BRISTOL, the shire-township of Bristol county, Rhode Island, U.S.A., about 15 m. S.S.E. of Providence, between Narragansett Bay on the W. and Mount Hope Bay on the E., thus being a peninsula. Pop. (1900) 6901, of whom 1923 were foreign-born; (1905; state census) 7512; (1910) 8565; area 12 sq. m. It is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford, and the Rhode Island Suburban railways, and is connected with the island of Rhode Island by ferry. Mount Hope (216 ft.), on the eastern side, commands delightful views of landscape, bay and river scenery. Elsewhere in the township the surface is gently undulating and generally well adapted to agriculture, especially to the growing of onions. A small island, Hog Island, is included in the township. The principal village, also known as Bristol, is a port of entry with a capacious and deep harbour, has manufactories of rubber and woollen goods, and is well known as a yacht-building centre, several defenders of the America's Cup, including the "Columbia" and the "Reliance," having been built in the Herreshoff yards here. At the close of King Philip's War in 1676, Mount Hope Neck (which had been the seat of the vanquished sachem), with most of what is now the township of Bristol, was awarded to Plymouth Colony. In 1680, immediately after Plymouth had conveyed the "Neck" to a company of four, the village was laid out; the following year, in anticipation of future commercial importance, the township and the village were named Bristol, from the town in England. The township became the shire-township in 1685, passed under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts in 1692, and in 1747 was annexed to Rhode Island. During the War of Independence the village was bombarded by the British on the 7th of October 1775, but suffered little damage; on the 25th of May 1778 it was visited and partially destroyed by a British force.
BRISTOL, a city of Sullivan county, Tennessee, and Washington county, Virginia, U.S.A., 130 m. N.E. of Knoxville, Tennessee, at an altitude of about 1700 ft. Pop. (1880) 3209; (1890) 6226; (1900) 9850 (including 1981 negroes); (1910) 13,395, of whom 7148 were in Tennessee and 6247 were in Virginia. Bristol is served by the Holston Valley, the Southern, the Virginia & South-Western, and the Norfolk & Western railways, and is a railway centre of some importance. It is near the great mineral deposits of Virginia, Tennessee, West Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina; an important distributing point for iron, coal and coke; and has tanneries and lumber mills, iron furnaces, tobacco factories, furniture factories and packing houses. It is the seat of Sullins College (Methodist Episcopal, South; 1870) for women, and of the Virginia Institute for Women (Baptist, 1884), both in the state of Virginia, and of a normal college for negroes, on the Tennessee side of the state line. The Tennessee-Virginia boundary line runs through the principal street, dividing the place into two separate corporations, the Virginia part, which before 1890 (when it was chartered as a city) was known as Goodson, being administratively independent of the county in which it is situated. Bristol was settled about 1835, and the town of Bristol, Tennessee, was first incorporated in 1856.
BRISTOW, BENJAMIN HELM (1832-1896), American lawyer and politician, was born in Elkton, Kentucky, on the 20th of June 1832, the son of Francis Marion Bristow (1804-1864), a Whig member of Congress in 1854-1855 and 1859-1861. He graduated at Jefferson College, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1851, studied law under his father, and was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1853. At the beginning of the Civil War he became lieutenant-colonel of the 25th Kentucky Infantry; was severely wounded at Shiloh; helped to recruit the 8th Kentucky Cavalry, of which he was lieutenant-colonel and later colonel; and assisted at the capture of John H. Morgan in July 1863. In 1863-1865 he was state senator; in 1865-1866 assistant United States district-attorney, and in 1866-1870 district-attorney for the Louisville district; and in 1870-1872, after a few months' practice of law with John M. Harlan, was the (first appointed) solicitor-general of the United States. In 1873 President Grant nominated him attorney-general of the United States in case George H. Williams were confirmed as chief justice of the United States,—a contingency which did not arise. As secretary of the treasury (1874-1876) he prosecuted with vigour the so-called "Whisky Ring," the headquarters of which was at St Louis, and which, beginning in 1870 or 1871, had defrauded the Federal government out of a large part of its rightful revenue from the distillation of whisky. Distillers and revenue officers in St Louis, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and other cities were implicated, and the illicit gains—which in St Louis alone probably amounted to more than $2,500,000 in the six years 1870-1876—were divided between the distillers and the revenue officers, who levied assessments on distillers ostensibly for a Republican campaign fund to be used in furthering Grant's re-election. Prominent among the ring's alleged accomplices at Washington was Orville E. Babcock, private secretary to President Grant, whose personal friendship for Babcock led him to indiscreet interference in the prosecution. Through Bristow's efforts more than 200 men were indicted, a number of whom were convicted, but after some months' imprisonment were pardoned. Largely owing to friction between himself and the president, Bristow resigned his portfolio in June 1876; as secretary of the treasury he advocated the resumption of specie payments and at least a partial retirement of "greenbacks"; and he was also an advocate of civil service reform. He was a prominent candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1876. After 1878 he practised law in New York City, where he died on the 22nd of June 1896.
