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, a Briton, who suffered martyrdom with another, St. Julius, during the persecution under the emperor Dioclesian, in the year 303, and about the same time with St. Alban, the protomartyr of Britain. What the British names of Aaron and Julius were, we are not told; nor have we any particulars of their death. They had each a church erected to his memory in the city of Caer-Leon, the antient metropolis of Wales, and their festival is placed, in the Roman Martyrology, on the first of July.

, a divine and historian in the seventh century, was a Briton by birth, who taught the celebrated Nennius, afterwards abbot of the monastery of Bangor; and applied himself from his earliest youth to the study of learning, which he joined to the greatest purity of morals. Bale tells us. that he was master of a very extensive knowledge of things, and a great fluency of style, and was actuated by a warm zeal for the propagation of truth. He had a son, the subject of the following article; which is a proof, as the historian above-mentioned observes, that the priests in Britain were not at that time prohibited to marry; though Pits is of opinion that our author was not ordained when his son was born. He was extremely industrious in examining into the antiquities of nations, and tracing out the families of the English Saxons after they had entered Britain and from these collections he is said to have written a work “De Geneaiogiis Gentium.” He flourished in the year 600. Bishop Nicolson. in his “English Historical Library” calls him Benlanius, and confounds him with his son.

His concern in the winotrade gave him an opportunity of travelling over a considerable part of Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, but hearing of his father’s death in 1758, he returned to England, and in 1761 withdrew entirely from the wine-trade. He now, from his observation while in Spain, suggested to the prime minister, Mr. Pitt, afterwards lord Chatham, the practicability of a successful expedition against Ferrol, in Galicia, where the Spaniards had a considerable harbour, and generally stationed a part of their navy; but various circumstances, of which perhaps Mr. Pitt’s resignation was the principal, prevented this enterprise from being attempted. Disappointed in this, he resolved to return to his native country, and pass his time as a private gentleman, cultivating his paternal estate. One of the new ministers, however, lord Halifax, diverted him from this design, and suggested Africa to him as a proper field for enterprize and discovery; and that he might go under the protection of a public character, it was proposed to send him as consul to Algiers. Bruce acceded to these proposals, and left England in the end of June 1762. He passed through France and Italy, and carried with him from the latter country an artist to assist him in his drawings. For his subsequent adventures, his travels into Abyssinia, and his discovery of the sources of the Nile, &c. we must refer to his published travels. He returned to his native country in 1773, and in 1776, he married a daughter of Thomas Dundas of Fingask, esq. by whom he had three children, two of whom, a son and daughter, are still living. After he settled at Kinnaird, his time was chiefly spent in managing his estate, in preparing his travels for the press, and other literary occupations; and he was preparing a second edition of his Travels, when death prevented the execution of/ his design. On Saturday, April 26, 1794, having entertained some company at Kinnaird, as he was going down stairs about eight o'clock in the evening, to hand a lady into a carriage, his foot slipt, and he fell from a considerable height. He was taken up in a state of insensibility, and expired early next morning. Mr. Bruce’s figure was above the common size; his limbs athletic, but well proportioned; his complexion sanguine; his countenance manly and good-tempered; and his manners easy and polite. The whole outward man was such as to announce a character well calculated to contend with the many difficulties and trying occasions, which so extraordinary a journey could not but have thrown in his way. His internal characters, the features of his understanding and disposition, seem in a great measure to have corresponded with these outward lineaments. As a country gentleman, though not without a tincture of haughtiness, he exhibited the elegance of a man of fashion, and the hospitality of a Briton. His personal accomplishments fitted him, in a superior manner, for the undertakings in which he engaged. His constitution was robust, and he had inured himself to every kind of fatigue and exercise. In mental accomplishments he equalled, if not surpassed, the generality of travellers. His memory was excellent, and his understanding vigorous and well cultivated. He understood French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, the two first of which he spoke and wrote with facility. Besides Greek and Latin, which he read well, though not critically, he knew the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac; and, in the latter part of his life, compared several portions of the scriptures in those related dialects. He read and spoke with ease, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Amharic. Necessity made him acquainted with these last, and impressed them deeply on his mind. He had applied, during the greatest part of his life, to the study of astronomy, and other practical branches of mathematical learning.

