[Illustration: FIG. 72.]
37. _Graphic Method of finding Deflection._--Divide the span L into any
convenient number n of equal parts of length l, so that nl = L; compute the
radii of curvature R_1, R_2, R_3 for the several sections. Let measurements
along the beam be represented according to any convenient scale, so that
calling L_1 and l_1 the lengths to be drawn on paper, we have L = aL_1; now
let r_1, r_2, r_3 be a series of radii such that r_1 = R_1/ab, r_2 =
R_2/ab, &c., where b is any convenient constant chosen of such magnitude as
will allow arcs with the radii, r_1, r_2, &c., to be drawn with the means
at the draughtsman's disposal. Draw a curve as shown in fig. 72 with arcs
of the length l_1, l_2, l_3, &c., and with the radii r_1, r_2, &c. (note,
for a length ½l_1 at each end the radius will be infinite, and the curve
must end with a straight line tangent to the last arc), then let v be the
measured deflection of this curve from the straight line, and V the actual
deflection of the bridge; we have V = av/b, approximately. This method
distorts the curve, so that vertical ordinates of the curve are drawn to a
scale b times greater than that of the horizontal ordinates. Thus if the
horizontal scale be one-tenth of an inch to the foot, a = 120, and a beam
100 ft. in length would be drawn equal to 10 in.; then if the true radius
at the centre were 10,000 ft., this radius, if the curve were undistorted,
would be on paper 1000 in., but making b = 50 we can draw the curve with a
radius of 20 in. The vertical distortion of the curve must not be so great
that there is a very sensible difference between the length of the arc and
its chord. This can be regulated by altering the value of b. In fig. 72
distortion is carried too far; this figure is merely used as an
illustration.
38. _Camber._--In order that a girder may become straight under its working
load it should be constructed with a camber or upward convexity equal to
the calculated deflection. Owing to the yielding of joints when a beam is
first loaded a smaller modulus of elasticity should be taken than for a
solid bar. For riveted girders E is about 17,500,000 lb per sq. in. for
first loading. W.J.M. Rankine gives the approximate rule
Working deflection = [delta] = l²/10,000h,
where l is the span and h the depth of the beam, the stresses being those
usual in bridgework, due to the total dead and live load.
(W. C. U.)
[1] For the ancient bridges in Rome see further ROME: _Archaeology_, and
such works as R. Lanciani, _Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome_ (Eng.
trans., 1897), pp. 16 foll.
BRIDGET, SAINT, more properly BRIGID (c. 452-523), one of the patron saints
of Ireland, was born at Faughart in county Louth, her father being a prince
of Ulster. Refusing to marry, she chose a life of seclusion, making her
cell, the first in Ireland, under a large oak tree, whence the place was
called Kil-dara, "the church of the oak." The city of Kildare is supposed
to derive its name from St Brigid's cell. The year of her death is
generally placed in 523. She was buried at Kildare, but her remains were
afterwards translated to Downpatrick, where they were laid beside the
bodies of St Patrick and St Columba. Her feast is celebrated on the 1st of
February. A large collection of miraculous stories clustered round her
name, and her reputation was not confined to Ireland, for, under the name
of St Bride, she became a favourite saint in England, and numerous churches
were dedicated to her in Scotland.
See the five lives given in the Bollandist _Acta Sanctorum_, Feb. 1, i. 99,
119, 950. Cf. Whitley-Stokes, _Three Middle-Irish Homilies on the Lives of
Saint Patrick, Brigit and Columba_ (Calcutta, 1874); Colgan, _Acta SS.
Hiberniae_; D. O'Hanlon, _Lives of Irish Saints_, vol. ii.; Knowles, _Life
of St Brigid_ (1907); further bibliography in Ulysse Chevalier, _Répertoire
des sources hist. Bio.-Bibl._ (2nd ed., Paris, 1905), s.v.
BRIDGET, BRIGITTA, BIRGITTA, OF SWEDEN, SAINT (c. 1302-1373), the most
celebrated saint of the northern kingdoms, was the daughter of Birger
Persson, governor and _lagman_ (provincial judge) of Uppland, and one of
the richest landowners of the country. In 1316 she was married to Ulf
Gudmarson, lord of Nericia, to whom she bore eight children, one of whom
was [v.04 p.0557] afterwards honoured as St Catherine of Sweden. Bridget's
saintly and charitable life soon made her known far and wide; she gained,
too, great religious influence over her husband, with whom (1341-1343) she
went on pilgrimage to St James of Compostella. In 1344, shortly after their
return, Ulf died in the Cistercian monastery of Alvastra in East Gothland,
and Bridget now devoted herself wholly to religion. As a child she had
already believed herself to have visions; these now became more frequent,
and her records of these "revelations," which were translated into Latin by
Matthias, canon of Linköping, and by her confessor, Peter, prior of
Alvastra, obtained a great vogue during the middle ages. It was about this
time that she founded the order of St Saviour, or Bridgittines (_q.v._), of
which the principal house, at Vadstena, was richly endowed by King Magnus
II. and his queen. About 1350 she went to Rome, partly to obtain from the
pope the authorization of the new order, partly in pursuance of her
self-imposed mission to elevate the moral tone of the age. It was not till
1370 that Pope Urban V. confirmed the rule of her order; but meanwhile
Bridget had made herself universally beloved in Rome by her kindness and
good works. Save for occasional pilgrimages, including one to Jerusalem in
1373, she remained in Rome till her death on the 23rd of July 1373. She was
canonized in 1391 by Pope Boniface IX., and her feast is celebrated on the
9th of October.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Cf. the Bollandist _Acta Sanctorum_, Oct. 8, iv. 368-560;
the _Vita Sanctae Brigittae_, edited by C. Annerstedt in _Scriptores rerum
Suedicarum medii aevi_, iii. 185-244 (Upsala, 1871). The best modern work
on the subject is by the comtesse Catherine de Flavigny, entitled _Sainte
Brigitte de Suède, sa vie, ses révélations et son oeuvre_ (Paris, 1892),
which contains an exhaustive bibliography. The Revelations are contained in
the critical edition of St Bridget's works published by the Swedish
Historical Society and edited by G.E. Klemming (Stockholm, 1857-1884, II
vols.). For full bibliography (to 1904) see Ulysse Chevalier, _Répertoire
des sources hist. Bio.-Bibl._, _s.v._ "Brigitte."
BRIDGETON, a city, port of entry, and the county-seat of Cumberland county,
New Jersey, U.S.A., in the south part of the state, on Cohansey creek, 38
m. S. of Philadelphia. Pop. (1890) 11,424; (1900) 13,913, of whom 653 were
foreign-born and 701 were negroes; (1905) 13,624; (1910) 14,209. It is
served by the West Jersey & Sea Shore and the Central of New Jersey
railways, by electric railways connecting with adjacent towns, and by
Delaware river steamboats on Cohansey creek, which is navigable to this
point. It is an attractive residential city, has a park of 650 acres and a
fine public library, and is the seat of West Jersey academy and of Ivy
Hall, a school for girls. It is an important market town and distributing
centre for a rich agricultural region; among its manufactures are glass
(the product, chiefly glass bottles, being valued in 1905 at
$1,252,795--42.3% of the value of all the city's factory products--and
Bridgeton ranking eighth among the cities of the United States in this
industry), machinery, clothing, and canned fruits and vegetables; it also
has dyeing and finishing works. Though Bridgeton is a port of entry, its
foreign commerce is relatively unimportant. The first settlement in what is
now Bridgeton was made toward the close of the 18th century. A pioneer
iron-works was established here in 1814. The city of Bridgeton, formed by
the union of the township of Bridgeton and the township of Cohansey
(incorporated in 1845 and 1848 respectively), was chartered in 1864.
BRIDGETT, THOMAS EDWARD (1829-1899), Roman Catholic priest and historical
writer, was born at Derby on the 20th of January 1829. He was brought up a
Baptist, but in his sixteenth year joined the Church of England. In 1847 he
entered St John's College, Cambridge, with the intention of taking orders.
Being unable to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles he could not take his
degree, and in 1850 became a Roman Catholic, soon afterwards joining the
Congregation of the Redemptorists. He went through his novitiate at St
Trond in Belgium, and after a course of five years of theological study at
Wittem, in Holland, was ordained priest. He returned to England in 1856,
and for over forty years led an active life as a missioner in England and
Ireland, preaching in over 80 missions and 140 retreats to the clergy and
to nuns. His stay in Limerick was particularly successful, and he founded a
religious confraternity of laymen which numbered 5000 members. Despite his
arduous life as a priest, Bridgett found time to produce literary works of
value, chiefly dealing with the history of the Reformation in England;
among these are _The Life of Blessed John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester_
(1888); _The Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More_ (1890); _History of the
Eucharist in Great Britain_ (2 vols., 1881); _Our Lady's Dowry_ (1875, 3rd
ed. 1890). He died at Clapham on the 17th of February 1899.
For a complete list of Bridgett's works see _The Life of Father Bridgett_,
by C. Ryder (London, 1906).
BRIDGEWATER, FRANCIS EGERTON, 3RD DUKE OF (1736-1803), the originator of
British inland navigation, younger son of the 1st duke, was born on the
21st of May 1736. Scroop, 1st duke of Bridgewater (1681-1745), was the son
of the 3rd earl of Bridgewater, and was created a duke in 1720; he was the
great-grandson of John Egerton, 1st earl of Bridgewater (d. 1649; cr.
1617), whose name is associated with the production of Milton's _Comus_;
and the latter was the son of Sir Thomas Egerton (1540-1617), Queen
Elizabeth's lord keeper and James I.'s lord chancellor, who was created
baron of Ellesmere in 1603, and in 1616 Viscount Brackley (_q.v._).
Francis Egerton succeeded to the dukedom at the age of twelve on the death
of his brother, the 2nd duke. As a child he was sickly and of such
unpromising intellectual capacity that at one time the idea of cutting the
entail was seriously entertained. Shortly after attaining his majority he
became engaged to the beautiful duchess of Hamilton, but her refusal to
give up the acquaintance of her sister, Lady Coventry, led to the breaking
off of the match. Thereupon the duke broke up his London establishment, and
retiring to his estate at Worsley, devoted himself to the making of canals.
The navigable canal from Worsley to Manchester which he projected for the
transport of the coal obtained on his estates was (with the exception of
the Sankey canal) the first great undertaking of the kind executed in Great
Britain in modern times. The construction of this remarkable work, with its
famous aqueduct across the Irwell, was carried out by James Brindley, the
celebrated engineer. The completion of this canal led the duke to undertake
a still more ambitious work. In 1762 he obtained parliamentary powers to
provide an improved waterway between Liverpool and Manchester by means of a
canal. The difficulties encountered in the execution of the latter work
were still more formidable than those of the Worsley canal, involving, as
they did, the carrying of the canal over Sale Moor Moss. But the genius of
Brindley, his engineer, proved superior to all obstacles, and though at one
period of the undertaking the financial resources of the duke were almost
exhausted, the work was carried to a triumphant conclusion. The untiring
perseverance displayed by the duke in surmounting the various difficulties
that retarded the accomplishment of his projects, together with the
pecuniary restrictions he imposed on himself in order to supply the
necessary capital (at one time he reduced his personal expenses to £400 a
year), affords an instructive example of that energy and self-denial on
which the success of great undertakings so much depends. Both these canals
were completed when the duke was only thirty-six years of age, and the
remainder of his life was spent in extending them and in improving his
estates; and during the latter years of his life he derived a princely
income from the success of his enterprise. Though a steady supporter of
Pitt's administration, he never took any prominent part in politics.
He died unmarried on the 8th of March 1803, when the ducal title became
extinct, but the earldom of Bridgewater passed to a cousin, John William
Egerton, who became 7th earl. By his will he devised his canals and estates
on trust, under which his nephew, the marquess of Stafford (afterwards
first duke of Sutherland), became the first beneficiary, and next his son
Francis Leveson Gower (afterwards first earl of Ellesmere) and his issue.
In order that the trust should last as long as possible, an extraordinary
use was made of the legal rule that property may be [v.04 p.0558] settled
for the duration of lives in being and twenty-one years after, by choosing
a great number of persons connected with the duke and their living issue
and adding to them the peers who had taken their seats in the House of
Lords on or before the duke's decease. Though the last of the peers died in
1857, one of the commoners survived till the 19th of October 1883, and
consequently the trust did not expire till the 19th of October 1903, when
the whole property passed under the undivided control of the earl of
Ellesmere. The canals, however, had in 1872 been transferred to the
Bridgewater Navigation Company, by whom they were sold in 1887 to the
Manchester Ship Canal Company.
