of the Common Law Procedure Commission, which resulted in the Common Law Procedure Act of 1852. This act he drafted jointly with his friend Mr (afterwards Mr Justice) Willes, and thus began the abolition of the system of special pleading. In 1851 Lord Cranworth made Bramwell a queen’s counsel, and the Inner Temple elected him a bencher—he had ceased to be a member of Lincoln’s Inn in 1841. In 1853 he served on the royal commission to inquire into the assimilation of the mercantile laws of Scotland and England and the law of partnership, which had as its result the Companies Act of 1862. It was he who, during the sitting of this commission, suggested the addition of the word “limited” to the title of companies that sought to limit their liability, in order to prevent the obvious danger to persons trading with them in ignorance of their limitation of liability. As a queen’s counsel Bramwell enjoyed a large and steadily increasing practice, and in 1856 he was raised to the bench as a baron of the court of exchequer. In 1867, with Mr Justice Blackburn and Sir John Coleridge, he was made a member of the judicature commission. In 1871 he was one of the three judges who refused the seat on the judicial committee of the privy council to which Sir Robert Collier, in evasion of the spirit of the act creating the appointment, was appointed; and in 1876 he was raised to the court of appeal, where he sat till the autumn of 1881. As a puisne judge he had been conspicuous as a sound lawyer, with a strong logical mind unfettered by technicalities, but endowed with considerable respect for the common law. His rulings were always clear and decisive, while the same quality marked his dealings with fact, and, coupled with a straightforward, unpretentious manner, gave him great influence with juries. In the court of appeal he was perhaps not so entirely in his element as at nisi prius, but the same combination of sound law, strong common sense and clear expression characterized his judgments. His decisions during the three stages of his practical career are too numerous to be referred to particularly, although Ryder v. Wombwell (L. R. 3 Ex. 95); R. v. Bradshaw (14 Cox C. C. 84); Household Fire Insurance Company v. Grant (4 Ex. Div. 216); Stonor v. Fowle (13 App. Cas. 20), The Bank of England v. Vagliano Brothers (App. Cas. 1891) are good examples. Upon his retirement, announced in the long vacation of 1881, twenty-six judges and a huge gathering of the bar entertained him at a banquet in the Inner Temple hall. In December of the same year he was raised to the peerage, taking the title Baron Bramwell of Hever, from his home in Kent. In private life Bramwell had simple tastes and enjoyed simple pleasures. He was musical and fond of sports. He was twice married: in 1830 to Jane (d. 1836), daughter of Bruno Silva, by whom he had one daughter, and in 1861 to Martha Sinden. He died on the 9th of May 1892.
His younger brother, Sir Frederick Bramwell (1818–1903), was a well-known consulting engineer and “expert witness.”
At all times Lord Bramwell had been fond of controversy and controversial writing, and he wrote constant letters to The Times over the signature B. (he also signed himself at different times Bramwell, G. B. and L. L.). He joined in 1882 the Liberty and Property Defence League, and some of his writings after that date took the form of pamphlets published by that society.
BRAN, in Celtic legend, the name of (1) the hero of the Welsh Mabinogi of Branwen, who dies in the attempt to avenge his sister’s wrongs; he is the son of Llyr (= the Irish sea-god Ler), identified with the Irish Bran mac Allait, Allait being a synonym of Ler; (2) the son of Febal, known only through the 8th-century Irish epic, The Voyage of Bran (to the world below); (3) the dog of Ossian’s Fingal. Bran also appears as a historical name, Latinized as Brennus. See Kuno Meyer and D. Nutt, The Voyage of Bran (London, 1895).
BRAN, the ground husk of wheat, oats, barley or other cereals, used for feeding cattle, packing and other purposes (see Flour). The word occurs in French bren or bran, in the dialects of other Romanic languages, and also in Celtic, cf. Breton brenn, Gaelic bran. The New English Dictionary considers these Celtic forms to be borrowed from French or English. In modern French bren means filth, refuse, and this points to some connexion with Celtic words, e.g. Irish brean, manure. If so, the original meaning would be refuse. “Bran-new,” i.e. quite new, is now the common form of “brand-new,” that which is fresh from the “brand,” the branding-iron used for marking objects, &c.
