but with Dutch rule there was general discontent, and when, in 1664, Colonel Richard Nicolls came to overthrow it and establish English rule these towns offered no resistance. Nicolls erected the region composed of Long Island, Staten Island and Westchester into a county under the name of Yorkshire, and divided it into three ridings, of which Staten Island, the present county of Kings, and the town of Newtown in Queens, formed one. In 1683 the present county of Kings was organized by the first colonial legislature. During the War of Independence the chief event was the battle of Long Island, fought on the 27th of August 1776. In 1816, when the population of the town of Brooklyn was about 4500, its most populous section was incorporated as a village; and in 1834, when its population had increased to 23,310, the whole town was incorporated as a city. By 1850 its population had increased to 138,882. In 1855 Williamsburg, which had been incorporated as a city in 1851, and the town of Bushwick were annexed. Other annexations followed until the city of Brooklyn was conterminous with Kings county; and finally, on the 1st of January 1898, the city of Brooklyn became a borough of New York City.
See S. M. Ostrander, A History of Brooklyn and Kings County (Brooklyn, 1894); H. W. B. Howard (ed.), History of the City of Brooklyn (Brooklyn, 1893); and H. Putnam, Brooklyn, in L. P. Powell’s Historic Towns of the Middle States (New York, 1899).
BROOKS, CHARLES WILLIAM SHIRLEY (1816–1874), English novelist, playwright and journalist, was born on the 29th of April 1816. He was the son of a London architect, and was articled in 1832 to a solicitor for five years. He became parliamentary reporter for the Morning Chronicle, and in 1853 was sent by that paper as special commissioner to investigate the subject of labour and the poor in southern Russia, Egypt and Syria; the result of his inquiries appearing first in the form of letters to the editor, and afterwards in a separate volume, under the title of The Russians of the South (1856). He wrote, sometimes alone, sometimes in conjunction with others, slight dramatic pieces of the burlesque kind, among which may be mentioned Anything for a Change (1848), The Daughter of the Stars (1850). Brooks was for many years on the staff of the Illustrated London News, contributing the weekly article on the politics of the day, and the two series entitled “Nothing in the Papers” and “By the Way.” In 1851 he joined the staff of Punch, and noteworthy among his numerous contributions were the weekly satirical summaries of the parliamentary debates, entitled “The Essence of Parliament.” His long service as newspaper reporter gave him special aptitude for this playful parody. In 1870, on the death of Mark Lemon, “dear old Shirley,” as his friends used to call him, was chosen to succeed to the editorial chair. His first novel, Aspen Court, was published in 1855. It was followed by The Gordian Knot (1860), The Silver Cord (1861) and Sooner or Later (1868). Brooks was a great letter-writer, deliberately cultivating the practice as an art, and imitating the style in vogue before newspapers and telegraphs suppressed private letters. He had an astonishing memory, was brilliant as an epigrammatist, was a great reader and a most genial companion. He was in his element with a group of children, reading to them, sharing their fun and always remembering the birthdays. He died in London, on the 23rd of February 1874, and was buried near his friends Leech and Thackeray, in Kensal Green cemetery.
See G. S. Layard, A Great “Punch” Editor: Being the Life, Letters and Diaries of Shirley Brooks (1907.)
BROOKS, PHILLIPS (1835–1893), American clergyman and author, was born in Boston, Mass., on the 13th of December 1835. Through his father, William Gray Brooks, he was descended from the Rev. John Cotton; through his mother, Mary Ann Phillips, a woman of rare force of character and religious faith, he was a great-grandson of the founder of Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. Of the six sons, four—Phillips, Frederic, Arthur and John Cotton—entered the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Phillips Brooks prepared for college at the Boston Latin school and graduated at Harvard in 1855. After a short and unsuccessful experience as a teacher in the Boston Latin school, he began in 1856 to study for the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the theological seminary at Alexandria, Virginia. In 1859 he graduated, was ordained deacon by Bishop William Meade of Virginia, and became rector of the church of the Advent, Philadelphia. In 1860 he was ordained priest, and in 1862 became rector of the church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, where he remained seven years, gaining an increasing name as preacher and patriot. Endowed by inheritance with a rich religious character, evangelical traditions, ethical temper and strong intellect, he developed, by wide reading in ancient and modern literature, a personality and attitude of mind which appealed to the characteristic thought and life of the period. With Tennyson, Coleridge, Frederic D. Maurice and F. W. Robertson he was in strong sympathy. During the Civil War he upheld with power the cause of the North and the negro, and his sermon on the death of President Lincoln was an eloquent expression of the character of both men. In 1869 he became rector of Trinity church, Boston. In 1877 the present church was finished, the architect being his friend H. H. Richardson. Here Phillips Brooks preached Sunday after Sunday to great congregations, until he was consecrated bishop of Massachusetts in 1891. In 1886 he declined an election as assistant bishop of Pennsylvania. He was for many years an overseer and preacher of Harvard University, his influence upon the religious life of the university being deep and wide. In 1881 he declined an invitation to be the sole preacher to the university and professor of Christian ethics. On the 30th of April 1891 he was elected sixth bishop of Massachusetts, and on the 14th of October was consecrated to that office in Trinity church, Boston. After a brief but great episcopate of fifteen months, he died, unmarried, on the 23rd of January 1893. Phillips Brooks was a tall, well-proportioned man of fine physique, his height being six feet four inches. In character he was pure, simple, endowed with excellent judgment and a keen sense of humour, and quick to respond to any call for sympathy. When kindled by his subject it seemed to take possession of him and pour itself out with overwhelming speed of utterance, with heat and power. His sympathy with men of other ways and thought, and with the truth in other ecclesiastical systems gained for him the confidence and affection of men of varied habits of mind and religious traditions, and was thus a great factor in gaining increasing support for the Episcopal Church. As years went by his influence as a religious leader became unique. The degree of S.T.D. had been conferred upon him by the universities of Harvard (1877), and of Columbia (1887), and the degree of D.D. by the university of Oxford, England (1885). In 1877 he published a course of lectures upon preaching, which he had delivered at the theological school of Yale University, and which are an expression of his own experience. In 1879 appeared the Bohlen Lectures on “The Influence of Jesus.” In 1878 he published his first volume of sermons, and from time to time issued other volumes, including Sermons Preached in English Churches (1883).
In 1901, at New York, was published, in two volumes, Phillips Brooks, Life and Letters, by the Rev. A. V. G. Allen, D.D., professor of ecclesiastical history, Episcopal Theological school, Cambridge, Mass., who in 1907 published at New York, in a single volume, Phillips Brooks, an abbreviation and revision of the earlier biography. (W. L.)
BROOKS’S, a London club in St James’s Street. It was founded in 1764 by the dukes of Roxburghe and Portland. The building had been previously opened as a gaming-house by William Macall (Almack), and afterwards by Brooks, a wine merchant and money-lender, whose name it retained.
BROOM, known botanically as Cytisus, or Sarothamnus, scoparius, a member of the natural order Leguminosae, a shrub found on heaths and commons in the British Isles, and also in Europe (except the north) and temperate Asia. The leaves are small, and the function of carbon-assimilating is shared by the green stems. The bright yellow flowers scatter their pollen by an explosive mechanism; the weight of a bee alighting on the flower causes the keel to split and the pollen to be shot out on to the insect’s body. When ripe the black pods explode with a