, of the Carews of Beddington, in Surrey, was the son of sir Richard Carew, knight banneret, and Magdalen, daughter of sir Robert Oxenbridge. At an early age he was introduced to the court of king Henry VIII. where he soon became a favourite, and was made one of the gentlemen of the privy chamber. Having been employed upon some public business in France, he became, as many other young men have been, so enamoured of French fashions and amusements, that, when he returned to his own country, he was continually makino- invidious comparisons to the- disadvantage of the English court. His majesty, who was too much of a Briton not to be disgusted at this behaviour, removed him from his person, and sentenced him to an honourable banishment, appointing him governor of Ruysbank in Picardy; to which government he was forthwith commanded to repair, much against his inclination. This little offence^ however, was soon passed over, and we find him again employed by the king, and for several years his constant companion, and a partaker with him in all the justs, tournaments, masques, and other diversions of the same kind, with wh'rch that reign abounded, and which are described very much at large in Hall’s Chronicle: and as a more substantial mark of his favour, the king appointed him master of the horse, an office of great honour, being reckoned the third in rank about the king’s household, and afterwards created him knight of the garter* His promotion may probably be attributed in some measure to the interest of Anne Bullen, to whom he was related through their common ancestor, lord Hoo. His good fortune was not of long continuance; for in 1539 he engaged in a conspiracy, as we are told by our historians, with the marquis of Exeter, the lord Montacute, and sir Edward Neville; the object of which was to set cardinal Pole upon the throne. The accuser was sir Geffrey Poole, lord Montacute’s brother; the trial was summary, and the conspirators were all executed. Sir Nicholas Carew was beheaded on Tower-hill, March 3, 1539, when he made, says Holinshed, “a godly confession, both of his fault and superstitious faith.” Fuller mentions a tradition of a quarrel which happened at bowls between the kipg and sir Nicholas Carew, to which he ascribes his majesty’s displeasure, and sir Nicholas’s death. The monarch’s known caprice, his hatred of the papists, to whom sir Nicholas was zealously attached, the absurdity of the plot, and the improbability of its success, might incline us to hearken to Fuller’s story, if sir Nicholas alone had suffered; but as he had so many partners in his punishment, with whom it is not pretended that the king had any quarrel, it will be more safe, perhaps, to rely upon the account given by our annalists. Sir Nicholas Carew was buried in the church of St. Botolph, Aldersgate, in the same tomb with Thomas lord Darcy, and others of his family.

, was the son of colonel Cleland, that celebrated fictitious member of the Spectator’s Club whom Steele describes under the name of Will Honeycombe. He was educated at Westminster- school, to which he was admitted in 1722, and was there the contemporary of lord Mansfield, He was early in life sent as consul to Smyrna, where perhaps he first imbibed those loose principles which in the infamous work he afterwards wrote, are so dangerously exemplified. On his return from Smyrna, he went to the East Indies; but, quarrelling with some of the members of the presidency of Bombay, he made a precipitate retreat from the east, with little or no benefit to his fortune. Being without profession, or any settled means of subsistence, he soon fell into difficulties; a prison and its miseries were the consequences. In this situation, about the year 1750, one of those booksellers who disgrace the profession, offered him a temporary relief for writing a work most grossly immoral, and fit only for the brothels, which brought a stigma on his name that time has not obliterated. The sum given for the copy was 20 guineas; the sum received for the sale could not be less than 10,000l. For this publication he was called before the privy council; and the circumstance of his distress being known, as well as his being a man of some parts, John earl Granville, the then president, nobly rescued him from the like temptation, by getting him a pension of 100l. a. year, which he enjoyed to his death, and which had so much the desired effect, that except the “Memoirs of a Coxcomb,” which has some smack of dissipated manners, and the “Man of Honour,” written as an amende honorable for his former exceptionable book, he dedicated the rest of his life to political, dramatic, and philological studies. In 1765 he published “The Way to Things by Words, and to Words by Things,” 8vo, which wast followed in 1768 by “Specimens of an Etymological Vocabulary, or Essay by means of the Analytic method to retrieve the ancient Celtic,” and Proposals for publishing by subscription, in 2 vols. 4to, “The Celtic retrieved by the Analytic method, or reduction to Radicals; illustrated by various and especially British antiquities;” but he does not appear to have received encouragement sufficient to enable him to print this work. In these publications, however, he has displayed a fund of ingenuity and erudition, not unworthy the education he received at Westminster. His political effusions appeared chiefly in the Public Advertiser, under the signatures A Briton, Modestus, &c. but were tedious and dull. His dramatic trifles and occasional poems were more lively, although they had not strength to survive their day. He Jived within the income of his pension, with some addition from his newspaper labours, in a retired situation in Petty France, where he died Jan. 23, 1789, in his eightieth year, having survived his infamous publication long enough to see, we trust with shame and sorrow, the extensive misery it created, and which it never was in his power to check.

His next production indicated somewhat of that rough and independent spirit which neither the smiles nor terrors of a court could repress. It was, indeed, a foolish ebullition for a man in his circumstances to ridicule the Scotch nation in the court of a Scotch king, yet this he attempted in a comedy entitled “Eastward- Hoe,” which he wrote in conjunction with Chapman and Marston, although, as Mr. Warton has remarked, he was in general “too proud to assist or be assisted.” The affront, however, was too gross to be overlooked, and the three authors were sent to prison, and not released without much interest. Camden and Selden are supposed to have supplicated the throne in favour of Jonson on this occasion. At an entertainment which he gave to these and other friends on his release, his mother, “more like an antique Roman than a Briton, drank to him, and showed him a paper of poison, which she intended to have given him in his liquor, after having taken a portion of it herself, if sentence upon him (of pillory, &c.) had been carried into execution.” The history of the times shews the probable inducement Jonson had to ridicule the Scotch. The court was filled with them, and it became the humour of the English to be jealous’ of their encroachments. Jonson, however, having obtained a pardon, endeavoured to conciliate his offended sovereign by taxing his genius to produce a double portion of that adulation in which James delighted.