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Browne, Revd Simon (1680–1732), Nonconformist divine: 617 n.a

Browne, Sir Thomas (1605–82), physician and author; prose diction and syntax greatly influenced S.J.; great neologist:first recorded userof overahundred word forms in the OED; most famed for Religio Medici (first version 1635–6): 13, 123 and n. a, 166, 176, 682

Browne, Tom (1657–?1717), shoemaker and teacher: 29

Bruce, James, of Kinnard (1730–94), traveller in Africa; only the second European to visit Abyssinia since the 1630s; Abyssinian explorations looked on critically by S.J.: 441

Bruce, Robert (1274–1329), king of Scotland: 467

Brumoy, Pierre (1688–1742), French Jesuit: 14, 185

Brunet (fl. 1775), a Frenchman whom S.J. met inParis: 472

Bryant, Jacob (1715–1804), antiquary and classical scholar; author of A New System, or, An Analysis of Ancient Mythology (1774–6), assessing the whole of ancient history from the deluge of Noah to the dispersion of peoples occasioned by the wanderings of his sons; plates of which work possibly created by Blake: 914

Brydone, Patrick (1736–1818), traveller andauthor;Fellow of Royal Society(1772/3); expert on electricity; author of A Tour through Sicily and Malta (1773), praised by S.J.: 447, 514, 716

Buchan, David Steuart Erskine, 11th Earl of (1742–1829), brother of Thomas, Lord Erskine: 352, 354

Buchanan, George (1506–82), poet, historian and administrator; keeper of the Privy Seal (1570–78); director of the Chancery (1570); tutor to the young King James; author of De jure regni (1579) andRerum Scoticarum historia(1582), as well as sometime playwright: 242, 309, 866

Buckingham, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of (1628–87), royalist politician and wit; only former Privy Councillor still alive Nottoberesworn at Restoration; readmitted to Privy Council (1662); Lord Lieutenant of West Riding (1667); added to Committee for Foreign Affairs (1668); managed important inter-house conferences in wake of the Popish Plot (1678); fellow of Royal Society (1661–85); friend of Rochester, Etherege, Waller and Wycherley; temperamentally friends with Charles II; famous as playwright of The Rehearsal (1671), a satire with Dryden as its principal target: 350, 940

Buckingham, Katherine, Duchess of (d. 1743), wife of John (Sheffield), 6th Duke: 653

Budgell, Eustace (1686–1737), writer; under-secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland;MP for Mullingar inthe Irish Parliament (1715–27); opposed Walpole; occasional and anonymous contributor to The Spectator; soft Whig target for Scriblerian satirists; mocked by Pope in The Dunciad and Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot for dependence on Addison; committed suicide after series of legal scrapes: 382, 542

Budworth, Captain Joseph (d. 1815): 993 n. a

Budworth, Revd William (d. 1745), schoolmaster; vicar of Brewood; master of Rugeley Grammar School, Staffordshire;non-Jaco bite High Church man:50n.a, 993 n. a

Buffier, Claude (1661–1737), French author: 248

Buffon, George Louis Leclerc, comte de (1707–88), naturalist: 564 n. a

Bulkeley, or Bulkley, Mrs (Mrs Barresford) (fl. 1764–89), actress: 376

Bunbury, Henry William (1750–1811), artist and caricaturist; heralded by Horace Walpole as ‘the second Hogarth’; friends with Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds and S.J.; groom of the bedchamber to the Duke of York (1787); famous for innovative story-telling designs, e.g. A Long Minuet as Danced at Bath (1787): 219 n. c

Bunbury, Sir Thomas Charles (1740–1821), horse-racing administrator and Whig politician, later supporter of Charles James Fox; MP for Suffolk (1761–1812); briefly Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; co-founder of the Oaks (1779) and the Derby; steward of the Jockey Club: 252, 408, 433, 999

Bunyan, John (1628–88), author of Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) and The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), the seventeenth century’s most popular work of prose fiction; Calvinist pioneer of the spiritual autobiography: 94, 386

Burbridge, Mr (fl. 1697): 98

Burch, Edward (fl. 1771–1814),