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 Sekondi (q.v.). Prempeh, the ex-king of Ashanti, was detained in the castle (1896) until his removal to the Seychelles. (See Ashanti: History, and Gold Coast: 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 Juvenile Offenders).
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 B.C.
The emperor Constans was assassinated there in A.D. 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
