BRISTOL BRITAIN. 



687 



{.ion of glass bottles ; brass, copper, lead, iron, and 

 tin works also abound, and great quantities of soap, 

 leather, gunpowder, and earthenware are made here. 

 Ship-building and rope-making are also much pur- 

 sued. It may in fact be deemed an emporium of 

 every sort of exportable article, and more especially 

 of the principal commodities produced by the sur- 

 rounding counties. The two annual fairs, of ten 

 days, were formerly frequented by dealers from all 

 parts of the country ; but they have latterly much 

 declined, except for cattle and leather. The market 

 abounds with the plenty so characteristic of the west 

 of England, as regards provisions and vegetables. 

 From Ireland, cattle of all sorts are brought twice a 

 week by the steam-vessels ; the number of the whole 

 averaging 1500 a week, of which three-quarters, at 

 least, are pigs. 



William Grocyne, an eminent Greek professor at 

 Oxford ; William Botoner, who first translated any 

 portion of Cicero into English, and was an antiquary 

 of considerable industry ; the celebrated mariner, 

 Sebastian Cabot, son of a resident Venetian, all liv- 

 ing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ; the 

 ill-fated Chatterton, and the scarcely less unfortunate 

 Mary Robinson, were natives of Bristol. To these 

 may be added Bowditch, the African traveller, and 

 our present laureate, Dr Southey. 



Bristol is distant from London 114 miles W. ; 

 from Bath 12 miles N. W. Population in 1831, 

 59,074, exclusive of the suburbs, which returned 

 44,812. 



BRISTOL (Indian names, Pocanocket and Sowam) ; a 

 seaport town, and capital of a county of the same name 

 in Rhode Island, on the continent ; fifty-six miles S. S. 

 W. Boston, America ; Ion. 71" 12' W. ; lat. 41 38' 

 N. ; population, in 1820, 3197. It is a very pleasant 

 town, finely situated, and handsomely built, has a safe 

 and commodious harbour, and is a place of consider- 

 able trade. The shipping belonging to this port in 

 1820 amounted to 10,701 tons. The trade is chiefly 

 to the West Indies and to Europe. It contains a 

 court house, a jail, a market-house, a masonic hall, 

 an academy, a public library, containing about 1400 

 volumes, and four houses of public worship. Great 

 quantities of onions are raised here for exportation. 



I Mount Hope, which lies two miles N. E. of Bristol, 

 within the township, is a pleasant hill of a conical 

 form, and is famous for having been the residence 

 of the Indian king Philip. 



BRISTOL CHANNEL ; an arm of the Irish sea, ex- 

 tending between the southern shores of Wales and the 

 western peninsula of England, and terminating In the 

 estuary of the Severn. It is about ninety miles long, 

 and from fifteen to fifty miles wide. It is remarkable 

 for its high tides and the rapidity with which they 

 rise. See Bridgewater. 



BRITAIN, according to Aristotle, was the name 

 which the Romans gave to modern England and Scot- 

 land. This appellation is, perhaps, derived from the old 

 word brit, party-coloured, it having been customary 

 with the inhabitants to paint their bodies with various 

 colours. According to the testimony of Pliny and Aris- 

 totle, the island, in the remotest times, also bore the 

 name of Albion, (q. v.) The sea, by which B. is sur- 

 rounded, was generally called the Western, the Atlan- 

 tic, or Hesperian ocean. Until the time of Caesar, B. 

 was totally unknown to the Romans. But the Phoeni- 

 cians, Greeks, and Carthaginians, especially the first, 

 were acquainted with it from the earliest period, 

 being accustomed to obtain tin here. On this ac- 

 count they called it Tin island, as Herodotus informs 

 us. Czesar undertook two expeditions to B. He de- 

 feated the inhabitants, whom he found entirely sa- 

 vage,, and continued a short time on the island. It 



was not, however, until the time of Claudius, that the 

 Romans gained a firm footing here. At that period, 

 they extended their possessions in the country, and 

 called the territory under their dominion Britannia 

 Romana. The most important acquisitions were 

 afterwards made under Adrian and Constantine. At 

 last, the inhabitants assumed the manners of their 

 conquerors. The country was very populous in the 

 time of Caesar, and, according to the testimony of Ta- 

 citus, fertile. It was divided into Britannia Romana 

 and B. Barbara. The Romans, from the time of 

 Adrian, anxiously endeavoured to secure the former 

 against the invasions of the barbarians, by a wall or 

 rampart of earth fortified with turrets and bulwarks. 

 Lollius Urbicus, in the reign of Antoninus, extended 

 this wall ; but Septimius Severus restored its former 

 limits. In his time, the Roman province was divided 

 into the eastern (prima, or inferior) and the western 

 part (secunda, or superior). Two provinces were 

 added by Constantine. The inhabitants of ancient 

 B. derived their origin partly from an original colony 

 of Celtae, partly from a mixed body of Gauls and Ger- 

 mans. The Celtic colonists, or the Britons, properly 

 so called, living in the interior of the country, had 

 less intercourse with foreign merchants than the 

 Gauls, who lived along the coasts. They are there- 

 fore represented by the Romans as less civilized. The 

 Gallic inhabitants, who had settled nearer the sea- 

 coast, possessed some property, and were therefore 

 more easily intimidated than those tribes that were 

 dispersed through the forests. None of them culti- 

 vated the ground : they all lived by raising cattle and 

 hunting. Their dress consisted of skins. Their habi- 

 tations were huts made of wicker-work and covered 

 with rushes. Their priests, the Druids, together with 

 the sacred women, exercised a kind of authority over 

 them. 



History of Great Britain. The name Great Bri- 

 tain was applied to England and Scotland after 

 James 1. ascended the English throne in 1603, and 

 we shall here give an outline of the history of the 

 United Kingdom from that period. Under the arti- 

 cles England, Scotland, and Ireland, the histories of 

 the respective countries will be given. 



With Elizabeth, who died in 1G03, ended the line 

 of princes of the house of Tudor. James VI. of 

 Srotland, son of the unfortunate Mary, was the only 

 r.ear relation of Elizabeth (his great-grandmother, 

 Margaret, was daughter of Henry VII. of England, 

 grandfather of Elizabeth), and was designated by her, 

 a short time before her death, to succeed her on the 

 English throne. James was acknowledged without 

 opposition ; and thus two countries, which had lived 

 for ages in strife and bloodshed with each other, were 

 amicably linked together. 



James was far from being destitute of natural 

 abilities, and had acquired a more than ordinary share 

 of literary knowledge, for which he was indebted to 

 the celebrated George Buchanan. When he ascended 

 the throne of England, the tyranny of the Episcopa- 

 lians, the opposition of the Catholics, and the discon- 

 tent of the Puritans, had kept the nation in continual 

 fermentation ; for the successes of Elizabeth's reign 

 only disguised the severities of her internal govern- 

 ment. The Catholics expected a toleration, from a 

 prince who was born of Roman Catholic parents, 

 baptized with the rites and ceremonies of the church 

 of Rome, and whose royal mother had died a martyr 

 for the cause. The Puritans, on the other hand, 

 expected that a monarch bred up in presbyterian 

 principles, and an attachment to which he had pub- 

 licly manifested upon several occasions, would rid 

 them of their oppressors, and cast the balance in their 

 favour, while the bishops awaited his accession witfj 

 fear and trembling. But James soon disappointeti 