BRIDGEWATER, FRANCIS HENRY EGERTON, 8TH EARL OF (1756-1829), was educated
at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and became fellow of All Souls in 1780,
and F.R.S. in 1781. He held the rectories of Middle and Whitchurch in
Shropshire, but the duties were performed by a proxy. He succeeded his
brother (see above) in the earldom in 1823, and spent the latter part of
his life in Paris. He was a fair scholar, and a zealous naturalist and
antiquarian. When he died in February 1829 the earldom became extinct. He
bequeathed to the British Museum the valuable Egerton MSS. dealing with the
literature of France and Italy, and also £12,000. He also left £8000 at the
disposal of the president of the Royal Society, to be paid to the author or
authors who might be selected to write and publish 1000 copies of a
treatise "On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as manifested in the
Creation." Mr Davies Gilbert, who then filled the office, selected eight
persons, each to undertake a branch of this subject, and each to receive
£1000 as his reward, together with any benefit that might accrue from the
sale of his work, according to the will of the testator.
The Bridgewater treatises were published as follows:--1. _The Adaptation of
External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Condition of Man_, by Thomas
Chalmers, D.D. 2. _The Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical
Condition of Man_, by John Kidd, M.D. 3. _Astronomy and General Physics
considered with reference to Natural Theology_, by William Whewell, D.D. 4.
_The Hand, its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as evincing Design_, by Sir
Charles Bell. 5. _Animal and Vegetable Physiology considered with reference
to Natural Theology_, by Peter Mark Roget. 6. _Geology and Mineralogy
considered with reference to Natural Theology_, by William Buckland, D.D.
7. _The Habits and Instincts of Animals with reference to Natural
Theology_, by William Kirby. 8. _Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function
of Digestion, considered with reference to Natural Theology_, by William
Prout, M.D. The works are of unequal merit; several of them took a high
rank in apologetic literature. They first appeared during the years 1833 to
1840, and afterwards in Bohn's Scientific Library.
BRIDGITTINES, an order of Augustinian canonesses founded by St Bridget of
Sweden (_q.v._) c. 1350, and approved by Urban V. in 1370. It was a "double
order," each convent having attached to it a small community of canons to
act as chaplains, but under the government of the abbess. The order spread
widely in Sweden and Norway, and played a remarkable part in promoting
culture and literature in Scandinavia; to this is to be attributed the fact
that the head house at Vastein, by Lake Vetter, was not suppressed till
1595. There were houses also in other lands, so that the total number
amounted to 80. In England, the famous Bridgittine convent of Syon at
Isleworth, Middlesex, was founded and royally endowed by Henry V. in 1415,
and became one of the richest and most fashionable and influential
nunneries in the country. It was among the few religious houses restored in
Mary's reign, when nearly twenty of the old community were re-established
at Syon. On Elizabeth's accession they migrated to the Low Countries, and
thence, after many vicissitudes, to Rouen, and finally in 1594 to Lisbon.
Here they remained, always recruiting their numbers from England, till
1861, when they returned to England. Syon House is now established at
Chudleigh in Devon, the only English community that can boast an unbroken
conventual existence since pre-Reformation times. Some six other
Bridgittine convents exist on the Continent, but the order is now composed
only of women.
See Helyot, _Histoire des ordres religieux_ (1715), iv. c. 4; Max
Heimbucher, _Orden u. Kongregationen_ (1907), ii. § 83; Herzog-Hauck,
_Realencyklopädie_ (ed. 3), art. "Birgitta"; A. Hamilton in _Dublin
Review_, 1888, "The Nuns of Syon."
(E. C. B.)
BRIDGMAN, FREDERICK ARTHUR (1847- ), American artist, was born at Tuskegee,
Alabama, on the 10th of November 1847. He began as a draughtsman in New
York for the American Bank Note Company in 1864-1865, and studied art in
the same years at the Brooklyn Art School and at the National Academy of
Design; but he went to Paris in 1866 and became a pupil of J.L. Gérôme.
Paris then became his headquarters. A trip to Egypt in 1873-1874 resulted
in pictures of the East that attracted immediate attention, and his large
and important composition, "The Funeral Procession of a Mummy on the Nile,"
in the Paris Salon (1877), bought by James Gordon Bennett, brought him the
cross of the Legion of Honour. Other paintings by him were "An American
Circus in Normandy," "Procession of the Bull Apis" (now in the Corcoran Art
Gallery, Washington), and a "Rumanian Lady" (in the Temple collection,
Philadelphia).
BRIDGMAN, LAURA DEWEY (1829-1889), American blind deaf-mute, was born on
the 21st of December 1829 at Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S.A., being the
third daughter of Daniel Bridgman (d. 1868), a substantial Baptist farmer,
and his wife Harmony, daughter of Cushman Downer, and grand-daughter of
Joseph Downer, one of the five first settlers (1761) of Thetford, Vermont.
Laura was a delicate infant, puny and rickety, and was subject to fits up
to twenty months old, but otherwise seemed to have normal senses; at two
years, however, she had a very bad attack of scarlet fever, which destroyed
sight and hearing, blunted the sense of smell, and left her system a wreck.
Though she gradually recovered health she remained a blind deaf-mute, but
was kindly treated and was in particular made a sort of playmate by an
eccentric bachelor friend of the Bridgmans, Mr Asa Tenney, who as soon as
she could walk used to take her for rambles a-field. In 1837 Mr James
Barrett, of Dartmouth College, saw her and mentioned her case to Dr Mussey,
the head of the medical department, who wrote an account which attracted
the attention of Dr S.G. Howe (_q.v._), the head of the Perkins Institution
for the Blind at Boston. He determined to try to get the child into the
Institution and to attempt to educate her; her parents assented, and in
October 1837 Laura entered the school. Though the loss of her eye-balls
occasioned some deformity, she was otherwise a comely child and of a
sensitive and affectionate nature; she had become familiar with the world
about her, and was imitative in so far as she could follow the actions of
others; but she was limited in her communication with others to the
narrower uses of touch--patting her head meant approval, rubbing her hand
disapproval, pushing one way meant to go, drawing another to come. Her
mother, preoccupied with house-work, had already ceased to be able to
control her, and her father's authority was due to fear of superior force,
not to reason. Dr Howe at once set himself to teach her the alphabet by
touch. It is impossible, for reasons of space, to describe his efforts in
detail. He taught words before the individual letters, and his first
experiment consisting in pasting upon several common articles such as keys,
spoons, knives, &c., little paper labels with the names of the articles
printed in raised letters, which he got her to feel and differentiate; then
he gave her the same labels by themselves, which she learnt to associate
with the articles they referred to, until, with the spoon or knife alone
before her she could find the right label for each from a mixed heap. The
next stage was to give her the component letters and teach her to combine
them in the words she knew, and gradually in this way she learnt all the
alphabet and the ten digits, &c. The whole process depended, of course, on
her having a human intelligence, which only required stimulation, and her
own interest in learning became keener as she progressed. On the 24th of
July 1839 she first wrote her own name legibly. Dr Howe devoted himself
with the utmost patience and assiduity to her education and was rewarded by
increasing success. On the 20th of June 1840 she had her first arithmetic
lesson, by the aid of a metallic case perforated with square holes, square
types being used; and in nineteen days she could add a column of figures
amounting to thirty. She was in good health and happy, and was treated by
Dr Howe as his daughter. Her case already began to interest the public, and
others were brought to Dr Howe [v.04 p.0559] for treatment. In 1841 Laura
began to keep a journal, in which she recorded her own day's work and
thoughts. In January 1842 Charles Dickens visited the Institution, and
afterwards wrote enthusiastically in _American Notes_ of Dr Howe's success
with Laura. In 1843 funds were obtained for devoting a special teacher to
her, and first Miss Swift, then Miss Wight, and then Miss Paddock, were
appointed; Laura by this time was learning geography and elementary
astronomy. By degrees she was given religious instruction, but Dr Howe was
intent upon not inculcating dogma before she had grasped the essential
moral truths of Christianity and the story of the Bible. She grew up a gay,
cheerful girl, loving, optimistic, but with a nervous system inclining to
irritability, and requiring careful education in self-control. In 1860 her
eldest sister Mary's death helped to bring on a religious crisis, and
through the influence of some of her family she was received into the
Baptist church; she became for some years after this more self-conscious
and rather pietistic. In 1867 she began writing compositions which she
called poems; the best-known is called "Holy Home." In 1872, Dr Howe having
been enabled to build some separate cottages (each under a matron) for the
blind girls, Laura was moved from the larger house of the Institution into
one of them, and there she continued her quiet life. The death of Dr Howe
in 1876 was a great grief to her; but before he died he had made
arrangements by which she would be financially provided for in her home at
the Institution for the rest of her life. In 1887 her jubilee was
celebrated there, but in 1889 she was taken ill, and she died on the 24th
of May. She was buried at Hanover. Her name has become familiar everywhere
as an example of the education of a blind deaf-mute, leading to even
greater results in Helen Keller.
See _Laura Bridgman_, by Maud Howe and Florence Howe Hall (1903), which
contains a bibliography; and _Life and Education of Laura Dewey Bridgman_
(1878), by Mary S. Lamson.
(H. CH.)
BRIDGNORTH, a market town and municipal borough in the Ludlow parliamentary
division of Shropshire, England, 150 m. N.W. by W. from London by the Great
Western railway, on the Worcester-Shrewsbury line. Pop. (1901) 6052. The
river Severn separates the upper town on the right bank from the lower on
the left. A steep line of rail connects them. The upper town is built on
the acclivities and summit of a rock which rises abruptly from the river to
the height of 180 ft., and gives the town a very picturesque appearance.
The railway passes under by a long tunnel. On the summit is the tower of
the old castle, leaning about 17° from the perpendicular. There are also
two parish churches. That of St Leonard, formerly collegiate, was
practically rebuilt in 1862. This parish was held by Richard Baxter, the
famous divine, in 1640. St Mary's church is in classic style of the late
18th century. The picturesque half-timbered style of domestic building is
frequently seen in the streets. In this style are the town hall (1652), and
a house dated 1580, in which was born in 1729 Thomas Percy, bishop of
Dromore, the editor of the _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_. The
grammar school, founded in 1503, occupies an Elizabethan building; there
are also a college of divinity, a blue-coat school, and a literary
institute with library and school of art. There are large charities. Near
the town is a curious ancient hermitage cave, in the sandstone. At
Quatford, 1 m. south-east, the site of a castle dating from 1085 may be
traced. This dominated the ancient Forest of Morf. Here Robert de Belesme
originally founded the college which was afterwards moved to Bridgnorth.
Bridgnorth manufactures carpets; brewing is carried on, and there is trade
in agricultural produce. The town is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12
councillors. Area, 3018 acres.
The early history of Bridgnorth is connected with Æthelfleda, lady of the
Mercians, who raised a mound there in 912 as part of her offensive policy
against the Danes of the five boroughs. After the Conquest William I.
granted the manor of Bridgnorth to Earl Roger of Shrewsbury, whose son
Robert de Belesme transferred his castle and borough from Quatford to
Bridgnorth, but on Robert's attainder in 1102 the town became a royal
borough. It is probable that Henry I. granted the burgesses certain
privileges, for Henry II. confirmed to them all the franchises and customs
which they had in the time of Henry I. King John in 1215 granted them
freedom from toll throughout England except the city of London, and in 1227
Henry III. conferred several new rights and liberties, among which were a
gild merchant with a hanse. These early charters were confirmed by several
succeeding kings, Henry VI. granting in addition assize of bread and ale
and other privileges. Bridgnorth was incorporated by James I. in 1546. The
burgesses returned two members to parliament in 1295, and continued to do
so until 1867, when they were assigned only one member. The town was
disfranchised in 1885. A yearly fair on the feast of the Translation of St
Leonard and three following days was granted to the burgesses in 1359, and
in 1630 Charles I. granted them licence to hold another fair on the
Thursday before the first week in Lent and two following days.
BRIDGWATER, a market town, port and municipal borough in the Bridgwater
parliamentary division of Somerset, England, on the river Parret, 10 m.
from its mouth, and 151¾ m. by the Great Western railway W. by S. of
London. Pop. (1901) 15,209. It is pleasantly situated in a level and
well-wooded country, having on the east the Mendip range and on the west
the Quantock hills. The town lies along both sides of the river, here
crossed by a handsome iron bridge. Among several places of worship the
chief is St Mary Magdalene's church; this has a north porch and windows
dating from the 14th century, besides a lofty and slender spire; but it has
been much altered by restoration. It possesses a fine painted reredos. A
house in Blake Street, largely restored, was the birthplace of Admiral
Blake in 1598. Near the town are the three fine old churches of Weston
Zoyland, Chedzoy and Middlezoy, containing some good brasses and carved
woodwork. The battlefield of Sedgemoor, where the Monmouth rebellion was
finally crushed in 1685, is within 3 m.; while not far off is Charlinch,
the home of the Agapemonites (_q.v._). Bridgwater has a considerable
coasting trade, importing grain, coal, wine, hemp, tallow and timber, and
exporting Bath brick, farm produce, earthenware, cement and plaster of
Paris. The river is navigable by vessels of 700 tons, though liable, when
spring-tides are flowing, to a bore which rises, in rough weather, to a
height of 9 ft. Bath brick, manufactured only here, and made of the mingled
sand and clay deposited by every tide, is the staple article of commerce;
iron-founding is also carried on. The town is governed by a mayor, 6
aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 926 acres.
