The Council for New England was a Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ordering, ruling and governing of New England in America. It was incorporated on November the 3rd, 1620, and was little else than the reorganization of the Plymouth, or North Virginia Company of 1606. Ferdinando Gorges was the moving spirit of the new corporation. Bradford obtained from this company a patent permitting the settlement of the Pilgrim Fathers. In 1631 Gorges obtained an additional grant of territory called Laconia, which comprised parts of the present States of Maine and New Hampshire. The lands of the new company, which now extended from Long Island to the Bay of Fundy, were distributed among twenty noblemen. Research Council For New England
Duke's Laws were a code of American laws drawn up in 1664 by Colonel Nicolls, then governing the colonies of the Duke of York's patent. They were first arranged for the government of the Dutch settlers of Long Island. They prohibited the election of magistrates, but provided for trial by jury, equal taxation, tenure of lands from the Duke of York, freedom of religion, liability to military duty, and recognition of negro slavery under certain restrictions. Research Duke's Laws
Genre painting is a type of painting concerned with the realistic depiction of scenes from everyday life. Originally the term was applied to all paintings that were factual representations of nature (animals, fruit, and landscapes), as well as scenes of ordinary life, rather than to works of imagination, such as religious and historical paintings. Genre paintings deal with ordinary life, including family life, sports, street scenes, picnics, festivals, and tavern scenes. They are usually characterised by human interest and by the care and finish with which they are executed.
Genre painting originated in ancient times. Many of the scenes painted on the walls of Egyptian tombs represent the daily life of the people of ancient Egypt. Excavations in the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum have revealed many genre paintings, both conventional and erotic. In the late Middle Ages genre painting reappeared, represented chiefly in the religious calendars that formed part of the illuminations, or illustrations, of manuscript books; the calendars show people going about the occupations appropriate to each season of the year.
In Italy during the early Renaissance, many of the religious and historical pictures of such painters as the 15th-century Florentines Ghirlandaio and Benozzo Gozzoli and the later Venetians Giorgione and the Bassano family are considered genre paintings because of their contemporaneous backgrounds and costumes as well as their use of people of the times as models. In 17th- century Italy, Mannerist painters such as Caravaggio executed genre paintings of extreme realism and dramatic power. In the 15th century the Flemish painter Petrus Christus in some of his religious paintings represented scenes from ordinary life, and in the following two centuries genre painting rose to its highest level in history with the work of the Flemish artists Pieter Brueghel the Elder, David Teniers, and Adriaen Brouwer. The greatest national school of genre painting was that of the Netherlands in the 17th century. Probably never before or after was the ordinary life of a nation depicted so fully as was the Dutch life of this period. Not only the great masters but also the less outstanding Dutch painters excelled in it.
The most important of the Dutch genre painters were the so-called little masters, including Gerard Ter Borch, Jan Steen, Gabriel Metsu, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard Dou, and Adrian Van Ostade. The three leading 17th-century Dutch masters, Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Jan Vermeer, also created genre paintings of unrivalled beauty. French genre painting showed a vital development in the work of Antoine Watteau, Nicolas Lancret, Jean Baptiste Chardin, and Jean Honore Fragonard. One of the most noted English genre painters was the great satirist William Hogarth. In the 19th century, genre painting was widely practised in both Europe and the USA Among the outstanding European painters in this style were the French painters Jean Leon Gerome and Jean Meissonier, the English painter William Powell Frith, and the American painter William Sidney Mount, known as the 'JanSteen of Long Island.' Among the many 19th- and 20th- century American painters whose work included genre painting were Robert Henri, John Sloan, George Wesley Bellows, George B Luks, Charles E Burchfield, Reginald Marsh, Grant Wood, and Thomas Hart Benton. Research Genre Painting
The Virginia company was an English company formed during the reign of James I to send out colonists to Virginia, in America.
