Part 45

_Distribution._--Brachiopods first appear in the Lower Cambrian, and reached their highest development in the Silurian, from which upwards of 2000 species are known, and were nearly as numerous in the Devonian period; at present they are represented by some 140 recent species. The following have been found in the British area, as defined by A.M. Norman, _Terebratulina caput-serpentis_ L., _Terebratula (Gwynia) capsula_ Jeff., _Magellania (Macandrevia) cranium_ Mull., _M. septigera_ Loven, _Terebratella spitzbergenensis_ Dav., _Megathyris decollata_ Chemn., _Cistella cistellula_ S. Wood, _Cryptopora gnomon_ Jeff., _Rhynchonella (Hemithyris) psittacea_ Gmel., _Crania anomala_ Mull., and _Discinisca atlantica_ King. About one-half the 120 existing species are found above the 100-fathoms line. Below 150 fathoms they are rare, but a few such as _Terebratulina wyvillei_ are found down to 2000 fathoms. _Lingula_ is essentially a very shallow water form. As a rule the genera of the northern hemisphere differ from those of the southern. A large number of specimens of a species are usually found together, since their only mode of spreading is during the ciliated larval stage, which although it swims vigorously can only cover a few millimetres an hour; still it may be carried some little distance by currents.

Undue stress is often laid on the fact that _Lingula_ has come down to us apparently unchanged since Cambrian times, whilst _Crania_, and forms very closely resembling _Discina_ and _Rhynchonella_, are found from the Ordovician strata onwards. The former statement is, however, true of animals from other classes at least as highly organized as Brachiopods, e.g. the Gasteropod _Capulus_, whilst most of the invertebrate classes were represented in the Ordovician by forms which do not differ from their existing representatives in any important respect.

A full bibliography of Brachiopoda (recent and fossil) is to be found in Davidson's Monograph of British Fossil Brachiopods, _Pal. Soc. Mon._ vi., 1886. The Monograph on Recent Brachiopoda, by the same author, _Tr. Linn. Soc. London_, Zool. ser. ii. vol. iv., 1886-1888, must on no account be omitted. (A. E. S.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Subgenera are indicated by round, synonyms by square brackets.

BRACHISTOCHRONE (from the Gr. [Greek: brachistos], shortest, and [Greek: chronos], time), a term invented by John Bernoulli in 1694 to denote the curve along which a body passes from one fixed point to another in the shortest time. When the directive force is constant, the curve is a cycloid (q.v.); under other conditions, spirals and other curves are described (see MECHANICS).

BRACHYCEPHALIC (Gr. for short-headed), a term invented by Andreas Retzius to denote those skulls of which the width from side to side was little less than the length from front to back, their ratio being as 80 to 100, as in those of the Mongolian type. Thus taking the length as 100, if the width exceeds 80, the skull is to be classed as brachycephalic. The prevailing form of the head of civilized races is brachycephalic. It is supposed that a brachycephalic race inhabited Europe before the Celts. Among those peoples whose heads show marked brachycephaly are the Indo-Chinese, the Savoyards, Croatians, Bavarians, Lapps, Burmese, Armenians and Peruvians. (See CRANIOMETRY.)

BRACKYLOGUS (from Gr. [Greek: brachys], short, and [Greek: logos], word), title applied in the middle of the 16th century to a work containing a systematic exposition of the Roman law, which some writers have assigned to the reign of the emperor Justinian, and others have treated as an apocryphal work of the 16th century. The earliest extant edition of this work was published at Lyons in 1549, under the title of _Corpus Legum per modum Institutionum_; and the title _Brachylogus totius Juris Civilis_ appears for the first time in an edition published at Lyons in 1553. The origin of the work may be referred with great probability to the 12th century. There is internal evidence that it was composed subsequently to the reign of Louis le Debonnaire (778-840), as it contains a Lombard law of that king's, which forbids the testimony of a clerk to be received against a layman. On the other hand its style and reasoning is far superior to that of the law writers of the 10th and 11th centuries; while the circumstance that the method of its author has not been in the slightest degree influenced by the school of the Gloss-writers (Glossatores) leads fairly to the conclusion that he wrote before that school became dominant at Bologna. Savigny, who traced the history of the _Brachylogus_ with great care, is disposed to think that it is the work of Irnerius himself (_Geschichte des rom. Rechts im Mittelalter_). Its value is chiefly historical, as it furnishes evidence that a knowledge of Justinian's legislation was always maintained in northern Italy. The author of the work has adopted the _Institutes_ of Justinian as the basis of it, and draws largely on the _Digest_, the _Code_ and the _Novels_; while certain passages, evidently taken from the _Sententiae Receptae_ of Julius Paulus, imply that the author was also acquainted with the Visigothic code of Roman law compiled by order of Alaric II.

