. In 1773 he published an edition of Orosius, with Alfred’s Saxon version, and an English translation with original notes. His Tracts on the Probability of reaching the North Pole (1775) were written in consequence of the northern voyage of discovery undertaken by Captain C. J. Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave (1744–1792). Barrington’s other writings are chiefly to be found in the publications of the Royal and Antiquarian Societies, of both of which he was long a member, and of the latter vice-president. Many of these were collected by him in a quarto volume entitled Miscellanies on various Subjects (1781). He contributed to the Philosophical Transactions for 1780 an account of Mozart’s visit at eight years of age to London. In his Miscellanies on varied subjects he included this with accounts of four other prodigies, namely, Crotch, Charles and Samuel Wesley, and Garrett Wellesley, Lord Mornington. Among the most curious and ingenious of his papers are his Experiments and Observations on the Singing of Birds, and his Essay on the Language of Birds. He died on the 14th of March 1800 and was buried in the Temple church.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barrett, Wilson

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​BARRETT, WILSON (1846–1904), English actor, manager and playwright, was born in Essex on the 18th of February 1846, the ​son of a farmer. He made his first appearance on the stage at Halifax in 1864, and then played in the provinces alone and with his wife, Caroline Heath, in East Lynne. After managerial experiences at Leeds and elsewhere, in 1879 he took the management of the old Court theatre, where he introduced Madame Modjeska to London, in an adaptation of Schiller’s Maria Stuart, Adrienne Lecouvreur, La Dame aux camélias and other plays. It was not till 1881, however, when he took the Princess’s theatre, that he became well known to the public in the emotional drama, The Lights o’ London, by G. R. Sims. The play which made him an established favourite was The Silver King by Henry Arthur Jones, perhaps the most successful melodrama ever staged, produced in 1882 with himself as Wilfred Denver, his brother George (an excellent comedian) in the cast, and E. S. Willard (b. 1853) as the “Spider,”—this being the part in which Mr Willard, afterwards a well-known actor both in America and England, first came to the front. Barrett played this part for three hundred nights without a break, and repeated his London success in W. G. Wills’s Claudian which followed. In 1884 he appeared in Hamlet, but soon returned to melodrama, and though he had occasional seasons in London he acted chiefly in the provinces. In 1886 he made his first visit to America, repeated in later years, and in 1898 he visited Australia. During these years the London stage was coming under new influences, and Wilson Barrett’s vogue in melodrama had waned. But in 1895 he struck a new vein of success with his drama of religious emotion, The Sign of the Cross, which crowded his theatre with audiences largely composed of people outside the ordinary circle of playgoers. He attempted to repeat the success with other plays of a religious type, but not with equal effect, and several of his later plays were failures. He died on the 22nd of July 1904. Wilson Barrett was a sterling actor of a robust type and striking physique, not remarkable for intellectual finesse, but excelling in melodrama, and very successful as the central figure on his own stage.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barrhead

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​BARRHEAD, a police burgh of Renfrewshire, Scotland, situated on the Levern, 71/2 m. S.W. of Glasgow by the Glasgow & South-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 9855. Founded in 1773, it has gradually absorbed the villages of Arthurlie, Dovecothall and Grahamston, and become a thriving town. The chief industries include bleaching, calico-printing, cotton-spinning, weaving, iron and brass founding, engineering and the manufacture of sanitary appliances. Neilston (pop. 2668), about 2 m. S.W., has bleachfields and print-works, and 2 m. N. by E. lie Hurlet, where are important manufactures of alum and other chemicals, and Nitshill (pop. 1242) with chemical works, quarries and collieries.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barricade

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​BARRICADE, or Barricado (from the Span. barricada, from barrica, a cask, casks filled with earth having been early used to form barricades), an improvised fortification of earth, paving-stones, trees or any materials ready to hand, thrown up, especially across a street, to hinder the advance of an enemy; in the old wooden warships a fence or wooden rail, supported by stanchions and strengthened by various materials, extending across the quarter-deck as a protection during action.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barrili, Antonio Giulio

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​BARRILI, ANTONIO GIULIO (1836–), Italian novelist, was born at Savona, and was educated for the legal profession, which he abandoned for journalism in Genoa. He was a volunteer in the campaign of 1859 and served with Garibaldi in 1866 and 1867. From 1865 (Capitan Dodero) onwards he published a large number of books of fiction, which had wide popularity, his work being commonly compared with that of Victor Cherbuliez. Some of the best of the later ones are Santa Cecilia (1866), Come un Sogno (1875), and L’Olmo e l’ Edera (1877). His Raggio di Dio appeared in 1899. Barrili also wrote two plays and various volumes of criticism, including Il rinnovamento letterario italiano (1890). He was elected to the Italian chamber of deputies in 1876; and in 1889 became professor of Italian literature at Genoa.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barrett, Lucas

