city at the beginning of this year (Return, i. 215), and who was one of the sixteen aldermen then belonging to the great Grocers' Company (Herbert, i. 207), ‘ove forte main … et gñt multitude des gentz … feust fait maire’ (Rot. Parl. iii. 226). Dr. Stubbs calls attention to this forcible election as possessing ‘the importance of a constitutional episode’ (Const. Hist. iii. 575), but wrongly assigns it to 1386 (ibid.). On the outbreak of John of Northampton's riot in February 1384, Brembre arrested and beheaded a ringleader, John Constantyn, cordwainer (T. WALS. ii. 110–1). Our main knowledge of Brembre's conduct is derived from a bundle of petitions presented to parliament in October–November 1386 by ten companies of the rival faction, of which two (those of the mercers and cordwainers) are printed in ‘Rot. Parl.’ iii. 225–7. In these he is accused of tyrannous conduct during his mayoralty of 1383–4, especially of beheading the cordwainer for the riot in Cheapside, and of securing his re-election in 1384 by increased violence. Forbidding his opponents to take part in the election, he filled the Guildhall with armed men, who, at their approach, ‘sailleront sur eux ove gũnt noise, criantz tuwez, tuwez, lour pursuivantz hydousement.’ In 1386 he secured the election of his accomplice, Nicholas Exton, who was thus mayor at the time of the petition, so that the mayoralty was still, it urged, ‘tenuz par conquest et maistrie.’ While mayor (1384), Brembre had effected the ruin of his rival, John of Northampton (who had appealed in vain to John of Gaunt), by his favourite device of a charge of treason (T. Wals. ii. 116); and though Gloucester (‘Thomas of Woodstock’) and the opposition accused him of plotting (T. Wals. ii. 150) in favour of Suffolk (the chancellor), who was impeached in the parliament of 1386, and of compassing their death, he not only escaped for the time, but at the close of the year (1386) was, with Burley and others of the party of resistance, summoned by Richard into his council. Through the year 1387 he supported Richard in London in his struggle for absolute power, but was again accused by Gloucester and the opposition of inciting the mayor and citizens against them, when the former (Exton) shrank from such a plot (T. Wals. ii. 165; Rot. Parl. iii. 234). He was therefore among the five councillors charged with treason by the lords appellant on 14 Nov. 1387, and, on the citizens refusing to rise for him, fled, but was captured (in Wales, says Froissart) and imprisoned at Gloucester (writ of 4 Jan. 1388 in Rymer's Fœdera), whence on 28 Jan. 1388 he was removed to the Tower (Issue Rolls, 11 Rich. II). The ‘merciless’ parliament met on 3 Feb., and the five councillors were formally impeached by Gloucester and the lords appellant (Rot. Parl. iii. 229–36). Brembre, who was styled ‘faulx Chivaler de Londres,’ and who was hated by York and Gloucester (Froissart), was specially charged with taking twenty-two prisoners out of Newgate and beheading them without trial at the ‘Foul Oke’ in Kent (Rot. Parl. p. 231). On 17 Feb. he was brought from the Tower to Westminster and put on his trial. He claimed trial by battle as a knight, but it was refused, and being again brought up on the 20th, he received sentence, and was ordered to be taken back to the Tower, whence the marshal should ‘lui treyner parmye la dite cite de Loundres, et avant tan q'as ditz Fourches [Tyburn], et illeõqs lui pendre par le cool’ (ib. iii. 237–8). This sentence was carried into effect, though he had ‘many intercessors’ among the citizens (T. Wals. ii. 173–4), but was reversed by Richard in his last struggle, 25 March 1399 (Claus. 22 Rich. II, p. 2, m. 6, dors.). Stow (Annals) wrongly believed that he was beheaded (‘with the same axe he had prepared for other’). He was buried in the choir of the Grey Friars, afterwards Christ Church (Strype, iii. 133, where the date is wrongly given). Froissart (cap. 108) says that he was bewailed by the citizens, but this must have applied to his partisans. Walsingham (ii. 173–4) narrates the absurd charges brought against him at his fall.
[Rolls of Parliament, vol. iii.; Rymer's Fœdera; Thomas of Walsingham's Historia Anglicana (Rolls Series); Stow's Annals; Strype's Stow's Survey; Cottonian MSS.; Documents (ut supra) in Public Record Office; Riley's Memorials of London; Norton's Commentaries on the History of London; Devon's Rolls of the Exchequer; Froissart's Chronicles; Stubbs's Constitutional History; Herbert's Twelve Great Companies; Heath's Grocers' Company; Hasted's History of Kent; Return of Members of Parliament.]
BREMER, Sir JAMES JOHN GORDON (1786–1860), rear-admiral, the son and grandson of naval officers, was entered as a first-class volunteer on board the Sandwich guardship at the Nore in 1794. This was only for a few months; in October 1797 he was appointed to the Royal Naval College at Portsmouth, and was not again embarked till 1802, when he was appointed to the Endymion as a midshipman under Captain Philip Durham. For the next fourteen years he was actively and continuously serving in different parts of the world. He was made lieutenant on 3 Aug. 1805, commander on 13 Oct. 1807, and
