bria, in which Wilfrith was condemned and excommunicated; and in 705, Wilfrith having visited Rome and obtained a papal mandate for his restoration, Brihtwald held a council near the river Nidd, in which, chiefly through his skilful management, it was arranged that Wilfrith should be permitted to re-enter the Northumbrian kingdom, only resigning the see of York and becoming bishop of Hexham (ibid. 264). He had already in the previous year taken measures for the division of the diocese of Wessex,then vacant by the death of Hedda, bishop of Winchester, and in 705 he consecrated Daniel to be bishop of that see, and Aldhelm first bishop of the new see of Sherborne (Will. Malm. Gest. Punt. 376). An interesting letter of his has been preserved (Ep. Boniface, 155) to Forthere, the successor of Aldhelm, imploring him to induce Beorwald, abbot of Glastonbury, to release a slave girl for a ransom of three hundred shillings offered by her brother. About the same time he received Winfrith (Boniface) on a mission from the West-Saxon clergy, perhaps concerning the further subdivision of their diocese by the foundation of a see for Sussex at Selsey, which took place in 711. In 716, in a council at Clovesho, he obtained a confirmation of Wihtred's privilege Hadden and Stubbs, iii. 300, 301). Scanty as these records of Brihtwald are, they seem to indicate that he ruled the church during a difficult period with energy and tact. The sympathies, however, of Bede and William of Malmesbury were so thoroughly on the side of Wilfrith of York that they were unable to bestow hearty praise on one who did not give him unqualified support. Brihtwald died in January 731, having presided over the church of England for thirty-seven years and a half, and was buried near his predecessor Theodore inside the church of St. Peter at Canterbury, the porch in which the first six primates had been buried being now quite full (Bede, ii. 3).
[Authorities cited in the text.]
BRIHTWOLD (d. 1045), the eighth bishop of Ramsbury, and the last before the removal of the see to Old Sarum, had been a monk at Glastonbury, and was made bishop in 1005. There are no records of his administration, although he presided over the see for forty years. William of Malmesbury (Gest. Pont. ii. § 83) relates a vision which Brihtwold had at Glastonbury in the reign of Canute, in which the succession of Æthelred's son Edward (the Confessor) to the throne was revealed to him. He was buried at Glastonbury, to which abbey, as also to that of Malmesbury, he had been a very liberal benefactor.
[Anglo-Saxon Chron.; Florence of Worcester; William of Malmesbury, Gest. Pontiff.]
BRIMLEY, GEORGE (1819–1857), essayist, was born at Cambridge on 29 Dec. 1819, and from the age of eleven to that of sixteen was educated at a school in Totteridge, Hertfordshire. In October 1838 he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, where in 1841 he was elected a scholar. He was reading with good hopes for classical honours, and was a private pupil of Dr. Vaughan; but even at that early age he was suffering from the disease to which he eventually succumbed. Although the state of his health prevented him from competing for university honours or obtaining a college fellowship, he was known to possess ability; and soon after taking his degree he was appointed college librarian (4 June 1845). He held this office until a few weeks before his death, when he returned to his father's house. Physical weakness prevented the sustained effort necessary for the production of any important work; but for the last six years of his life he contributed to the press. Most of his writings appeared in the 'Spectator' or in 'Fraser's Magazine,' the only one to which his name was attached being an essay on Tennyson's poems, contributed to the Cambridge Essays of 1855. He died 29 May 1857. A selection of his essays was made after his death and published with a prefatory memoir by the late W. G. Clark, then fellow and tutor of Trinity. This volume contains notices of a large number of the writers who were contemporary with Brimley himself, and is of considerable value as representing the contemporary judgment by a man of cultivation and acuteness on the writers of the middle of the nineteenth century, most of whom are now being judged by posterity. Sir Arthur Helps said of him, 'He was certainly, as it appeared to me, one of the finest critics of the present day.'
[W. G. Clark's Memoir attached to the Essays (London and Cambridge, 1858); information from the family.]
BRIND, RICHARD (d. 1718), organist, was educated as a chorister in St. Paul's Cathedral, probably under Jeremiah Clarke. On the death of the latter in 1707, Brind succeeded him as organist of the cathedral, a post he held until his death, which took place in March 1717–18. He was buried in the vaults of St. Paul's on 18 March. Administration of his effects was granted to his father, Richard Brind, on 7 April 1718. In the grant he is described as being a bachelor.