A settlement probably grew up in Saxon times at Bridgwater (_Briges_,
_Briggewalteri_, _Brigewauter_), owing its origin as a trade centre to its
position at the mouth of the chief river in Somerset. It became a mesne
borough by the charter granted by John in 1201, which provided that the
town should be a free borough, the burgesses to be free and quit of all
tolls, and made William de Briwere overlord. Other charters were granted by
Henry III. in 1227 (confirmed in 1318, 1370, 1380), which gave Bridgwater a
gild merchant. It was incorporated by charter of Edward IV. (1468),
confirmed in 1554, 1586, 1629 and 1684. Parliamentary representation began
in 1295 and continued until the Reform Act of 1870. A Saturday market and a
fair on the 24th of June were granted by the charter of 1201. Another fair
at the beginning of Lent was added in 1468, and a second market on
Thursday, and fairs at Midsummer and on the 21st of September were added in
1554. Charles II. granted another fair on the 29th of December. The
medieval importance of these markets and fairs for the sale of wool and
wine and later of cloth has gone. The shipping trade of the port revived
after the construction of the new dock in 1841, and corn and timber have
been imported for centuries.
See S. G. Jarman, "History of Bridgwater," _Historical MSS. Commission_,
Report 9, Appendix; _Victoria County History: Somerset_, vol. ii.
BRIDLINGTON, a market town, municipal borough and seaside resort in the
Buckrose parliamentary division of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England,
31 m. N.N.E. from Hull by a branch of the North Eastern railway. Pop.
(1891) 8919; (1901) 12,482. It is divided into two parts, the ancient
market town lying about 1 m. from the coast, while the modern houses of
Bridlington Quay, the watering-place, fringe the shore of Bridlington Bay.
Southward the coast becomes low, but northward it is steep and very fine,
where the great spur of Flamborough Head (_q.v._) projects eastward. In the
old town of Bridlington the church of St Mary and St Nicholas consists of
the fine Decorated and Perpendicular nave, with Early English portions, of
the priory church of an Augustinian foundation of the time of Henry I.
There remains also the Perpendicular gateway, serving as the town-hall. The
founder of the priory was Walter de Gaunt, about 1114, and the institution
[v.04 p.0560] flourished until 1537, when the last prior was executed for
taking part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. A Congregational society was
founded in 1662, and its old church, dating from 1702, stood until 1906. At
Bridlington Quay there is excellent sea-bathing, and the parade and
ornamental gardens provide pleasant promenades. Extensive works have been
carried out along the sea front. There is a chalybeate spring. The harbour
is enclosed by two stone piers, and there is good anchorage in the bay. The
municipal borough is under a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors, and has
an area of 2751 acres.
The mention of four burgesses at Bridlington (Brellington, Burlington) in
the Domesday survey shows it to have been a borough before the Conquest.
With the rest of the north of England, Bridlington suffered from the
ravages of the Normans, and decreased in value from £32 in the reign of
Edward the Confessor, when it formed part of the possessions of Earl
Morcar, to 8s. at the time of the Domesday survey. By that time it was in
the hands of the king by the forfeiture of Earl Morcar. It was granted by
William II. to Gilbert de Gaunt, whose son and heir Walter founded the
priory and endowed it with the manor of Bridlington and other lands. From
this date the importance of the town steadily increased. Henry I. and
several succeeding kings confirmed Walter de Gaunt's gift, Stephen granting
in addition the right to have a port. In 1546 Henry IV. granted the prior
and convent exemption from fifteenths, tenths and subsidies, in return for
prayer for himself and his queen in every mass sung at the high altar.
After the Dissolution the manor remained with the crown until 1624, when
Charles I. granted it to Sir John Ramsey, whose brother and heir, Sir
George Ramsey, sold it in 1633 to thirteen inhabitants of the town on
behalf of all the tenants of the manor. The thirteen lords were assisted by
twelve other inhabitants chosen by the freeholders, and when the number of
lords was reduced to six, seven others were chosen from the assistants. A
chief lord was chosen every year. This system still holds good. It is
evident from the fact of thirteen inhabitants being allowed to hold the
manor that the town had some kind of incorporation in the 17th century,
although its incorporation charter was not granted until 1899, when it was
created a municipal borough. In 1200 King John granted the prior of
Bridlington a weekly market on Saturday and an annual fair on the vigil,
feast and morrow of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Henry VI. in 1446
granted the prior three new fairs yearly on the vigil, day and morrow of
the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, the Deposition of St John, late prior of
Bridlington, and the Translation of the same St John. All fairs and markets
were sold with the manor to the inhabitants of the town.
See J. Thompson, _Historical Sketches of Bridlington_ (1821); _Victoria
County History: Yorkshire_.
BRIDPORT, ALEXANDER HOOD, VISCOUNT (1727-1814), British admiral, was the
younger brother of Samuel, Lord Hood, and cousin of Sir Samuel and Captain
Alexander Hood. Entering the navy in January 1741, he was appointed
lieutenant of the "Bridgewater" six years later, and in that rank served
for ten years in various ships. He was then posted to the "Prince," the
flag-ship of Rear-Admiral Saunders (under whom Hood had served as a
lieutenant) and in this command served in the Mediterranean for some time.
Returning home, he was appointed to the "Minerva" frigate, in which he was
present at Hawke's great victory in Quiberon Bay (20th November 1759). In
1761 the "Minerva" recaptured, after a long struggle, the "Warwick" of
equal force, and later in the same year Captain Alexander Hood went in the
"Africa" to the Mediterranean, where he served until the conclusion of
peace. From this time forward he was in continuous employment afloat and
ashore, and in the "Robust" was present at the battle of Ushant in 1778.
Hood was involved in the court-martial on Admiral (afterwards Viscount)
Keppel which followed this action, and although adverse popular feeling was
aroused by the course which he took in Keppel's defence, his conduct does
not seem to have injured his professional career. Two years later he was
made rear-admiral of the white, and succeeded Kempenfeldt as one of Howe's
flag-officers, and in the "Queen" (90) he was present at the relief of
Gibraltar in 1782. For a time he sat in the House of Commons. Promoted
vice-admiral in 1787, he became K.B. in the following year, and on the
occasion of the Spanish armament in 1790 flew his flag again for a short
time. On the outbreak of the war with France in 1793 Sir Alexander Hood
once more went to sea, this time as Howe's second in command, and he had
his share in the operations which culminated in the "Glorius First of
June," and for his services was made Baron Bridport of Cricket St Thomas in
Somerset in the Irish peerage. Henceforth Bridport was practically in
independent command. In 1795 he fought the much-criticized partial action
of the 23rd of June off Belle-Ile, which, however unfavourably it was
regarded in some quarters, was counted as a great victory by the public.
Bridport's peerage was made English, and he became vice-admiral of England.
In 1796-1797 he practically directed the war from London, rarely hoisting
his flag afloat save at such critical times as that of the Irish expedition
in 1797. In the following year he was about to put to sea when the Spithead
fleet mutinied. He succeeded at first in pacifying the crew of his
flag-ship, who had no personal grudge against their admiral, but a few days
later the mutiny broke out afresh, and this time was uncontrollable. For a
whole week the mutineers were supreme, and it was only by the greatest
exertions of the old Lord Howe that order was then restored and the men
returned to duty. After the mutiny had been suppressed, Bridport took the
fleet to sea as commander-in-chief in name as well as in fact, and from
1798 to 1800 personally directed the blockade of Brest, which grew stricter
and stricter as time went on. In 1800 he was relieved by St Vincent, and
retired from active duty after fifty-nine years' service. In reward for his
fine record his peerage was made a viscounty. He spent the remaining years
of his life in retirement. He died on the 2nd of May 1814. The viscounty in
the English peerage died with him; the Irish barony passed to the younger
branch of his brother's family, for whom the viscounty was recreated in
1868.
See Charnock, _Biographia Navalis_, vi. 153; _Naval Chronicle_, i. 265;
Ralfe, _Nav. Biog._ i. 202.
BRIDPORT, a market town and municipal borough in the Western parliamentary
division of Dorsetshire, England, 18 m. N.W. of Dorchester, on a branch of
the Great Western railway. Pop. (1901) 5710. It is pleasantly situated in a
hilly district on the river Brit, from which it takes its name. The main
part of the town is about a mile from the sea, with which it is connected
by a winding street, ending at a quay surrounded by the fishing village of
West Bay, where the railway terminates. The church of St Mary is a handsome
cruciform Perpendicular building. The harbour is accessible only to small
vessels. There is some import trade in flax, timber and coal. The principal
articles of manufacture have long been sailcloth, cordage, linen and
fishing-nets. The municipal borough is under a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18
councillors. Area, 593 acres.
Bridport was evidently of some importance before the Conquest, when it
consisted of 120 houses rated for all the king's services and paying geld
for five hides. By 1086 the number of houses had decreased to 100, and of
these 20 were in such a wretched condition that they could not pay geld.
The town is first mentioned as a borough in the Pipe Roll of 1189, which
states that William de Bendenges owed £9: 10s. for the ancient farm of
Bridport, and that the men of the town owed tallage to the amount of 53s.
10d. Henry III. granted the first charter in 1252-1253, making the town a
free borough and granting the burgesses the right to hold it at the ancient
fee farm with an increase of 40s., and to choose two bailiffs to answer at
the exchequer for the farm. A deed of 1381 shows that Henry III. also
granted the burgesses freedom from toll. Bridport was incorporated by James
I. in 1619, but Charles II. granted a new charter in 1667, and by this the
town was governed until 1835. The first existing grant of a market and
fairs to Bridport is dated 1593, but it appears from the _Quo Warranto_
Rolls that Edward I. possessed a market there. The town was noted for the
manufacture of ropes and cables as early as 1213, and an act of parliament
(21 Henry VIII.) shows that the inhabitants had "from time out of mind"
made the cables, ropes and hawsers for the royal navy and for most of the
other ships. Bridport was represented in parliament by two members from
1395 to 1867. In the latter year the number was reduced to one, and in 1885
the town was disfranchised.
BRIE (_Briegus saltus_, from Celtic _briek_, clay), an agricultural
district of northern France, to the E. of Paris, bounded W. and S. by the
Seine, N. by the Marne. It has an area of 2400 sq. m., comprising the
greater part of the department of Seine-et-Marne, together with portions of
the departments of Seine, Seine-et-Oise, Aisne, Marne and Aube. The western
portion was known as the _Brie française_, the eastern portion as the _Brie
champenoise_. The Brie forms a plateau with few eminences, varying in
altitude between 300 and 500 ft. in the west, and between 500 and 650 ft.
in the east. Its scenery is varied by forests of some size--the [v.04
p.0561] chief being the Forêt de Senart, the Forêt de Crécy and the Forêt
d'Armainvilliers. The surface soil is clay in which are embedded fragments
of siliceous sandstone, used for millstones and constructional purposes;
the subsoil is limestone. The Yères, a tributary of the Seine, and the
Grand Morin and Petit Morin, tributaries of the Marne, are the chief
rivers, but the region is not abundantly watered and the rainfall is only
between 20 and 24 in. The Brie is famous for its grain and its dairy
products, especially cheeses.
BRIEF (Lat. _brevis_, short), in English legal practice, the written
statement given to a barrister to form the basis of his case. It was
probably so called from its at first being only a copy of the original
writ. Upon a barrister devolves the duty of taking charge of a case when it
comes into court, but all the preliminary work, such as the drawing up of
the case, serving papers, marshalling evidence, &c., is performed by a
solicitor, so that a brief contains a concise summary for the information
of counsel of the case which he has to plead, with all material facts in
chronological order, and frequently such observations thereon as the
solicitor may think fit to make, the names of witnesses, with the "proofs,"
that is, the nature of the evidence which each witness is ready to give, if
called upon. The brief may also contain suggestions for the use of counsel
when cross-examining witnesses called by the other side. Accompanying the
brief may be copies of the pleadings (see PLEADING), and of all documents
material to the case. The brief is always endorsed with the title of the
court in which the action is to be tried, with the title of the action, and
the names of the counsel and of the solicitor who delivers the brief.
