his Life, by Wm. Benjamin Kennaway, 1820.' He was much attached to Dr. Priestley, and edited a new edition of his 'Rudiments of English Grammar;' many of his letters to the doctor are printed in J. T. Rutt's memoirs of Priestley.
[Life by Kennaway; Rutt's Priestley, passim; Monthly Repository, 1819, pp. 445, 473, 494, 559.]
BRETNOR, THOMAS (fl. 1607–1618), almanac maker, calls himself on the title-page of one of his almanacs 'student in astronomie and physicke,' and on that of another, 'professor of the mathematicks and student in physicke in Cow Lane, London.' His extant works are as follows:
- 'A Prognostication for this Present Yeere … M.DC.VII. … Imprinted at London for the Companie of Stationers' (a copy is in the British Museum). 'Necessary observations in Phlebotomie' and 'Advertisements in Husbandrie' are introduced into the work.
- 'A Newe Almanacke and Prognostication for … 1615' (copies are in the Huth Library and the Bodleian).
- 'Opiologia, or a Treatise concerning the nature, properties, true preparation, and safe vse and administration of Opium. By Angelus Sala Vincentines Venatis, and done into English and something enlarged by Tho. Bretnor, M.M.,' London, 1618. This translation, which is made from the French, is dedicated 'to the learned and my worthily respected friends D. Bonham and Maister Nicholas Carter, physitians.' In an address to the reader Bretnor defends the use of laudanum in medicine, promises to prepare for his readers 'the chiefest physicke I vse my selfe,' and mentions his friends 'Herbert Whitfield in Newgate Market,' and 'Maister Bromhall,' as good druggists.
Bretnor was a notorious character in London, and is noticed by Ben Jonson in his 'Devil is an Ass' (1616), i. 2, and by Thomas Middleton in his 'Fair Quarrel' (1617), vi.
[Nares's Glossary (ed. Halliwell), s.v. 'Bretnor; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Middleton's Works (ed. A. H. Bullen), iv. 263.]
BRETON, JOHN le (d. 1275), bishop of Hereford, was chosen bishop about Christmas 1268, being then a canon of Hereford, and was consecrated 2 June 1269. For about two years before this he was a justice of the king's court. He died 12 May 1275. Some fifty years after his death, perhaps sooner, the belief was current that he wrote the book now known to lawyers as ' Britton.' That book (first printed without date about 1540, reprinted in 1640, and carefully edited by F. M. Nichols in 1865) is in the main Bracton's treatise on English law condensed, rearranged on a new plan, purged of speculative jurisprudence, turned from Latin into French, and put into the mouth of Edward I, so that the whole law appears as the king's command. Seemingly, it is an unfinished work, but it became very popular, and was often copied in manuscript. Frequent reference is made in it to statutes passed after the bishop's death, and from the internal evidence we must suppose it written shortly after 1290. Possibly we have but the bishop's book as altered by a later hand, or possibly, as Selden suggested, there has been some confusion between the bishop and the contemporary judge whom we call Bracton [q. v.], but whose name seems really to have been Bratton. The book 'Britton ' might fairly be called a Bracton for practising lawyers, and in fourteenth-century manuscripts the two books are indiscriminately called Bretoun, Brettoune, and the like.
[For election, consecration, and death, see thefollowing Chronicles under years 1268-9, 1275: Gervase of Canterbury (ed. Stubbs); Annals of Winchester, Waverley, Osney. Wykes, and Worcester (all in Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, who, vol. ii. p. xxxvii, discusses date of consecration); Le Neve's Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, ed. Hardy, i. 459-60. For judicial employment: Excerpta e Rotulis Finium (Record Commission), ii. 444-82; Liber de Antiquis Legibus (Camden Society), year 1267. Judge and bishop same man: Ann. Osney, year 1268. The statement that he wrote a law book is in the following, under year 1275: F. Nicolai Triveti Annales (ed. Hog.); Chronicle of Rishanger (ed. Riley); Flores Historiarum Matth. Westm. (ed. 1570, but it is not in the first edition, nor in many manuscripts see Hardy, Catalogue of Materials for British History, iii. 209). The authorship of Britton is discussed by Selden, Notes to Hengham, ed. 1616, pp. 129-31 and Dissertation suffixed to Fleta, pp. 458-9, also in F. M. Nichols's preface to edition (1865) of Britton; Foss's Judges of England.]
BRETON, NICHOLAS (1545?–1626?), poet, was descended from an ancient family originally settled at Layer-Breton, Essex. His grandfather, William Breton of Colchester, died in 1499, and was buried there in the monastery of St. John. His father, also William Breton, was a younger son, came to London and amassed a fortune in trade. His 'capitall mansion house' was in Red Cross Street, in the parish of St. Giles Without Cripplegate, and he owned tenements in other parts of London, besides land in Essex and Lincolnshire. His wife was Elizabeth, daughter of John Bacon, and by her he had two sons,
