Brand

Brand, JOHN, antiquary, born in Durham county, 19th August 1744, was apprenticed to a cordwainer in Newcastle, and educated at the grammar-school there. His industry raised up for him patrons, who sent him to Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1775. He had been ordained some years previously, and in 1784 he was presented to a rectory in the City of London; in the same year he was elected resident secretary of the Society of Antiquaries, to which office he was re-elected annually until his death, 11th September 1806. His Observations on Popular Antiquities, first published in 1777, and edited with additions by Sir Henry Ellis (3 vols. 1813; new ed. by W. C. Hazlitt, 1870), is the best book on its subject in the English language.