Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 07.djvu/41

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Brown
35
Brown

the 'Orthodox Journal' very many articles and letters signed with his then well-known initials, S[acre] T[heologiæ] P[rofessor]. In 1858 he obtained permission from the holy see that his cathedral chapter should be formed exclusively of Benedictine monks. He thus succeeded in reviving under the new hierarchy one of the most remarkable and distinctive features of the pre-reformation hierarchy of England. On 29 Sept. 1873 John Cuthbert Hedley was consecrated bishop auxiliary, and seven years later was his successor in the see of Newport and Menevia. Before the close of his life Brown was for many years the senior member of the English catholic episcopate. For forty years together he was in a very literal and primitive sense a bishop in poverty. Rising all through his long life invariably at 5 a.m., he persistently travelled, preached, wrote, saved, and begged for his flock. And with such good effect did he spend himself in their interests that, instead of the nineteen chapels and nineteen priests he had found in his huge vicariate of the Welsh district, he left in his comparatively much smaller diocese of Newport and Menevia fifty-eight churches and sixty-two priests. Brown died on 12 April 1880, shortly before the completion of his eighty-second year, at his resiaence in Bullinham, Herefordshire.

[Snow's Necrology of the English Benedictines from 1600 to 1883, p. 174; Men of the Time, 10th ed., p. 153; Maziere Brady's Episcopal Succession, pp. 337, 354, 424–6 ; Oliver's Colluections illustrating the History of the Catholic Religion, &c., pp. 262, 253; The Downside Review, No. 1, July 1880, Memoir, pp. 4–16; Annual Register for 1880, p. 160; Tablet, 17 April 1880, p. 498 ; Weekly Register, 17 April 1880, pp. 241,246.]

C. K.


BROWN or BROWNE, ULYSSES MAXIMILIAN von (1705–1757), count of the holy Roman empire, baron de Camus and Mountany, and field-marshal in the imperialist armies, was son of Ulysses, baron Brown, an Irish colonel of cavalry in the Austrian army ennobled for his military services by the emperor Charles V, and was born at Basle on 23 Oct. 1705. He entered the imperial service at an early age and distinguished himself on several occasions. At the age of twenty-one he married the young Countess Marie Philippine von Martinez, daughter of George Adam Martinez, who for a short time was imperial vicegerent in the kingdom of Naples. Brown's influential connections, as well as his personal merits, secured his rapid advancement. At twenty-nine he commanded an Austrian infantry regiment in Italy, and a few years later, on the accession of the empress Maria Theresa, he was advanced to the rank of field-marshal lieutenant and appointed to command in Silesia. In the campaigns in Italy in 1743–8 he greatly distinguished himself, particularly at the battle of Piacenza, where he commanded the Austrian left, and mainly contributed to the success of the day. When the Austrians moved southward the city of Genoa opened its gates to him, and he subsequently commanded the imperialist troops that crossed the Var and entered France, establishing their outposts a few miles from Toulon. His withdrawal from Genoa was considered a masterly operation. After the convention of Nizza in 1749 he returned to Vienna, and held commands in Transylvania and Bohemia. He became a field-marshal in 1763. At the outbreak of the seven years' war he was in Silesia, and commanded the Austrians at the battle of Lobositz. Believing a dual command, as proposed by Maria Theresa, to be prejudicial to public interests, Brown offered to serve under the orders of Prince Charles of Lorraine, the empress's favourite, in Bohemia, and there, while heading a bayonet-charge of grenadiers on the Prussian line before the walls of Prague, on 6 May 1757, was struck by a cannon-shot, which shattered one of his legs. He was carried from the field, and died of his wound at Prague on 26 June following, leaving behind him the reputation of a consummate general and an able and successful negotiator. His biography was published in German and in French in 1757.

[Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (Leipzig, 1876), iii. 369-73, the particulars in which are taken from Zuverlässige Lebensbeschreibung von U. M. Count von Brown (Leipzig and Frankfort, 1757); Baron O'Cahill's Geschichte der grössten Heerführer der neueren Zeit (Rastadt, 1785), ii. 264–316. English readers will find compendious notices of Count Brown's military operations in Sir E. Gust's Annals of the Wars of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1860–1); Carlyle's Frederick the Great.]

H. M. C.


BROWN, WILLIAM (d. 1814), rear-admiral, of an old Leicestershire family, was made a lieutenant in the navy in 1788, and a commander in 1792, when he came home from the Mediterranean in command of the Zebra sloop. After sixteen months' uneventful service on the home station, in command of the Kingfisher and Fly sloops, he was advanced to post rank on 29 Oct. 1793. In 1794 he commanded the Venus frigate in the Channel fleet under Lord Howe, and in her was present at the action of 1 June, but without any opportunity of distinction. In 1795 he commanded the Alcmène, and,