GOLDWELL, THOMAS (d. 1585), English ecclesiastic, began his career as vicar of Cheriton in 1531, after graduating M.A. at All Souls College, Oxford. He became chaplain to Cardinal Pole and lived with him at Rome, was attainted in 1539, but returned to England on Mary’s accession, and in 1555 became bishop of St Asaph, a diocese which he did much to win back to the old faith. On the death of Mary, Goldwell escaped from England and in 1561 became superior of the Theatines at Naples. He was the only English bishop at the council of Trent, and in 1562 was again attainted. In the following year he was appointed vicar-general to Carlo Borromeo, archbishop of Milan. He died in Rome in 1585, the last of the English bishops who had refused to accept the Reformation.
GOLDZIHER, IGNAZ (1850–), Jewish Hungarian orientalist, was born in Stuhlweissenburg on the 22nd of June 1850. He was educated at the universities of Budapest, Berlin, Leipzig and Leiden, and became privat docent at Budapest in 1872. In the next year, under the auspices of the Hungarian government, he began a journey through Syria, Palestine and Egypt, and took the opportunity of attending lectures of Mahommedan sheiks in the mosque of el-Azhar in Cairo. He was the first Jewish scholar to become professor in the Budapest University (1894), and represented the Hungarian government and the Academy of Sciences at numerous international congresses. He received the large gold medal at the Stockholm Oriental Congress in 1889. He became a member of several Hungarian and other learned societies, was appointed secretary of the Jewish community in Budapest. He was made Litt. D. of Cambridge (1904) and LL.D. of Aberdeen (1906). His eminence in the sphere of scholarship is due primarily to his careful investigation of pre-Mahommedan and Mahommedan law, tradition, religion and poetry, in connexion with which he published a large number of treatises, review articles and essays contributed to the collections of the Hungarian Academy.
Among his chief works are: Beiträge zur Literaturgeschichte der Schi’a (1874); Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachgelehrsamkeit bei den Arabern (Vienna, 1871–1873); Der Mythos bei den Hebräern und seine geschichtliche Entwickelung (Leipzig, 1876; Eng. trans., R. Martineau, London, 1877); Muhammedanische Studien (Halle, 1889–1890, 2 vols.); Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philologie (Leiden, 1896–1899, 2 vols.); Buch v. Wesen d. Seele (ed. 1907).
GOLETTA [La Goulette], a town on the Gulf of Tunis in 36° 50′ N. 10° 19′ E., a little south of the ruins of Carthage, and on the north side of the ship canal which traverses the shallow Lake of Tunis and leads to the city of that name. Built on the narrow strip of sand which separates the lake from the gulf, Goletta is defended by a fort and battery. The town contains a summer palace of the bey, the old seraglio, arsenal and custom-house, and many villas, gardens and pleasure resorts, Goletta being a favourite place for sea-bathing. A short canal, from which the name of the town is derived (Arab. Halk-el-Wad, “throat of the canal”), 40 ft. broad and 812 ft. deep, divides the town and affords communication between the ship canal and a dock or basin, 1082 ft. long and 541 ft. broad. An electric tramway which runs along the north bank of the ship canal connects Goletta with the city of Tunis (q.v.). Pop. (1907) about 5000, mostly Jews and Italian fishermen.
Beyond Cape Carthage, 5 m. N. of Goletta, is La Marsa, a summer resort overlooking the sea. The bey has a palace here, and the French resident-general, the British consul, other officials, and many Tunisians have country-houses, surrounded by groves of olive trees.
Before the opening of the ship canal in 1893 Goletta, as the port of Tunis, was a place of considerable importance. The basin at the Goletta end of the canal now serves as a subsidiary harbour to that of Tunis. The most stirring events in the history of the town are connected with the Turkish conquest of the Barbary states. Khair-ed-Din Barbarossa having made himself master of Tunis and its port, Goletta was attacked in 1535 by the emperor Charles V., who seized the pirate’s fleet, which was sheltered in the small canal, his arsenal, and 300 brass cannon. The Turks regained possession in 1574. (See Tunisia: History.)