BRANCH (from the Fr. branche, late Lat. branca, an animal’s paw), a limb of a tree; hence any offshoot, e.g. of a river, railway, &c., of a deer’s antlers, of a family or genealogical tree, and generally a subdivision or department, as in “a branch of learning.” The phrase, to destroy “root and branch,” meaning to destroy utterly, taken originally from Malachi iv. 1, was made famous in 1641 by the so-called “Root and Branch” Bill and Petition for the abolition of episcopal government, in which petition occurred the sentence, “That the said government, with all its dependencies, roots and branches, be destroyed.” Among technical senses of the word “branch” are: the certificate of proficiency given to pilots by Trinity House; and in siege-craft a length of trench forming part of a zigzag approach.
BRANCO, or Parima, a river of northern Brazil and tributary of the Rio Negro, formed by the confluence of the Takutú, or “Upper Rio Branco,” and Uraricoera, about 3° N. lat. and 60° 28′ W. long., and flowing south by west to a junction with the Negro. It has rapids in its upper course, but the greater part of its length of 348 m. is navigable for steamers of light draught. The Takutú rises in the Roraima and Coïrrit ranges on the Guiana frontier, while the Uraricoera rises in the Serra de Parima, on the Venezuelan frontier, and has a length of 360 m. before reaching the Branco. These are white water rivers, from which the Branco (white) derives its name, and at its junction with the Negro the two differently-coloured streams flow side by side for some distance before mingling.
BRANCOVAN, or Brancoveanu, the name of a family which has played an important part in the history of Rumania. It was of Servian origin and was connected with the family of Branko or Brankovich. Constantine Brancovan, the most eminent member of the family, was born in 1654, and became prince of Walachia in 1689. In consequence of his anti-Turkish policy of forming an alliance first with Austria and then with Russia, he was denounced to the Porte, deposed from his throne, brought under arrest to Constantinople and imprisoned (1710) in the fortress of Yedi Kuleh (Seven Towers). Here he was tortured by the Turks, who hoped thus to discover the fortune of £3,000,000, which Constantine was alleged to have amassed. He was beheaded with his four sons on the 26th of August 1714. His faithful friend Enake Vacarescu shared his fate. Constantine Brancovan became, through his tragic death, the hero of Rumanian popular ballads. His family founded and endowed the largest hospital in Walachia, the so-called Spital Brancovanescu.
See O. G. Lecca, Familiile Boereşti Române (Bucharest, 1899), p. 90, sqq. (M. G.)
BRAND, JOHN (1744–1806), English antiquary, was born on the 19th of August 1744 at Washington, Durham, where his father was parish clerk. His early years were spent at Newcastle-on-Tyne with his uncle, a cordwainer, to whom he was apprentice in his fourteenth year. Showing promise, however, at Newcastle grammar school, friends interested themselves in him and assisted him to go to Oxford. It was not, however, until his twenty-eighth year that he matriculated at Lincoln College, but before this he had been ordained, holding in succession the curacies of Bolam, Northumberland, of St Andrew’s, Newcastle, and of Cramlington, 8 m. from the county town. He graduated in 1775 and two years later was elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Having for a short time been under-usher at the Newcastle grammar school, the duke of Northumberland, a former patron, gave him in 1784 the rectory of the combined parishes of St Mary-at-Hill and St Mary Hubbard, London. Appointed secretary to the Society of Antiquaries in the same year, he was annually re-elected until his death in 1806. He was buried in the chancel of his church. His most important work is Observations on Popular Antiquities: including the whole of Mr Bourne’s “Antiquitates Vulgares,” with addenda to every chapter of that work. This was published in London in 1777, and after Brand’s death, a new edition embodying the MSS. left by him, was published by Sir Henry Ellis in 1813. Brand also published
