James II. incorporated the town under a mayor, 6 aldermen, and 26 burgesses, granted three new fairs and confirmed the old fair and market. In 1708 Anne granted four fairs to the earl of Bridgewater, and in 1886 the borough had a new charter of incorporation under a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors under the Municipal Corporations Act of 1882. Camden (Brit. p. 430) says that Brackley was formerly a famous staple for wool. It first sent members to parliament in 1547, and continued to send two representatives till disfranchised by the Reform Act of 1832. The town formerly had a considerable woollen and lace-making trade.
BRACQUEMOND, FÉLIX (1833– ), French painter and etcher,
was born in Paris. He was trained in early youth as a
trade lithographer, until Guichard, a pupil of Ingres, took him
to his studio. His portrait of his grandmother, painted by him
at the age of nineteen, attracted Théophile Gautier’s attention
at the Salon. He applied himself to engraving and etching about
1853, and played a leading and brilliant part in the revival of
the etcher’s art in France. Altogether he has produced over eight
hundred plates, comprising portraits, landscapes, scenes of
contemporary life, and bird-studies, besides numerous interpretations
of other artists’ paintings, especially those of Meissonier,
Gustave Moreau and Corot. After having been attached
to the Sèvres porcelain factory in 1870, he accepted a post as art
manager of the Paris atelier of the firm of Haviland of Limoges.
He was connected by a link of firm friendship with Manet, Whistler,
and all the other fighters in the impressionist cause, and received
all the honours that await the successful artist in France,
including the grade of officer of the Legion of Honour in 1889.
BRACTON, HENRY DE (d. 1268), English judge and writer
on English law. His real name was Bratton, and in all
probability he derived it either from Bratton Fleming or from
Bratton Clovelly, both of them villages in Devonshire. It is
only after his death that his name appears as “Bracton.” He
seems to have entered the king’s service as a clerk under the
patronage of William Raleigh, who after long service as a royal
justice died bishop of Winchester in 1250. Bracton begins to
appear as a justice in 1245, and from 1248 until his death in 1268
he was steadily employed as a justice of assize in the
south-western counties, especially Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.
During the earlier part of this period he was also sitting as a
judge in the king’s central court, and was there hearing those
pleas which “followed the king”; in other words, he was a
member of that section of the central tribunal which was soon
to be distinguished as the king’s bench. From this position
he retired or was dismissed in or about the year 1257, shortly
before the meeting of the Mad Parliament at Oxford in 1258.
Whether his disappearance is to be connected with the political
events of this turbulent time is uncertain. He continued to take
the assizes in the south-west, and in 1267 he was a member of
a commission of prelates, barons and judges appointed to hear
the complaints of the disinherited partisans of Simon de Montfort.
In 1259 he became rector of Combe-in-Teignhead, in 1261 rector
of Barnstaple, in 1264 archdeacon of Barnstaple, and, having
resigned the archdeaconry, chancellor of Exeter cathedral;
he also held a prebend in the collegiate church at Bosham.
Already in 1245 he enjoyed a dispensation enabling him to
hold three ecclesiastical benefices. He died in 1268 and was
buried in the nave of Exeter cathedral, and a chantry for his
soul was endowed out of the revenues of the manor of Thorverton.
His fame is due to a treatise on the laws and customs of England which is sufficiently described elsewhere (see English Law). The main part of it seems to have been compiled between 1250 and 1256; but apparently it is an unfinished work. This may be due to the fact that when he ceased to be a member of the king’s central court Bracton was ordered to surrender certain judicial records which he had been using as raw material. Even though it be unfinished his book is incomparably the best work produced by any English lawyer in the middle ages.
The treatise was published in 1569 by Richard Tottel. This text was reprinted in 1640. An edition (1878–1883) with English translation was included in the Rolls Series. Manuscript copies are numerous, and a critical edition is a desideratum. See Bracton’s Note-Book (ed. Maitland, 1887); Bracton and Azo (Selden Society, 1895). (F. W. M.)
BRADAWL (from “brad,” a flat nail, and “awl,” a piercing
tool), a small tool used for boring holes (see Tool).
BRADDOCK, EDWARD (1695?–1755), British general, was
born in Perthshire, Scotland, about 1695. He was the son of
Major-General Edward Braddock (d. 1725), and joined the
Coldstream Guards in 1710. In 1747 as a lieutenant-colonel
he served under the prince of Orange in Holland during the siege
of Bergen-op-Zoom. In 1753 he was given the colonelcy of the
14th foot, and in 1754 he became a major-general. Being appointed
shortly afterwards to command against the French in
America, he landed in Virginia in February 1755. After some
months of preparation, in which he was hampered by administrative
confusion and want of resources, he took the field with
a picked column, in which George Washington served as a
volunteer officer, intended to attack Fort Duquesne (Pittsburg,
Pa.). The column crossed the Monongahela river on the 9th of
July and almost immediately afterwards fell into an ambuscade
of French and Indians. The troops were completely surprised
and routed, and Braddock, rallying his men time after time,
fell at last mortally wounded. He was carried off the field
with difficulty, and died on the 13th. He was buried at Great
Meadows, where the remnant of the column halted on its retreat
to reorganize. (See Seven Years' War.)
BRADDOCK, a borough of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania,
U.S.A., on the Monongahela river, 10 m. S.E. of Pittsburg.
Pop. (1890) 8561; (1900) 15,654, of whom 5111 were foreign-born;
(1910 census) 19,357. Braddock is served by the Pennsylvania,
the Baltimore & Ohio, and the Pittsburg & Lake
Erie railways. Its chief industry is the manufacture of steel—especially
steel rails; among its other manufactures are pig-iron,
wire rods, wire nails, wire bale ties, lead pipe, brass and
electric signs, cement and plaster. In 1905 the value of the
borough’s factory products was $4,199,079. Braddock has a
Carnegie library. Kennywood Park, near by, is a popular
resort. The municipality owns and operates the water-works.
Braddock was named in honour of the English general Edward
Braddock, who in 1755 met defeat and death near the site of
the present borough at the hands of a force of French and
Indians. The borough was first settled at the close of the 18th
century, and was incorporated in 1867.
BRADDON, MARY ELIZABETH (1837– ), English
novelist, daughter of Henry Braddon, solicitor, of Skirdon
Lodge, Cornwall, and sister of Sir Edward Braddon, prime
minister of Tasmania, was born in London in 1837. She began at
an early age to contribute to periodicals, and in 1861 produced
her first novel, The Trail of the Serpent. In the same year
appeared Garibaldi, accompanied by Olivia, and other poems,
chiefly narrative, a volume of extremely spirited verse, deserving
more notice than it has received. In 1862 her reputation as a
novelist was made by a favourable review in The Times of Lady Audley’s Secret. Aurora Floyd, a novel with a strong affinity
to Madame Bovary, followed, and achieved equal success. Its
immediate successors, Eleanor’s Victory, John Marchmont’s Legacy, Henry Dunbar, remain with her former works the best-known
of her novels, but all her numerous books have found a
large and appreciative public. They give, indeed, the great body
of readers of fiction exactly what they require; melodramatic
in plot and character, conventional in their views of life, they are
yet distinguished by constructive skill and opulence of invention.
For a considerable time Miss Braddon conducted Belgravia,
in which several of her novels appeared. In 1874 she married
Mr John Maxwell, publisher, her son, W. B. Maxwell, afterwards
becoming known as a clever novelist and newspaper correspondent.
BRADFORD, JOHN (1510?–1555), English Protestant martyr, was born at Manchester in the early part of the reign of Henry VIII., and educated at the local grammar school. Being a good penman and accountant, he became secretary to Sir John
