Chapter XXIV: Act 1856: , is mainly declaratory of the English common law, as embodied (17)

The palace built by Man Singh (1486-1516) forms the most interesting example of early Hindu work of its class in India. Another palace of even greater extent was added to this in 1516; both Jehangir and Shah Jahan added palaces to these two--the whole making a group of edifices unequalled for picturesqueness and interest by anything of their class in Central India. Among the apartments in the palace was the celebrated chamber, named the _Baradari_, supported on 12 columns, and 45 ft. square, with a stone roof, forming one of the most beautiful palace-halls in the world. It was, besides, singularly interesting from the expedients to which the Hindu architect was forced to resort to imitate the vaults of the Moslems. Of the buildings, however, which so excited the admiration of the emperor Baber, probably little now remains. The fort of Gwalior, within which the above buildings are situated, stands on an isolated rock. The face is perpendicular and where the rock is naturally less precipitous it has been scarped. Its greatest length from north-east to south-west is a mile and a half, and the greatest breadth 900 yds. The rock attains its maximum height of 342 ft. at the northern end. A rampart, accessible by a steep road, and farther up by huge steps cut out of the rock, surrounds the fort. The citadel stands at the north-eastern corner of the enclosure, and presents a very picturesque appearance. The old town of Gwalior, which is of considerable size, but irregularly built, and extremely dirty, lies at the eastern base of the rock. It contains the tomb of Mahommed Ghaus, erected during the early part of Akbar's reign. The fort of Gwalior was traditionally built by one Surya Sen, the raja of the neighbouring country. In 1196 Gwalior was captured by Mahommed Ghori; it then passed into the hands of several chiefs until in 1559 Akbar gained possession of it, and made it a state prison for captives of rank. On the dismemberment of the Delhi empire, Gwalior was seized by the Jat rana of Gohad. Subsequently it was garrisoned by Sindhia, from whom it was wrested in 1780 by the forces of the East India Company, and to whom it was finally restored by the British in 1886. The modern town contains the palace of the chief, a college, a high school, a girls' school, a service school to train officials, a law school, hospitals for men and for women, a museum, paper-mills, and a printing-press issuing a state gazette.

GWALIOR RESIDENCY, an administrative unit in the Central India agency, comprises Gwalior state and eleven smaller states and estates. Its total area is 17,825 sq. m., and its population in 1901 was 2,187,612. Of the area, 17,020 sq. m. belong to Gwalior State, and the agency also includes the small states of Raghugarh, Khaniadhana, Paron, Garha, Umri and Bhadaura, with the Chhabra _pargana_ of Tonk.

GWEEDORE, a hamlet and tourist resort of Co. Donegal, Ireland, on the Londonderry & Lough Swilly & Letterkenny railway. The river Clady, running past the village from the Nacung Loughs, affords salmon and trout fishing. The fine surrounding scenery culminates to the east in the wild mountain Errigal (2466 ft.) at the upper end of the loughs. The place owes its popularity as a resort to Lord George Hill (d. 1879), who also laboured for the amelioration of the conditions of the peasantry on his estate, and combated the Rundale system of minute repartition of property. In 1889, during the troubles which arose out of evictions, Gweedore was the headquarters of the Irish constabulary, when District Inspector Martin was openly murdered on attempting to arrest a priest on his way to Mass.

GWILT, JOSEPH (1784-1863), English architect and writer, was the younger son of George Gwilt, architect surveyor to the county of Surrey, and was born at Southwark on the 11th of January 1784. He was educated at St Paul's school, and after a short course of instruction in his father's office was in 1801 admitted a student of the Royal Academy, where in the same year he gained the silver medal for his drawing of the tower and steeple of St Dunstan-in-the-East. In 1811 he published a _Treatise on the Equilibrium of Arches_, and in 1815 he was elected F.S.A. After a visit to Italy in 1816, he published in 1818 _Notitia architectonica italiana, or Concise Notices of the Buildings and Architects of Italy_. In 1825 he published an edition of Sir William Chambers's _Treatise on Civil Architecture_; and among his other principal contributions to the literature of his profession are a translation of the _Architecture of Vitruvius_ (1826), a _Treatise on the Rudiments of Architecture, Practical and Theoretical_ (1826), and his valuable _Encyclopaedia of Architecture_ (1842), which was published with additions by Wyatt Papworth in 1867. In recognition of Gwilt's advocacy of the importance to architects of a knowledge of mathematics, he was in 1833 elected a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. He took a special interest in philology and music, and was the author of _Rudiments of the Anglo-Saxon Tongue_ (1829), and of the article "Music" in the _Encyclopaedia metropolitana_. His principal works as a practical architect were Markree Castle near Sligo in Ireland, and St Thomas's church at Charlton in Kent. He died on the 14th of September 1863.

