1617 was also chosen sheriff of London. Clarendon describes him as having ‘a great name and interest in the city, and with all the presbyterian party’ (Rebellion, x. 70). With the majority of his ‘party he changed sides in 1648, was accuse by the army of confederating with the Scots and the secluded members for the invasion of England (6 Dec.), arrested (12 Dec.), expelled from the House of Commons, and deprived of his sheriffdom and other posts (Walker, History of Independency, ii. 39; Rushworth, iv. pt. ii. 1354-61). For several years he remained in prison at Windsor, Wallingford, Warwick, Ludlow, and other places. In the account of his sufferings which he gave in parliament in March 1659 he says: ‘I was used worse than a cavalier; taken and sent away prisoner to Wales; used with more cruelty than if in Newgate; in a worse prison than common prisoners. My wife and children could not come under roof to see me. My letters could not pass. The governor demanded my letters; I said he should have my life as soon. I defended them with my weapon’ (Burton, Diary, iv. 263). This imprisonment lasted for live years. In 1656 Browne was one of the members excluded from parliament for refusing to take the engagement demanded by the Protector (see Protest of 22 Sept. in Whitelock). In Richard Cromwell‘s parliament he was one of the members for London, and found at length, in March 1659, an opportunity for securing redress. On 26 March 1659 the House of Commons annulled the vote of 4 Dec. 1649 disabling him from the office of alderman, and ordered the payment of 9,0l6l. still owing to him from the state. In the summer of 1659 he was implicated in Sir George Booth’s rising, and his arrest ordered, but he succeeded in lying hid at Stationers’ Hall, ‘by the faithful secrecy of Captain Burroughes’ (Heath's Chronicle, p. 737). The votes then passed against him were annulled on 22 Feb. 1660 (Journals ; and Pepys, Diary). Browne was one of the persons with whom Whitelocke took counsel for the furtherance of his scheme of persuading Fleetwood to recall the king (Whitelocke, 22 Dec. 1659). Browne was chosen by the city as one of the deputation to Charles II, and headed the triumphal procession which brought the king back to London with a troop of gentlemen in cloth of silver doublets. His services were liberally rewarded by the king, who conferred the honour of knighthood on both him and his eldest son. He was also elected lord mayor on 3 Oct. 1660. During his mayoralty Venner’s insurrection took place, and the vigour he showed in suppressing it gained him fresh advancement. The city rewarded him with a pension of 500l. a your (7 Aug. 1662, Kennet, p. 739), and the king created
him a baronet. He died and 24 Sept. 1869, ‘at his house in Essex, near Saffron Walden’ (Obituary of Richard Smyth, p. 83). He was a brave soldier, and the charges of rapacity and cruelty brought against him by the royalist pamphleteers can hardly he regarded as proved. A greater blot on his fame is his conduct at the trial of the regicides. Browne repeated against Adrian Scroop words tending to justify the king's execution which Scroop had spoken in a casual conversation, and this testimony excited a feeling in the high court and the parliament which cost Scroop his life (Wood, Athenæ, ii. 74, ed. 1721; Kennet, Register, p. 276).
[Vicars’s Parliamentary Chronicle; Rushworth's Historical Collections; Kennet's Register. Vicars's English Worthies (1647) contains a sketch of Browne's career and a portrait. The correspondence with Lord Digby who printed in a pamphlet entitled The Lord Digby’s Design on Abingdon (4to, 1644), and several of Browne’s relations of different battles and skirmishes were published contemporaneously.]
BROWNE or BROWN, RICHARD (fl. 1674–1694), physician, was educated at Queen's College, Oxford, but graduated at Leyden, where he was admitted 20 Sept. 1675, being then fifty years old. He became a licentiate of the College of Physicians on 30 Sept. 1678. His principal writings, some of which bear on the title-page by Richard Browne, Apothecary of Oakham,' are: 1. ‘Medicina Musica; or a Mechanical Essay on the Effects of Singing, Music, and Dancing on Human Bodies: with an Essay on the Nature and Cure of the Spleen and Vapours,’ London, 1671, new edition 1729. 2. ‘Περὶ Ἀρχῶν, Liber in quo Principia Veterurn evertuntur, et nova stabiliuntur,’ London, 1678. 3. ‘Prosodia Pharmacopœorum, or the Apothecary's Prosody,' London, 1685. 4. ‘English Grammar,‘ London, 1692. 5. ‘General History of Earthquakes,' London, 1694, A small book entitled ‘Coral and Steel, a most Compendious Method of Preserving and Restoring Health, by R. B., M.D.,' no date, is doubtfully assigned to the same R. Brown.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. (1878), i. 391.]
BROWNE, Sir RICHARD (1605–1683), diplomatist, born in 1605, was the only son of Christopher Browne of Sayes Court, Deptford, and Thomasine Gonson, whose father and grandfather, Benjamin and William Gonson, had been treasurers of the navy. The father of Christopher, Sir Richard
