Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Normans

(Encyclopedia)Normans, designation for the Northmen, or Norsemen, who conquered Normandy in the 10th cent. and adopted Christianity and the customs and language of France. Abandoning piracy and raiding, they adopte...

Welsh Marches

(Encyclopedia)Welsh Marches, lands in Wales along the English border. After the Norman conquest of England in the 11th cent., William I established the border earldoms of Chester, Shrewsbury, and Hereford to protec...

Danelaw

(Encyclopedia)Danelaw dānˈlôˌ [key], originally the body of law that prevailed in the part of England occupied by the Danes after the treaty of King Alfred with Guthrum in 886. It soon came to mean also the are...

Christchurch, town and borough, England

(Encyclopedia)Christchurch, town and borough, Dorset, S central England, on Christchurch Bay at the confluence of the Avon and Stour rivers. The city's industries ran...

Foster, Norman Robert, Baron Foster of Thames Bank

(Encyclopedia)Foster, Norman Robert, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, 1935–, British architect, b. Manchester, grad. Manchester Univ. school of architecture (1961), Yale school of architecture (M.A., 1962). Foster an...

Morecambe and Heysham

(Encyclopedia)Morecambe and Heysham môrˈkəm, hēˈshəm, hēˈsəm [key], town (1991 pop. 41,432), Lancashire, NW England, on Morecambe Bay. Morecambe, a seaside resort, and Heysham, a port with service to Belfa...

Roger I

(Encyclopedia)Roger I (Roger Guiscard), c.1031–1101, Norman conqueror of Sicily; son of Tancred de Hauteville (see Normans). He went to Italy in 1058 to join his brother, Robert Guiscard, in conquering Apulia and...

Eustathius

(Encyclopedia)Eustathius, d. c.1194, Byzantine scholar, archbishop of Salonica (from 1175). He became renowned as master of the orators at Hagia Sophia, Constantinople, then a center of learning. He lectured on Hom...

Winchester, city, England

(Encyclopedia)Winchester wĭnˈchĭstər [key], city and district (1991 pop. 34,127), county seat of Hampshire, S central England. Winchester was called Caer Gwent by the Britons, Venta Belgarum by the Romans, and ...

gavelkind

(Encyclopedia)gavelkind găvˈəlkīnd [key] [M.E.,=family tenure], custom of inheritance of lands held in socage tenure, whereby all the sons of a holder of an estate in land share equally in such lands upon the d...