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 of St Augustine at Canterbury, which has been edited by C. Hardwick for the Rolls Series (1858); and a Liber metricus de Henrico V., edited by C. A. Cole in the Memorials of Henry V. (1858). It is very probable that Elmham wrote the famous Gesta Henrici Quinti, which is the best authority for the life of Henry V. from his accession to 1416. This work, often referred to as the “chaplain’s life,” and thought by some to have been written by Jean de Bordin, has been published for the English Historical Society by B. Williams (1850). Elmham, however, did not write the Vita et Gesta Henrici V., which was attributed to him by T. Hearne and others.

See C. L. Kingsford, Henry V. (1901).

 ELMINA, a town on the Gold Coast, British West Africa, in 5° 4′ N., 1° 20′ W. and about 8 m. W. of Cape Coast. Pop. about 4000. Facing the Atlantic on a rocky peninsula is Fort St George, considered the finest fort on the Guinea coast. It is built square with high walls, and has accommodation for 200 soldiers. On the land side were formerly two moats, cut in the rock on which the castle stands. The castle is the residence of the commissioner of the district and other officials. The houses in the native quarter are mostly built of stone, that material being plentiful in the vicinity.

Elmina is the earliest European settlement on the Gold Coast, and was visited by the Portuguese in 1481. Christopher Columbus is believed to have been one of the officers who took part in this voyage. The Portuguese at once began to build the castle now known as Fort St George, but it was not completed till eighty years afterwards. Another defensive work is Fort St Jago, built in 1666, which is behind the town and at some distance from the coast. (In the latter half of the 19th century it was converted into a prison.) Elmina was captured by the Dutch in 1637, and ceded to them by treaty in 1640. They made it the chief port for the produce of Ashanti. With the other Dutch possessions on the Guinea coast, it was transferred to Great Britain in April 1872. The king of Ashanti, claiming to be ground landlord, objected to its transfer, and the result was the Ashanti war of 1873–1874. For many years the greatest output of gold from this coast came from Elmina. The annual export is said to have been nearly £3,000,000 in the early years of the 18th century, but the figure is probably exaggerated. Since 1900 the bulk of the export trade in gold has been transferred to (q.v.). Prempeh, the ex-king of Ashanti, was detained in the castle (1896) until his removal to the Seychelles. (See : History, and : History.)

ELMIRA, a city and the county-seat of Chemung county, New York, U.S.A., 100 m. S.E. of Rochester, on the Chemung river, about 850 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1890) 30,893; (1900) 35,672, of whom 5511 were foreign-born (1988 Irish and 1208 German); (1910 census) 37,176. It is served by the Erie, the Pennsylvania, the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, the Lehigh Valley, and the Tioga Division railways, the last of which connects it with the Pennsylvania coalfields 48 m. away. The city is attractively situated on both sides of the river, and has a fine water-supply and park system, among the parks being Eldridge, Rorick’s Glen, Riverside, Brand, Diven, Grove, Maple Avenue and Wisner; in the last-named is a statue of Thomas K. Beecher by J. S. Hartley. The city contains a Federal building, a state armoury, the Chemung county court house and other county buildings, the Elmira orphans’ home, the Steele memorial library, home for the aged, the Arnot-Ogden memorial hospital, the Elmira free academy, and the Railway Commercial training school. Here, also, is Elmira College (Presbyterian) for women, founded in 1855. This institution, chartered in 1852 as Auburn Female University and then situated in Auburn, was rechartered in 1855 as the Elmira Female College; it was established largely through the influence and persistent efforts of the Rev. Samuel Robbins Brown (1810–1880) and his associates, notably Simeon Benjamin of Elmira, who gave generously to the newly founded college, and was the first distinctively collegiate institution for women in the United States, and the first, apparently, to grant degrees to women. The most widely known institution in the city is the Elmira reformatory, a state prison for first offenders between the ages of sixteen and thirty, on a system of general indeterminate sentences. Authorized by the state legislature in 1866 and opened in 1876 under the direction of Zebulon Reed Brockway (b. 1827), it was the first institution of the sort and has served as a model for many similar institutions both in the United States and in other countries (see ). Elmira is an important railway centre, with large repair shops, and has also extensive manufactories (value of production in 1900, $8,558,786, of which $6,596,603 was produced under the “factory system”; in 1905, under the “factory system,” $6,984,095), including boot and shoe factories, a large factory for fire-extinguishing apparatus, iron and steel bridge works, steel rolling mills, large valve works, steel plate mills, knitting mills, furniture, glass and boiler factories, breweries and silk mills. Near the site of Elmira occurred on the 29th of August 1779 the battle of Newtown, in which General John Sullivan decisively defeated a force of Indians and Tories under Sir John Johnson and Joseph Brant. There were some settlers here at the close of the War of Independence, but no permanent settlement was made until 1788. The village was incorporated as Newtown in 1815, and was reincorporated as Elmira in 1828. A city charter was secured in 1864. In 1861 a state military camp was established here, and in 1864–1865 there was a prison camp here for Confederate soldiers.

ELMSHORN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, on the Krückau, 19 m. by rail N.W. from Altona. Pop. (1905) 13,640. Its industries include weaving, dyeing, brewing, iron-founding and the manufacture of leather goods, boots and shoes and machines. There is a considerable shipping trade.

ELMSLEY, PETER (1773–1825), English classical scholar. He was educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, and having inherited a fortune from his uncle, a well-known bookseller, devoted himself to the study of classical authors and manuscripts. In 1798 he was appointed to the chapelry of Little Horkesley in Essex, which he held till his death. He travelled extensively in France and Italy, and spent the winter of 1818 in examining the MSS. in the Laurentian library at Florence. In 1819 he was commissioned, with Sir Humphry Davy, to decipher the papyri found at Herculaneum, but the results proved insignificant. In 1823 he was appointed principal of St Alban’s Hall, Oxford, and Camden professor of ancient history. He died in Oxford on the 8th of March 1825. Elmsley was a man of most extensive learning and European reputation, and was considered to be the best ecclesiastical scholar in England. But it is chiefly by his collation of the MSS. of the Greek tragedians and his critical labours on the restoration of their text that he will be remembered. He edited the Acharnians of Aristophanes, and several of the plays and scholia of Sophocles and Euripides. He was the first to recognize the importance of the Laurentian MS. (see Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. iii. (1908).

ELNE, a town of south-western France in the department of Pyrénées-Orientales, 10 m. S.S.E. of Perpignan by rail. Pop. (1906) 3026. The hill on which it stands, once washed by the sea, which is now over 3 m. distant, commands a fine view over the plain of Roussillon. From the 6th century till 1602 the town was the seat of a bishopric, which was transferred to Perpignan. The cathedral of St Eulalie, a Romanesque building completed about the beginning of the 12th century, has a beautiful cloister in the same style, with interesting sculptures and three early Christian sarcophagi. Remains of the ancient ramparts flanked by towers are still to be seen. Silk-worm cultivation is carried on. Elne, the ancient Illiberis, was named Helena by the emperor Constantine in memory of his mother. Hannibal encamped under its walls on his march to Rome in 218 The emperor Constans was assassinated there in 350. The town several times sustained siege and capture between its occupation by the Moors in the 8th century and its capitulation in 1641 to the troops of Louis XIII.

EL OBEID, chief town of the mudiria (province) of Kordofan, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and 230 m. S.W. by S. of Khartum in