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  of all Irish histories from its appearance in the seventeenth century till the time when Irish literature ceased to be read at all in the country about the year of the famine. The book was written in Munster, and therefore praises the most famous of her heroes. In later days still, from the time of Daniel O'Connell downwards, the renown of Brian has been spread more and more. 'For it was he that released the men of Erin and its women from the bondage and iniquity of the foreigners and the pirates. It was he that gained five-and-twenty battles over the foreigners, and who killed and banished them as we have already said.' These words of the old Munster chronicler, who wrote all the praise he could of the popular hero of the south, represent the spirit in which Brian has been extolled in modern times. He has been often praised in books and speeches as an enlightened patriot, a compeer of King Alfred and of Washington. In the chronicles of his own times this is not his aspect; he there appears as a strong man and a hardy warrior, skilful in battle and in plotting, proud of his ancestors and of his tribe, and determined that the Dal Cais should be the greatest tribe in Ireland, the tribe with the most cattle and the most tribute. Such was Brian, son of Cenneide, for whom no fitter title could be found than that of Boroimhe, of the tribute, the main object of so many of his battles.



BRIANT. [See ]

BRIANT, ALEXANDER (1553–1581), Jesuit, was born in Somersetshire in 1553, and in 1574 became a member of Hart Hall, Oxford. Having been converted to the catholic religion, he passed over to the English college of Douay, which shortly afterwards removed to Rheims; was ordained priest in 1578, and was sent back to the English mission in 1579. He laboured in his native county, where he reconciled the father of Robert Parsons, the Jesuit, to the catholic church. His career was very brief. He was seized by a party of pursuivants who were really in search of Father Parsons, on 28 April 1581, and carried off to the Compter prison in London, whence he was transferred to the Tower. Cardinal Allen says 'he was tormented with needles thrust under his nails, racked also otherwise in cruel sort, and specially by two whole days and nights with famine, which they did attribute to obstinacy, but indeed (sustained in Christ's quarrel) it was most honourable constancy' (Modest Defence of English Catholicks, 11). Briant was also subjected to the horrible torture of the instrument nicknamed 'the scavenger's daughter.' Norton, the rack-master, who boasted that he would stretch Briant a foot longer than God had made him, was afterwards called to account by his employers for his excessive cruelty. From his cell Briant addressed a letter to the Jesuit fathers in England begging the favour of admission to the society, and his request was acceded to. On 16 Nov. 1581 he was tried in the queen's bench at Westminster, with six other priests, and condemned to death for high treason under the 27th of Elizabeth. He suffered at Tyburn with Father Edmund Campion and the Rev. Ralph Sherwin, on 1 Dec. 1581. He was a young man of singular beauty, and behaved with great intrepidity at the execution. 'His quarters were hanged up for a time in public places' (, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 480). There is an engraved portrait of him. His letter to the English Jesuits is printed in Foley's 'Records,' iv. 355-358.

[Aquepontanus, Concert. Eccl. Cathol. in Anglia (1589-94), ii. 72, 74, iii. 407; Challoner's Missionary Priests (1741), i. 63-69; Oliver's Collections S. J.; Foley's Records, iv. 343-67, vii. 84; Simpson's Life of Campion; Granger's Biog. Hist, of England (1824), i. 274; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), i. 479; Dodd's Church Hist. ii. 114; Bromley's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, 34; Hist, del glorioso Martirio di diciotto Sacerdoti (1585), 111; Diaries of Douay College; Letters and Memorials of Cardinal Allen, 95, 107; Howell's State Trials; Bartoli, Dell' Istoria della Compagnia di Giesu,