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​BARRETT, LUCAS (1837–1862), English naturalist and geologist, was born in London on the 14th of November 1837, and educated at University College school and at Ebersdorf. In 1855 he accompanied R. McAndrew on a dredging excursion from the Shetlands to Norway and beyond the Arctic Circle; and subsequently made other cruises to Greenland and to the coast of Spain. These expeditions laid the foundations of an extensive knowledge of the distribution of marine life. In 1855 he was engaged by Sedgwick to assist in the Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge, and during the following three years he aided the professor by delivering lectures. He discovered bones of birds in the Cambridge Greensand, and he also prepared a geological map of Cambridge on the one-inch Ordnance map. In 1859, when twenty-two years of age, he was appointed director of the Geological Survey of Jamaica. He there determined the Cretaceous age of certain rocks which contained Hippurites, the new genus Barrettia being named after him by S. P. Woodward; he also obtained many fossils from the Miocene and newer strata. He was drowned at the early age of twenty-five, on the 18th of December 1862, while investigating the sea-bottom off Kingston, Jamaica.
Obituary by S. P. Woodward in Geologist (Feb. 1863), p. 60.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barrie

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​BARRIE, the capital of Simcoe county, Ontario, Canada, 56 m. N. of Toronto, on Lake Simcoe, an important centre on the Grand Trunk railway. It contains several breweries, carriage factories, boat-building and railway shops, and manufactories of woollens, stoves and leather. It is also a summer resort and the starting-point for the numerous Lake Simcoe steamers. Pop. (1901) 5949.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Barrier Treaty

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​BARRIER TREATY, the name given first to the treaty signed on 29th of October 1709 between Great Britain and the states-general of the United Netherlands, by which the latter engaged to guarantee the Protestant succession in England in favour of the house of Hanover; while Great Britain undertook to procure for the Dutch an adequate barrier on the side of the Netherlands, consisting of the towns of Furnes, Nieuport, Ypres, Menin, Lille, Tournai, Condé, Valenciennes, Maubeuge, Charleroi, Namur, Halle, Damme, Dendermond and the citadel of Ghent. The treaty was based on the same principle of securing Holland against French aggression that had inspired that of Ryswick in 1698, by the terms of which the chief frontier fortresses of the Netherlands were to be garrisoned by Dutch troops. A second Barrier Treaty was signed between Great Britain and Holland on 29th of January 1713, by which the strong places designed for the barrier were reduced to Furnes, the fort of Knocke, Ypres, Menin, Tournai, Mons, Charleroi and the citadel of Ghent, and certain fortresses in the neighbourhood of that city and of Bruges; Great Britain undertaking to obtain the right for the Dutch to garrison them from the future sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands. Its terms were included in the treaty of Rastatt, between the emperor and France, signed on the 7th of March 1714. A third Barrier Treaty was signed in November 1715.
See Jean Dumont, Corps universel diplomatique, &c. (1726–1731), vol. viii.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Battishill, Jonathan

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​BATTISHILL, JONATHAN (1738–1801), one of the best 18th century English composers of church music. Until 1764 he wrote chiefly for the theatre (incidental songs, pantomime music, and an opera in collaboration with Michael Arne, the son of Thomas Arne), but his later compositions are chiefly glees, part-songs and church music. In 1763 he had married a singer at Covent Garden theatre where he was harpsichordist. She retired from her profession when she married; and her death in 1777 so crushed him that he composed no more.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Battle

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​BATTLE, a general engagement between the armed forces, naval or military, of enemies. The word is derived from the Fr. bataille, and this, like the Ital. battaglia, and Span. batalla, comes from the popular Lat. battalia for battualia. Cassiodorus Senator (480–?575) says: Battualia quae vulgo Batalia dicuntur . . . exercitationes militum vel gladiatorum significant (see Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. Batalia). The verb battuere, cognate with “beat,” is a rare word, found in Pliny, used of beating in a mortar or of meat before cooking. Suetonius (Caligula, 54. 32) uses it of fencing, battuebat pugnatoriis armis, i.e. not with blunted weapons or foils. Battalia or batalia was used for the array of troops for battle, and hence was applied to the body of troops so arranged, or to a division of an army, whence the use of the word “battalion” (q.v.).
A “pitched battle,” loosely used as meaning almost a decisive engagement, is strictly, as the words imply, one that is fought on ground previously selected (“pitched” meaning arranged in a fixed order) and in accordance with the intentions of the commanders of both sides; the French equivalent is bataille arrangée, opposed to bataille manœuvrée, which is prearranged but may come off on any ground. With “battle,” in its usual meaning of a general engagement of hostile forces, are contrasted “skirmish,” a fight between small bodies (“skirmishing” technically means fighting by troops in extended or irregular order), and “action,” a more or less similar engagement between large bodies of troops. (See also Tactics and Strategy.)