Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/98

Gregor he exchanged for the rectory of Creed in Cornwall, where he continued for the rest of his life. He was distinguished as a painter of landscapes, as an etcher, and as a musician. While attending Mr. Waltier's lectures at Bristol he acquired a taste for chemical pursuits, but he gave his chief attention to analytical mineralogy. In 1791 a peculiar black sand, found in the Menacchan or Manaccan Valley, Cornwall, was sent to him for analysis, which he ascertained to be a compound of iron, with traces of manganese and of an unknown substance, which by a series of experiments he proved to possess a metallic base, although he was unable to reduce it to its simple form. In an article in Crell's ‘Annals’ he gave the name of Menacchanite to the sand, and that of Menacchine to the metallic substance which he had proved it to contain. No further notice was taken of this matter for six years. In 1795 Klaproth published the analysis of red schorl, showing that it was composed of the oxide of a peculiar metal to which he gave the name of Titanium. Two years after the same chemist analysed some Menacchanite, and was surprised to find that it contained his new metal, when he abandoned his claim to the discovery of Titanium, and acknowledged that the merit belonged solely to Gregor. This substance was afterwards found in the United States of America and in other places, and is sometimes called Gregorite. Gregor next made experiments on zeolite and wavellite, in both of which he found fluoric acid, while in uran glimmer he discovered oxide of lead, lime and silica, and in the topaz he was enabled to detect lime and potash, which had escaped the observation of Klaproth. He published sermons in 1798, 1805, 1809, three pamphlets, and in 1802 ‘A Letter on the Statute 21 Hen. VIII, c. 13, and on the Grievances to which the Clergy are exposed,’ besides papers in scientific journals. He died of consumption at the rectory, Creed, 11 July 1817. His wife died at Exeter, 11 Sept. 1819.

[Paris's Memoir of the Rev. W. Gregor, 1818; Burke's Landed Gentry, 1850, i. 504 ; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub. p. 188 ; Boase's Collect. Cornub. pp. 292, 307.]  GREGOR, cacique of Poyais (d. 1886). [See MacGregor, Gregor (DNB00), bart.]  GREGORY the (d. 889),, king of Scotland, was the seventy-third king according to the fictitious chronology of Fordoun and Buchanan, but according to Skene's rectified list, the fifth king of the united kingdom of Scone, which Kenneth MacAlpine founded in 844. He succeeded in 878 Aed, the brother of Constantine and son of Kenneth MacAlpine, who after a short reign of one year was killed by his own people. With Aed the sons of Kenneth were exhausted, and instead of his grandson Donald, the son of Constantine, being taken as king, Eocha, son of Run, king of the Britons of Strathclyde, and the son of Constantine's sister, was made king, according, it is suggested, to the old custom of Pictish succession in the royal house through females. Eocha or Eochodius, was under age, and Gregory was associated with him, according to the Pictish ‘Chronicle,’ as his guardian (‘alumpnus ordinatorque Eochodii fiebat’). The word ‘alumnus,’ though more usually meaning a foster-child, was also in late Latin applicable to a guardian, ‘Qui alit et alitur alumnus dici potest.’ The father of Gregory was Dungaile, and it is supposed that he also was, like Run, of British descent, which may account for the omission of his name from the Albanic Duan and the ‘Annals of Ulster,’ which treat chiefly of the kings of Scottish or Dalriadic origin. Apart from the statement that he and his ward were expelled from the kingdom after a reign of eleven years, the earliest version of the Pictish ‘Chronicles’ gives no information as to Gregory except the fact of the expulsion, and that an eclipse of the sun occurred ‘in the ninth year of his reign, on the day of St. Ciricius’—his patron or name saint for Ciricius is the form this ‘Chronicle’ uses for the name of Gregory. Such an eclipse there in fact was on 16 June 885, the day of St. Ciricius, which was the seventh or the eighth year of Gregory's reign, so that, allowing for the discrepancy of one or two years, the period of his accession is thus confirmed. Later chroniclers have added two facts to our scanty knowledge which seem to be consistent with the probable course of this reign. Gregory is said to have brought into subjection the whole of Bernicia and the greater part of Anglia (Chronicles of Picts and Scots, p. 288), or, as the later thirteenth (p. 174) and fourteenth century ‘Chronicles’ of the Scots (p. 304) express it, Hibernia and Northumbria. There seems no foundation for the alleged Irish conquest, nor for that of nearly the whole of England at a time when Alfred was winning his victories over the Danes. But it is possible that Northumbria, or that part of England, which was then also suffering from divided rule and the Danish incursions, may have been in part subdued by this Scottish king. Simeon of Durham states that during the reign of Guthred, son of Hardicnut, the Dane who succeeded 