It 



BRIKNNE, JOHN OF. 



BRI003, HENRY. 



Physios eomkUrad with reference to Natural Theology,' 6vo, London, 

 1S39. 4. By Sir Charles 1'olL The Hand, it* Mechanism an 

 Endowment*, u evincing Design,' 8vo, London, 18S7. 5. By Peter 

 Mark Roget. M.D. Animal and Vegetable Physiology, considered 

 with reference to Natural Theology,' 3 Tols. STO, London, 1840. 0. 

 By the HT. Dr. Buekland. On ecology and Mineralogy,' 2 YoU. 8vo, 

 London, lf>87. 7. By the Rev. William Kirby. 'On the History, 

 Habiu, aii.l Instincts of Animal*,' 8 Tola. STO, London, 1SS5. 8. By 

 William Prout. M.D. ' ChemUtry, Meteorology, and the Function of 

 Digestion, eonsidersd with reference to Natural Theology,' STO, London, 

 1884. All these treatises hare been reprinted in a cheaper form at a 

 portion of Bohn'i < Standard Library.' 



The Earl of Bridgewater also left upward* of 12,0001. to the British 

 Museum, the annual income arising from which he directed to be 

 employed in the purchase of manuscript*, and in taking due care of 

 them for the ute of the public. 



BRIKNNE, JOHN OP, third ton of Erard II., Count of Brienne- 

 sur-Aulie, a small town in Champagne near Troyes, and of Agnes of 

 Montbclliard, wu married by the recommendation of Philippe Auguate, 

 to Mary, daughter of Isabella, wife of Conrad, marquis of Montferrat 

 Isabella wa> the youngest daughter of Amaury, king of Jerusalem, an 

 empty title which Mary thus inherited from her maternal grandfather. 

 Of the early life of John of Brienne nothing is known, but he was 

 named by the king of Franco as the moat worthy champion whom he 

 could offer for the defence of the Holy Land, " as good in arms, faithful 

 in war, and provident in action." He wu crowned at Tyre in 1209, 

 and he maintained himself against the Saracens as well as his scanty 

 force would allow. In the fifth crusade ho headed a large band of 

 adventurers in the invasion of Egypt, whom he led to the capture of 

 Damietta, after sixteen months' siege ; and when the pride, obstinacy, 

 and avarice of the Cardinal Pelagius, the papal legato, had compromised 

 the safety of the Christian army, which was inclosed on one aide by 

 an overpowering host of Moslem*, and on the other by the waters of 

 the Nile, the king of Jerusalem became one of the hostages for the 

 evacuation of Egypt 



When the emperor Frederic II., stimulated by ambition, undertook 

 to fulfil his often evaded vows of joining the crusade, upon receiving 

 the nominal sovereignty of the Holy Land, John of Brieune, wearied 

 with the ineffectual struggle which he had long supported against the 

 infidels, agreed to abdicate in his favour, and brought his eldest 

 daughter and heiress, Yolande or lolante, to Italy, where Frederic 

 received her in marriage ; yet in the subsequent wars between the 

 pope and the emperor, John commanded the pontifical army against 

 his son-in-law. In the year 1225, the emperor, during bis successful 

 expedition to Palestine, entered the Holy City ; and, upon a demur of 

 Uie patriarch, crowned himself with his own hands. From this union 

 of Frederic with lolante, the present royal house of Naples derives a 

 claim to the title of king of Jerusalem, which it still preserves. 

 (Oiannone, xvi 2 ; Hallaro, ' Middle Ages,' I 261, 4 to.) 



John of Brienne in 1 222 had married as a second wife, Berengaria, 

 stater of Ferdinand, king of Castile ; but his services in more advanced 

 life were again needed in the East. On the death of Robert of Courte- 

 paye, and the sucoeeaiou of his youngest brother, Baldwin IL, to the 

 imperial throne of Constantinople, the barons of Romania, seeing that 

 the Latin dynasty required a protector of greater vigour and maturer 

 yean than their boy-sovereign, invited John of lirienoe to share the 

 throne during his lifetime, a proposal which he accepted upon condi- 

 tion that Baldwin should espouse his youngest daughter. In 1--'.' lie 

 accordingly assumed the imperial dignity, and for the ensuing nine 

 Tears he nobly maintained himself against the increasing power of 

 VaUces, emperor of Nicna. A contemporary poet affirms that the 

 achievement* of John of Hrienne (who at that time had passed his 

 eightieth year, according to the representation of the Byzantine histo- 

 rian Acropoliu) exceeded those of Ajax, Hector, Itoland, Uggier, and 

 Jodas Maccabeus ; and we should readily acquiesce in this assertion, 

 if we were to believe the exploits related of him when Constantinople 

 was besieged by the confederate forces of Vataces and of Azan, king of 

 Bulgaria, Their allied army amounted to 100,000 men; their fleet 

 consisted of 800 ships of war, against which the Latins could oppose 

 only 100 knights and a few Serjeants and archers. "1 tremble to 

 rslate," lays Gibbon, with well-justified apprehension, " that instead of 

 defending the city, the hero made a sally at the head of his cavalry, 

 that of forty-eight squadrons of the enemy no more than three 

 ,ped from the edge of bis invincible sword." The ensuing year 

 distinguished by a second victory; soon after which Julm of 

 one closed a life of military glory by an act of devotion which 

 raited him equally high in spiritual reputation also. During hit last 

 illness, in 1237, be clothed himself in the habit of a Franciscan monk, 

 pd thus expired in that which superstition considered to be the 

 richest odour of tsnctity. 