GWYN, NELL [ELEANOR] (1650-1687), English actress, and mistress of Charles II., was born on the 2nd of February 1650/1, probably in an alley off Drury Lane, London, although Hereford also claims to have been her birthplace. Her father, Thomas Gwyn, appears to have been a broken-down soldier of a family of Welsh origin. Of her mother little is known save that she lived for some time with her daughter, and that in 1679 she was drowned, apparently when intoxicated, in a pond at Chelsea. Nell Gwyn, who sold oranges in the precincts of Drury Lane Theatre, passed, at the age of fifteen, to the boards, through the influence of the actor Charles Hart and of Robert Duncan or Dungan, an officer of the guards who had interest with the management. Her first recorded appearance on the stage was in 1665 as Cydaria, Montezuma's daughter, in Dryden's _Indian Emperor_, a serious part ill-suited to her. In the following year she was Lady Wealthy in the Hon. James Howard's comedy _The English Monsieur_. Pepys was delighted with the playing of "pretty, witty Nell," but when he saw her as Florimel in Dryden's _Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen_, he wrote "so great a performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world before" and, "so done by Nell her merry part as cannot be better done in nature" (_Diary_, March 25, 1667). Her success brought her other leading roles--Bellario, in Beaumont and Fletcher's _Philaster_; Flora, in Rhodes's _Flora's Vagaries_; Samira, in Sir Robert Howard's _Surprisal_; and she remained a member of the Drury Lane company until 1669, playing continuously save for a brief absence in the summer of 1667 when she lived at Epsom as the mistress of Lord Buckhurst, afterwards 6th earl of Dorset (q.v.). Her last appearance was as Almahide to the Almanzor of Hart, in Dryden's _The Conquest of Granada_ (1670), the production of which had been postponed some months for her return to the stage after the birth of her first son by the king.

As an actress Nell Gwyn was largely indebted to Dryden, who seems to have made a special study of her airy, irresponsible personality, and who kept her supplied with parts which suited her. She excelled in the delivery of the risky prologues and epilogues which were the fashion, and the poet wrote for her some specially daring examples. It was, however, as the mistress of Charles II. that she endeared herself to the public. Partly, no doubt, her popularity was due to the disgust inspired by her rival, Louise de Keroualle, duchess of Portsmouth, and to the fact that, while the Frenchwoman was a Catholic, she was a Protestant. But very largely it was the result of exactly those personal qualities that appealed to the monarch himself. She was _piquante_ rather than pretty, short of stature, and her chief beauty was her reddish-brown hair. She was illiterate, and with difficulty scrawled an awkward E. G. at the bottom of her letters, written for her by others. But her frank recklessness, her generosity, her invariable good temper, her ready wit, her infectious high spirits and amazing indiscretions appealed irresistibly to a generation which welcomed in her the living antithesis of Puritanism. "A true child of the London streets," she never pretended to be superior to what she was, nor to interfere in matters outside the special sphere assigned her; she made no ministers, she appointed to no bishoprics, and for the high issues of international politics she had no concern. She never forgot her old friends, and, as far as is known, remained faithful to her royal lover from the beginning of their intimacy to his death, and, after his death, to his memory.

Of her two sons by the king, the elder was created Baron Hedington and earl of Burford and subsequently duke of St Albans; the younger, James, Lord Beauclerk, died in 1680, while still a boy. The king's death-bed request to his brother, "Let not poor Nelly starve," was faithfully carried out by James II., who paid her debts from the Secret Service fund, provided her with other moneys, and settled on her an estate with reversion to the duke of St Albans. But she did not long survive her lover's death. She died in November 1687, and was buried on the 17th, according to her own request, in the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, her funeral sermon being preached by the vicar, Thomas Tenison, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, who said "much to her praise." Tradition credits the foundation of Chelsea Hospital to her influence over the king.

See Peter Cunningham, _The Story of Nell Gwyn_, edited by Gordon
Goodwin (1903); Waldron's edition of John Downes's _Roscius
Anglicanus_ (1789); Osmund Airy, _Charles II._ (1904); Pepys, _Diary_;
Evelyn, _Diary and Correspondence_; _Origin and Early History of the
Royal Hospital at Chelsea_, edited by Major-General G. Hutt (1872);
_Memoirs of the Life of Eleanor Gwinn_ (1752); Burnet, _History of My
Own Time_, part i., edited by Osmund Airy (Oxford, 1897); _Louise de
Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth_, by H. Forneron, translated by Mrs
Crawford (1887).

GWYNIAD, the name given to a fish of the genus _Coregonus_ or White fish (_C. clupeoides_), inhabiting the large lakes of North Wales and the north of England. At Ullswater it is known by the name of "schelly," at Loch Lomond by that of "powen." It is tolerably abundant in Lake Bala, keeping to the deepest portion of the lake for the greater part of the year, but appearing in shoals near the shores at certain seasons. It is well flavoured, like all the species of _Coregonus_, but scarcely attains to the weight of a pound. The name gwyniad is a Welsh word, and signifies "shining"; and it is singular that a similar fish in British Columbia, also belonging to the family of Salmonoids, is called by the natives "quinnat," from the silvery lustre of its scales, the word having in their language the same meaning as the Welsh "gwyniad."