GREEN, JOHN Rtenano (1837-83). An Frin- lish historian. His education, except some two or three years of private instruction, was received in his native city, Oxford, at Magdalen College School, and at Jesus College, where he graduated in 1859. His interests were historica,1 rather than scholastic. Religious, and raised in Tory and High Church principles, he took orders in 1860, and for the next five years lived in East London. In 1866 lie became Vicar of Saint Stephen's, Stepney. His health failing, and his inclination to a clerical life abating, he resigned in 1869 to become librarian at Lambeth, devoting himself henceforth to history and polities. His first important historical work, A Short History of the English People, was the outcome of his desire to leave behind him some of his accumulations of knowledge in a form easily available to ordinary people. Ile rewrote it twice, and was only persuaded to publish it in 1874. Its object, as the title suggests, was to give the story of social development of the con ditions which affected the lives of the great mass of the people, in preference to mere dynastic or military chronicles. While it is not infallible in detail, its great merit is the attractive vividness with which it presents one picture after another of the past. It had a great and immediate suc
cess, and was ultimately expanded, still keeping the same point of view, into the four-volume History of the English People(18T7-80), in which he received much assistance from his wife, Alice, daughter of Archdeacon Stopford, whom he mar ried in 1877. A visit to Egypt in 1881 aggra vated his lung trouble, and made labor very diffi cult for the rest of his life. His courage, how ever, enabled him to persist in the writing of another work of a less popular and more schol arly nature, The Making of England (1882), which came down to the consolidation of the kingdoms under Egbert. The materials for the subsequent volume, The Conquest of England, down to the coming of the Normans, were so far put together that. his widow was enabled to publish it in the year of his death, 1883. His Stray Studies in England and Italy (1876) was a collection of essays marked by notable historical insight. In spite of his ill health, the brilliancy of his conversation and the breadth of his sym pathy gave him a marked influence, especially among the historical students of his generation.