Counsel's fee is also marked. The delivery of a brief to counsel gives him
authority to act for his client in all matters which the litigation
involves. The result of the action is noted on the brief by counsel, or if
the action is compromised, the terms of the compromise are endorsed on each
brief and signed by the leading counsel on the opposite side. In Scotland a
brief is called a memorial.
In the United States the word has, to a certain extent, a different
meaning, a brief in its English sense not being required, for the American
attorney exercises all the functions distributed in England between
barristers and solicitors. A lawyer sometimes prepares for his own use what
is called a "trial brief" for use at the trial. This corresponds in all
essential particulars with the "brief" prepared by the solicitor in England
for the use of counsel. But the more distinctive use of the term in America
is in the case of the brief "in error or appeal," before an appellate
court. This is a written or printed document, varying according to
circumstances, but embodying the argument on the question affected. Most of
the appellate courts require the filing of printed briefs for the use of
the court and opposing counsel at a time designated for each side before
hearing. In the rules of the United States Supreme Court and circuit courts
of appeals the brief is required to contain a concise statement of the
case, a specification of errors relied on, including the substance of
evidence, the admission or rejection of which is to be reviewed, or any
extract from a charge excepted to, and an argument exhibiting clearly the
points of law or fact to be discussed. This form of brief, it may be added,
is also adopted for use at the trial in certain states of the Union which
require printed briefs to be delivered to the court.
In English ecclesiastical law a brief meant letters patent issued out of
chancery to churchwardens or other officers for the collection of money for
church purposes. Such briefs were regulated by a statute of 1704, but are
now obsolete, though they are still to be found named in one of the rubrics
in the Communion service of the Book of Common Prayer.
The _brief-bag_, in which counsel's papers are carried to and from court,
now forms an integral part of a barrister's outfit, but in the early part
of the 19th century the possession of a brief-bag was strictly confined to
those who had received one from a king's counsel. King's counsel were then
few in number, were considered officers of the court, and had a salary of
£40 a year, with a supply of paper, pens and purple bags. These bags they
distributed among rising juniors of their acquaintance, whose bundles of
briefs were getting inconveniently large to be carried in their hands.
These perquisites were abolished in 1830. English brief-bags are now either
blue or red. Blue bags are those with which barristers provide themselves
when first called, and it is a breach of etiquette to let this bag be
visible in court. The only brief-bag allowed to be placed on the desks is
the red bag, which by English legal etiquette is given by a leading counsel
to a junior who has been useful to him in some important case.
BRIEG, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Silesia, on the left
bank of the Oder, and on the Breslau and Beuthen railway, 27 m. S.E. of the
former city. Pop. (1900) 24,090. It has a castle (the residence of the old
counts of Brieg), a lunatic asylum, a gymnasium with a good library,
several churches and hospitals, and a theatre. Its fortifications were
destroyed by the French in 1807, and are now replaced by beautiful
promenades. Brieg carries on a considerable trade, its chief manufactures
being linen, embroideries, cotton and woollen goods, ribbons, leather,
machinery, hats, pasteboard and cigars. Important cattle-markets are held
here. Brieg, or, as it is called in early documents, _Civitas Altae Ripae_,
obtained municipal rights in 1250 from Duke Henry III. of Breslau, and was
fortified in 1297; its name is derived from the Polish _Brzeg_ (shore).
Burned by the Hussites in 1428, the town was soon afterwards rebuilt, and
in 1595 it was again fortified by Joachim Frederick, duke of Brieg. In the
Thirty Years' War it suffered greatly; in that of the Austrian succession
it was heavily bombarded by the Prussian forces; and in 1807 it was
captured by the French and Bavarians. From 1311 to 1675 Brieg was the
capital of an independent line of dukes, a cadet branch of the Polish dukes
of Lower Silesia, by one of whom the castle was built in 1341. In 1537
Frederick II., duke of Liegnitz, Brieg and Wohlau, concluded with Joachim
II., elector of Brandenburg, a treaty according to which his duchy was to
pass to the house of Brandenburg in the event of the extinction of his
line. On the death of George William the last duke in 1675, however,
Austria refused to acknowledge the validity of the treaty and annexed the
duchies. It was the determination of Frederick II. of Prussia to assert his
claim that led in 1740 to the war that ended two years later in the cession
of Silesia to Prussia.
See Stokvis, _Manuel d'histoire_, iii. pp. 54, 64.
BRIEG, often now spelt BRIG (Fr. _Brigue_, Ital. _Briga_), a picturesque
small town in the Swiss canton of the Valais, situated at the foot of the
northern slope of the Simplon Pass, on the right bank of the Saltine
stream, and a little above its junction with the Rhone. Its older houses
are very Italian in appearance, while its most prominent buildings (castle,
former Jesuits' college and Ursuline convent) all date from the 17th
century, and are due to the generosity of a single member of the local
Stockalper family. The prosperity of Brieg is bound up with the Simplon
Pass (_q.v._), so that it gradually supplanted the more ancient village of
Naters opposite, becoming a separate parish (the church is at Glis, a few
minutes from the town) in 1517. Its medieval name was _Briga dives_. The
opening of the carriage road across the Simplon (1807) and of the tunnel
beneath the pass (1906), as well as the fact that above Brieg is the
steeper and less fertile portion of the Upper Valais (now much frequented
by tourists), have greatly increased the importance and size of the town.
The opening of the railway tunnel beneath the Lötschen Pass, affording
direct communication with Bern and the Bernese Oberland, is calculated
still further to contribute to its prosperity. The new town extends below
the old one and is closer to the right bank of the Rhone. In 1900 the
population was 2182, almost all Romanists, while 1316 were German-speaking,
719 Italian-speaking (the Simplon tunnel workmen), and 142 French-speaking,
one person only speaking Romonsch.
(W. A. B. C.)
BRIELLE (_Briel_ or _Bril_), a seaport in the province of South Holland,
Holland, on the north side of the island of Voorne, at the mouth of the New
Maas, 5½ m. N. of Hellevoetsluis. Pop. (1900) 4107. It is a fortified place
and has a good harbour, arsenal, magazine and barracks. It also possesses a
quaint town hall, and an orphanage dating from 1533. The tower of the
Groote [v.04 p.0562] Kerk of St Catherine serves as a lighthouse. Most of
the trade of Brielle was diverted to Hellevoetsluis by the cutting of the
Voornsche Canal in 1829, but it still has some business in corn and fodder,
as well as a few factories. A large number of the inhabitants are also
engaged in the fisheries and as pilots.
The chief event in the history of Brielle is its capture by the _Gueux sur
Mer_, a squadron of privateers which raided the Dutch coast under
commission of the prince of Orange. This event, which took place on the 1st
of April 1572, was the first blow in the long war of Dutch independence,
and was followed by a general outbreak of the patriotic party (Motley,
_Rise of the Dutch Republic_, part iii. chapter vi.). "The Brill" was one
of the four Dutch towns handed over to Queen Elizabeth in 1584 as security
for English expenses incurred in aiding the Dutch. Brielle is the
birthplace of the famous admiral Martin van Tromp, and also of Admiral van
Almonde, a distinguished commander of the early 18th century.
BRIENNE-LE-CHÂTEAU, a town of north-eastern France, in the department of
Aube, 1 m. from the right bank of the Aube and 26 m. N.E. of Troyes on the
Eastern railway. Pop. (1906) 1761. The château, which overlooks the town,
is an imposing building of the latter half of the 18th century, built by
the cardinal de Brienne (see below). It possesses an important collection
of pictures, many of them historical portraits of the 17th and 18th
centuries. The church dates from the 16th century and contains good stained
glass. A statue of Napoleon commemorates his sojourn at Brienne from 1779
to 1784, when he was studying at the military school suppressed in 1790. In
1814 Brienne was the scene of fighting between Napoleon and the Allies (see
NAPOLEONIC CAMPAIGNS). Brewing is carried on in the town.
Brienne-la-Vieille, a village 1½ m. south of Brienne-le-Château, has a
church of the 12th and 16th centuries with fine stained windows. The portal
once belonged to the ancient abbey of Bassefontaine, the ruins of which are
situated near the village.
_Counts of Brienne._--Under the Carolingian dynasty Brienne-le-Château was
the capital town of a French countship. In the 10th century it was captured
by two adventurers named Engelbert and Gobert, and from the first of these
sprang the noble house of Brienne. In 1210 John of Brienne (1148-1237)
became king of Jerusalem, through his marriage with Mary of Montsserrat,
heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem. He led a crusade in Egypt which had no
lasting success; and when in 1229 he was elected emperor of the East, for
the period of Baldwin II.'s minority, he fought and conquered the Greek
emperor John III. (Batatzes or Vatatzes). Walter V., count of Brienne and
of Lecce (Apulia) and duke of Athens, fought against the Greeks and at
first drove them from Thessaly, but was eventually defeated and killed near
Lake Copais in 1311. His son, Walter VI., after having vainly attempted to
reconquer Athens in 1331, served under Philip of Valois against the
English. Having defended Florence against the Pisans he succeeded in
obtaining dictatorial powers for himself in the republic; but his
tyrannical conduct brought about his expulsion. He was appointed constable
of France by John the Good, and was killed at the battle of Poitiers in
1356. His sister and heiress Isabelle married Walter of Enghien, and so
brought Brienne to the house of Enghien, and, by his marriage with Margaret
of Enghien, John of Luxemburg-St Pol (d. about 1397) became count of
Brienne. The house of Luxemburg retained the countship until Margaret
Charlotte of Luxemburg sold it to a certain Marpon, who ceded it to Henri
Auguste de Loménie (whose wife, Louise de Béon, descended from the house of
Luxemburg-Brienne) in 1640. The Limousin house of Loménie (the genealogies
which trace this family to the 15th century are untrustworthy) produced
many well-known statesmen, among others the celebrated cardinal Étienne
Charles de Loménie de Brienne (1727-1794), minister of Louis XV.; and the
last lords of Brienne were members of this family.
(M. P.*)
BRIENZ, LAKE OF, in the Swiss canton of Bern, the first lake into which the
river Aar expands. It lies in a deep hollow between the village of Brienz
on the east (2580 inhabitants, the chief centre of the Swiss wood-carving
industry) and, on the west, Bönigen (1515 inhabitants), close to
Interlaken. Its length is about 9 m., its width 1½ m., and its maximum
depth 856 ft., while its area is 11½ sq. m., and the surface is 1857 ft.
above the sea-level. On the south shore are the Giessbach Falls and the
hamlet of Iseltwald. On the north shore are a few small villages. The
character of the lake is gloomy and sad as compared with its neighbour,
that of Thun. Its chief affluent is the Lütschine (flowing from the valleys
of Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen). The first steamer was placed on the lake
in 1839.
(W. A. B. C.)
BRIERLEY, BENJAMIN (1825-1896), English weaver and writer in Lancashire
dialect, was born near Manchester, the son of humble parents, and started
life in a textile factory, educating himself in his spare time. At about
the age of thirty he began to contribute articles to local papers, and the
republication of some of his sketches of Lancashire character in _A Summer
Day in Daisy Nook_ (1859) attracted attention. In 1863 he definitely took
to journalism and literature as his work, publishing in 1863 his
_Chronicles of Waverlow_, and in 1864 a long story called _The Layrock of
Langley Side_ (afterwards dramatized), followed by others. He started in
1869 _Ben Brierley's Journal_, a weekly, which continued till 1891, and he
gave public readings from his own writings, visiting America in 1880 and
1884. His various _Ab-o'-th'-Yate_ sketches (about America, London, &c.),
and his pictures of Lancashire common life were very popular, and were
collected after his death. In 1884 he lost his savings by the failure of a
building society, and a fund was raised for his support. He died on the
18th of January 1896, and two years later a statue was erected to him in
Queen's Park, Manchester.
BRIERLY, SIR OSWALD WALTERS (1817-1894), English marine painter, who came
of an old Cheshire family, was born at Chester. He entered Sass's
art-school in London, and after studying naval architecture at Plymouth he
exhibited some drawings of ships at the Royal Academy in 1839. He had a
passion for the sea, and in 1841 started round the world with Benjamin Boyd
(1796-1851), afterwards well known as a great Australian squatter, in the
latter's ship "Wanderer," and having got to New South Wales, made his home
at Auckland for ten years. Brierly Point is called after him. He added to
his sea experiences by voyages on H.M.S. "Rattlesnake" in 1848, and with
Sir Henry Keppel on the "Meander" in 1850; he returned to England in 1851
on this ship, and illustrated Keppel's book about his cruise (1853). He was
again with Keppel during the Crimean War, and published in 1855 a series of
lithographs illustrating "The English and French fleets in the Baltic." He
was now taken up by Queen Victoria and other members of the royal family,
and was attached to the suites of the duke of Edinburgh and the prince of
Wales on their tours by sea, the results being seen in further marine
pictures by him; and in 1874 he was made marine-painter to the queen. He
exhibited at the Academy, but more largely at the Royal Water-colour
Society, his more important works including the historical pictures, "The
Retreat of the Spanish Armada" (1871) and "The Loss of the Revenge" (1877).