An edition by E. Bocking was published at Berlin in 1829, under the title of _Corpus Legum sive Brachylogus Juris Civilis_. See also H. Fitting, _Uber die Heimath und das Alter des sogenannten Brachylogus_ (Berlin, 1880).

BRACKET, in architecture and carpentering, a projecting feature either in wood or metal for holding things together or supporting a shelf. The same feature in stone is called a "console" (q.v.). In furniture it is a small ornamental shelf for a wall or a corner, to bear knick-knacks, china or other bric-a-brac. The word has been referred to "brace," clamp, Lat. _bracchium_, arm, but the earliest form "bragget" (1580) points to the true derivation from the Fr. _braguette_, or Span. _bragueta_ (Lat. _bracae_, breeches), used both of the front part of a pair of breeches and of the architectural feature. The sense development is not clear, but it has no doubt been influenced by the supposed connexion with "brace."

BRACKET-FUNGI. The term "bracket" has been given to those hard, woody fungi that grow on trees or timber in the form of semicircular brackets. They belong to the order _Polyporeae_, distinguished by the layer of tubes or pores on the under surface within which the spores are borne. The mycelium, or vegetable part of the fungus, burrows in the tissues of the tree, and often destroys it; the "bracket" represents the fruiting stage, and produces innumerable spores which gain entrance to other trees by some wound or cut surface; hence the need of careful forestry. Many of these woody fungi persist for several years, and a new layer of pores is superposed on the previous season's growth.

BRACKLESHAM BEDS, in geology, a series of clays and marls, with sandy and lignitic beds, in the Middle Eocene of the Hampshire Basin, England. They are well developed in the Isle of Wight and on the mainland opposite; and receive their name from their occurrence at Bracklesham in Sussex. The thickness of the deposit is from 100 to 400 ft. Fossil mollusca are abundant, and fossil fish are to be found, as well as the _Palaeophis_, a sea-snake. Nummulites and other foraminifera also occur. The Bracklesham Beds lie between the Barton Clay above and the Bournemouth Beds, Lower Bagshot, below. In the London Basin these beds are represented only by thin sandy clays In the Middle Bagshot group. In the Paris Basin the "Calcaire grossier" lies upon the same geological horizon.

See F. Dixon, _Geology of Sussex_ (new ed., 1878); F.E. Edwards and S.V. Wood, "Monograph of Eocene Mollusca," _Palaeontographical Soc._ vol. i. (1847-1877); "Geology of the Isle of Wight," _Mem. Geol. Survey_ (2nd ed., 1889); C. Reid, "The Geology of the Country around Southampton," _Mem. Geol. Survey_ (1902).

BRACKLEY, THOMAS EGERTON, VISCOUNT (c. 1540-1617), English lord chancellor, was a natural son of Sir Richard Egerton of Ridley, Cheshire. The exact date of his birth is unrecorded, but, according to Wood,[1] when he became a commoner at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1556, he was about seventeen. He entered Lincoln's Inn in 1559, and was called to the bar in 1572, being chosen a governor of the society in 1580, Lent reader in 1582, and treasurer in 1588. He early obtained legal renown and a large practice, and tradition relates that his skilful conduct of a case against the crown gained the notice of Elizabeth, who is reported to have declared: "In my troth he shall never plead against me again." Accordingly, on the 26th of June 1581, he was made solicitor-general. He represented Cheshire in the parliaments of 1585 and 1586, but in his official capacity he often attended in the House of Lords. On the 3rd of March 1589 the Commons desired that he should return to their house, the Lords refusing on the ground that he was called by the queen's writ to attend in the Lords before his election by the House of Commons.[2] He took part in the trial of Mary, queen of Scots, in 1586, and advised that in her indictment she should only be styled "commonly called queen of Scots," to avoid scruples about judging a sovereign. He conducted several other state prosecutions. On the 2nd of June 1592 he was appointed attorney-general, and was knighted and made chamberlain of Chester in 1593. On the 10th of April 1594 he became master of the rolls, and on the 6th of May 1596 lord keeper of the great seal and a privy councillor, remaining, however, a commoner as Sir Thomas Egerton, and presiding in the Lords as such during the whole reign of Elizabeth. He kept in addition the mastership of the rolls, the whole work of the chancery during this period falling on his shoulders and sometimes causing inconvenience to suitors[3]. His promotion was welcomed from all quarters. "I think no man," wrote a contemporary to Essex, "ever came to this dignity with more applause than this worthy gentleman."[4]

