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Rh chiefly owing to his assuming the command at an important crisis during the battle of Kirkee.

The peshwa being driven from his throne, his territories were annexed to the British dominions, and Elphinstone was nominated commissioner to administer them. He discharged the responsible task with rare judgment and ability. In 1819 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Bombay and held this post till 1827, his principal achievement being the compilation of the “Elphinstone code.” He may fairly be regarded as the founder of the system of state education in India, and he probably did more than any other Indian administrator to further every likely scheme for the promotion of native education. His connexion with the Bombay presidency was appropriately commemorated in the endowment of the Elphinstone College by the native communities, and in the erection of a marble statue by the European inhabitants.

Returning to England in 1829, after an interval of two years’ travel, Elphinstone retained in his retirement and enfeebled health an important influence on public affairs. He twice refused the offer of the governor-generalship of India. Long before his return he had made his reputation as an author by his Account of the Kingdom of Cabul and its Dependencies in Persia and India (1815). Soon after his arrival in England he commenced the preparation of a work of wider scope, a history of India, which was published in 1841. It embraces the Hindu and Mahommedan periods, and is still a work of high authority. He died on the 20th of November 1859.

See J. S. Cotton, Mountstuart Elphinstone (“Rulers of India” series), (1892); T. E. Colebrooke, Life of Mountstuart Elphinstone (1884); and G. W. Forrest, Official Writings of Mountstuart Elphinstone (1884).

ELPHINSTONE, WILLIAM (1431–1514), Scottish statesman and prelate, founder of the university of Aberdeen, was born in Glasgow, and educated at the university of his native city, taking the degree of M.A. in 1452. After practising for a short time as a lawyer in the church courts, he was ordained priest, becoming rector of St Michael’s church, Trongate, Glasgow, in 1465. Four years later he went to continue his studies at the university of Paris, where he became reader in canon law, and then, proceeding to Orleans, became lecturer in the university there. Before 1474 he had returned to Scotland, and was made rector of the university, and official of the see of Glasgow. Further promotion followed, but soon more important duties were entrusted to Elphinstone, who was made bishop of Ross in 1481. He was a member of the Scots parliament, and was sent by King James III. on diplomatic errands to Louis XI. of France, and to Edward IV. of England; in 1483 he was appointed bishop of Aberdeen, although his consecration was delayed for four years; and he was sent on missions to England, both before and after the death of Richard III. in 1485. Although he attended the meetings of parliament with great regularity he did not neglect his episcopal duties, and the fabric of the cathedral of Aberdeen owes much to his care. Early in 1488 the bishop was made lord high chancellor, but on the king’s death in the following June he vacated this office, and retired to Aberdeen. As a diplomatist of repute, however, his services were quickly required by the new king, James IV., in whose interests he visited the kings of England and France, and the German king, Maximilian I. Having been made keeper of the privy seal in 1492, and having arranged a dispute between the Scotch and the Dutch, the bishop’s concluding years were mainly spent in the foundation of the university of Aberdeen. The papal bull for this purpose was obtained in 1494, and the royal charter which made old Aberdeen the seat of a university is dated 1498. A small endowment was provided by the king, and the university, modelled on that of Paris and intended principally to be a school of law, soon became the most famous and popular of the Scots seats of learning, a result which was largely due to the wide experience and ripe wisdom of Elphinstone and of his friend, Hector Boece, the first rector. The building of the college of the Holy Virgin in Nativity, now King’s College, was completed in 1506, and the bishop also rebuilt the choir of his cathedral, and built a bridge over the Dee. Continuing to participate in public affairs he opposed the policy of hostility towards England which led to the disaster at Flodden in September 1513, and died in Edinburgh on the 25th of October 1514. Elphinstone was partly responsible for the introduction of printing into Scotland, and for the production of the Breviarium Aberdonense. He may have written some of the lives in this collection, and gathered together materials concerning the history of Scotland; but he did not, as some have thought, continue the Scotichronicon, nor did he write the Lives of Scottish Saints.

See Hector Boece, Murthlacensium et Aberdonensium episcoporum vitae, edited and translated by J. Moir (Aberdeen, 1894); Fasti Aberdonenses, edited by C. Innes (Aberdeen, 1854); and A. Gardyne, Theatre of Scottish Worthies and Lyf of W. Elphinston, edited by D. Laing (Aberdeen, 1878).

 EL RENO, a city and the county-seat of Canadian county, Oklahoma, U.S.A., on the N. fork of the Canadian river, about 26 m. W. of Oklahoma City. Pop. (1890) 285; (1900) 3383; (1907) 5370 (401 were of negro descent and 7 were Indians); (1910) 7872. It is served by the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Choctaw, Oklahoma & Gulf (owned by the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific), and the St Louis, El Reno & Western railways, the last extending from El Reno to Guthrie. El Reno lies on the rolling prairie lands, about 1360 ft. above the sea, in an Indian corn, wheat, oats and cotton-producing and dairying region, and has a large grain elevator, a cotton compress, and various manufacturing establishments, among the products being flour, canned goods and crockery. El Reno has a Carnegie library, and within the city’s limits is Bellamy’s Lake (180 acres), a favourite resort. Near the city is a Government boarding school for the Indians of the Cheyenne and the Arapahoe Reservation. Fort Reno, a U.S. military post, was established near El Reno in 1876, and in 1908 became a supply depot of the quartermaster’s department under the name of “Fort Reno Remount Depot.” The first settlement here, apart from the fort, was made in the autumn of 1889; in 1892 El Reno received a city charter.

 ELSFLETH, a maritime town of Germany, in the grand-duchy of Oldenburg, in a fertile district at the confluence of the Hunte with the Weser, on the railway Hude-Nordenham. Pop. 2000. It has an Evangelical church, a school of navigation, a harbour and docks. It has considerable trade in corn and timber and is one of the centres of the North Sea herring fishery.

 ELSINORE (Dan. Helsingör), a seaport of Denmark in the amt (county) of Frederiksborg, on the east coast of the island of Zealand, 28 m. N. of Copenhagen by rail. Pop. (1901) 13,902. It stands at the narrowest part of the Sound, opposite the Swedish town of Helsingborg, 3 m. distant. Communication is maintained by means of a steam ferry. Its harbour admits vessels of 20 ft. draught, and the roadstead affords excellent anchorage. There are shipbuilding yards, with foundry, engineering shops, &c.; the chief export is agricultural produce; imports, iron, coal, cereals and yarn. Helsingör received town-privileges in 1425. In 1522 it was taken and burnt by Lübeck, but in 1535 was retaken by Christian II. It is celebrated as the Elsinore of Shakespeare’s tragedy of Hamlet, and was the birthplace of Saxo Grammaticus, from whose history the story of Hamlet is derived. A pile of rocks surrounded by trees is shown as the grave of Hamlet, and Ophelia’s brook is also pointed out, but both are, of course, inventions. On a tongue of land east of the town stands the castle of Kronberg or Kronenberg, a magnificent, solid and venerable Gothic structure built by Frederick II. towards the end of the 16th century, and extensively restored by Christian IV. after a fire in 1637. It was taken by the Swedes in 1658, but its possession was again given up to the Danes in 1660. From its turrets, one of which serves as a lighthouse, there are fine views of the straits and of the neighbouring countries. The Flag Battery is the “platform before the castle” where the ghost appears in Hamlet. Within it the principal object of interest is the apartment in which Matilda, queen of Christian VII. and sister of George III. of England, was imprisoned before she was taken to Hanover. The chapel contains fine wood-carving of the 17th century. North-west of the town 