The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 148

CROMWELL, RICHARD, son of the Protector; appointed to succeed him; was unequal to the task, and compelled to abdicate, April 26, 1659; retired into private life; went after the Restoration for a time abroad; returned under a feigned name, and lived and died at Cheshunt (1626-1712).

CROMWELL, THOMAS, minister of Henry VIII., and _malleus monachorum_, the "mauler of the monks," born at Putney; the son of a blacksmith; led a life of adventure for eight or nine years on the Continent; settled in England about the beginning of Henry's reign; came under notice of Wolsey, whose confidant he became, and subordinate agent in suppressing the smaller monasteries; on his master's fall rose into favour with Henry by suggesting he should discard the supremacy of the Pope, and a.s.sume the supremacy of the Church himself; attained, in consequence, the highest rank and authority in the State, for the proposal was adopted, with the result that the Crown remains the head of ecclesiastical authority in England to this day; the authority he thus acquired he employed in so high-handed a fas.h.i.+on that he lost the favour of both king and people, till on a sudden he was arrested on charges of treason, was condemned to death, and beheaded on Tower Hill (1485-1540).

CRONSTADT (42), the port of St. Petersburg, at the mouth of the Neva; a strongly fortified place, and the greatest naval station in the country; it is absolutely impregnable.

CROOKES, WILLIAM, an eminent chemist and physicist, born in London; distinguished for researches in both capacities; discovered the metal thallium, and invented the radiometer; _b_. 1832.

CROSS, MRS., George Eliot's married name.

CROSS, SOUTHERN, a bright constellation in the southern hemisphere, consisting of four stars.

CROSS, VICTORIA, a naval and military decoration inst.i.tuted in 1854; awarded for eminent personal valour in the face of the enemy.

CROSS FELL, one of the Pennine range of mountains in the N. of England, 2892 ft., on the top of which five counties meet.

CROSSE, ANDREW, electrician, born at Somersets.h.i.+re; made several discoveries in the application of electricity; he was a zealous scientist, and apt to be over-zealous (1784-1855).

CROSSRAGUEL, an abbey, now in ruins, 2 m. SW. of Maybole, Ayrs.h.i.+re, where John Knox held disputation with the abbot, and of which in his "History of the Reformation" he gives a humorous account (1562).

CROTCH, WILLIAM, musical composer of precocious gifts, and writer in music, born in Norwich; became, in 1797, professor of Music in Oxford, and in 1822 Princ.i.p.al of the Royal Academy; his anthems are well known (1775-1847).

CROTONA, an ancient large and flouris.h.i.+ng Greek city, Magna Graecia, in Italy; the residence of the philosopher Pythagoras and the athlete Milo.

CROWE, EYRE EVANS, historian and miscellaneous writer, born in Hants; editor of the _Daily News_; author of the "History of France" and "Lives of Eminent Foreign Statesmen" (1799-1868).

CROWE, SIR JAMES ARCHER, writer on art and a journalist, born in London, son of the preceding; is a.s.sociated with Cavalcaselle in several works on art and famous artists; _b_. 1825.

CROWNE, JOHN, playwright, born in Nova Scotia, a contemporary and rival of Dryden; supplied the stage with plays for nearly 30 years (1640-1705).

CROWTHER, SAMUEL ADJAI, bishop of the Niger Territory; an African by birth; was captured to be sold as a slave, but released by an English cruiser; baptized a Christian in 1825; joined the first Niger Expedition in 1841; sent out as a missionary in 1843; appointed bishop in 1864, the duties of which he discharged faithfully, zealously, and well (1810-1891).

CROYDON (103), the largest town in Surrey, on the Wandle, 10 m. SW.

of London Bridge, and practically now a suburb of London.

CRUDEN, ALEXANDER, author of a "Complete Concordance of the Holy Scriptures," with which alone his name is now a.s.sociated; born in Aberdeen; intended for the Church, but from unsteadiness of intellect not qualified to enter it; was placed frequently in restraint; appears to have been a good deal employed as a press corrector; gave himself out as "Alexander the Corrector," commissioned to correct moral abuses (1701-1770).

CRUIKSHANK, GEORGE, a richly gifted English artist, born in London, of Scotch descent; the first exhibition of his talent was in the ill.u.s.tration of books for children, but it was in the line of humorous satire he chiefly distinguished himself; and he first found scope for his gifts in this direction in the political squibs of William Hone, a faculty he exercised at length over a wide area; the works ill.u.s.trated by him include, among hundreds of others, "Grimm's Stories," "Peter Schlemihl," Scott's "Demonology," d.i.c.kens's "Oliver Twist," and Ainsworth's "Jack Shepherd"; like Hogarth, he was a moralist as well as an artist, and as a total abstainer he consecrated his art at length to dramatise the fearful downward career of the drunkard; his greatest work, done in oil, is in the National Gallery, the "Wors.h.i.+p of Bacchus," which is a vigorous protestation against this vice (1792-1878).

