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 one-fourth of a pint. The word comes through the O. Fr. gelle, from Low Lat. gello or gillo, a measure for wine. It is thus connected with “gallon.” The g is soft. (3) An abbreviation of the feminine name Gillian, also often spelled Jill, as it is pronounced. Like Jack for a boy, with which it is often coupled, as in the nursery rhyme, it is used as a homely generic name for a girl.

GILLES DE ROYE, or (d. 1478), Flemish chronicler, was born probably at Montdidier, and became a Cistercian monk. He was afterwards professor of theology in Paris and abbot of the monastery of Royaumont at Asnières-sur-Oise, retiring about 1458 to the convent of Notre Dame des Dunes, near Furnes, and devoting his time to study. Gilles wrote the Chronicon Dunense or Annales Belgici, a résumé and continuation of the work of another monk, Jean Brandon (d. 1428), which deals with the history of Flanders, and also with events in Germany, Italy and England from 792 to 1478.

The Chronicle was published by F. R. Sweert in the Rerum Belgicarum annales (Frankfort, 1620); and the earlier part of it by C. B. Kervyn de Lettenhove in the Chroniques relatives à l’histoire de la Belgique (Brussels, 1870).

GILLES LI MUISIS, or (c. 1272–1352), French chronicler, was born probably at Tournai, and in 1289 entered the Benedictine abbey of St Martin in his native city, becoming prior of this house in 1327, and abbot four years later. He only secured the latter position after a contest with a competitor, but he appears to have been a wise ruler of the abbey. Gilles wrote two Latin chronicles, Chronicon majus and Chronicon minus, dealing with the history of the world from the creation until 1349. This work, which was continued by another writer to 1352, is valuable for the history of northern France, and Flanders during the first half of the 14th century. It is published by J. J. de Senet in the Corpus chronicorum Flandriae, tome ii. (Brussels, 1841). Gilles also wrote some French poems, and these Poésies de Gilles li Muisis have been published by Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove (Louvain, 1882).

See A. Molinier, Les Sources de l’histoire de France, tome iii. (Paris, 1903).

GILLESPIE, GEORGE (1613–1648), Scottish divine, was born at Kirkcaldy, where his father, John Gillespie, was parish minister, on the 21st of January 1613, and entered the university of St Andrews as a “presbytery bursar” in 1629. On the completion of a brilliant student career, he became domestic chaplain to John Gordon, 1st Viscount Kenmure (d. 1634), and afterwards to John Kennedy, earl of Cassillis, his conscience not permitting him to accept the episcopal ordination which was at that time in Scotland an indispensable condition of induction to a parish. While with the earl of Cassillis he wrote his first work, A Dispute against the English Popish Ceremonies obtruded upon the Church of Scotland, which, opportunely published shortly after the “Jenny Geddes” incident (but without the author’s name) in the summer of 1637, attracted considerable attention, and within a few months had been found by the privy council to be so damaging that by their orders all available copies were called in and burnt. In April 1638, soon after the authority of the bishops had been set aside by the nation, Gillespie was ordained minister of Wemyss (Fife) by the presbytery of Kirkcaldy, and in the same year was a member of the famous Glasgow Assembly, before which he preached (November 21st) a sermon against royal interference in matters ecclesiastical so pronounced, as to call for some remonstrance on the part of Argyll, the lord high commissioner. In 1642 Gillespie was translated to Edinburgh; but the brief remainder of his life was chiefly spent in the conduct of public business in London. Already, in 1640, he had accompanied the commissioners of the peace to England as one of their chaplains; and in 1643 he was appointed by the Scottish Church one of the four commissioners to the Westminster Assembly. Here, though the youngest member of the Assembly, he took a prominent part in almost all the protracted discussions on church government, discipline and worship, supporting Presbyterianism by numerous controversial writings, as well as by an unusual fluency and readiness in debate. Tradition long preserved and probably enhanced the record of his victories in debate, and especially of his encounter, with John Selden on Matt. xviii. 15-17. In 1645 he returned to Scotland, and is said to have drawn the act of assembly sanctioning the directory of public worship. On his return to London he had a hand in drafting the Westminster confession of faith, especially chap. i. Gillespie was elected moderator of the Assembly in 1648, but the laborious duties of that office (the court continued to sit from the 12th of July to the 12th of August) told fatally on an overtaxed constitution; he fell into consumption, and, after many weeks of great weakness, he died at Kirkcaldy on the 17th of December 1648. In acknowledgment of his great public services, a sum of £1000 Scots was voted, though destined never to be paid, to his widow and children by the committee of estates. A simple tombstone, which had been erected to his memory in Kirkcaldy parish church, was in 1661 publicly broken at the cross by the hand of the common hangman, but was restored in 1746.