Egerton became one of the queen's most trusted advisers and one of the greatest and most striking figures at her court. He was a leading member of the numerous special commissions, including the ecclesiastical commission, and was the queen's interpreter in her communications to parliament. In 1598 he was employed as a commissioner for negotiating with the Dutch, obtaining great credit by the treaty then effected, and in 1600 in the same capacity with Denmark. In 1597, in consequence of his unlawful marriage with his second wife, in a private house without banns, the lord keeper incurred a sentence of excommunication, and was obliged to obtain absolution from the bishop of London.[5] He was a firm friend of the noble but erratic and unfortunate Essex. He sought to moderate his violence and rashness, and after the scene in the council in July 1598, when the queen struck Essex and bade him go and be hanged, he endeavoured to reconcile him to the queen in an admirable letter which has often been printed.[6] On the arrival of Essex in London without leave from Ireland, and his consequent disgrace, he supported the queen's just authority, avoiding at the same time any undue severity to the offender. Essex was committed to his custody in York House from the 1st of October 1599 till the 5th of July 1600, when the lord keeper used his influence to recover for him the queen's favour and gave him kindly warnings concerning the necessity for caution in his conduct. On the 5th of June 1600 he presided over the court held at his house, which deprived Essex of his offices except that of master of the horse, treating him with leniency, not pressing the charge of treason but only that of disobedience, and interrupting him with kind intentions when he attempted to justify himself. After the trial he tried in vain to bring Essex to a sense of duty. On the 8th of February 1601, the day fixed for the rebellion, the lord keeper with other officers of state visited Essex at Essex House to demand the reason of the tumultuous assemblage. His efforts to persuade Essex to speak with him privately and explain his "griefs," and to refrain from violence, and his appeal to the company to depart peacefully on their allegiance, were ineffectual, and he was imprisoned by Essex for six hours, the mob calling out to kill him and to throw the great seal out of the window. Subsequently he abandoned all hope of saving Essex, and took an active part in his trial. On the 13th of February he made a speech in the Star Chamber, exposing the wickedness of the rebellion, and of the plot of Thomas Lea to surprise Elizabeth at her chamber door.[7] In July 1602, a few months before her death, Elizabeth visited the lord keeper at his house at Harefield in Middlesex, and he was one of those present during her last hours who received her faltering intimation as to her successor.

On the accession of James I., Sir Thomas Egerton was reappointed lord keeper, resigning the mastership of the rolls in May 1603, and the chamberlainship of Chester in August. On the 21st of July he was created Baron Ellesmere, and on the 24th lord chancellor. His support of the king's prerogative was too faithful and undiscriminating. He approved of the harsh penalty inflicted upon Oliver St John in 1615 for denying the legality of benevolences, and desired that his sentencing of the prisoner "might be his last work to conclude his services."[8] In May 1613 he caused the committal of Whitelocke to the Fleet for questioning the authority of the earl marshal's court. In 1604 he came into collision with the House of Commons. Sir Francis Goodwin, an outlaw, having been elected for Buckinghamshire contrary to the king's proclamation, the chancellor cancelled the return when made according to custom into chancery, and issued writs for a new election. The Commons, however, considering their privileges violated, restored Goodwin to his seat, and though the matter was in the present instance compromised by the choice of a third party, they secured for the future the right of judging in their own elections. He was at one with James in desiring to effect the union between England and Scotland, and served on the commission in 1604; and the English merchants who opposed the union and community of trade with the Scots were "roundly shaken by him." In 1608, in the great case of the Post Nati, he decided, with the assistance of the fourteen judges, that those born after the accession of James I. to the throne of England were English subjects and capable of holding lands in England; and he compared the two dissentient judges to the apostle Thomas, whose doubts only confirmed the faith of the rest. He did not, however, always show obedience to the king's wishes. He opposed the latter's Spanish policy, and in July 1615, in spite of James's most peremptory commands and threats, refused to put the great seal to the pardon of Somerset. In May 1616 he officiated as high steward in the trial of the latter and his countess for the murder of Overbury. He was a rigid churchman, hostile to both the Puritans and the Roman Catholics. He fully approved of the king's unfriendly attitude towards the former, adopted at the Hampton Court conference in 1604, and declared, in admiration of James's theological reasoning on this occasion, that he had never understood before the meaning of the legal maxim, _Rex est mixta persona cum sacerdote_. In 1605 he opposed the petition for the restitution of deprived Puritan ministers, and obtained an opinion from the judges that the petition was illegal. He supported the party of Abbot against Laud at Oxford, and represented to the king the unfitness of the latter to be president of St John's College. In 1605 he directed the judges to enforce the penal laws against the Roman Catholics.

