BRI 



BRI 



answer any action. It is called brief, be- 

 cause it is couched in a few words, with- 

 out any preamble. Brief is also used for 

 a writing issued out of any of the king's 

 courts of record at Westminster, whereby 

 something is commanded to be done, in 

 order to justice, or the execution of the 

 king's command. 



BKIEF is also taken for a letter patent, 

 granting a licence to a subject to make 

 collection for any public or private loss, as 

 briefs for loss by fire, to be read by min- 

 isters in churches, &c. These briefs must 

 be read in all churches and chapels, with- 

 in two months after receipt thereof; and 

 the sums thereby collected shall be paid 

 over to the undertaker of briefs, .within 

 six months after the delivery of the briefs, 

 under penalty of 20/. 



BRIEF is likewise an abridgment of a 

 client's case, wrote out for the instruction 

 of counsel, on a trial at law. 



BRIEFS, apostolical, letters which the 

 pope dispatches to princes, or other ma- 

 gistrates, relating to any public affair. 

 These briefs are distinguished from bulls 

 in this respect, the latter are more ample, 

 and always written on parchment, and 

 sealed with lead or green wax ; whereas 

 briefs are very concise, written on paper, 

 sealed with red wax, and with the seal of 

 the fisherman, or St. Peter in a boat. 



BRIG. See BRIGA.NTIJTE. 



BRIGADE, in the military art, a party 

 or division of a body of soldiers, whether 

 horse or foot, under the command of a 

 brigadier. An army is divided into bri- 



fades of .horse and brigades of foot : a 

 rigade of horse is a body of eight or ten 

 squadrons ; a brigade of foot consists of 

 four, h've, or six battalions. The eldest 

 brigade has the right of the first line, and 

 the second the right of the second, and 

 the two next take the left of the two lines, 

 and the voungest stand in the centre. 



BRIGADE major, is an officer appointed 

 by the brigadier, to assist him in the ma- 

 nagement and ordering of his brigade. 



BRIGADIER, is the general officer who 

 has the command of a brigade. The eldest 

 colonels are generally advanced to this 

 post. He that is upon duly is brigadier of 

 the day. They march at the head of their 

 own brigades, and are allowed a serjeant 

 and ten men, of their own brigade, for 

 their guard. 



BRIGANTINE, a small light vessel, 

 which can both row and sail well, and is 

 either for fighting or giving chace. It has 

 about twelve or fifteen benches for the 

 rowers, one man to a bench : all the 

 hands aboard are soldiers, and each 



man has his musket lying ready under 

 his oar. 



BRIGGS (HENRY), in biography, a very 

 considerable mathematician, born near 

 Halifax, Yorkshire, in 1556; and in 1579, 

 having attained a good share of gramma- 

 tical knowledge, he went to St. John's 

 College, Cambridge, where lie took his 

 degrees in regular order, and in 1588 

 was chosen fellow of his college. The 

 bent of his mind was to the mathematics, 

 in which he made so great and rapid a 

 progress, that in 1592 he was appointed 

 examiner and lecturer in that branch of 

 science. In 1596 he was elected to the 

 first professorship of geometry at Gre- 

 sham College ; he constructed a table for 

 finding the latitude, from the variation of 

 the magnetic needle being given. About 

 the year 1609 he contracted an acquaint- 

 ance with Mr. Usher, afterwards Arch- 

 bishop of Armagh, and in correspondence 

 with him he mentions his employment 

 upon the calculation of eclipses, and soon 

 after writes that he is wholly engaged 

 about the noble invention of logarithms, 

 which had just made their appearance, 

 and in the improvement of which he af- 

 terwards had so great a concern. On this 

 subject he delivered various lectures at 

 Gresham College, and proposed to alter 

 the scale from the hyperbolic form which 

 Napier had given Miem, to that in which 

 1 should be the logarithm of the ratio of 

 10 to 1. In 1616 Briggs made a visit to 

 Napier at Edinburgh, and communicated 

 to him his wishes. The alteration was 

 agreed upon, and in 1617 he published 

 his first 1000 of logarithms. He suc- 

 ceeded in 1619 to the Savilian professor- 

 ship of geometry at Oxford, upon which 

 he resigned the duties of Gresham Col- 

 lege. Here he devoted himself most se- 

 dulously to his studies, and published 

 many works connected with the higher 

 branches of mathematics.- His " Arith- 

 metica Logarithmica" was printed in 

 1624; it contained the logarithms of 

 30,000 natural numbers to 14 places of 

 figures, besides the index. He completed 

 a table of logarithmic sines and tangents 

 for the 100th part of every degree to 14 

 places ; with a table of natural sines, 

 tangents, and secants, with the construc- 

 tion of the whole. These tables were 

 printed, under the title of Trigonometria 

 Britannica. " In the construction of these 

 two works," says one of Mr. Brigg's bio- 

 graphers, "on the Logarithms of Num- 

 bers and of Sines and Tangents, our au- 

 thor, besides extreme labour and appli- 

 cation, manifests the highest powers of 



