to Byrhtferth is a life of St. Dunstan, the writer of which calls himself ‘B. presbyter.’ The conjecture that this initial stands for Byrhtferth is due to Mabillon, who had seen the ‘Life,’ but did not consider it worth while to print it. He gives, however, some extracts from it in his preface and notes to the ‘Life of Dunstan’ by Osbern, and it has been published in the ‘Acta Sanctorum’ of the Bollandists, and in Dr. Stubbs's ‘Memorials of St. Dunstan.’ Mabillon's suggestion appears at first sight highly plausible, as Byrhtferth in the ‘Computus’ describes himself as ‘presbyter,’ and his master Abbo had intimate relations with Dunstan. The wretched Latinity and the bombastic style of the ‘Life,’ however, cannot easily be reconciled with the supposition of Byrhtferth's authorship. Dr. Stubbs has furnished some other arguments, which appear to be decisive against Mabillon's conjecture, although his attempt to show that the author of the ‘Life’ was a continental Saxon can scarcely be considered successful.
[Bale's Script. Ill. Maj. Brit. (Basle edition), 138; Pits, De Angliæ Scriptoribus, 178; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. 125; Wright's Biog. Brit. Lit. i. 174; Memorials of St. Dunstan (ed. Stubbs), introd. p. xix; Bæda's Works (Cologne edition, 1612), ii. 103 et al.]
BYRNE, ANNE FRANCES (1775–1837), flower-painter, was born in 1775 in London, and was the eldest daughter of William Byrne, engraver [q. v.] She early became one of her father's pupils and assistants, etching for him and preparing his work. She also had some proficiency in fruit-painting, and exhibited a fruit-piece at the Academy in her twenty-first year, 1796, after which date pictures of hers appeared there from time to time, and at the British Institute, and Suffolk Street, down to 1832 (Graves's Dict. of Artists, p. 38). In 1805 Miss Byrne's father died. In 1806 she was elected associate-exhibitor at the Water Colour Society, which was followed by her election to full membership in 1809. Miss Byrne died 2 Jan. 1837, aged 62.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists of British School, ed. 1878.]
BYRNE, CHARLES (1761–1783), Irish giant, was born in Ireland in 1761. His father was an Irishman, and his mother a Scotchwoman, but neither of them was of extraordinary size. In August 1780 he ‘measured exactly eight feet; in 1782 he had gained two inches, and after he was dead he measured eight feet four inches’ (Gent. Mag. liv. pt. i. 541). He travelled about the country for exhibition; at Edinburgh he alarmed the watchmen on the North Bridge one morning by lighting his pipe at one of the lamps without standing even on tiptoe. In London he created such a sensation, that the pantomime at the Haymarket, produced on 18 Aug. 1782, was entitled, with reference to him, ‘Harlequin Teague, or the Giant's Causeway.’ He died (of, it is said, excessive drinking and vexation at losing a note for 700l.) at Cockspur Street, Charing Cross, on 1 June 1783, aged 22. His skeleton, which measures exactly 923/4 inches, is to be seen in the museum of the College of Surgeons in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where there is also a portrait of him. Two sketches of the giant by Kay will be found in the first volume of ‘Original Etchings,’ Nos. 4 and 164. Byrne has often been confused with Patrick Cotter, another Irish giant, who took the name of O'Brien, and died at Bristol in 1806.
[Kay's Original Portraits and Caricature Etchings (1877), i. 10–11, 417; Chambers's Book of Days (1864), ii. 326–7; Buckland's Curiosities of Natural History, 4th ser. pp. 19–21; Scots Mag. 1783, xlv. 335; Annual Register, 1783, app. pp. 209–10; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. xi. 369, 396, 476, xii. 59; 5th ser. iv. 132–3.]
BYRNE, LETITIA (1779–1849), engraver, was born 24 Nov. 1779, presumably in London, being the third daughter of William Byrne, engraver [q. v.], and the sister of Anne Frances Byrne [q. v.] (Gent. Mag. vol. lxxv. pt. ii. p. 1071). As a pupil of her father, she exhibited landscape-views at the Academy when she was only twenty, in 1799. In 1810 she etched the illustrations for ‘A Description of Tunbridge Wells,’ and among other work entrusted to her were four views for Hakewill's ‘History of Windsor.’ She exhibited ‘From Eton College Play-fields’ at the Academy in 1822; and had other pictures there (twenty-one in all) down to 1848 (Graves's Dict. of Artists, p. 38). She died 2 May 1849, aged 70, and was buried at Kensal Green.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists of British School, ed. 1878, p. 66; Graves's Dict. of Artists, p. 38.]
BYRNE, MILES (1780–1862), member of the Society of United Irishmen, and afterwards chef de bataillon in the service of France, was the son of a farmer, and was born at Monaseed, in the county of Wexford, Ireland, on 20 March 1780. In 1796 he agreed to join a corps of yeomanry cavalry on condition of obtaining the renewal of a lease of land for his mother; but his father, who was then ill, dying shortly afterwards, he was absolved