The reign of John of Brienne is given at length by Du Gauge, in 

 the third book of his ' Hist ConsUntinop.,' and a life of him was pub- 

 lished at Paris in 1727, 12mo, by Lafitau, a Jesuit 



I'.KIUUS, HENRY. Moot of the account! of Briggs are taken 

 from Ward's ' Lives of the Oreaham Professors,' which we shall also 

 follow as to dates and personal fact*. Mr. Ward cites Dr. Smith, 

 Vila Henrici Briggii, 1 and Wood's Athena Oxonienses.' 



Briggs was born at Warloywood, near Halifax, probably about 1556. 



lie was tent to St. John's College, Cambridge, about 1577, whore he 

 became scholar in 1579, B.A. In 1581, M.A. in 1585, fellow in 1588, 

 and reader in natural philosophy, on Dr. Linacer s foundation, in 1592. 

 In 1596, on the establishment of Qresham House, London, (not then 

 called College) he was chosen the first reader (not professor) in 

 geometry. In 1619 be was chosen first Saviliau professor of geometry 

 at Oxford, Sir Henry Saville himself having preceded him in tli 

 delivery of thirteen lectures, llriggs began whore SaTille left oil, 

 namely, at the ninth proposition of the first book of Euclid, lie 

 entered himself of Morton College, but he continued to hold tlu- 

 Oresham readership till 1620, when he resigned it, and continued to 

 hold the Suvilian professorship till his death, which took plaoe 

 January 26, 1630. He was buried in the chapel of Morton College. 



The history of Briggs is that of his connection with the improve- 

 ment and construction of logarithms. When Napier, in 1014, first 

 published bis invention of natural or hyperbolic logarithms, Briggs 

 was so struck with the invention that he resolved to pay the author a 

 visit in Scotland. He says in a letter to Archbishop Usher, dated 

 March 10, 1615, "Naper, Lord of Markinston, bath set my head and 

 bands a work with his new and admirable logarithms. I hope to 

 see him this summer, if it please God, for I never saw book which 

 pleased me better, and made me more wonder." He went iuto 

 Scotland accordingly, both in 1616 and 1617, and stayed tome time 

 with Napier. It must be observed that the first logarithms of 

 Nspier are a table of the values of x to every value of 8 for all the 

 minutes of the quadrant, in the equation (as it would now be 

 expressed) 



. 



2-3 



_ 



sin 9 



How this apparently complicated system is more natural than any 

 other U explained in the article LOGARITHMS in ARTS ANU SoixxcLb 

 DIVISION of this work. In 1615, Briggs, in his lectures at On-sham 

 college, publicly explained the superior convenience of calculating the 

 following table, ou which he wrote to Napier, before his first journey 

 to Scotland : 



These are both on the supposition that the whole tine, as it was then 

 called, or tha sine [of a right angle, is 1. Both Briggs and Napier 

 made it such a power of 10 as left no decimals in the table, and 

 therefore of course depending ou the number of places in tho 

 logarithms contemplated. But Napier himself (according to his own 

 account) had been struck with the convenience of adopting a decimal 

 system, and (according to Briggs's account) mentioned to him that ho 

 (Napier) had long thought that the system would be amended by 

 what we should now call the tabulation of X from the equatiou 



." " = (* 



sin. 6 to radius 10 I or 10 r= sin. 



if the whole tine be unity. Tho difference between the two last 

 systems has nothing to do with the principle of the improvement in 

 question. In the first two systems the logarithms of increasing sines 

 diminish; in the third, the logarithms of increasing sines increase. 

 Briggs, as he informs us, immediately admitted the merit of Napier's 

 improvement. And be it observed, the difficulty then lay in making 

 the calculations : probably both Briggs and Napier thought little of 

 the step as an advance in the theory, compared with the n 

 actually carrying it into effect This latter part was done by Briggs, 

 (Napier died in 1618,) who published, in 1618 (having printed them 

 the year before,) his ' Chi lias 1'riiiia Logarithmorum,' containing thu 

 first thousand numbers, with logarithms to nine places: and in 1624, 

 his ' Arithmctica Logarithmica,' which contains the logarithms of 

 numbers (not of sines) from 1 to 20,000 and from 1)0,000 to 101,000, 

 all to 15 places, with a method of supplying the logarithms of 

 intermediate numbers. This was fully done by Vlacq, who, in an 

 edition of the work just cited, Qoudae, 1628, gave (to 11 placet) the 

 logarithms of all numbers from 1 to 100,000, together with a corre- 

 sponding table of sines, cosines, &c., for every minute of the quadrant 

 During this time Briggs was labouring at a logarithmic table of 

 Ac., of which he did not live to complete the preceding explanation*, 

 but which was completed and published by bis friend ll.nry 

 Gcllibrand, (whom be bad associated with himself in the task some years 

 before his death,) under the title of ' Trigonometria Britannica,' Goudae, 

 1683. It is to 15 places of figures, and to every hundredth of a degree. 

 Gellibrand states, in the preface, that, about 30 years before his death, 

 Briggs had calculated a canon of sines (natural sines of course) by 

 algebraical equations and differences. 



It seems from the preceding that Napier thought himself entitled 

 to tho discovery of the decimal method of logarithms, and that if 

 Hrii:g'ii statement be correct, he did not act quite fairly in suppressing 

 the Utter name in the preface to his ' Kabdologia.' But as thin little 

 controversial episode is fully treated of in Dr. Mutton's preface to his 

 ' Logarithms,' we shall content ourselves here with citing the passages 

 which constitute the evidence : 



1. Napier, ' Kabdologia, 1 1616, published after Briggs left him, 

 claims the improvement and entrusts the execution to Briggs as 

 follows: " Logan thmorum speciem aliam multo pnestantiorem nunc 