GOLF (in its older forms Goff, Gouff or Gowff, the last of
which gives the genuine old pronunciation), a game which
probably derives its name from the Ger. kolbe, a club—in Dutch,
kolf—which last is nearly in sound identical and might suggest a
Dutch origin,[1] which many pictures and other witnesses further
support.
History.—One of the most ancient and most interesting of the pictures in which the game is portrayed is the tailpiece to an illuminated Book of Hours made at Bruges at the beginning of the 16th century. The original is in the British Museum. The players, three in number, have but one club apiece. The heads of the clubs are steel or steel covered. They play with a ball each. That which gives this picture a peculiar interest over the many pictures of Dutch schools that portray the game in progress is that most of them show it on the ice, the putting being at a stake. In this Book of Hours they are putting at a hole in the turf, as in our modern golf. It is scarcely to be doubted that the game is of Dutch origin, and that it has been in favour since very early days. Further than that our knowledge does not go. The early Dutchmen played golf, they painted golf, but they did not write it.
It is uncertain at what date golf was introduced into Scotland, but in 1457 the popularity of the game had already become so great as seriously to interfere with the more important pursuit of archery. In March of that year the Scottish parliament “decreted and ordained that wapinshawingis be halden be the lordis and baronis spirituale and temporale, four times in the zeir; and that the fute-ball and golf be utterly cryit down, and nocht usit; and that the bowe-merkis be maid at ilk paroche kirk a pair of buttis, and schuttin be usit ilk Sunday.” Fourteen years afterwards, in May 1471, it was judged necessary to pass another act “anent wapenshawings,” and in 1491 a final and evidently angry fulmination was issued on the general subject, with pains and penalties annexed. It runs thus—“Futeball and Golfe forbidden. Item, it is statut and ordainit that in na place of the realme there be usit fute-ball, golfe, or uther sik unprofitabill sportis,” &c. This, be it noted, is an edict of James IV.; and it is not a little curious presently to find the monarch himself setting an ill example to his commons, by practice of this “unprofitabill sport,” as is shown by various entries in the accounts of the lord high treasurer of Scotland (1503–1506).
About a century later, the game again appears on the surface of history, and it is quite as popular as before. In the year 1592 the town council of Edinburgh “ordanis proclamation to be made threw this burgh, that na inhabitants of the samyn be seen at ony pastymes within or without the toun, upoun the Sabboth day, sic as golfe, &c.”[2] The following year the edict was re-announced, but with the modification that the prohibition was “in tyme of sermons.”
Golf has from old times been known in Scotland as “The Royal and Ancient Game of Goff.” Though no doubt Scottish monarchs handled the club before him, James IV. is the first who figures formally in the golfing record. James V. was also very partial to the game distinctively known as “royal”; and there is some scrap of evidence to show that his daughter, the unhappy Mary Stuart, was a golfer. It was alleged by her enemies that, as showing her shameless indifference to the fate of her husband, a very few days after his murder, she “was seen playing golf and pallmall in the fields beside Seton.”[3] That her son, James VI. (afterwards James I. of England), was a golfer, tradition confidently asserts, though the evidence which connects him with the personal practice of the game is slight. Of the interest he took in it we have evidence in his act—already alluded to—“anent golfe ballis,” prohibiting their importation, except under certain
- ↑ From an enactment of James VI. (then James I. of England), bearing date 1618, we find that a considerable importation of golf balls at that time took place from Holland, and as thereby “na small quantitie of gold and silver is transported zierly out of his Hienes’ kingdome of Scoteland” (see letter of His Majesty from Salisbury, the 5th of August 1618), he issues a royal prohibition, at once as a wise economy of the national moneys, and a protection to native industry in the article. From this it might almost seem that the game was at that date still known and practised in Holland.
- ↑ Records of the City of Edinburgh.
- ↑ Inventories of Mary Queen of Scots, preface, p. lxx. (1863).