See Memorial of Benjamin Helm Bristow, largely prepared by David Willcox (Cambridge, Mass., privately printed, 1897); Whiskey Frauds, 44th Cong., 1st Sess., Mis. Doc. No. 186; Secrets of the Great Whiskey Ring (Chicago, 1880), by John McDonald, who for nearly six years had been supervisor of internal revenue at St Louis,—a book by one concerned and to be considered in that light.
BRISTOW, HENRY WILLIAM (1817-1889), English geologist, son of Major-General H. Bristow, who served in the Peninsular War, was born on the 17th of May 1817. He was educated at King's College, London, under John Phillips, then professor of geology. In 1842 he was appointed assistant geologist on the Geological Survey, and in that service he remained for forty-six years, becoming director for England and Wales in 1872, and retiring in 1888. He was elected F.R.S. in 1862. He died in London on the 14th of June 1889. His publications (see Geol. Mag., 1889, p. 384) include A Glossary of Mineralogy (1861) and The Geology of the Isle of Wight (1862).
BRITAIN (Gr. Πρετανικαὶ νῆσοι, Βρεττανία; Lat. Britannia, rarely Brittania), the anglicized form of the classical name of England, Wales and Scotland, sometimes extended to the British Isles as a whole (Britannicae Insulae). The Greek and Roman forms are doubtless attempts to reproduce a Celtic original, the exact form of which is still matter of dispute. Brittany (Fr. Bretagne) in western France derived its name from Britain owing to migrations in the 5th and 6th century A.D. The personification of Britannia as a female figure may be traced back as far as the coins of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius (early 2nd century A.D.); its first appearance on modern coins is on the copper of Charles II. (see Numismatics).
In what follows, the archaeological interest of early Britain is dealt with, in connexion with the history of Britain in Pre-Roman, Roman, and Anglo-Saxon days; this account being supplementary to the articles England; English History; Scotland, &c.
Pre-Roman Britain
Geologists are not yet agreed when and by whom Britain was first peopled. Probably the island was invaded by a succession of races. The first, the Paleolithic men, may have died out or retired before successors arrived. During the Neolithic and Bronze Ages we can dimly trace further immigrations. Real knowledge begins with two Celtic invasions, that of the Goidels in the later part of the Bronze Age, and that of the Brythons and Belgae in the Iron Age. These invaders brought Celtic civilization and dialects. It is uncertain how far they were themselves Celtic in blood and how far they were numerous enough to absorb or obliterate the races which they found in Britain. But it is not unreasonable to think that they were no mere conquering caste, and that they were of the same race as the Celtic-speaking peoples of the western continent. By the age of Julius Caesar all the inhabitants of Britain, except perhaps some tribes of the far north, were Celts in speech and customs. Politically they were divided into separate and generally warring tribes, each under its own princes. They dwelt in hill forts with walls of earth or rude stone, or in villages of round huts sunk into the ground and resembling those found in parts of northern Gaul, or in subterranean chambered houses, or in hamlets of pile-dwellings constructed among the marshes. But, at least in the south, market centres had sprung up, town life was beginning, houses of a better type were perhaps coming into use, and the southern tribes employed a gold coinage and also a currency of iron bars or ingots, attested by Caesar and by surviving examples, which weigh roughly, some two-thirds of a pound, some 2⅔ lb, but mostly 1⅓ lb. In religion, the chief feature was the priesthood of Druids, who here, as in Gaul, practised magical arts and barbarous rites of human sacrifice, taught a secret lore, wielded great influence, but, at least as Druids, took ordinarily no part in politics. In art, these tribes possessed a native Late Celtic fashion, descended from far-off Mediterranean antecedents and more directly connected with the La-Tène culture of the continental Celts. Its characteristics were a flamboyant and fantastic treatment of plant and animal (though not of human) forms, a free use of the geometrical device called the "returning spiral," and much skill in enamelling. Its finest products were in bronze, but the artistic impulse spread to humbler work in wood and pottery. The late Celtic age was one which genuinely delighted in beauty of form and detail. In this it resembled the middle ages rather than the Roman empire or the present day, and it resembled them all the more in that its love of beauty, like theirs, was mixed with a feeling for the fantastic and the grotesque. The Roman conquest of northern Gaul (57-50 B.C.) brought Britain into definite relation with the Mediterranean. It was already closely connected with Gaul, and when Roman civilization and its products invaded Gallia Belgica, they passed on easily to Britain. The British coinage now begins to bear Roman legends, and after Caesar's two raids (55, 54 B.C.) the southern tribes were regarded at Rome, though they do not seem to have regarded themselves, as vassals. Actual conquest was, however, delayed. Augustus planned it. But both he and his successor Tiberius realized that the greater need was to consolidate the existing empire, and absorb the vast additions recently made to it by Pompey, Caesar and Augustus.