preaching is printed as part of the service at the ordination of Jonathan Evans at Foleshill in 1797, and Brewer's oration at the burial of Samuel Pearce at Birmingham was printed with Dr. Rylands's sermon on the same occasion in 1799. Brewer is now remembered only by a single hymn, printed with the signature of 'Sylvestris' in the 'Gospel Magazine,' 1776. A portrait of him was inserted in the 'Christian's Magazine,' 1791. A different portrait of him appeared in the 'Evangelical Magazine' in 1799.
[Evangelical Magazine, October 1817; Bishop's Christian Memorials of the Nineteenth Century, 1826; Gadsby's Hymn Writers, 1855.]
BREWER, JOHN, D.D. (1744–1822), an English Benedictine monk, who assumed in religion the Christian name of Bede, was born in 1744. In 1776 he was appointed to the mission at Bath. He built a new chapel in St. James's Parade in that city, and it was to have been opened on 11 June 1780, but the delegates from Lord George Gordon's 'No Popery' association so inflamed the fanaticism of the mob that on 9 June the edifice was demolished, as well as the presbytery in Bell-tree Lane. The registers, diocesan archives, and Bishop Walmesley's library and manuscripts perished in the flames; and Dr. Brewer had a narrow escape from the fury of the rioters. The ringleader was tried and executed, and Dr. Brewer recovered 3,736l. damages from the hundred of Bath.
In 1781 the duties of president of his brethren called Dr. Brewer away from Bath. Subsequently Woolton, near Liverpool, became his principal place of residence, and there he died on 18 April 1822.
He brought out the second edition of the Abbé Luke Joseph Hooke's 'Religio Naturalis et Revelata,' 3 vols., Paris, 1774, 8vo, to which he added several dissertations.
[Oliver's Hist, of the Catholic Religion in Cornwall, 56, 508; Biog. Univ. Suppl. lxvii. 291.]
BREWER, JOHN SHERREN (1810–1879), historical writer, was the son of a Norwich schoolmaster who bore the same Christian names. His family originally belonged to Kent. His father was brought up in the church of England, but became a baptist. He was a good biblical scholar, and devoted his leisure to the study of Hebrew. He had a large family, but only four sons grew up, of whom John Sherren, the eldest, notwithstanding his father's nonconformist leanings, was sent to Oxford, where, having joined the church of England, he entered Queen's College, and obtained a first class in literis humanioribus in 1832. In his Oxford years every one seems to have been struck with the extraordinary range of his reading. For a short time he remained at the university as a private tutor, but he shut himself out from a fellowship by an early marriage. In 1870 he was elected honorary fellow of Queen's College. During this time (1836) he brought out an edition of Aristotle's 'Ethics.' His domestic life was soon clouded, first by a great change of circumstances, his father-in-law having lost a fortune; afterwards by the death and infirmity of some of his children. He removed to London, where he took deacon's orders in 1837, and was the same day appointed chaplain to the workhouse of the united parishes of St. Giles-in-the-Fields and St. George, Bloomsbury.
He had been strongly influenced by the Oxford movement of those days, and retained to the last, notwithstanding differences, a very warm regard for its leader, Cardinal Newman. He devoted himself to the duties of his chaplaincy with a zeal which was gratefully remembered by old persons forty years after. One result of his experience was a lecture on workhouse visiting, which is included in a volume entitled 'Lectures to Ladies on Practical Subjects,' published in 1855. He valued highly, but not fantastically, the artistic element in religious worship, and from the first taught the boys, and even some of the older inmates, of the workhouse to sing the psalms to the Gregorian chants. When the church adjoining the workhouse in Endell Street was built, it was proposed that the chaplaincy should be united with the incumbency, and that Brewer should be the first incumbent. He took great interest in the architecture, making models with his own hand in cardboard and bark. But a difference of opinion with the rector of St. Giles prevented his appointment, and made him resign the chaplaincy, after which, though he assisted other clergymen at times, he for many years held no cure.
Meanwhile, for a short time he found some employment in the British Museum. Before leaving Oxford, he had drawn up for the Record Commission a catalogue of the manuscripts in some of the colleges there. In 1839 he was appointed lecturer in classical literature at King's College, London. His friend, the Rev. F. D. Maurice, became professor of English literature and modern history the year after; and from that time, notwithstanding some differences in their views, he most cordially co-operated with him in many things. After the removal of Mr. Maurice from King's
