Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/245

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any preparations for the voyage. Parr addressed an indignant letter on the subject to Windham, then secretary at war, and, assisted by others, sent after Gerrald money, books, and personal necessaries; he also took under his protection Gerrald's son. Touching letters written at this period bear witness to the affection which existed between Parr and his former pupil (Parr, Works, i. 453–5).

Gerrald reached Sydney, New South Wales, on 5 Nov. 1795, in very weak health, and was received by friends who had suffered in the same cause. Among these was Margarot, against whom accusations had been made by his companions, and from whom Gerrald soon separated. He was permitted by the governor of the settlement to purchase a small house and garden. Five months after his arrival (16 March 1796) he died of consumption, aged 33. Gerrald's name appears on the obelisk (‘The Martyrs' Monument’) erected on Calton Hill, Edinburgh, in 1844, to commemorate the struggle for parliamentary reform.

[Howell's State Trials, xxiii. 803–1011, 1411–1414; Parl. Hist. xxx. 1298, 1449, 1486, xxxi. 54, 263, xxxiii. 617; Adolphus's History, v. 532–41; Lives and Trials of the Reformers, 1836, pt. i.; Memoirs and Trials of the Political Martyrs of Scotland persecuted during 1793 and 1794, Edinburgh, 1837; An Examination of the Trials for sedition which have hitherto occurred in Scotland, by the late Lord Cockburn (posthumously published 1888); Johnstone's Memoir of Dr. Parr prefixed to his Works, i. 448–57; Rogers's Monuments and Monumental Inscriptions, i. 92.]

J. M. S.

GERVASE of Canterbury (Gervasius Dorobornensis) (fl. 1188), chronicler, was born, apparently of a Kentish family, about 1141. As he had a brother Thomas in his monastery, who is conjectured to be identical with one Thomas of Maidstone, we have a possible clue to his birthplace; but the information is too imperfect to warrant more than an hypothesis. Gervase became a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, on the first Saturday in Lent, 16 Feb. 1163 (Hist. Works, i. 173). The new archbishop, Thomas Becket, received his profession, and it was he who conferred holy orders upon him (p. 231). Dom Brial's statement (Recueil des Historiens de France, xvii. præf. pp. xi, xii, 1818) that Gervase was prior of St. Ceneri before he went to Canterbury is impossible on chronological grounds. Of his earlier years in the monastery nothing is recorded beyond an incidental notice (ii. 396) of his presence at the archbishop's burial on the morrow of his murder, 30 Dec. 1170. Thenceforward his works contain more and more information as to the events connected with his church and monastery, which he seems never to have quitted for any length of time. He gives, for instance, a minute account of the burning of the cathedral, 5 Sept. 1174 (i. 1–6), though this record is apparently not quite contemporary, since it is probable that he did not begin writing until 1185; and he takes an active interest in the disputes of his monastery, which continued in an acute form until long after the election of Archbishop Baldwin in December 1184. His writings are of great interest for the history of the important religious body to which he belonged. ‘He writes throughout as the champion of the cathedral convent against the whole world, and especially against the archbishop, wherever the interests of the archbishop and convent are opposed. Where there is no such opposition he is willing to act and write as the archbishop's champion, and his interest is never more vivid or his argument stronger than where the rights of the archbishop and convent are identical’ (Stubbs, i. pref. p. xvi).

The earliest controversy in which Gervase appears to have been personally concerned was one between the archbishop and the abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, which lasted from 1179 to 1183, and on which he wrote two ‘imaginationes’ or statements of the case (i. 68–83). These have the look, however, rather of exercises than of statements drawn up for use in the contest. The same criticism applies also, though with not so high a degree of probability, to a set of tracts or statements prefixed to Gervase's ‘Chronicle’ (i. 32–68), which relate to the disputes between Archbishop Baldwin and the monastery of Christ Church (1185–91). There are several traces of his personal action in the affair, and on one occasion, in December 1186, he was sent with other monks to announce to the archbishop the appeal of the monastery to Rome (i. 343 f.). It is further possible that he was in part the author of some of the letters drawn up on behalf of his monastery, and printed by Bishop Stubbs in his collection of ‘Epistolæ Cantuarienses’ (Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, vol. ii. Rolls Series, 1865). The relation of the smaller tracts to the Chronicle which follows them, as well as of the Chronicle to the life of St. Thomas by Herbert of Bosham, furnishes a satisfactory argument for fixing 1188 as the date at which Gervase began the composition of the larger work. That opens at the accession of Henry I (1100), and was continued apparently year by year until 1199. The materials for its earlier portions are chiefly derived from Henry of Huntingdon and Florence of Worcester—of the latter