On April the 10th, 1606, James I set apart by charter the territory between Cape Fear and Passamaquoddy Bay to be settled by two rival companies, the Virginia Company of London, and the North Virginia or Plymouth Company. To the London, or Virginia Company proper, was granted the land between parallels 34 degrees and 41 degrees north, or between Cape Fear and Long Island. This company was composed of London merchants and adventurers.
In 1606 an expedition consisting of three vessels and 143 men, commanded by Christopher Newport, was fitted out, landed in Chesapake Bay, and succeeded in founding, on May the 13th, 1607, the first permanent English settlement in America at Jamestown, , Virginia - named in honour of the king.
In 1609 a new charter was granted and the company reincorporated under the name of the London Company of Virginia; still another in 1612. Other colonizing parties arrived in 1609, 1611 and 1619, and by 1630 the colony of Virginia was firmly established. The majority in the company was of the political party in England opposed to the court. It fell into difficulties with the king, who in 1624 caused its charter to be annulled. The company then dissolved. Research Virginia Company
The Barbados Blackbelly is a breed of sheep, African in origin and developed on the island of Barbados. The Barbados Blackbelly has a variety of colour phases varying from basic black and tan colour through black, yellow, and variegated pinto patterns. The black colour covers the under parts completely in the basal pattern and extends up the neck with black extending down the inside of the legs, on the plank and back of the thighs. The inside hair of the ears is black with a small dash at the rear of the eye. The chin and poll are black. The black under parts and black lines medial to the eye contrasting with the normal tan to reddish coat in most other areas, gives an exotic contrasting appearance. Yellow ewes (pale to reddish yellow) have a white abdomen. The yellow colour phase may have been originally derived from a different breed of hair sheep.
There has also been noted a reddish, and also a white, hair sheep in northeastBrazil and light brown colours characteristic of hair sheep from Tobago. Further north there is a light to pale brown sheep in the Bahamas, the long island sheep in Cuba called the Pelibuey. All of these sheep are thought to be at least partially related to the Barbados Blackbelly. The mature rams have a neckpiece of long hair, up to six inches, which extends down the neck to the brisket. The cape reaches full development in the fall of the year. In some rams this is a full cape which extends over the sides and top of the neck and shoulders as a showy blanket. Rams and ewes on the island of Barbados are polled or with short scurs. Research Barbados Blackbelly
The Blackfish (Tautoga americana), is a fish caught on the American coast, especially in the vicinity of Long Island, whence large supplies are obtained for the New York market. Its back and sides are of a bluish or crow black; the under parts, especially in the males, are white. It is plump in appearance, and much esteemed for the table, varying in size from 2 to 12 lbs. Another fish, the Centrolophus morio found in the Mediterranean and on the coasts of Western Europe, is also called blackfish. It belongs to the mackerel family. In Scotland the term is applied to foul or newly-spawned fish. In America two species of small whale of the genus Globiocephalus also get this name. Research Blackfish
Albert Gallatin was an American statesman. He was born in 1761 at Geneva, Switzerland and died in 1849. Educated at the university of Geneva, he emigrated to America in 1780. After varied experiences he settled as a manufacturer in Pennsylvania in 1784. By 1790 he was in the legislature. His rise to State and national prominence as a leader in the Democratic-Republican party was rapid. He was elected US Senator in 1793, but was not admitted to his seat. The following year he helped by his influence to suppress the Whiskey Insurrection. From 1795 to 1801 he was a member from Pennsylvania of the National House of Representatives, and took a leading part almost from the start, especially on financial topics. When his party came into power with Jefferson, Gallatin was invited to take the Treasury portfolio. He filled this position from 1801 to 1813, and has passed into history as one of the ablest of American financiers. In 1813 to 1814 he was peace commissioner in Europe, where his services in negotiating the Treaty of Ghent were conspicuous. He was US Minister to France from 1816 until 1823, and in 1826 he was sent as Envoy Extraordinary to Great Britain. He was later a bank president in New York City, and died at Astoria on Long Island. Research Albert Gallatin
Alexander Hamilton was an American patriot. He was born in 1757 at Nevis in the West Indies and died in 1804 in a duel. He was on the one side of Scottish, on the other of French birth. Deprived of parental care at an early age, he developed an astonishing precocity, and was, in 1772, sent to New York City. There, after a short period of preparation, he entered King's (later Columbia) College. While the Revolutionary fever was at its height Hamilton, in July, 1774, made a public speech on the patriotic side, marvellous for a boy of seventeen. He followed up this success by a vigorous war of pamphlets. When hostilities began Hamilton organized a cavalry company and served at Long Island and White Plains. As a member of George Washington's staff he rendered valuable aid; resigning from membership in the staff in 1781 he ended a brilliant military career at Yorktown, studied law, and married the daughter of General Schuyler. For a short time, between 1782 and 1783 he was in the Continental Congress.
