John britton wiki

​BRITTON, JOHN (1771–1857), antiquary, topographer, and miscellaneous writer, was born on 7 July 1771 at Kington St.

Michael, near Chippenham, Wiltshire, where his father was a small farmer, maltster, baker, and village shopkeeper. After a desultory education, in the course of which he acquired a love of reading, he went at sixteen to London, where he was apprenticed by an uncle to a tavern-keeper on Clerkenwell Green.

Here he bottled wines in a cellar, snatching an occasional hour for the perusal of a few books.

​BRITTON, JOHN (–), English antiquary, was born on the 7th of July at Kington-St-Michael, near Chippenham.

Here, too, he made the acquaintance of Edward William Brayley [q. v.], who joined him in writing and issuing a popular ballad. He was next employed as a cellarman at the London Tavern, and in Smithfield, and as a clerk in an attorney's office.

Amid these employments, and the compilation of street songbooks, he was led by the success of Sheridan's 'Pizarro' to produce in 1799 his first book, 'Th