CRUSADES, THE, military expeditions, organised from the 11th century to the 13th, under the banner of the Cross for the recovery of the Holy Land from the hands of the Saracens, to the number of eight. _The First_ (1096-1099), preached by Peter the Hermit, and sanctioned by the Council of Clermont (1095), consisted of two divisions: one, broken into two hordes, under Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless respectively, arrived decimated in Syria, and was cut to pieces at Nicaea by the sultan; while the other, better equipped and more efficiently organised, laid siege to and captured in succession Nicaea, Antioch, and Jerusalem, where G.o.dfrey of Bouillon was proclaimed king. _The Second_ (1147-1149), preached by St. Bernard, consisting of two armies under Conrad III. of Germany and Louis VII. of France, laid siege in a shattered state to Damascus, and was compelled to raise the siege and return a mere remnant to Europe. _The Third_ (1189-1193), preached by William, archbishop of Tyre, and provoked by Saladin's capture of Jerusalem, of which one division was headed by Barbarossa, who, after taking Iconium, was drowned while bathing in the Orontes, and the other, headed by Philippe Augustus and Richard Coeur de Lion, who jointly captured Acre and made peace with Saladin. _The Fourth_ (1202-1204), under sanction of Pope Innocent III., and undertaken by Baldwin, count of Flanders, having got the length of Venice, was preparing to start for Asia, when it was called aside to Constantinople to restore the emperor to his throne, when, upon his death immediately afterwards, the Crusaders elected Baldwin in his place, pillaged the city, and left, having added it to the domain of the Pope.

_The Fifth_ (1217-1221), on the part of John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem, and Andrew II., king of Hungary, who made a raid upon Egypt against the Saracens there, but without any result. _The Sixth_ (1228-1229), under conduct of Frederick II. of Germany, as heir through John of Brienne to the throne of Jerusalem, who made a treaty with the sultan of Egypt, whereby the holy city, with the exception of the Mosque of Omar, was made over to him as king of Jerusalem. _The Seventh_ (1248-1254), conducted by St. Louis in the fulfilment of a vow, in which Louis was defeated and taken prisoner, and only recovered his liberty by payment of a heavy ransom. _The Eighth_ (1270), also undertaken by St.

Louis, who lay dying at Tunis as the towns of Palestine fell one after another into the hands of the Saracens. The Crusades terminated with the fall of Ptolemas in 1291.

CRUSOE, ROBINSON, the hero of Defoe's fiction of the name, a s.h.i.+pwrecked sailor who spent years on an uninhabited island, and is credited with no end of original devices in providing for his wants. See SELKIRK.

CSOMA DE KoRoS, ALEXANDER, a Hungarian traveller and philologist, born in Koros, Transylvania; in the hope of tracing the origin of the Magyar race, set out for the East in 1820, and after much hards.h.i.+p by the way arrived in Thibet, where, under great privations, though aided by the English Government, he devoted himself to the study of the Thibetan language; in 1831 settled in Calcutta, where he compiled his Thibetan Grammar and Dictionary, and catalogued the Thibetan works in the library of the Asiatic Society; died at Darjeeling just as he was setting out for fresh discoveries (1784-1836).

CTESIAS, Greek physician and historian of Persia; was present with Artaxerxes Mnemon at the battle of Cunaxa, 401 B.C., and stayed afterwards at the Persian court, where he got the materials for his history, of which only a few fragments are extant.

CTESIPHON, an Athenian who, having proposed that the city should confer a crown of gold on Demosthenes, was accused by aeschines of violating the law in so doing, but was acquitted after an eloquent oration by Demosthenes in his defence.

CUBA (1,500), the largest of the West India Islands, 700 m. long and from 27 m. to 290 m. in breadth; belonged to Spain, but is now under the protection of the United States; is traversed from E. to W. by a range of mountains wooded to the summit; abounds in forests--ebony, cedar, mahogany, &c.; soil very fertile; exports sugar and tobacco; princ.i.p.al town, Havana.

CUBBIT, SIR WILLIAM, an eminent English engineer, born in Norfolk; more or less employed in most of the great engineering undertakings of his time (1785-1861).

CUDWORTH, RALPH, an eminent English divine and philosopher, born in Somerset; his chief work, a vast and discursive one, and to which he owes his fame, "The True Intellectual System of the Universe," in which he teaches a philosophy of the Platonic type, which ascribes more to the abiding inner than the fugitive outer of things; he defends revealed religion on grounds of reason against both the atheist and the materialist; his candour and liberality exposed him to much misconstruction, and on that account was deemed a lat.i.tudinarian. "He stands high among our early philosophers for his style, which, if not exactly elegant and never splendid, is solid and clear" (1617-1688).

CUENCA, a fine old city in Spain, 83 m. E. of Madrid; also a high-lying city of Ecuador, over 100 m. S. of Quito, with a delightful climate; both in provinces of the same name.

CUJAS, or CUJACIUS, a celebrated French jurist, born at Toulouse; devoted to the study of Roman law in its historical development, and the true founder of the Historical school in that department (1522-1590).

CULDEES, fraternities of uncertain origin and character scattered up and down Ireland, and especially Scotland, hardly at all in England, from the 9th or 10th to the 14th century; inst.i.tuted, as would appear, to keep alive a religious spirit among themselves and disseminate it among their neighbours, until on the establishment of monastic orders in the country they ceased to have a separate existence and lost their individuality in the new communities, as well as their original character; they appear to have been originally, whatever they became at length, something like those fraternities we find later on at Deventer, in Holland, with which Thomas a Kempis was connected, only whereas the former sought to plant Christianity, the latter sought to purify it. The name disappears after 1332, but traces of them are found at Dunkeld, St. Andrews, Brechin, and elsewhere in Scotland; in Ireland they continued in Armagh to the Reformation, and were resuscitated for a few years in the 17th century.

CULLEN, PAUL, Cardinal, Catholic primate of Ireland, born in Kildare; was an extreme Ultramontanist; vigorously opposed all secret societies in the country with revolutionary aims, as well as the system of mixed education then in force (1803-1878).

CULLEN, WILLIAM, physician, born at Hamilton; studied in Glasgow; held successively the chairs of Chemistry, the Inst.i.tutes of Medicine, and Medicine in Edinburgh University; author of several medical works; did much to advance the science of medicine; the celebrated Dr. Black was one of his pupils in chemistry (1710-1790).