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 the bishop’s bailiff, and the holders of the burgages composed the juries of the bishop’s courts leet and baron. No charter of incorporation is extant, but in 1563 contests were carried on under the name of the bailiffs, burgesses and commonalty, and a list of borough accounts exists for 1696. The bishop appointed the last borough bailiff in 1681, and though the inhabitants in 1772 petitioned for a bailiff the town remained under a steward and grassmen until the 19th century. As part of the palatinate of Durham, Gateshead was not represented in parliament until 1832. At the inquisition of 1336 the burgesses claimed an annual fair on St Peter’s Day, and depositions in 1577 mention a borough market held on Tuesday and Friday, but these were apparently extinct in Camden’s day, and no grant of them is extant. The medieval trade seems to have centred round the fisheries and the neighbouring coal mines which are mentioned in 1364 and also by Leland.

GATH, one of the five chief cities of the Philistines. It is frequently mentioned in the historical books of the Old Testament, and from Amos vi. 2 we conclude that, like Ashdod, it fell to Sargon in 711. Its site appears to have been known in the 4th century, but the name is now lost. Eusebius (in the Onomasticon) places it near the road from Eleutheropolis (Beit Jibrīn) to Diospolis (Ludd) about five Roman miles from the former. The Roman road between these two towns is still traceable, and its milestones remain in places. East of the road at the required distance rises a white cliff, almost isolated, 300 ft. high and full of caves. On the top is the little mud village of Tell eṣ-Ṣāfi (“the shining mound”), and beside the village is the mound which marks the site of the Crusaders’ castle of Blanchegarde (Alba Custodia), built in 1144. Tell eṣ-Ṣāfi was known by its present name as far back as the 12th century; but it appears not improbable that the strong site here existing represents the ancient Gath. The cliff stands on the south side of the mouth of the Valley of Elah, and Gath appears to have been near this valley (1 Sam. xvii. 2, 52). This identification is not certain, but it is at least much more probable than the theory which makes Gath, Eleutheropolis, and Beit Jibrīn one and the same place. The site was partially excavated by the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1899, and remains extending in date back to the early Canaanite period were discovered. 

GATLING, RICHARD JORDAN (1818–1903), American inventor, was born in Hertford county, North Carolina, on the 12th of September 1818. He was the son of a well-to-do planter and slave-owner, from whom he inherited a genius for mechanical invention and whom he assisted in the construction and perfecting of machines for sowing cotton seeds, and for thinning the plants. He was well educated and was successively a school teacher and a merchant, spending all his spare time in developing new inventions. In 1839 he perfected a practical screw propeller for steamboats, only to find that a patent had been granted to John Ericsson for a similar invention a few months earlier. He established himself in St Louis, Missouri, and taking the cotton-sowing machine as a basis he adapted it for sowing rice, wheat and other grains, and established factories for its manufacture. The introduction of these machines did much to revolutionize the agricultural system in the country. Becoming interested in the study of medicine through an attack of smallpox, he completed a course at the Ohio Medical College, taking his M.D. degree in 1850. In the same year he invented a hemp-breaking machine, and in 1857 a steam plough. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was living in Indianapolis, and devoted himself at once to the perfecting of fire-arms. In 1861 he conceived the idea of the rapid fire machine-gun which is associated with his name. By 1862 he had succeeded in perfecting a gun that would discharge 350 shots per minute; but the war was practically over before the Federal authorities consented to its official adoption. From that time, however, the success of the invention was assured, and within ten years it had been adopted by almost every civilized nation. Gatling died in New York City on the 26th of February 1903. 

