Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/403

is of the scantiest description. On the condition of this distinct, indeed, history is almost silent till the 5tl century, when the invasion of Britain by the Saxons was followed by the migration across the channel of large numbers of the defeated islanders. The Breton chronicles contain an account of about a score of dukes from that period to the end of the 8th century ; but how far the names and the narrative are merely mythical it would be hard to deter mine. The one great fact that is clearly evident is, that a violent contest for independence was maintained against the Frankish inroads. Under the early Carlo vingians the country was for a time in rather more than nominal subjection ; but it soon reasserted its independence. The 9th and 10th centuries are mainly remarkable ior the wars that were continually breaking out between Brittany and the rising duchy of Normandy. Though Alan V. of Brittany had been intrusted with the guardianship of the youthful William of Normandy, and had fulfilled his trust to the full, yet under his successors Couau II., Hoel V., and Alan Fergent, the old enmity between the two countries broke out again and again. On the death in 1148 of Conan III., who had been defeated in a contest with his rebellious nobles, the succession was disputed by Hoel VI. andlis brother-in-law, the count of Porhoet. The partizans of the former on their defeat submitted to Henry II. of England, who bestowed the duchy on his brother Geoffrey. Geoffrey s death two years after left the way open to the enterprise of Conan IV., grandson of Conan III., who had made his step-father prisoner, and was gradually obtaining possession of the whole duchy. The new duke, however, was forced not only to give his daughter Constance to Henry s son Geoffrey, but also in tlte long run to abdicate in his favour. On Geoffrey s death in 1186 the duchy became an object of dispute between the English and French kings, the latter being supported by the native nobility. To this rivalry the young duke Arthur fell a victim, murdered, as is usually supposed, by his uncle John of England. His sister Alice succeeded, under the protection of France, and was married to Pierre de Dreux, who thus became the first of a new line of dukes which lasted till the death of Francis II. in 1488. In 1491 the heiress Anne was forced to marry Charles VIII., and thus the duchy was held by the French crown. In 1532 it was formally united to France, but it retained a separate parliament till the Devolution.

Map of Brittany.

Among the historians of Brittany may be mentioned Dom Lobineau, Dom Taillandier, Dom Morice, Dam, andDe Courson. See also Trollope s Summer in Brittany, 1840 ; Mrs Bury Palliser, Brittany and its Byeways, 1869 ; Du Chatellier, L 1 Agriculture et Ics classes ayricolcs de la Brctayne, 1862.

BRITTON, the title of the earliest summary of the law of England in the French tongue, which purports to have been written by command of King Edward I. The origin and authorship of the work have been much disputed. It has been attributed to John le Breton, bishop of Hereford, on the authority of a passage found in some MSS. of the history of Matthew of Westminster ; there are difficulties, however, involved in this theory, inasmuch as the bishop of Hereford died in 1275 (3 Edward I.), whereas allusions are made in Britton to several statutes passed after that time, and more particularly to the well- known statute " Quia emptores terrarum, " which was passed in 18 Edward I. It was the opinion of Selden that the book derived its title from Henry de Bracton, the last of the chief justiciaries, whose name is sometimes spelled in the Fine Rolls Bratton and Bretton, and that it was a royal abridgment of Bracton s great work on the customs and laws of England, with the addition of certain subse quent statutes. The arrangement, however, of the two works is different, and but a small proportion of Bracton s work is incorporated in Britton. The work is entitled in an early MS. of the 14th century, which was once in the possession of Selden, and is now in the Cambridge Uni versity Library, " Summa de leglbus Anglie que vocatur Bretone ;" and it is described as " a book called Bretoun" in the will of Andrew Horn, the learned chamberlain of the city of London, who bequeathed it to the chamber of the Guildhall in 3 Edward III., together with another book called the Mirroir des Jutticei. Britton was first printed in London by Robert Redman, without a date, probably about the year 1530. Another edition of it was printed in 1640, corrected by Edmund Wingate. A third edition of it, with an English translation, has been lately published at the University Press, Oxford, 1865, by F. M. Nicholls, M.A. An English translation of the work without the Latin text had been previously published by R. Kelham in 1762.

BRITTON, John, a topographical and antiquarian writer,

was born at Kingston-St-Michael, near Chippenham, July 7, 1771. His birthplace, an old-world village of the dullest and sleepiest kind, had also the distinction of being the home of the antiquary John Aubrey. His parents were in humble circumstances, and he was left an orphan at an early age. He grew up with no better education than was to be had in the poor schools of his native Wiltshire village and neighbouring places, the last to which he was sent being at Chippenham. At the age of fourteen he became possessed of a small lot of books, and among them were Robinsaii Crusoe, the Pilgrim s Progress, and The Life of

Peter, Czar of Muscovy. At sixteen he went to London,