of the Empire (Reichsgraf) by the emperor Charles VI. His uncle Georg, Reichsgraf von Browne (1698–1792), was a distinguished soldier, who rose to the rank of field marshal in the Russian army, and was made Reichsgraf by the emperor Joseph II. in 1779. The powerful influence which he commanded, through his father and his wife (née Countess Marie Philippine v. Martinitz), advanced the young officer through the subordinate grades so rapidly that at the age of twenty-nine he was colonel of an infantry regiment. But he justified his early promotion in the field, and in the Italian campaign of 1734 he greatly distinguished himself. In the Tirolese fighting of 1735, and in the unfortunate Turkish war, he won further distinction as a general officer. He was a lieutenant field marshal in command of the Silesian garrisons when in 1740 Frederick II. and the Prussian army overran the province. His careful employment of such resources as he possessed materially hindered the king in his conquest and gave time for Austria to collect a field army (see Austrian Succession, War of the). He was present at Mollwitz, where he received a severe wound. His vehement opposition to all half-hearted measures brought him frequently into conflict with his superiors, but contributed materially to the unusual energy displayed by the Austrian armies in 1742 and 1743. In the following campaigns Browne exhibited the same qualities of generalship and the same impatience of control. In 1745 he served under Count Traun, and was promoted to the rank of Feldzeugmeister. In 1746 he was present in the Italian campaign and the battles of Piacenza and Rottofredo. Browne himself with the advanced guard forced his way across the Apennines and entered Genoa. He was thereafter placed in command of the army intended for the invasion of France, and early in 1747 of all the imperial forces in Italy. At the end of the war Browne was engaged in the negotiations which led to the convention of Nice (January 21st, 1749). He became commander-in-chief in Bohemia in 1751, and field marshal two years later. He was still in Bohemia when the Seven Years’ War opened with Frederick’s invasion of Saxony (1756). Browne’s army, advancing to the relief of Pirna (see Seven Years' War), was met, and, after a hard struggle, defeated by the king at Lobositz, but he drew off in excellent order, and soon made another attempt with a picked force to reach Pirna, by wild mountain tracks. The field marshal never spared himself, bivouacking in the snow with his men, and Carlyle records that private soldiers made rough shelters over him as he slept. He actually reached the Elbe at Schandau, but as the Saxons were unable to break out Browne retired, having succeeded, however, in delaying the development of Frederick’s operations for a whole campaign. In the campaign of 1757 he voluntarily served under Prince Charles of Lorraine (q.v.) who was made commander-in-chief, and on the 6th of May in that year, while leading a bayonet charge at the battle of Prague, Browne, like Schwerin on the same day, met his death. He was carried mortally wounded into Prague, and there died on the 26th of June, his last days embittered by the knowledge that he was unjustly held responsible for the failure of the campaign. His name has been borne, since 1888, by the 36th Austrian infantry.
See Zuverlässige Lebensbeschreibung U. M. Reichsgrafen, v. B. K.-K. Gen.-Feldmarschall (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1757); Baron O’Cahill, Gesch. der grossten Herrfuhrer (Rastadt, 1785, v. ii. pp. 264-316).
BROWNE, PETER (?1665–1735), Irish divine and bishop of Cork and Ross, was born in Co. Dublin, not long after the Restoration. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1682, and after ten years’ residence obtained a fellowship. In 1699 he was made provost of the college, and in the same year published his Letter in answer to a Book entitled “Christianity not Mysterious," which was recognized as the ablest reply yet written to Toland. It expounds in germ the whole of his later theory of analogy. In 1710 he was made bishop of Cork and Ross, which post he held till his death in 1733. In 1713 he had become somewhat notorious from his vigorous pamphleteering attack on the fashion of drinking healths, especially “to the glorious and immortal memory.” His two most important works are the Procedure, Extent, and, Limits of the Human Understanding (1728), an able though sometimes captious critique of Locke’s essay, and Things Divine and Supernatural conceived by Analogy with Things Natural and Human, more briefly referred to as the Divine Analogy (1733). The doctrine of analogy was intended as a reply to the deistical conclusions that had been drawn from Locke’s theory of knowledge. Browne holds that not only God’s essence, but his attributes are inexpressible by our ideas, and can only be conceived analogically. This view was vigorously assailed as leading to atheism by Berkeley in his Alciphron (Dialogue iv.), and a great part of the Divine Analogy is occupied with a defence against that criticism. The bishop emphasizes the distinction between metaphor and analogy; though the conceived attributes are not thought as they are in themselves, yet there is a reality corresponding in some way to our ideas of them. His analogical arguments resemble those found in the Bampton Lectures of Dean Mansel. Browne was a man of abstemious habits, charitable disposition, and impressive eloquence. He died on the 27th of August 1735.
BROWNE, ROBERT (1550–1633), a leader among the early Separatist Puritans (hence sometimes called Brownists), was born about 1550 at Tolethorpe, near Stamford. He was of an ancient family, several members of which had been distinguished as merchants, county magnates and local benefactors. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, “commencing B.A.” in 1572. For some years he was a schoolmaster, but in what place is uncertain. In 1579, on a brother’s application and without his own consent, he was licensed to preach, and actually preached for some six months in Cambridge, where he gained considerable popularity; but impugning the episcopal order of the Established Church, he had his licence revoked early in the following year. He then went, on the invitation of Robert Harrison, “Maister in the Hospitall,” to Norwich, where he soon gathered a numerous congregation, the members of which became associated in a religious “covenant,” to the refusing of “all ungodlie communion with wicked persons.” He seems also to have preached in various parts of Norfolk and Suffolk, especially at Bury St Edmunds, and vigorously denounced the form of government existing in the Church, which at this time he held incompatible with true “preaching of the word.” Dr Freake, bishop of Norwich, caused him to be imprisoned early in 1581, but he was ere long released through the influence of his remote kinsman, the Lord Treasurer Burghley. Before the end of 1581, however, he incurred two more imprisonments, and, apparently in January 1582, migrated with his whole company to Middelburg in Zealand. There they organized a church on what they conceived to be the New Testament model, but the community broke up within two years owing to internal dissensions.
Meanwhile, Browne issued two most important works, A Treatise of Reformation without Tarying for Anie, in which he asserts the inalienable right of the church to effect necessary reforms without the authorization or permission of the civil magistrate; and A Booke which sheweth the life and manners of all True Christians, in which he enunciates the theory of Congregational independency (see Congregationalism). These, with a third tract (A Treatise upon the 23. of Matthew, see C. Burrage, as below, pp. 21-25), making together a thin quarto, were published at Middelburg in 1582. The following year two men were hanged at Bury St Edmunds for circulating them. In January 1584[1] Browne and some of his company came to Edinburgh, after visiting Dundee and St Andrews. He remained some months in Scotland, endeavouring to commend his ecclesiastical theories, but had no success. He then returned to Stamford, in which town or neighbourhood he seems to have resided chiefly for the next two years, his residence being broken by visits to London and probably to the continent (early in 1585), and by at least one imprisonment (summer, 1585). His attitude to the lawfulness of occasional attendance at services in parish churches seems to have been changing about this time; on the
- ↑ Probably after writing A True and Short Declaration, the main source of our knowledge of his life hitherto.