In 1885 he was knighted, and he died on the 14th of December 1894. He was
twice married and had an active and prosperous life, but was no great
artist; his best pictures are at Melbourne and Sydney.
BRIEUX, EUGÈNE (1858- ), French dramatist, was born in Paris of poor
parents on the 19th of January 1858. A one-act play, _Bernard Palissy_,
written in collaboration with M. Gaston Salandri, was produced in 1879, but
he had to wait eleven years before he obtained another hearing, his _Ménage
d' artistes_ being produced by Antoine at the Théâtre Libre in 1890. His
plays are essentially didactic, being aimed at some weakness or iniquity of
the social system. _Blanchette_ (1892) pointed out the evil results of
education of girls of the working classes; _M. de Réboval_ (1892) was
directed against pharisaism; _L'Engrenage_ (1894) against corruption in
politics; _Les Bienssaiteurs_ (1896) against the frivolity of fashionable
charity; and _L'Évasion_ (1896) satirized an indicriminate belief in the
doctrine of heredity. _Les Trois Filles de M. Dupont_ (1897) is a powerful,
somewhat brutal, study of the miseries imposed on poor middle-class girls
by the French [v.04 p.0563] system of dowry; _Le Résultat des courses_
(1898) shows the evil results of betting among the Parisian workmen; _La
Robe rouge_ (1900) was directed against the injustices of the law; _Les
Remplaçantes_ (1901) against the practice of putting children out to nurse.
_Les Avariés_ (1901), forbidden by the censor, on account of its medical
details, was read privately by the author at the Théâtre Antoine; and
_Petite amie_ (1902) describes the life of a Parisian shop-girl. Later
plays are _La Couvée_ (1903, acted privately at Rouen in 1893), _Maternité_
(1904), _La Déserteuse_ (1904), in collaboration with M. Jean Sigaux, and
_Les Hannetons_, a comedy in three acts (1906).
BRIGADE (Fr. and Ger. _brigade_, Ital. _brigata_, Span. _brigada_; the
English use of the word dates from the early 17th century), a unit in
military organization commanded by a major-general, brigadier-general or
colonel, and composed of two or more regiments of infantry, cavalry or
artillery. The British infantry brigade consists as a rule of four
battalions (or about 4000 bayonets) with supply, transport and medical
units attached; the cavalry brigade of two or three regiments of cavalry.
An artillery "brigade" (field, horse, and heavy) is in Great Britain a
smaller unit, forming a lieut.-colonel's command and consisting of two or
three batteries. (See ARMY, ARTILLERY, INFANTRY, and CAVALRY.) The staff of
an infantry or cavalry brigade usually consists of the brigadier
commanding, his aide-de-camp, and the brigade-major, a staff officer whose
duties are intermediate between those of an adjutant and those of a general
staff officer.
BRIGANDAGE. The brigand is supposed to derive his name from the O. Fr.
_brigan_, which is a form of the Ital. _brigante,_ an irregular or partisan
soldier. There can be no doubt as to the origin of the word "bandit," which
has the same meaning. In Italy, which is not unjustly considered the home
of the most accomplished European brigands, a _bandito_ was a man declared
outlaw by proclamation, or _bando_, called in Scotland "a decree of
horning" because it was delivered by a blast of a horn at the town cross.
The brigand, therefore, is the outlaw who conducts warfare after the manner
of an irregular or partisan soldier by skirmishes and surprises, who makes
the war support itself by plunder, by extorting blackmail, by capturing
prisoners and holding them to ransom, who enforces his demands by violence,
and kills the prisoners who cannot pay. In certain conditions the brigand
has not been a mere malefactor. "It is you who are the thieves"--"_I
Ladroni, siete voi,_"--was the defence of the Calabrian who was tried as a
brigand by a French court-martial during the reign of Murat in Naples.
Brigandage may be, and not infrequently has been, the last resource of a
people subject to invasion. The Calabrians who fought for Ferdinand of
Naples, and the Spanish irregular levies, which maintained the national
resistance against the French from 1808 to 1814, were called brigands by
their enemies. In the Balkan peninsula, under Turkish rule, the brigands
(called _klephts_ by the Greeks and _hayduks_ or _haydutzi_ by the Slavs)
had some claim to believe themselves the representatives of their people
against oppressors. The only approach to an attempt to maintain order was
the permission given to part of the population to carry arms in order to
repress the klephts. They were hence called "armatoli." As a matter of fact
the armatole were rather the allies than the enemies of the klephts. The
invader who reduces a nation to anarchy, and then suffers from the disorder
he creates, always calls his opponents brigands. It is a natural
consequence of such a war, but a very disastrous one, for the people who
have to have recourse to these methods of defence, that the brigand
acquires some measure of honourable prestige from his temporary association
with patriotism and honest men. The patriot band attracts the brigand
proper, who is not averse to continue his old courses under an honourable
pretext. "_Viva Fernando y vamos robando_" (Long life to Ferdinand, and let
us go robbing) has been said by not unfair critics to have been the maxim
of many Spanish guerrilleros. Italy and Spain suffered for a long time from
the disorder developed out of the popular resistance to the French. Numbers
of the guerrilleros of both countries, who in normal conditions might have
been honest, had acquired a preference for living on the country, and for
occasional booty, which they could not resign when the enemy had retired.
Their countrymen had to work for a second deliverance from their late
defenders. In the East the brigand has had a freer scope, and has even
founded kingdoms. David's following in the cave of Adullam was such
material as brigands are made of. "And every one that was in distress, and
every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered
themselves unto him, and he became a captain over them: and there were with
him about four hundred men." Nadir Shah of Persia began in just such a cave
of Adullam, and lived to plunder Delhi with a host of Persians and Afghans.
The conditions which favour the development of brigandage may be easily
summed up. They are first bad administration, and then, in a less degree,
the possession of convenient hiding-places. A country of mountain and
forest is favourable to the brigand. The highlands of Scotland supplied a
safe refuge to the "gentlemen reavers," who carried off the cattle of the
Sassenach landlords. The Apennines, the mountains of Calabria, the Sierras
of Spain, were the homes of the Italian "banditos" and the Spanish
"bandoleros" (banished men) and "salteadores" (raiders). The forests of
England gave cover to the outlaws whose very much flattered portrait is to
be found in the ballads of Robin Hood. The "maquis," i.e. the bush of
Corsica, and its hills, have helped the Corsican brigand, as the bush of
Australia covered the bushranger. But neither forest thicket nor mountain
is a lasting protection against a good police, used with intelligence by
the government, and supported by the law-abiding part of the community. The
great haunts of brigands in Europe have been central and southern Italy and
the worst-administered parts of Spain, except those which fell into the
hands of the Turks. "Whenever numerous troops of banditti, multiplied by
success and impunity, publicly defy, instead of eluding, the justice of
their country, we may safely infer that the excessive weakness of the
government is felt and abused by the lowest ranks of the community," is the
judgment passed by Gibbon on the disorders of Sicily in the reign of the
emperor Gallienus. This weakness has not always been a sign of real
feebleness in the government. England was vigorously ruled in the reign of
William III., when "a fraternity of plunderers, thirty in number according
to the lowest estimate, squatted near Waltham Cross under the shades of
Epping Forest, and built themselves huts, from which they sallied forth
with sword and pistol to bid passengers stand." It was not because the
state was weak that the Gubbings (so called in contempt from the trimmings
and refuse of fish) infested Devonshire for a generation from their
headquarters near Brent Tor, on the edge of Dartmoor. It was because
England had not provided herself with a competent rural police. In
relatively unsettled parts of the United States there has been a
considerable amount of a certain kind of brigandage. In early days the
travel routes to the far West were infested by highwaymen, who, however,
seldom united into bands, and such outlaws, when captured, were often dealt
with in an extra-legal manner, e.g. by "vigilance committees." The Mexican
brigand Cortina made incursions into Texas before the Civil War. In Canada
the mounted police have kept brigandage down, and in Mexico the "Rurales"
have made an end of the brigands. Such curable evils as the highwaymen of
England, and their like in the States, are not to be compared with the
"Écorcheurs," or Skinners, of France in the 15th century, or the
"Chauffeurs" of the revolutionary epoch. The first were large bands of
discharged mercenary soldiers who pillaged the country. The second were
ruffians who forced their victims to pay ransom by holding their feet in
fires. Both flourished because the government was for the time disorganized
by foreign invasion or by revolution. These were far more terrible evils
than the licence of criminals, who are encouraged by a fair prospect of
impunity because there is no permanent force always at hand to check them,
and to bring them promptly to justice. At the same time it would be going
much too far to say that the absence of an efficient police is the sole
cause of brigandage in countries not subject to foreign invasion, or where
[v.04 p.0564] the state is not very feeble. The Sicilian peasants of whom
Gibbon wrote were not only encouraged by the hope of impunity, but were
also maddened by an oppressive system of taxation and a cruel system of
land tenure. So were the Gauls and Spaniards who throughout the 3rd and 4th
centuries were a constant cause of trouble to the empire, under the name of
Bagaudae, a word of uncertain origin. In the years preceding the French
Revolution, the royal government commanded the services of a strong army,
and a numerous _maréchaussée_ or gendarmerie. Yet it was defied by the
troops of smugglers and brigands known as _faux saulniers_, unauthorized
salt-sellers, and gangs of poachers haunted the king's preserves round
Paris. The salt monopoly and the excessive preservation of the game were so
oppressive that the peasantry were provoked to violent resistance and to
brigandage. They were constantly suppressed, but as the cause of the
disorder survived, so its effects were continually renewed. The offenders
enjoyed a large measure of public sympathy, and were warned or concealed by
the population, even when they were not actively supported. The traditional
outlaw who spared the poor and levied tribute on the rich was, no doubt,
always a creature of fiction. The ballad which tells us how "Rich, wealthy
misers were abhorred, By brave, free-hearted Bliss" (a rascal hanged for
highway robbery at Salisbury in 1695) must have been a mere echo of the
Robin Hood songs. But there have been times and countries in which the law
and its administration have been so far regarded as enemies by people who
were not themselves criminals, that all who defied them have been sure of a
measure of sympathy. Then and there it was that brigandage has flourished,
and has been difficult to extirpate. Schinder-Hannes, Jack the Skinner,
whose real name was Johann Buckler, and who was born at Muklen on the
Rhine, flourished from 1797 to 1802 because there was no proper police to
stop him; it is also true that as he chiefly plundered the Jews he had a
good deal of Christian sympathy. When caught and beheaded he had no
successors.
The brigandage of Greece, southern Italy, Corsica and Spain had deeper
roots, and has never been quite suppressed. All four countries are well
provided with hiding-places in forest and mountain. In all the
administration has been bad, the law and its officers have been regarded as
dangers, if not as deliberate enemies, so that they have found little
native help, and, what is not the least important cause of the persistence
of brigandage, there have generally been local potentates who found it to
their interest to protect the brigand. The case of Greece under Turkish
rule need not be dealt with. Whoever was not a klepht was the victim of
some official extortioner. It would be grossly unfair to apply the name
brigand to the Mainotes and similar clans, who had to choose between being
flayed by the Turks or living by the sword under their own law. When it
became independent Greece was extremely ill administered under a nominal
parliamentary government by politicians who made use of the brigands for
their own purposes. The result was the state of things described with only
pardonable exaggeration in Edmond About's amusing _Roi de la montagne_. An
authentic and most interesting picture of the Greek brigands will be found
in the story of the captivity of S. Soteropoulos, an ex-minister who fell
into their hands. It was translated into English under the title of _The
Brigands of the Morea_, by the Rev. J.O. Bagdon (London, 1868). The
misfortunes of Soteropoulos led to the adoption of strong measures which
cleared the Morea, where the peasantry gave active support to the troops
when they saw that the government was in earnest. But brigandage was not
yet extinct in Greece. In 1870 an English party, consisting of Lord and
Lady Muncaster, Mr Vyner, Mr Lloyd, Mr Herbert, and Count de Boyl, was
captured at Oropos, near Marathon, and a ransom of £25,000 was demanded.
Lord and Lady Muncaster were set at liberty to seek for the ransom, but the
Greek government sent troops in pursuit of the brigands, and the other
prisoners were then murdered. The scoundrels were hunted down, caught, and
executed, and Greece has since then been tolerably free from this reproach.
In the Balkan peninsula, under Turkish rule, brigandage continued to exist
in connexion with Christian revolt against the Turk, and the race conflicts
of Albanians, Walachians, Pomuks, Bulgarians and Greeks. In Corsica the
"maquis" has never been without its brigand hero, because industry has been
stagnant, family feuds persist, and the government has never quite
succeeded in persuading the people to support the law. The brigand is
always a hero to at least one faction of Corsicans.
