GRAMPOUND, a small market town in the mid-parliamentary division of Cornwall, England, 9 m. E.N.E. of Truro, and 2 m. from its station (Grampound Road) on the Great Western railway. It is situated on the river Fal, and has some industry in tanning. It retains an ancient town hall; there is a good market cross; and in the neighbourhood, along the Fal, are several early earthworks.
Grampound (Ponsmure, Graundpont, Grauntpount, Graundpond) and the hundred, manor and vill of Tibeste were formerly so closely associated that in 1400 the former is found styled the vill of Grauntpond called Tibeste. At the time of the Domesday Survey Tibeste was amongst the most valuable of the manors granted to the count of Mortain. The burgensic character of Ponsmure first appears in 1299. Thirty-five years later John of Eltham granted to the burgesses the whole town of Grauntpount. This grant was confirmed in 1378 when its extent and jurisdiction were defined. It was provided that the hundred court of Powdershire should always be held there and two fairs at the feasts of St Peter in Cathedra and St Barnabas, both of which are still held, and a Tuesday market (now held on Friday) and that it should be a free borough rendering a yearly rent to the earl of Cornwall. Two members were summoned to parliament by Edward VI. in 1553. The electors consisted of an indefinite number of freemen, about 50 in all, indirectly nominated by the mayor and corporation, which existed by prescription. The venality of the electors became notorious. In 1780 £3000 was paid for a seat: in 1812 each supporter of one of the candidates received £100. The defeat of this candidate in 1818 led to a parliamentary inquiry which disclosed a system of wholesale corruption, and in 1821 the borough was disfranchised. A former woollen trade is extinct.
GRAMPUS (Orca gladiator, or Orca orca), a cetacean belonging to the Delphinidae or dolphin family, characterized by its rounded head without distinct beak, high dorsal fin and large conical teeth. The upper parts are nearly uniform glossy black, and the under parts white, with a strip of the same colour over each eye. The O. Fr. word was grapois, graspeis or craspeis, from Med. Lat. crassus piscis, fat fish. This was adapted into English as grapeys, graspeys, &c., and in the 16th century becomes grannie pose as if from grand poisson. The final corruption to “grampus” appears in the 18th century and was probably nautical in origin. The animal is also known as the “killer,” in allusion to its ferocity in attacking its prey, which consists largely of seals, porpoises and the smaller dolphins. Its fierceness is only equalled by its voracity, which is such that in a specimen measuring 21 ft. in length, the remains of thirteen seals and thirteen porpoises were found, in a more or less digested state, while the animal appeared to have been choked in the endeavour to swallow another seal, the skin of which was found entangled in its teeth. These cetaceans sometimes hunt in packs or schools, and commit great havoc among the belugas or white whales, which occasionally throw themselves ashore to escape their persecutors. The grampus is an inhabitant of northern seas, occurring on the shores of Greenland, and having been caught, although rarely, as far south as the Mediterranean. There are numerous instances of its capture on the British coasts. (See [Cetacea].)
GRANADA, LUIS DE (1504-1588), Spanish preacher and ascetic writer, born of poor parents named Sarriá at Granada. He lost his father at an early age and his widowed mother was supported by the charity of the Dominicans. A child of the Alhambra, he entered the service of the alcalde as page, and, his ability being discovered, received his education with the sons of the house. When nineteen he entered the Dominican convent and in 1525 took the vows; and, with the leave of his prior, shared his daily allowance of food with his mother. He was sent to Valladolid to continue his studies and then was appointed procurator at Granada. Seven years after he was elected prior of the convent of Scala Caeli in the mountains of Cordova, which after eight years he succeeded in restoring from its ruinous state, and there he began his work as a zealous reformer. His preaching gifts were developed by the orator Juan de Avila, and he became one of the most famous of Spanish preachers. He was invited to Portugal in 1555 and became provincial of his order, declining the offer of the archbishopric of Braga but accepting the position of confessor and counsellor to Catherine, the queen regent. At the expiration of his tenure of the provincialship, he retired to the Dominican convent at Lisbon, where he lived till his death on the last day of 1588. Aiming, both in his sermons and ascetical writings, at development of the religious view, the danger of the times as he saw it was not so much in the Protestant reformation, which was an outside influence, but in the direction that religion had taken among the masses. He held that in Spain the Catholic faith was not understood by the people, and that their ignorance was the pressing danger. He fell under the suspicion of the Inquisition; his mystical teaching was said to be heretical, and his most famous book, the Guia de Peccadores, still a favourite treatise and one that has been translated into nearly every European tongue, was put on the Index of the Spanish Inquisition, together with his book on prayer, in 1559. His great opponent was the restless and ambitious Melchior Cano, who stigmatized the second book as containing grave errors smacking of the heresy of the Alumbrados and manifestly contradicting Catholic faith and teaching. But in 1576 the prohibition was removed and the works of Luis de Granada, so prized by St Francis de Sales, have never lost their value. The friend of St Teresa, St Peter of Alcantara, and of all the noble minds of Spain of his day, no one among the three hundred Spanish mystics excels Luis de Granada in the beauty of a didactic style, variety of illustration and soberness of statement.
The last collected edition of his works is that published in 9 vols. at Antwerp in 1578. A biography by L. Monoz, La Vida y virtudes de Luis de Granada (Madrid, 1639); a study of his system by P. Rousselot in Mystiques espagnoles (Paris, 1867); Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature (vol. iii.), and Fitzmaurice Kelly, History of Spanish Literature, pp. 200-202 (London, 1898), may also be consulted.
GRANADA, the capital of the department of Granada, Nicaragua; 32 m. by rail S.E. of Managua, the capital of the republic. Pop. (1900) about 25,000. Granada is built on the north-western shore of Lake Nicaragua, of which it is the principal port. Its houses are of the usual central American type, constructed of adobe, rarely more than one storey high, and surrounded by courtyards with ornamental gateways. The suburbs, scattered over a large area, consist chiefly of cane huts occupied by Indians and half-castes. There are several ancient churches and convents, in one of which the interior of the chancel roof is inlaid with mother-of-pearl. An electric tramway connects the railway station and the adjacent wharves with the market, about 1 m. distant. Ice, cigars, hats, boots and shoes are manufactured, but the characteristic local industry is the production of “Panama chains,” ornaments made of thin gold wire. In the neighbourhood there are large cocoa plantations; and the city has a thriving trade in cocoa, coffee, hides, cotton, native tobacco and indigo.