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Westminster Palace

(Encyclopedia)Westminster Palace or Houses of Parliament, in Westminster, London. The present enormous structure, of Neo-Gothic design, was built (1840–60) by Sir Charles Barry to replace an aggregation of ancien...

Vane, Sir Henry, 1613–62, English statesman

(Encyclopedia)Vane, Sir Henry, 1613–62, English statesman; son of Sir Henry Vane (1589–1655). Early converted to Puritanism, he went to New England in 1635 and became governor of Massachusetts in 1636. His reli...

Della-Cruscans

(Encyclopedia)Della-Cruscans dĕlˈə-krŭsˈkənz [key] [from the Accademia della Crusca, founded for linguistic purity, Florence, 16th cent.], a group of English poets living in Italy at the end of the 18th cent....

Gibbons, Grinling

(Encyclopedia)Gibbons, Grinling, 1648–1721, English wood carver and sculptor, b. Rotterdam. From the reign of Charles II to that of George I he was master wood carver to the crown. Sir Christopher Wren employed h...

Killigrew, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Killigrew, Thomas kĭlˈəgro͞oˌ [key], 1612–83, English dramatist and theater manager, b. London. Before the closing of the theaters by the Puritans in 1642, he wrote several tragicomedies, inclu...

Orrery, Charles Boyle, 4th earl of

(Encyclopedia)Orrery, Charles Boyle, 4th earl of ŏrˈərē [key], 1676–1731, English nobleman; grandson of the 1st earl of Orrery. He succeeded his brother as earl in 1703. A supporter of Sir William Temple in h...

Putney

(Encyclopedia)Putney pŭtˈnē [key], ward of Wandsworth borough, London, England. It is the starting point of the Oxford-Cambridge boat races. Thomas Cromwell and Edward Gibbon were born in Putney, and Algernon Sw...

Karan, Donna

(Encyclopedia)Karan, Donna, 1948–, American fashion designer, b. Forest Hills, N.Y., as Donna Faske. Daughter of a tailor and a garment saleswoman, she started to design clothes as a teenager and studied at New Y...

Dwight, Timothy, 1828–1916, American educator

(Encyclopedia)Dwight, Timothy, 1828–1916, American educator, b. Norwich, Conn., grad. Yale, 1849; grandson of Timothy Dwight (1752–1817). Appointed professor of sacred literature at Yale, he assisted in the reo...

Essex Junto

(Encyclopedia)Essex Junto, group of New England merchants and lawyers, so called because many of them came from Essex co., Mass. They opposed the radicals in Massachusetts in the American Revolution and supported t...