The conditions which favour brigandage have been more prevalent, and for
longer, in Italy than elsewhere in western Europe, with the standing
exception of Corsica, which is Italian in all but political allegiance.
Until the middle of the 19th century Italy was divided into small states,
so that the brigand who was closely pursued in one could flee to another.
Thus it was that Marco Sciarra of the Abruzzi, when hard pressed by the
Spanish viceroy of Naples--just before and after 1600--could cross the
border of the papal states and return on a favourable opportunity. When
pope and viceroy combined against him he took service with Venice, from
whence he could communicate with his friends at home, and pay them
occasional visits. On one such visit he was led into a trap and slain.
Marco Sciarra had terrorized the country far and wide at the head of 600
men. He was the follower and imitator of Benedetto Mangone, of whom it is
recorded that, having stopped a party of travellers which included Torquato
Tasso, he allowed them to pass unharmed out of his reverence for poets and
poetry. Mangone was finally taken, and beaten to death with hammers at
Naples. He and his like are the heroes of much popular verse, written in
_ottava rima_, and beginning with the traditional epic invocation to the
muse. A fine example is "The most beautiful history of the life and death
of Pietro Mancino, chief of Banditti," which has remained popular with the
people of southern Italy. It begins:--
"Io canto li ricatti, e il fiero ardire
Del gran Pietro Mancino fuoruscito"
(Pietro Mancino that great outlawed man
I sing, and all his rage.)
In Naples the number of competing codes and jurisdictions, the survival of
the feudal power of the nobles, who sheltered banditti, just as a Highland
chief gave refuge to "caterans" in Scotland, and the helplessness of the
peasantry, made brigandage chronic, and the same conditions obtained in
Sicily. The Bourbon dynasty reduced brigandage very much, and secured order
on the main high-roads. But it was not extinguished, and it revived during
the French invasion. This was the flourishing time of the notorious Fra
Diavolo, who began as brigand and blossomed into a patriot. Fra Diavolo was
captured and executed by the French. When Ferdinand was restored on the
fall of Napoleon he employed an English officer, General Sir Richard
Church, to suppress the brigands. General Church, who kept good order among
his soldiers, and who made them pay for everything, gained the confidence
of the peasantry, and restored a fair measure of security. It was he who
finally brought to justice the villainous Don Ciro Anicchiarico--priest and
brigand--who declared at his trial with offhand indifference that he
supposed he had murdered about seventy people first and last. When a
brother priest was sent to give him the consolations of religion, Ciro cut
him short, saying, "Stop that chatter, we are two of a trade: we need not
play the fool to one another" (_Lasciate queste chiacchiere, siamo dell'
istessa professione: non ci burliamo fra noi_). Every successive
revolutionary disturbance in Naples saw a recrudescence of brigandage down
to the unification of 1860-1861, and then it was years before the Italian
government rooted it out. The source of the trouble was the support the
brigands received from various kinds of "_manuténgoli_"
(maintainers)--great men, corrupt officials, political parties, and the
peasants who were terrorized, or who profited by selling the brigands food
and clothes. In Sicily brigandage has been endemic. In 1866 two English
travellers, Mr E.J.C. Moens and the Rev. J.C. Murray Aynesley, were
captured and held to ransom. Mr Moens found that the "manuténgoli" of the
brigands among the peasants charged famine prices for food, and
extortionate prices for clothes and cartridges. What is true of Naples and
Sicily is true of other parts of Italy _mutatis [v.04 p.0565] mutandis_. In
Tuscany, Piedmont and Lombardy the open country has been orderly, but the
borders infested with brigands. The worst district outside Calabria has
been the papal states. The Austrian general, Frimont, did, however, partly
clear the Romagna about 1820, though at a heavy cost of life to his
soldiers--mostly Bohemian Jägers--from the malaria.
The history of brigandage in Spain is very similar. It may be said to have
been endemic in and south of the Sierra Morena. In the north it has
flourished when government was weak, and after foreign invasion and civil
wars. But it has always been put down easily by a capable administration.
It reached its greatest heights in Catalonia, where it began in the strife
of the peasants against the feudal exactions of the landlords. It had its
traditional hero, Roque Guinart, who figures in the second part of Don
Quixote. The revolt against the house of Austria in 1640, and the War of
the Succession (1700-1714), gave a great stimulus to Catalan brigandage.
But it was then put down in a way for which Italy offers no precedent. A
country gentleman named Pedro Veciana, hereditary _balio_ (military and
civil lieutenant) of the archbishop of Tarragona in the town of Valls,
armed his farm-servants, and resisted the attacks of the brigands. With the
help of neighbouring country gentlemen he formed a strong band, known as
the Mozos (Boys) of Veciana. The brigands combined to get rid of him by
making an attack on the town of Valls, but were repulsed with great loss.
The government of Philip V. then commissioned Veciana to raise a special
corps of police, the "escuadra de Cataluna," which still exists. For five
generations the colonel of the escuadra was always a Veciana. At all times
in central and northern Spain the country population has supported the
police when the government would act firmly. Since the organization of the
excellent constabulary called "La Guardia Civil" by the duke of Ahumada,
about 1844, brigandage has been well kept down. At the close of the Carlist
War in 1874 a few bands infested Catalonia, but one of the worst was
surprised, and all its members battered to death with boxwood cudgels by a
gang of charcoal-burners on the ruins of the castle of San Martin de
Centellas. In such conditions as these brigandage cannot last. More
sympathy is felt for "bandoleros" in the south, and there also they find
Spanish equivalents for the "manuténgoli" of Italy. The tobacco smuggling
from Gibraltar keeps alive a lawless class which sinks easily into pure
brigandage. Perhaps the influence of the Berber blood in the population
helps to prolong this barbarism. The Sierra Morena, and the Serrania de
Ronda, have produced the bandits whose achievements form the subject of
popular ballads, such as Francisco Esteban El Guapo (Francis Stephen, the
Buck or Dandy), Don Juan de Serralonga, Pedranza, &c. The name of José
Maria has been made familiar to all the world by Merimée's story, _Carmen_,
and by Bizet's opera. José Maria, called El Tempranillo (the early bird),
was a historical personage, a liberal in the rising against Ferdinand VII.,
1820-1823, then a smuggler, then a "bandolero." He was finally bought off
by the government, and took a commission to suppress the other brigands.
Jose Maria was at last shot by one of them, whom he was endeavouring to
arrest. The civil guard prevents brigandage from reaching any great height
in normal times, but in 1905 a bandit of the old stamp, popularly known as
"El Vivillo" (the Vital Spark), haunted the Serrania de Ronda.
The brigand life has been made the subject of much romance. But when
stripped of fiction it appears that the bands have been mostly recruited by
men who had been guilty of homicide, out of jealousy or in a gambling
quarrel, and who remained in them not from love of the life, but from fear
of the gallows. A reformed brigand, known as Passo di Lupo (Wolf's Step),
confessed to Mr McFarlane about 1820 that the weaker members of the band
were terrorized and robbed by the bullies, and that murderous conflicts
were constant among them.
The "dacoits" or brigands of India were of the same stamp as their European
colleagues. The Pindaris were more than brigands, and the Thugs were a
religious sect.
AUTHORITIES.--The literature of brigandage, apart from pure romances, or
official reports of trials, is naturally extensive. Mr McFarlane's _Lives
and Exploits of Banditti and Robbers_ (London, 1837) is a useful
introduction to the subject. The author saw a part of what he wrote about,
and gives many references, particularly for Italy. A good bibliography of
Spanish brigandage will be found in the _Reseña Historica de la Guardia
Civil_ of Eugenio de la Iglesia (Madrid, 1898). For actual pictures of the
life, nothing is better than the _English Travellers and Italian Brigands_
of W.J.C. Moens (London, 1866), and _The Brigands of the Morea_, by S.
Soteropoulos, translated by the Rev. J.O. Bagdon (London, 1868).
(D. H.)
BRIGANDINE, a French word meaning the armour for the _brigandi_ or
_brigantes_, light-armed foot soldiers; part of the armour of a foot
soldier in the middle ages, consisting of a padded tunic of canvas,
leather, &c., and lined with closely sewn scales or rings of iron.
BRIGANTES (Celtic for "mountaineers" or "free, privileged"), a people of
northern Britain, who inhabited the country from the mouth of the Abus
(Humber) on the east and the Belisama (Mersey; according to others, Ribble)
on the west as far northwards as the Wall of Antoninus. Their territory
thus included most of Yorkshire, the whole of Lancashire, Durham,
Westmorland, Cumberland and part of Northumberland. Their chief town was
Eburacum (or Eboracum; York). They first came into contact with the Romans
during the reign of Claudius, when they were defeated by Publius Ostorius
Scapula. Under Vespasian they submitted to Petillius Cerealis, but were not
finally subdued till the time of Antoninus Pius (Tac. _Agricola_, 17;
Pausan. viii. 43. 4). The name of their eponymous goddess Brigantia is
found on inscriptions (_Corp. Inscr. Lat._ vii. 200, 875, 1062; F.
Haverfield in _Archaeological Journal_, xlix., 1892), and also that of a
god Bergans = Brigans (_Ephemeris Epigraphica_, vii. No. 920). A branch of
the Brigantes also settled in the south-east corner of Ireland, near the
river Birgus (Barrow).
See A. Holder, _Altceltischer Sprachschatz_, i. (1896), for ancient
authorities; J. Rhys, _Celtic Britain_ (3rd ed., 1904); Pauly-Wissowa,
_Realencyclopädie_, iii. pt. i. (1897).
BRIGG (properly Glanford Briggs or Glamford Bridge), a market town in the
North Lindsey or Brigg parliamentary division of Lincolnshire, England,
situated on the river Ancholme, which affords water communication with the
Humber. Pop. of urban district (1901) 3137. It is 23 m. by road north of
Lincoln, and is served by the Grimsby line of the Great Central railway.
Trade is principally agricultural. In 1885 a remarkable boat, assigned to
early British workmanship, was unearthed near the river; it is hollowed out
of the trunk of an oak, and measures 48 ft. 6 in. by about 5 ft. Other
prehistoric relics have also been discovered.
BRIGGS, CHARLES AUGUSTUS (1841- ), American Hebrew scholar and theologian,
was born in New York City on the 15th of January 1841. He was educated at
the university of Virginia (1857-1860), graduated at the Union Theological
Seminary in 1863, and studied further at the university of Berlin. He was
pastor of the Presbyterian church of Roselle, New Jersey, 1869-1874, and
professor of Hebrew and cognate languages in Union Theological Seminary
1874-1891, and of Biblical theology there from 1891 to 1904, when he became
professor of theological encyclopaedia and symbolics. From 1880 to 1890 he
was an editor of the _Presbyterian Review_. In 1892 he was tried for heresy
by the presbytery of New York and acquitted. The charges were based upon
his inaugural address of the preceding year. In brief they were as follows:
that he had taught that reason and the Church are each a "fountain of
divine authority which apart from Holy Scripture may and does savingly
enlighten men"; that "errors may have existed in the original text of the
Holy Scripture"; that "many of the Old Testament predictions have been
reversed by history" and that "the great body of Messianic prediction has
not and cannot be fulfilled"; that "Moses is not the author of the
Pentateuch," and that "Isaiah is not the author of half of the book which
bears his name"; that "the processes of redemption extend to the world to
come"--he had considered it a fault of Protestant theology that it limits
redemption to this world--and that "sanctification is not complete at
death." The general assembly, to which the case was appealed, suspended Dr
Briggs [v.04 p.0566] in 1893, being influenced, it would seem, in part, by
the manner and tone of his expressions--by what his own colleagues in the
Union Theological Seminary called the "dogmatic and irritating" nature of
his inaugural address. He was ordained a priest of the Protestant Episcopal
Church in 1899. His scholarship procured for him the honorary degree of
D.D. from Edinburgh (1884) and from Glasgow (1901), and that of Litt.D.
from Oxford (1901). With S.R. Driver and Francis Brown he prepared a
revised _Hebrew and English Lexicon_ (1891-1905), and with Driver edited
the "International Commentary Series." His publications include _Biblical
Study: Its Principles, Methods and History_ (1883); _Hebrew Poems of the
Creation_ (1884); _American Presbyterianism: Its Origin and Early History_
(1885); _Messianic Prophecy_ (1886); _Whither? A Theological Question for
the Times_ (1889); _The Authority of the Holy Scripture_ (1891); _The
Bible, the Church and the Reason_ (1892); _The Higher Criticism of the
Hexateuch_ (1893); _The Messiah of the Gospels_ (1804), _The Messiah of the
Apostles_ (1894); _New Light on the Life of Jesus_ (1904); _The Ethical
Teaching of Jesus_ (1904); _A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the
Book of Psalms_ (2 vols., 1906-1907), in which he was assisted by his
daughter; and _The Virgin Birth of Our Lord_ (1909).