His vigorous and active public career closed with a great victory gained over the common law and his formidable antagonist, Sir Edward Coke. The chancellor's court of equity had originated in the necessity for a tribunal to decide cases not served by the common law, and to relax and correct the rigidity and insufficiency of the latter's procedure. The two jurisdictions had remained bitter rivals, the common-law bar complaining of the arbitrary and unrestricted powers of the chancellor, and the equity lawyers censuring and ridiculing the failures of justice in the courts of common law. The disputes between the courts, concerning which the king had already in 1615 remonstrated with the chancellor and Sir Edward Coke,[9] the lord chief justice, came to a crisis in 1616, when the court of chancery granted relief against judgments at common law in the cases of _Heath v. Rydley_ and _Courtney v. Granvil_. This relief was declared by Coke and other judges sitting with him to be illegal, and a counter-attack was made by a praemunire, brought against the parties concerned in the suit in chancery. The grand jury, however, refused to bring in a true bill against them, in spite of Coke's threats and assurances that the chancellor was dead, and the dispute was referred to the king himself, who after consulting his counsel and on Bacon's advice decided in favour of equity. The chancellor's triumph was a great one, and from this time the equitable jurisdiction of the court of chancery was unquestioned. In June 1616 he supported the king in his dispute with and dismissal of Coke in the case of the _commendams_, agreeing with Bacon that it was the judge's duty to communicate with the king, before giving judgments in which his interests were concerned, and in November warned the new lord chief justice against imitating the errors of his predecessor and especially his love of "popularity."[10] Writing in 1609 to Salisbury, the chancellor had described Coke (who had long been a thorn in his flesh) as a "frantic, turbulent and idle broken brayned fellow," apologizing for so often troubling Salisbury on this subject, "no fit exercise for a chancellor and a treasurer."[11] He now summoned Coke before him and communicated to him the king's dissatisfaction with his _Reports_, desiring, however, to be spared further service in his disgracing. After several petitions for leave to retire through failing health, he at last, on the 3rd of March 1617, delivered up to James the great seal, which he had held continuously for the unprecedented term of nearly twenty-one years. On the 7th of November 1616 he had been created Viscount Brackley, and his death took place on the 15th of March 1617. Half an hour before his decease James sent Bacon, then his successor as lord keeper, with the gift of an earldom, and the presidentship of the council with a pension of L3000 a year, which the dying man declined as earthly vanities with which he had no more concern. He was buried at Dodleston in Cheshire.