GATTY, MARGARET (1809–1873), English writer, daughter of the Rev. Alexander Scott (1768–1840), chaplain to Lord Nelson, was born at Burnham, Essex, in 1809. She early began to draw and to etch on copper, being a regular visitor to the print-room of the British Museum from the age of ten. She also illuminated on vellum, copying the old strawberry borders and designing initials. In 1839 Margaret Scott married the Rev. Alfred Gatty, D.D., vicar of Ecclesfield near Sheffield, subdean of York cathedral, and the author of various works both secular and religious. In 1842 she published in association with her husband a life of her father; but her first independent work was The Fairy Godmother and other Tales, which appeared in 1851. This was followed in 1855 by the first of five volumes of Parables from Nature, the last being published in 1871. It was under the nom de plume of Aunt Judy, as a pleasant and instructive writer for children, that Mrs Gatty was most widely known. Before starting Aunt Judy’s Magazine in May 1866, she had brought out Aunt Judy’s Tales (1858) and Aunt Judy’s Letters (1862), and among the other children’s books which she subsequently published were Aunt Judy’s Song Book for Children and The Mother’s Book of Poetry. “Aunt Judy” was the nickname given by her daughter (q.v.). The editor of the magazine was on the friendliest terms with her young correspondents and subscribers, and her success was largely due to the sympathy which enabled her to look at things from the child’s point of view. Besides other excellences her children’s books are specially characterized by wholesomeness of sentiment and cheerful humour. Her miscellaneous writings include, in addition to several volumes of tales, The Old Folks from Home, an account of a holiday ramble in Ireland; The Travels and Adventures of Dr Wolff the Missionary (1861), an autobiography edited by her; British Sea Weeds (1862); Waifs and Strays of Natural History (1871); A Book of Emblems and The Book of Sun-Dials (1872). She died at Ecclesfield vicarage on the 4th of October 1873.

GAU, JOHN (c. 1495–? 1553), Scottish translator, was born at Perth towards the close of the 15th century. He was educated in St Salvator’s College at St Andrews. He appears to have been in residence at Malmö in 1533, perhaps as chaplain to the Scots community there. In that year John Hochstraten, the exiled Antwerp printer, issued a book by Gau entitled: The Richt vay to the Kingdome of Heuine, of which the chief interest is that it is the first Scottish book written on the side of the Reformers. It is a translation of Christiern Pedersen’s Den rette vey till Hiemmerigis Rige (Antwerp, 1531), for the most part direct, but showing intimate knowledge in places of the German edition of Urbanus Rhegius. Only one copy of Gau’s text is extant, in the library of Britwell Court, Bucks. It has been assumed that all the copies were shipped from Malmö to Scotland, and that the cargo was intercepted by the Scottish officers on the look out for the heretical works which were printed abroad in large numbers. This may explain the silence of all the historians of the Reformed Church—Knox, Calderwood and Spottiswood. Gau married in 1536 a Malmö citizen’s daughter, bearing the Christian name Birgitta. She died in 1551, and he in or about 1553.

The first reference to the Richt Vay appeared in Chalmers’s Caledonia, ii. 616. Chalmers, who was the owner of the unique volume before it passed into the Britwell Court collection, considered it to be an original work. David Laing printed extracts for the Bannatyne Club (Miscellany, iii., 1855). The evidence that the book is a translation was first given by Sonnenstein Wendt in a paper “Om Reformatorerna i Malmö,” in Rördam’s Ny Kirkehistoriske Samlinger, ii. (Copenhagen, 1860). A complete edition was edited by A. F. Mitchell for the Scottish Text Society (1888). See also Lorimer’s Patrick Hamilton.

GAUDEN, JOHN (1605–1662), English bishop and writer, reputed author of the Eikon Basilike, was born in 1605 at Mayland, Essex, where his father was vicar of the parish. Educated at Bury St Edmunds school and at St John’s College, Cambridge, he took his M.A. degree in 1625/6. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Russell of Chippenham, Cambridgeshire, and was tutor at Oxford to two of his wife’s brothers. He seems to have remained at Oxford until 1630, when he became vicar of Chippenham. His sympathies were at first with the parliamentary party. He was chaplain to Robert Rich, second earl of Warwick, and preached before the House of Commons in 1640.