BRIGGS, HENRY (1556-1630), English mathematician, was born at Warley Wood,
near Halifax, in Yorkshire. He graduated at St John's College, Cambridge,
in 1581, and obtained a fellowship in 1588. In 1592 he was made reader of
the physical lecture founded by Dr Thomas Linacre, and in 1596 first
professor of geometry in Gresham House (afterwards College), London. In his
lectures at Gresham House he proposed the alteration of the scale of
logarithms from the hyperbolic form which John Napier had given them, to
that in which unity is assumed as the logarithm of the ratio of ten to one;
and soon afterwards he wrote to the inventor on the subject. In 1616 he
paid a visit to Napier at Edinburgh in order to discuss the suggested
change; and next year he repeated his visit for a similar purpose. During
these conferences the alteration proposed by Briggs was agreed upon; and on
his return from his second visit to Edinburgh in 1617 he accordingly
published the first chiliad of his logarithms. (See NAPIER, JOHN.) In 1619
he was appointed Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford, and resigned his
professorship of Gresham College on the 25th of July 1620. Soon after his
settlement at Oxford he was incorporated master of arts. In 1622 he
published a small tract on the _North-West Passage to the South Seas,
through the Continent of Virginia and Hudson's Bay_; and in 1624 his
_Arithmetica Logarithmica_, in folio, a work containing the logarithms of
thirty thousand natural numbers to fourteen places of figures besides the
index. He also completed a table of logarithmic sines and tangents for the
hundredth part of every degree to fourteen places of figures besides the
index, with a table of natural sines to fifteen places, and the tangents
and secants for the same to ten places; all of which were printed at Gouda
in 1631 and published in 1633 under the title of _Trigonometria Britannica_
(see TABLE, MATHEMATICAL). Briggs died on the 26th of January 1630, and was
buried in Merton College chapel, Oxford. Dr Smith, in his _Lives of the
Gresham Professors_, characterizes him as a man of great probity, a
contemner of riches, and contented with his own station, preferring a
studious retirement to all the splendid circumstances of life.
His works are: _A Table to find the Height of the Pole, the Magnetical
Declination being given_ (London, 1602, 4to); "Tables for the Improvement
of Navigation," printed in the second edition of Edward Wright's treatise
entitled _Certain Errors in Navigation detected and corrected_ (London,
1610, 4to); _A Description of an Instrumental Table to find the part
proportional, devised by Mr Edward Wright_ (London, 1616 and 1618, 12mo);
_Logarithmorum Chilias prima_ (London, 1617, 8vo); _Lucubrationes et
Annotationes in opera posthuma J. Neperi_ (Edinburgh, 1619, 4to); _Euclidis
Elementorum VI. libri priores_ (London, 1620. folio); _A Treatise on the
North-West Passage to the South Sea_ (London, 1622, 4to), reprinted in
Purchas's _Pilgrims_, vol. iii. p. 852; _Arithmetica Logarithmica_ (London,
1624, folio); _Trigonometria Britannica_ (Goudae, 1663, folio); two
_Letters_ to Archbishop Usher; _Mathematica ab Antiquis minus cognita_.
Some other works, as his _Commentaries on the Geometry of Peter Ramus_, and
_Remarks on the Treatise of Longomontanus respecting the Quadrature of the
Circle_, have not been published.
BRIGHOUSE, a municipal borough in the Elland parliamentary division of the
West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 5½ m. N. of Huddersfield by the
Lancashire & Yorkshire railway, on the river Calder. Pop. (1901) 21,735. It
is in the heart of the manufacturing district of the West Riding, and has
large woollen and worsted factories; carpets, machinery and soap are also
produced. The town was incorporated in 1893, and is governed by a mayor, 8
aldermen and 24 councillors. Area, 2231 acres.
BRIGHT, SIR CHARLES TILSTON (1832-1888), English telegraph engineer, who
came of an old Yorkshire family, was born on the 8th of June 1832, at
Wanstead, Essex. At the age of fifteen he became a clerk under the Electric
Telegraph Company. His talent for electrical engineering was soon shown,
and his progress was rapid; so that in 1852 he was appointed engineer to
the Magnetic Telegraph Company, and in that capacity superintended the
laying of lines in various parts of the British Isles, including in 1853
the first cable between Great Britain and Ireland, from Portpatrick to
Donaghadee. His experiments convinced him of the practicability of an
electric submarine cable connexion between Ireland and America; and having
in 1855 already discussed the question with Cyrus Field, who with J. W.
Brett controlled the Newfoundland Telegraph Company on the other side of
the ocean, Bright organized with them the Atlantic Telegraph Company in
1856 for the purpose of carrying out the idea, himself becoming
engineer-in-chief. The story of the first Atlantic cable is told elsewhere
(see TELEGRAPH), and it must suffice here to say that in 1858, after two
disappointments, Bright successfully accomplished what to many had seemed
an impossible feat, and within a few days of landing the Irish end of the
line at Valentia he was knighted in Dublin. Subsequently Sir Charles Bright
supervised the laying of submarine cables in various regions of the world,
and took a leading part as pioneer in other developments of the electrical
industry. In conjunction with Josiah Latimer Clark, with whom he entered
into partnership in 1861, he invented improved methods of insulating
submarine cables, and a paper on electrical standards read by them before
the British Association in the same year led to the establishment of the
British Association committee on that subject, whose work formed the
foundations of the system still in use. From 1865 to 1868 he was Liberal
M.P. for Greenwich. He died on the 3rd of May 1888, at Abbey Wood, near
London.
See _Life Story of Sir C. T. Bright_, by his son Charles Bright (revised
ed. 1908).
BRIGHT, JOHN (1811-1889), British statesman, was born at Rochdale on the
16th of November 1811. His father, Jacob Bright, was a much-respected
Quaker, who had started a cottonmill at Rochdale in 1809. The family had
reached Lancashire by two migrations. Abraham Bright was a Wiltshire
yeoman, who, early in the 18th century, removed to Coventry, where his
descendants remained, and where, in 1775, Jacob Bright was born. Jacob
Bright was educated at the Ackworth school of the Society of Friends, and
was apprenticed to a fustian manufacturer at New Mills. He married his
employer's daughter, and settled with his two brothers-in-law at Rochdale
in 1802, going into business for himself seven years later. His first wife
died without children, and in 1809 he married Martha Wood, daughter of a
tradesman of Bolton-le-Moors. She had been educated at Ackworth school, and
was a woman of great strength of character and refined taste. There were
eleven children of this marriage, of whom John Bright was the second, but
the death of his elder brother in childhood made him the eldest son. He was
a delicate child, and was sent as a day-scholar to a boarding-school near
his home, kept by Mr William Littlewood. A year at the Ackworth school, two
years at a school at York, and a year and a half at Newton, near Clitheroe,
completed his education. He learned, he himself said, but little Latin and
Greek, but acquired a great love of English literature, which his mother
fostered, and a love of outdoor pursuits. In his sixteenth year he entered
his father's mill, and in due time became a partner in the business. Two
agitations were then going on in Rochdale--the first (in which Jacob Bright
was a leader) in opposition to a local [v.04 p.0567] church-rate, and the
second for parliamentary reform, by which Rochdale successfully claimed to
have a member allotted to it under the Reform Bill. In both these movements
John Bright took part. He was an ardent Nonconformist, proud to number
among his ancestors John Gratton, a friend of George Fox, and one of the
persecuted and imprisoned preachers of the Society of Friends. His
political interest was probably first kindled by the Preston election in
1830, in which Lord Stanley, after a long struggle, was defeated by
"Orator" Hunt. But it was as a member of the Rochdale Juvenile Temperance
Band that he first learned public speaking. These young men went out into
the villages, borrowed a chair of a cottager, and spoke from it at open-air
meetings. In Mrs John Mills's life of her husband is an account of John
Bright's first extempore speech. It was at a temperance meeting. Bright got
his notes muddled, and broke down. The chairman gave out a temperance song,
and during the singing told Bright to put his notes aside and say what came
into his mind. Bright obeyed, began with much hesitancy, but found his
tongue and made an excellent address. On some early occasions, however, he
committed his speech to memory. In 1832 he called on the Rev. John Aldis,
an eminent Baptist minister, to accompany him to a local Bible meeting. Mr
Aldis described him as a slender, modest young gentleman, who surprised him
by his intelligence and thoughtfulness, but who seemed nervous as they
walked to the meeting together. At the meeting he made a stimulating
speech, and on the way home asked for advice. Mr Aldis counselled him not
to learn his speeches, but to write out and commit to memory certain
passages and the peroration. Bright took the advice, and acted on it all
his life.
This "first lesson in public speaking," as Bright called it, was given in
his twenty-first year, but he had not then contemplated entering on a
public career. He was a fairly prosperous man of business, very happy in
his home, and always ready to take part in the social, educational and
political life of his native town. He was one of the founders of the
Rochdale Literary and Philosophical Society, took a leading part in its
debates, and on returning from a holiday journey in the East, gave the
society a lecture on his travels. He first met Richard Cobden in 1836 or
1837. Cobden was an alderman of the newly formed Manchester corporation,
and Bright went to ask him to speak at an education meeting in Rochdale. "I
found him," said Bright, "in his office in Mosley Street, introduced myself
to him, and told him what I wanted." Cobden consented, and at the meeting
was much struck by Bright's short speech, and urged him to speak against
the Corn Laws. His first speech on the Corn Laws was made at Rochdale in
1838, and in the same year he joined the Manchester provisional committee
which in 1839 founded the Anti-Corn Law League He was still only the local
public man, taking part in all public movements, especially in opposition
to John Feilden's proposed factory legislation, and to the Rochdale
church-rate. In 1839 he built the house which he called "One Ash," and
married Elizabeth, daughter of Jonathan Priestman of Newcastle-on-Tyne. In
November of the same year there was a dinner at Bolton to Abraham Paulton,
who had just returned from a successful Anti-Corn Law tour in Scotland.
Among the speakers were Cobden and Bright, and the dinner is memorable as
the first occasion on which the two future leaders appeared together on a
Free Trade platform. Bright is described by the historian of the League as
"a young man then appearing for the first time in any meeting out of his
own town, and giving evidence, by his energy and by his grasp of the
subject, of his capacity soon to take a leading part in the great
agitation." But his call had not yet come. In 1840 he led a movement
against the Rochdale church-rate, speaking from a tombstone in the
churchyard, where it looks down on the town in the valley below. A very
happy married life at home contented him, and at the opening of the Free
Trade hall in January 1840 he sat with the Rochdale deputation,
undistinguished in the body of the meeting. A daughter, Helen, was born to
him; but his young wife, after a long illness, died of consumption in
September 1841. Three days after her death at Leamington, Cobden called to
see him. "I was in the depths of grief," said Bright, when unveiling the
statue of his friend at Bradford in 1877, "I might almost say of despair,
for the life and sunshine of my house had been extinguished." Cobden spoke
some words of condolence, but after a time he looked up and said, 'There
are thousands of homes in England at this moment where wives, mothers and
children are dying of hunger. Now, when the first paroxysm of your grief is
past, I would advise you to come with me, and we will never rest till the
Corn Laws are repealed.' "I accepted his invitation," added Bright, "and
from that time we never ceased to labour hard on behalf of the resolution
which we had made." At the general election in 1841 Cobden was returned for
Stockport, and in 1843 Bright was the Free Trade candidate at a by-election
at Durham. He was defeated, but his successful competitor was unseated on
petition, and at the second contest Bright was returned. He was already
known in the country as Cobden's chief ally, and was received in the House
of Commons with a suspicion and hostility even greater than had met Cobden
himself. In the Anti-Corn Law movement the two speakers were the
complements and correlatives of each other. Cobden had the calmness and
confidence of the political philosopher, Bright had the passion and the
fervour of the popular orator. Cobden did the reasoning, Bright supplied
the declamation, but like Demosthenes he mingled argument with appeal. No
orator of modern times rose more rapidly to a foremost place. He was not
known beyond his own borough when Cobden called him to his side in 1841,
and he entered parliament towards the end of the session of 1843 with a
formidable reputation as an agitator. He had been all over England and
Scotland addressing vast meetings and, as a rule, carrying them with him;
he had taken a leading part in a conference held by the Anti-Corn Law
League in London, had led deputations to the duke of Sussex, to Sir James
Graham, then home secretary, and to Lord Ripon and Mr Gladstone, the
secretary and under secretary of the Board of Trade; and he was universally
recognized as the chief orator of the Free Trade movement. Wherever "John
Bright of Rochdale" was announced to speak, vast crowds assembled. He had
been so announced, for the last time, at the first great meeting in Drury
Lane theatre on 15th March 1843; henceforth his name was enough. He took
his seat in the House of Commons as one of the members for Durham on 28th
July 1843, and on 7th August delivered his maiden speech in support of a
motion by Mr Ewart for reduction of import duties. He was there, he said,
"not only as one of the representatives of the city of Durham, but also as
one of the representatives of that benevolent organization, the Anti-Corn
Law League." A member who heard the speech described Bright as "about the
middle size, rather firmly and squarely built, with a fair, clear
complexion, and an intelligent and pleasing expression of countenance. His
voice is good, his enunciation distinct, and his delivery free from any
unpleasant peculiarity or mannerism." He wore the usual Friend's coat, and
was regarded with much interest and hostile curiosity on both sides of the
House.
