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 James II. incorporated the town under a mayor, 6 aldermen, and 26 burgesses, granted three new fairs and confirmed the old fair and market. In 1708 Anne granted four fairs to the earl of Bridgewater, and in 1886 the borough had a new charter of incorporation under a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors under the Municipal Corporations Act of 1882. Camden (Brit. p. 430) says that Brackley was formerly a famous staple for wool. It first sent members to parliament in 1547, and continued to send two representatives till disfranchised by the Reform Act of 1832. The town formerly had a considerable woollen and lace-making trade.

 BRACQUEMOND, FÉLIX (1833–&emsp;&emsp;), French painter and etcher, was born in Paris. He was trained in early youth as a trade lithographer, until Guichard, a pupil of Ingres, took him to his studio. His portrait of his grandmother, painted by him at the age of nineteen, attracted Théophile Gautier’s attention at the Salon. He applied himself to engraving and etching about 1853, and played a leading and brilliant part in the revival of the etcher’s art in France. Altogether he has produced over eight hundred plates, comprising portraits, landscapes, scenes of contemporary life, and bird-studies, besides numerous interpretations of other artists’ paintings, especially those of Meissonier, Gustave Moreau and Corot. After having been attached to the Sèvres porcelain factory in 1870, he accepted a post as art manager of the Paris atelier of the firm of Haviland of Limoges. He was connected by a link of firm friendship with Manet, Whistler, and all the other fighters in the impressionist cause, and received all the honours that await the successful artist in France, including the grade of officer of the Legion of Honour in 1889.

 BRACTON, HENRY DE (d. 1268), English judge and writer on English law. His real name was Bratton, and in all probability he derived it either from Bratton Fleming or from Bratton Clovelly, both of them villages in Devonshire. It is only after his death that his name appears as “Bracton.” He seems to have entered the king’s service as a clerk under the patronage of William Raleigh, who after long service as a royal justice died bishop of Winchester in 1250. Bracton begins to appear as a justice in 1245, and from 1248 until his death in 1268 he was steadily employed as a justice of assize in the south-western counties, especially Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. During the earlier part of this period he was also sitting as a judge in the king’s central court, and was there hearing those pleas which “followed the king”; in other words, he was a member of that section of the central tribunal which was soon to be distinguished as the king’s bench. From this position he retired or was dismissed in or about the year 1257, shortly before the meeting of the Mad Parliament at Oxford in 1258. Whether his disappearance is to be connected with the political events of this turbulent time is uncertain. He continued to take the assizes in the south-west, and in 1267 he was a member of a commission of prelates, barons and judges appointed to hear the complaints of the disinherited partisans of Simon de Montfort. In 1259 he became rector of Combe-in-Teignhead, in 1261 rector of Barnstaple, in 1264 archdeacon of Barnstaple, and, having resigned the archdeaconry, chancellor of Exeter cathedral; he also held a prebend in the collegiate church at Bosham. Already in 1245 he enjoyed a dispensation enabling him to hold three ecclesiastical benefices. He died in 1268 and was buried in the nave of Exeter cathedral, and a chantry for his soul was endowed out of the revenues of the manor of Thorverton.

His fame is due to a treatise on the laws and customs of England which is sufficiently described elsewhere (see ). The main part of it seems to have been compiled between 1250 and 1256; but apparently it is an unfinished work. This may be due to the fact that when he ceased to be a member of the king’s central court Bracton was ordered to surrender certain judicial records which he had been using as raw material. Even though it be unfinished his book is incomparably the best work produced by any English lawyer in the middle ages.

The treatise was published in 1569 by Richard Tottel. This text was reprinted in 1640. An edition (1878–1883) with English translation was included in the Rolls Series. Manuscript copies are numerous, and a critical edition is a desideratum. See Bracton’s Note-Book (ed. Maitland, 1887); Bracton and Azo (Selden Society, 1895).

 BRADAWL (from “brad,” a flat nail, and “awl,” a piercing tool), a small tool used for boring holes (see ).

 BRADDOCK, EDWARD (1695?–1755), British general, was born in Perthshire, Scotland, about 1695. He was the son of Major-General Edward Braddock (d. 1725), and joined the Coldstream Guards in 1710. In 1747 as a lieutenant-colonel he served under the prince of Orange in Holland during the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom. In 1753 he was given the colonelcy of the 14th foot, and in 1754 he became a major-general. Being appointed shortly afterwards to command against the French in America, he landed in Virginia in February 1755. After some months of preparation, in which he was hampered by administrative confusion and want of resources, he took the field with a picked column, in which George Washington served as a volunteer officer, intended to attack Fort Duquesne (Pittsburg, Pa.). The column crossed the Monongahela river on the 9th of July and almost immediately afterwards fell into an ambuscade of French and Indians. The troops were completely surprised and routed, and Braddock, rallying his men time after time, fell at last mortally wounded. He was carried off the field with difficulty, and died on the 13th. He was buried at Great Meadows, where the remnant of the column halted on its retreat to reorganize. (See .)

 BRADDOCK, a borough of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the Monongahela river, 10 m. S.E. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890) 8561; (1900) 15,654, of whom 5111 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 19,357. Braddock is served by the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio, and the Pittsburg & Lake Erie railways. Its chief industry is the manufacture of steel—especially steel rails; among its other manufactures are pig-iron, wire rods, wire nails, wire bale ties, lead pipe, brass and electric signs, cement and plaster. In 1905 the value of the borough’s factory products was $4,199,079. Braddock has a Carnegie library. Kennywood Park, near by, is a popular resort. The municipality owns and operates the water-works. Braddock was named in honour of the English general Edward Braddock, who in 1755 met defeat and death near the site of the present borough at the hands of a force of French and Indians. The borough was first settled at the close of the 18th century, and was incorporated in 1867.

 BRADDON, MARY ELIZABETH (1837–&emsp;&emsp;), English novelist, daughter of Henry Braddon, solicitor, of Skirdon Lodge, Cornwall, and sister of Sir Edward Braddon, prime minister of Tasmania, was born in London in 1837. She began at an early age to contribute to periodicals, and in 1861 produced her first novel, The Trail of the Serpent. In the same year appeared Garibaldi, accompanied by Olivia, and other poems, chiefly narrative, a volume of extremely spirited verse, deserving more notice than it has received. In 1862 her reputation as a novelist was made by a favourable review in The Times of Lady Audley’s Secret. Aurora Floyd, a novel with a strong affinity to Madame Bovary, followed, and achieved equal success. Its immediate successors, Eleanor’s Victory, John Marchmont’s Legacy, Henry Dunbar, remain with her former works the best-known of her novels, but all her numerous books have found a large and appreciative public. They give, indeed, the great body of readers of fiction exactly what they require; melodramatic in plot and character, conventional in their views of life, they are yet distinguished by constructive skill and opulence of invention. For a considerable time Miss Braddon conducted Belgravia, in which several of her novels appeared. In 1874 she married Mr John Maxwell, publisher, her son, W. B. Maxwell, afterwards becoming known as a clever novelist and newspaper correspondent.

 BRADFORD, JOHN (1510?–1555), English Protestant martyr, was born at Manchester in the early part of the reign of Henry VIII., and educated at the local grammar school. Being a good penman and accountant, he became secretary to Sir John<section end="Bradford, John" />