As Lord Chancellor Ellesmere he is a striking figure in the long line of illustrious English judges. No instance of excessive or improper use of his jurisdiction is recorded, and the famous case which precipitated the contest between the courts was a clear travesty of justice, undoubtedly fit for the chancellor's intervention. He refused to answer any communications from suitors in his court,[12] and it was doubtless to Ellesmere (as weeding out the "enormous sin" of judicial corruption)[13] that John Donne, who was his secretary, addressed his fifth satire. He gained Camden's admiration, who records an anagram on his name, "Gestat Honorem." Bacon, whose merit he had early recognized, and whose claims to the office of solicitor-general he had unavailingly supported both in 1594 and 1606, calls him "a true sage, a salvia in the garden of the state," and speaks with gratitude of his "fatherly kindness." Ben Jonson, among the poets, extolled in an epigram his "wing'd judgements," "purest hands," and constancy. Though endowed with considerable oratorical gifts he followed the true judicial tradition and affected to despise eloquence as "not decorum for judges, that ought to respect the Matter and not the Humours of the Hearers."[14] Like others of his day he hoped to see a codification of the laws,[15] and appears to have had greater faith in judge-made law than in statutes of the realm, advising the parliament (October 27, 1601) "that laws in force might be revised and explained and no new laws made," and describing the Statute of Wills passed in Henry VIII.'s reign as the "ruin of ancient families" and "the nurse of forgeries." In the thirty-eighth year of Elizabeth he drew up rules for procedure in the Star Chamber,[16] restricting the fees, and in the eighth of James I. ordinances for remedying abuses in the court of chancery. In 1609 he published his judgment in the case of the Post Nati, which appears to be the only certain work of his authorship. The following have been ascribed to him:--_The Privileges and Prerogatives of the High Court of Chancery_ (1641); _Certain Observations concerning the Office of the Lord Chancellor_ (1651)--denied by Lord Chancellor Hardwicke in _A Discourse of the Judicial Authority of the Master of the Rolls_ (1728) to be Lord Ellesmere's work; _Observations on Lord Coke's Reports_, ed. by G. Paul (about 1710), the only evidence of his authorship being apparently that the MS. was in his handwriting; four MSS., bequeathed to his chaplain, Bishop Williams, viz. _The Prerogative Royal, Privileges of Parliament, Proceedings in Chancery_ and _The Power of the Star Chamber; Notes and Observations on Magna Charta, &c._, Sept. 1615 (Harl. 4265, f. 35), and _An Abridgment of Lord Coke's Reports_ (see MS. note by F. Hargrave in his copy of _Certain Observations concerning the Office of Lord Chancellor_, Brit. Mus. 510 a 5, also _Life of Egerton_, p. 80, note T, catalogue of Harleian collection, and Walpole's _Royal and Noble Authors_, 1806, ii. 170).

He was thrice married. By his first wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Ravenscroft of Bretton, Flintshire, he had two sons and a daughter. The elder son, Thomas, predeceased him, leaving three daughters. The younger, John, succeeded his father as 2nd Viscount Brackley, was created earl of Bridgewater, and, marrying Lady Frances Stanley (daughter of his father's third wife, widow of the 5th earl of Derby), was the ancestor of the earls and dukes of Bridgewater (q.v.), whose male line became extinct in 1829. In 1846 the titles of Ellesmere and Brackley were revived in the person of the 1st earl of Ellesmere (q.v.), descended from Lady Louisa Egerton, daughter and co-heir of the 1st duke of Bridgewater.

No adequate life of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere has been written, for which, however, materials exist in the Bridgewater MSS., very scantily calendared in _Hist. MSS. Comm._ 11th Rep. p. 24, and app. pt. vii. p. 126. A small selection, with the omission, however, of personal and family matters intended for a separate projected _Life_ which was never published, was edited by J.P. Collier for the Camden Society in 1840.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Athenae Oxon._ (Bliss), ii. 197.

[2] D'Ewes's _Parliaments of Elizabeth_, 441, 442.

[3] _Cal. of St. Pap., Dom._, 1601-1603, p. 191.

[4] Birch's _Mem. of Queen Elizabeth_, i. 479.

[5] _Hist. MSS. Comm._ 11th Rep. p. 24.

[6] T. Birch's _Mem. of Queen Elizabeth_, ii. 384.

[7] _Cal. of St. Pap., Dom._, 1598-1601, pp. 554, 583.

[8] _State Trials_, ii. 909.

[9] _Cal. St. Pap., Dom._, 1611-1618, p. 381.

[10] _Cal. St. Pap., Dom._, 1611-1618, p. 407.

[11] _Lansdowne MS._ 91, f. 41.

[12] _Hist. MSS. Comm._ app. pt. vii. p. 156.

[13] _Life of Donne_, by E. Gosse, i. 43.

[14] Judgment on the Post Nati.

[15] Speech to the parliament, 24th of October 1597.

[16] _Harleian MS._ 2310, f. i.; Gardiner's _Hist. of England_, ix. 56.