Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/367

 Chronicle,' on which most of his history is based, render it probable that he was a Norman by birth, and he may have derived his name from a suburb of Caen, anciently known as Gaimara, and now Gémare. As he tells us in the concluding lines of his history, he wrote at the request of Custance, wife of Ralf Fitzgilbert, who was a friend of [q. v.] It is likely that this Ralf Fitzgilbert is the person to whom Gilbert of Ghent, second earl of Lincoln, granted the lordship of Scampton in Lincolnshire, and it is quite possible that he was an illegitimate member of the same family. Gaimar also speaks, as if from personal knowledge, of Henry I and his queen, Adelaide of Louvain, of Robert, earl of Gloucester, the king's illegitimate son, and of Nicholas de Trailli, a nephew of Walter Espec.

His history follows the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' in the main, many of the differences being attributable either to gratuitous expansion or mistranslation. The insertion of the legendary story of Havelock, the founder of a Danish kingdom in East Anglia, is no doubt owing to the author's residence in Lincolnshire, and the same may be said of his version of the exploits of the more historic Hereward, which differs in some particulars from the well-known prose life. His account of the reign of William II, of which he must have had personal knowledge, is of more value, but is not chronologically accurate. He gives an amusing description of the court held in the New Hall at Westminster at Whitsuntide 1099, and, in narrating the death of the Red King, hints that Walter Tirel was moved to murder his master in consequence of a bragging assertion of his intention to invade France. He speaks also of the grief of the attendants and their careful removal of the corpse, which other writers say was left to a casual woodman, and he praises William for liberality and magnanimity as he does his successor, Henry I. There are four manuscripts of 'Lestorie des Engles,' as the work is called; MS. Bibl. Reg. 13. A. xxi. (Brit. Mus.); Lincoln Cathedral MS. A. 4-12; Durham Cathedral MS. C. iv. 27; and Arundel MS. No. 14, in the College of Arms. A previously written history of earlier times is more than once mentioned in the course of the poem, but it is not known to be extant.



GAINSBOROUGH, (d. 1750). [See ] 

GAINSBOROUGH, THOMAS (1727–1788), painter, was born in 1727 at Sudbury, Suffolk, in a picturesque old house which had once been the Black Horse Inn. The day of his birth is unknown, but he was baptised at the independent meeting-house, 14 May 1727. His father, John Gainsborough, was a dissenter, engaged in the wool manufactures of the town. He is said to have been a fine man, careful of his personal appearance, an adroit fencer, kind to his spinners and also to his debtors, of good reputation, but not rigid in the matter of smuggling, enterprising and active in business, 'travelling' in France and Holland, and the introducer into Sudbury of the shroud trade from Coventry. Mrs. John Gainsborough, whose maiden name was Burroughs, was the sister of the Rev. Humphrey Burroughs, curate of the church of St. Gregory, and master of the grammar school at Sudbury. They had nine children (five sons and four daughters), of whom Thomas was the youngest. The daughters were all married: Mary to a dissenting minister of Bath, named Gibbon; Susannah to Mr. Gardiner of the same city; Sarah married Mr. Dupont, and Elizabeth Mr. Bird, both of Sudbury. The sons' names were John, Humphry, Mathias, and Robert. Mathias died of an accident in his youth, and of Robert little is known, but both John and Humphry were remarkable for their mechanical ingenuity. John was well known in Sudbury as 'Scheming Jack.' He made a