Mr Ewart's motion was defeated, but the movement of which Cobden and Bright
were the leaders continued to spread. In the autumn the League resolved to
raise £100,000; an appeal was made to the agricultural interest by great
meetings in the farming counties, and in November _The Times_ startled the
world by declaring, in a leading article, "The League is a great fact. It
would be foolish, nay, rash, to deny its importance." In London great
meetings were held in Covent Garden theatre, at which William Johnson Fox
was the chief orator, but Bright and Cobden were the leaders of the
movement. Bright publicly deprecated the popular tendency to regard Cobden
and himself as the chief movers in the agitation, and Cobden told a
Rochdale audience that he always stipulated that he should speak first, and
Bright should follow. His "more stately genius," as Mr John Morley calls
it, was already making him the undisputed master of the feelings of his
audiences. In the House of Commons his progress was slower. Cobden's
argumentative speeches were regarded more sympathetically than Bright's
more rhetorical appeals, and in a debate on Villiers's annual motion
against the Corn Laws Bright was heard with so much impatience that [v.04
p.0568] he was obliged to sit down. In the next session (1845) he moved for
an inquiry into the operation of the Game Laws. At a meeting of county
members earlier in the day Peel had advised them not to be led into
discussion by a violent speech from the member for Durham, but to let the
committee be granted without debate. Bright was not violent, and Cobden
said that he did his work admirably, and won golden opinions from all men.
The speech established his position in the House of Commons. In this
session Bright and Cobden came into opposition, Cobden voting for the
Maynooth Grant and Bright against it. On only one other occasion--a vote
for South Kensington--did they go into opposite lobbies, during twenty-five
years of parliamentary life. In the autumn of 1845 Bright retained Cobden
in the public career to which Cobden had invited him four years before.
Bright was in Scotland when a letter came from Cobden announcing his
determination, forced on him by business difficulties, to retire from
public work. Bright replied that if Cobden retired the mainspring of the
League was gone. "I can in no degree take your place," he wrote. "As a
second I can fight, but there are incapacities about me, of which I am
fully conscious, which prevent my being more than second in such a work as
we have laboured in." A few days later he set off for Manchester, posting
in that wettest of autumns through "the rain that rained away the Corn
Laws," and on his arrival got his friends together, and raised the money
which tided Cobden over the emergency. The crisis of the struggle had come.
Peel's budget in 1845 was a first step towards Free Trade. The bad harvest
and the potato disease drove him to the repeal of the Corn Laws, and at a
meeting in Manchester on 2nd July 1846 Cobden moved and Bright seconded a
motion dissolving the league. A library of twelve hundred volumes was
presented to Bright as a memorial of the struggle.
Bright married, in June 1847, Miss Margaret Elizabeth Leatham, of
Wakefield, by whom he had seven children, Mr John Albert Bright being the
eldest. In the succeeding July he was elected for Manchester, with Mr
Milner Gibson, without a contest. In the new parliament, as in the previous
session, he opposed legislation restricting the hours of labour, and, as a
Nonconformist, spoke against clerical control of national education. In
1848 he voted for Hume's household suffrage motion, and introduced a bill
for the repeal of the Game Laws. When Lord John Russell brought forward his
Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, Bright opposed it as "a little, paltry,
miserable measure," and foretold its failure. In this parliament he spoke
much on Irish questions. In a speech in favour of the government bill for a
rate in aid in 1849, he won loud cheers from both sides, and was
complimented by Disraeli for having sustained the reputation of that
assembly. From this time forward he had the ear of the House, and took
effective part in the debates. He spoke against capital punishment, against
church-rates, against flogging in the army, and against the Irish
Established Church. He supported Cobden's motion for the reduction of
public expenditure, and in and out of parliament pleaded for peace. In the
election of 1852 he was again returned for Manchester on the principles of
free trade, electoral reform and religious freedom. But war was in the air,
and the most impassioned speeches he ever delivered were addressed to this
parliament in fruitless opposition to the Crimean War. Neither the House
nor the country would listen. "I went to the House on Monday," wrote
Macaulay in March 1854, "and heard Bright say everything I thought." His
most memorable speech, the greatest he ever made, was delivered on the 23rd
of February 1855. "The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land.
You may almost hear the beating of his wings," he said, and concluded with
an appeal to the prime minister that moved the House as it had never been
moved within living memory. There was a tremor in Bright's voice in the
touching parts of his great speeches which stirred the feelings even of
hostile listeners. It was noted for the first time in this February speech,
but the most striking instance was in a speech on Mr Osborne Morgan's
Burials Bill in April 1875, in which he described a Quaker funeral, and
protested against the "miserable superstition of the phrase 'buried like a
dog.'" "In that sense," he said, "I shall be buried like a dog, and all
those with whom I am best acquainted, whom I best love and esteem, will be
'buried like a dog.' Nay more, my own ancestors, who in past time suffered
persecution for what is now held to be a righteous cause, have all been
buried like dogs, if that phrase is true." The tender, half-broken tones in
which these words were said, the inexpressible pathos of his voice and
manner, were never forgotten by those who heard that Wednesday morning
speech.
Bright was disqualified by illness during the whole of 1856 and 1857. In
Palmerston's penal dissolution in the latter year, Bright was rejected by
Manchester, but in August, while ill and absent, Birmingham elected him
without a contest. He returned to parliament in 1858, and in February
seconded the motion which threw out Lord Palmerston's government. Lord
Derby thereupon came into office for the second time, and Bright had the
satisfaction of assisting in the passing of two measures which he had long
advocated--the admission of Jews to parliament and the transfer of the
government of India from the East India Company to the crown. He was now
restored to full political activity, and in October addressed his new
constituents, and started a movement for parliamentary reform. He spoke at
great gatherings at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bradford and Manchester, and his
speeches filled the papers. For the next nine years he was the protagonist
of Reform. Towards the close of the struggle he told the House of Commons
that a thousand meetings had been held, that at every one the doors were
open for any man to enter, yet that an almost unanimous vote for reform had
been taken. In the debates on the Reform Bills submitted to the House of
Commons from 1859. to 1867, Bright's was the most influential voice. He
rebuked Lowe's "Botany Bay view," and described Horsman as retiring to his
"cave of Adullam," and hooking in Lowe. "The party of two," he said,
"reminds me of the Scotch terrier, which was so covered with hair that you
could not tell which was the head and which was the tail." These and
similar phrases, such as the excuse for withdrawing the Reform Bill in the
year of the great budget of 1860--"you cannot get twenty wagons at once
through Temple Bar"--were in all men's mouths. It was one of the triumphs
of Bright's oratory that it constantly produced these popular cries. The
phrase "a free breakfast table" was his; and on the rejection of Forster's
Compensation for Disturbance Bill he used the phrase as to Irish
discontent, "Force is not a remedy."
During his great reform agitation Bright had vigorously supported Cobden in
the negotiations for the treaty of commerce with France, and had taken,
with his usual vehemence, the side of the North in the discussions in
England on the American Civil War. In March 1865 Cobden died, and Bright
told the House of Commons he dared not even attempt to express the feelings
which oppressed him, and sat down overwhelmed with grief. Their friendship
was one of the most characteristic features of the public life of their
time. "After twenty years of intimate and almost brotherly friendship with
him," said Bright, "I little knew how much I loved him till I had lost
him." In June 1865 parliament was dissolved, and Bright was returned for
Birmingham without opposition. Palmerston's death in the early autumn
brought Lord John Russell into power, and for the first time Bright gave
his support to the government. Russell's fourth Reform Bill was introduced,
was defeated by the Adullamites, and the Derby-Disraeli ministry was
installed. Bright declared Lord Derby's accession to be a declaration of
war against the working classes, and roused the great towns in the demand
for reform. Bright was the popular hero of the time. As a political leader
the winter of 1866-1867 was the culminating point in his career. The Reform
Bill was carried with a clause for minority representation, and in the
autumn of 1868 Bright, with two Liberal colleagues, was again returned for
Birmingham. Mr Gladstone came into power with a programme of Irish reform
in church and land such as Bright had long urged, and he accepted the post
of president of the Board of Trade. He thus became a member of the privy
council, with the title of Right Honourable, and from this time forth was a
recognized leader of the Liberal party in parliament and in the country. He
made a great speech [v.04 p.0569] on the second reading of the Irish Church
Bill, and wrote a letter on the House of Lords, in which he said, "In
harmony with the nation they may go on for a long time, but throwing
themselves athwart its course they may meet with accidents not pleasant for
them to think of." He also spoke strongly in the same session in favour of
the bill permitting marriage with a deceased wife's sister. The next
session found him disqualified by a severe illness, which caused his
retirement from office at the end of the year, and kept him out of public
life for four years. In August 1873 Mr Gladstone reconstructed his cabinet,
and Bright returned to it as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. But his
hair had become white, and though he spoke again with much of his former
vigour, he was now an old man. In the election in January 1874 Bright and
his colleagues were returned for Birmingham without opposition. When Mr
Gladstone resigned the leadership of his party in 1875, Bright was chairman
of the party meeting which chose Lord Hartington as his successor. He took
a less prominent part in political discussion till the Eastern Question
brought Great Britain to the verge of war with Russia, and his old energy
flamed up afresh. In the debate on the vote of credit in February 1878, he
made one of his impressive speeches, urging the government not to increase
the difficulties manufacturers had in finding employment for their
workpeople by any single word or act which could shake confidence in
business. The debate lasted five days. On the fifth day a telegram from Mr
Layard was published announcing that the Russians were nearing
Constantinople. The day, said _The Times_, "was crowded with rumours,
alarms, contradictions, fears, hopes, resolves, uncertainties." In both
Houses Mr Layard's despatch was read, and in the excited Commons Mr
Forster's resolution opposing the vote of credit was withdrawn. Bright,
however, distrusted the ambassador at the Porte, and gave reasons for
doubting the alarming telegram. While he was speaking a note was put into
the hands of Sir Stafford Northcote, and when Bright sat down he read it to
the House. It was a confirmation from the Russian prime minister of
Bright's doubts: "There is not a word of truth in the rumours which have
reached you." At the general election in 1880 he was re-elected at
Birmingham, and joined Mr Gladstone's new government as chancellor of the
duchy of Lancaster. For two sessions he spoke and voted with his
colleagues, but after the bombardment of the Alexandria forts he left the
ministry and never held office again. He felt most painfully the severance
from his old and trusted leader, but it was forced on him by his conviction
of the danger and impolicy of foreign entanglements. He, however, gave a
general support to Mr Gladstone's government. In 1883 he took the chair at
a meeting of the Liberation Society in Mr Spurgeon's chapel; and in June of
that year was the object of an unparalleled demonstration at Birmingham to
celebrate his twenty-five years of service as its representative. At this
celebration he spoke strongly of "the Irish rebel party," and accused the
Conservatives of "alliance" with them, but withdrew the imputation when Sir
Stafford Northcote moved that such language was a breach of the privileges
of the House of Commons. At a banquet to Lord Spencer he accused the Irish
members of having "exhibited a boundless sympathy for criminals and
murderers." He refused in the House of Commons to apologise for these
words, and was supported in his refusal by both sides of the House. At the
Birmingham election in 1885 he stood for the central division of the
redistributed constituency; he was opposed by Lord Randolph Churchill, but
was elected by a large majority. In the new parliament he voted against the
Home Rule Bill, and it was generally felt that in the election of 1886
which followed its defeat, when he was re-elected without opposition, his
letters told with fatal effect against the Home Rule Liberals. His
contribution to the discussion was a suggestion that the Irish members
should form a grand committee to which every Irish bill should go after
first reading. The break-up of the Liberal party filled him with gloom. His
last speech at Birmingham was on 29th March 1888, at a banquet to celebrate
Mr Chamberlain's return from his peace mission to the United States. He
spoke of imperial federation as a "dream and an absurdity." In May his
illness returned, he took to his bed in October, and died on the 27th of
March 1889. He was buried in the graveyard of the meeting-house of the
Society of Friends in Rochdale.