His principal publications were controversial and chiefly against Erastianism: Three sermons against Thomas Coleman; A Sermon before the House of Lords (August 27th), on Matt. iii. 2, Nihil Respondem and Male Audis; Aaron’s Rod Blossoming, or the Divine Ordinance of Church-government vindicated (1646), which is deservedly regarded as a really able statement of the case for an exclusive spiritual jurisdiction in the church; One Hundred and Eleven Propositions concerning the Ministry and Government of the Church (Edinburgh, 1647). The following were posthumously published by his brother: A Treatise of Miscellany Questions (1649); The Ark of the New Testament (2 vols., 1661–1667); Notes of Debates and Proceedings of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, from February 1644 to January 1645. See Works, with memoir, published by Hetherington (Edinburgh, 1843–1846).

GILLESPIE, THOMAS (1708–1774), Scottish divine, was born at Clearburn, in the parish of Duddingston, Midlothian, in 1708. He was educated at the university of Edinburgh, and studied divinity first at a small theological seminary at Perth, and afterwards for a brief period under Philip Doddridge at Northampton, where he received ordination in January 1741. In September of the same year he was admitted minister of the parish of Carnock, Fife, the presbytery of Dunfermline agreeing not only to sustain as valid the ordination he had received in England, but also to allow a qualification of his subscription to the church’s doctrinal symbol, so far as it had reference to the sphere of the civil magistrate in matters of religion. Having on conscientious grounds persistently absented himself from the meetings of presbytery held for the purpose of ordaining one Andrew Richardson, an unacceptable presentee, as minister of Inverkeithing, he was, after an unobtrusive but useful ministry of ten years, deposed by the Assembly of 1752 for maintaining that the refusal of the local presbytery to act in this case was justified. He continued, however, to preach, first at Carnock, and afterwards in Dunfermline, where a large congregation gathered round him. His conduct under the sentence of deposition produced a reaction in his favour, and an effort was made to have him reinstated; this he declined unless the policy of the church were reversed. In 1761, in conjunction with Thomas Boston of Jedburgh and Collier of Colinsburgh, he formed a distinct communion under the name of “The Presbytery of Relief,”—relief, that is to say, “from the yoke of patronage and the tyranny of the church courts.” The Relief Church eventually became one of the communions combining to form the United Presbyterian Church. He died on the 19th of January 1774. His only literary efforts were an Essay on the Continuation of Immediate Revelations in the Church, and a Practical Treatise on Temptation. Both works appeared posthumously (1774). In the former he argues that immediate revelations are no longer vouchsafed to the church, in the latter he traces temptation to the work of a personal devil.

See Lindsay’s Life and Times of the Rev. Thomas Gillespie; Smithers’s History of the Relief Church; for the Relief Church see.

GILLIE (from the Gael. gille, Irish gille or giolla, a servant or boy), an attendant on a Gaelic chieftain; in this sense its use, save historically, is rare. The name is now applied in the Highlands of Scotland to the man-servant who attends a sportsman in shooting or fishing. A gillie-wetfoot, a term now obsolete (a translation of gillie-casfliuch, from the Gaelic cas, foot, and