lived till 1623, and was buried at Cheyneys. Giles died without issue, and was succeeded as fourth lord Chandos by his brother William, the father of Grey Brydges [q. v.]
Sir Thomas Brydges, the first lord Chandos's brother, and his successor in the lieutenancy of the Tower, was in 1548 steward of the hundred of Chadlington and of the royal manors of Burford and Minster Lovell, and keeper of the forest of Whichwood and of the parks of Longley and Cornbury. Edward VI granted him many abbey lands. He resided at Cornbury, and was buried at Chadlington in 1559. His son Thomas was drowned off London Bridge on 10 Aug. 1553 (Machyn, Diary, p. 41; Stow, Chronicle). Richard, another brother of the first lord Chandos, was knighted at Mary's coronation (2 Oct. 1553); was sheriff of Berkshire in 1555–6, and, as one of the commissioners for the trial of Julius or Josceline Palmer at Newbury (16 July 1556), made ‘a gentle offer’ to the prisoner of meat, drink, books, and 10l. yearly if he would live with him and renounce his errors. Palmer declined the offer, and suffered at the stake. Sir Richard died in September 1558.
[Dugdale's Baronage; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ed. Brewer and Gairdner; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1547–90; Sir S. E. Brydges's Stemmata Illustrata, p. 99; Cooper Willyams's History of Sudeley Castle, 1790; Chronicle of Calais (Camd. Soc.), pp. 42, 176, 177; Machyn's Diary (Camd. Soc.), passim; Chronicle of Queen Jane and Queen Mary, pp. 18, 53, 57, 76; Wriothesley's Chron. (Camd. Soc.); Froude's History of England; Nichols's Progresses of Eliz. i. 543, iii. 136.]
BRYDGES, Sir SAMUEL EGERTON (1762–1837), editor of early English literature and genealogist, was born at the manor-house of Wootton, situated between Canterbury and Dover, on 30 Nov. 1762, and was the second son of Edward Brydges (or Bridges) of Wootton, by Jemima, daughter of William Egerton, LL.D., prebendary of Canterbury and chancellor of Hereford, he was educated at Maidstone School, at the King's School, Canterbury, and (from October 1780 till Christmas 1782) at Queens' College, Cambridge. On leaving the university he was entered of the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in November 1787. He never, however, practised, and retired in 1792 to Denton Court, a seat which he had purchased near his birthplace in Kent. From his boyhood Brydges had had a passion for reading, and had sacrificed his degree at college by 'giving himself up to English poetry.' His first literary venture was made in March 1785, when he published a volume of poems, among which the earliest pieces are some sonnets dated 1782. A fourth and much enlarged edition of his miscellaneous poetry appeared in 1807. The volume of 1785 was coldly received, and Brydges continued to be much disheartened, even though his novels, 'Mary de Clifford' (1792) and 'Arthur Fitzalbini' (1798), obtained some popularity. He was by nature shy and proud, yet morbidly sensitive and egotistic, and being tormented by an extraordinary thirst for literary fame, he was unhappily led to mistake his delight in reading great works of literature for an evidence of his capacity to produce similar works himself. From the extremely naive self-portraiture of his rambling but interesting 'Autobiography,' there can be no doubt that he imagined himself a poet and a man of genius. His poetry, however, is of the most mediocre description, recalling the dullest efforts of Bowles or Thomas Warton. Of his useful labours as a bibliographer and editor he is inclined to speak with contempt: 'These were unworthy pursuits … they overlaid the fire of my bosom … they suppressed in me that self-confidence without which nothing great can be done, and bound my enthusiastic spirits in chains. The fire smouldered within, and made me discontented and unhappy.' Indulging in this amabilis insania, he easily persuaded himself that his failure as an author was due to the misdirection of his own energies, and especially to the jealous machinations of enemies hostile to his fame. At Denton he got on badly with his neighbours, 'the book-hating squires,' and was embarrassed in his money affairs; yet his life there between the years 1797 and 1810 was not altogether unhappy, and was productive of much literary work. He produced, among other books, an edition of Edward Phillips's 'Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum' (1800), with large additions; and began in 1806 a new and augmented edition of Collins's 'Peerage of England,' a work which was eventually published in 1812 in nine volumes, 8vo. In 1805-9 he published the ten volumes of his 'Censura Literaria, containing Titles, Abstracts, and Opinions of old English Books, with original Disquisitions, Articles of Biography, and other Literary Antiquities.'
In 1789 Brydges's taste for genealogy was turned to practical account, for in October of that year he persuaded his elder brother, the Rev. Edward Tymewell Brydges, to put forward his claim to the barony of Chandos. The case came on for hearing before the committee of privileges of the House of Lords on 1 June 1790, and more than twenty-six hearings took place at intervals. New evi-