He had risen to eminence at the New York bar, when he took part in the Annapolis Convention of 1786. There followed two years of contests and triumphs of the greatest renown to himself and moment to his country. Alexander Hamilton was one of the chief members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He advocated a very strong-central government, but accepted the results of that assembly, and returned to New York to further by pen and voice the ratification of the American National Constitution. It is little exaggeration to say that Alexander Hamilton was practically the Federal party in New York. Of the eighty-five papers in the Federalist fifty-one are undisputedly his, and he had a part in the production of others.
At the State ratifying Convention in 1788 at Poughkeepsie he contended almost single-handed against a two-thirds majority, which he converted into a minority. He entered George Washington's Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury in 1789. His report on the public credit, reports on revenue, the mint, the bank, manufactures, etc., were of the utmost value in placing the finances on a sound footing. Meanwhile within the Cabinet he was confronted with Jefferson, advocate of radically different ideas; the two great leaders quarrelled almost incessantly, and Alexander Hamilton resigned in 1795.
He had previously accompanied the army for the suppression of the Whiskey Insurrection. He defended Jay's Treaty with Great Britain in the able Camillus letters, and was concerned in the preparation of George Washington's Farewell Address. He was, in 1798, appointed inspector-general in view of the imminent war with France. But he quarrelled with President John Adams and intrigued against the latter and in favour of Pinckney. Alexander Hamilton and Burr had been political enemies; the latter, while Vice-President, brought on a duel at Weehawken, New Jersey, on July the 11th, 1804, in which Alexander Hamilton was mortally wounded.
He also wrote, the Pacificus letters, report on the public debt in 1789, etc. Alexander Hamilton was perhaps one of the most brilliant of early American statesmen; his state papers were models of luminous and convincing argumentation; and he had an extraordinary genius for administrative organization. His weaknesses were, an imperious self-confidence, and want of popular sympathies. Research Alexander Hamilton
The Associated Loyalists were a Tory society formed in New York in 1780 at the instance of the British government and independent of the orders of the British commander. The Associated Loyalists were a terrorist organisation led by the son of the Tory Governor of New Jersey, and conducted raids and piracy along the shores of New Jersey, Connecticut and Long Island. Research Associated Loyalists
Charles Cornwallis (Lord Cornwallis) was a British soldier and the first marquess of Cornwallis. He was born in 1737 and died in 1805. He served in the Seven Years' War. He took his seat in Parliament and favoured the Americans during the preliminary troubles. Having been made lieutenant-general he was sent to America in 1776, fought in the Battle of Long Island, and pursued George Washington's army through New Jersey. He was defeated at the Battle of Princeton, decided the victory of Brandywine in 1777, and served at Germantown and Monmouth. Having been appointed to the command of the Southern army he overwhelmed Gates at Camden in 1780, but in his contest with Greene he was worsted, although he won a technical victory at Guilford Court House in 1781. Then followed his campaign in Virginia against Lafayette, the siege of his army in Yorktown, and its surrender to the Franco-American troops on October the 17th 1781. As Governor-General of India, from 1786 until 1793 and in 1805, he rendered valuable military and administrative services. He was also lord-lieutenant of Ireland, from 1798 until 1801, at the epoch of the Union. Research Charles Cornwallis
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Council For New England
