Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/342

 Brigham anatomical description of the eye, published at Cambridge in 1676, on his return from France. He proceeded M.D. at Cambridge in 1677, and was elected a fellow of the London College of Physicians in 1682. In the latter year the first part of his 'Theory of Vision' was published by Hooke (Philosophical Collections, No. 6, p. 167); the second part was published in the 'Philosophical Transactions' in 1683. The 'Theory of Vision' was translated into Latin, and published in 1685 by desire of Sir Isaac Newton, who wrote a commendatory preface to it, acknowledging the benefit he had derived from Briggs's anatomical skill and knowledge. A second edition of the 'Ophthalmographia' was published in 1687. Several points in Briggs's account of the eye are noteworthy, one being his recognition of the retina as an expansion in which the fibres of the optic nerve are spread out ; another, his laying emphasis upon the hypothesis of vibrations as an explanation of the phenomena of nervous action. Briggs practised with great success in London, especially in diseases of the eye ; was physician to St. Thomas's Hospital 1682-9, physician in ordinary to William III from 1696, and censor of the College of Physicians in 1685, 1686, 1692. In 1689, according to a curious memorial on one sheet preserved in the British Museum, Dr. Briggs was at great expense in vindicating the title of the crown to St. Thomas's Hospital, but was himself dismissed from his post, owing, as he states, to the machinations of a rival physician. From the same sheet we learn that, although he attended the royal household with great zeal for five years, he could get no pay ; and notwithstanding that in 1698 William III promised that he should be considered, this was of no avail. In consequence of these circumstances, apparently early in Anne's reign, he begs for consideration in regard to the hospital appointment. He died 4 Sept. 1704, at Town Mailing in Kent. His son, Henry Briggs, chaplain to George II, and rector of Holt in Norfolk, erected a cenotaph to his father's memory in Holt church in 1737. The inscription is quoted by Munk. His portrait, by R. White, was engraved by Faber.

[Bayle, Lond. 1735. iii. 592 ; Biog. Brit. 1747, i. 982; Memorial of Dr. W. Briggs relating to St. Thomas's Hospital, n.d. (about 1702) ; Munk's Coll. of Phys. (1878), i. 424.]  BRIGHAM, NICHOLAS (d. 1558), is mentioned by Bale (Scriptores edit. 1557-9, not in that of 1548) as a Latin scholar and antiquarian, who gave up literature to practise in the law courts, and who flourished in 1550. To this Pits adds that he was no common poet and a good orator, and that in 1555 he built a tomb for the bones of Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. Later writers have taken this to be Nicholas Brigham, a 'teller' of the exchequer, who died in 1558. Wood (Athenæ Oxon. i. 309) conjectures that he was born near Caversham, where his eldest brother Thomas had lands of inheritance, and died in 6 Edward VI, but was descended from the Brighams of Brigham in Yorkshire. Now one Anthony Brigham was made bailiff of the king's manor of Caversham in 1543 (Pat. 35 Hen. VIII, p. 14, m. 6), and in 1544 had a grant of lands called Canon End there (Pat. 36 Hen. VIII, p. 2), but no Nicholas appears in the pedigree of Brigham of Canon End (Harl. MS. 1480, fol. 44, in which Anthony Brigham is erroneously called cofferer of the household), nor is either Anthony or Nicholas named in that of Brigham of Brigham (, Holderness, ii. 268). Wood further supposes that he studied at Hart Hall, Oxford, but whether or not he took a degree does not appear. Brigham had a grant on 29 June 1544 of the reversion, after his father-in-law, Ric. Warner, of a tellership in the exchequer (Pat. 36 Hen. VIII, p. 19, m. 25), and on 23 May 1558, as a teller of the exchequer, a grant of 50l. a year for life, which was confirmed on 14 Aug. following to him and Margaret, his wife, in survivorship (Pat. 4 and 5 Ph. and M. p. 13, m. 1, and 5 and 6 Ph. and M. p. 3, m. 30). In the spring of 1558 the queen appointed him receiver of the loan made her by the city of London, and general receiver of all subsidies, fifteenths, or other benevolences. Part of Sir Henry Dudley's conspiracy, for which many suffered death in 1556, was to seize the money of the exchequer in custody of Brigham. One of the conspirators, William Hunnys, or Hinnes, or Ennys (by Froude, Hist. vi. 441, called Heneage), of the royal chapel, who 'kept Brigham's wife, and was very familiar with him by that means,' was to find a way to do this ; but Brigham's own money, which he kept with the queen's, was not to be taken, as he was 'a very plain man,' and they would have enough money without his. On Brigham's death in 1558 his widow forthwith married this Hunnys, who had escaped the fate of most of his fellow-conspirators ; and there is in Somerset House an entry of a decree of 4 Nov. 1559 that a will made in September, October, November, or December 1558, leaving all his property to his wife, which will was disputed by James Brigham, nephew of Nicholas, is to be held valid, and that William Hunnys, 'husband and 