Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/169

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Bradford
157
Bradford

of Belgium, and was appointed to the 1st regiment of lancers. At one time he held a commission in the Royal West Middlesex Militia. He was appointed on 31 Dec. 1835 stipendiary magistrate in Tobago, from which he was removed to Trinidad on 13 May 1836. He was reappointed to the southern or Cedros district on 13 April 1839, but soon returned to England, having been superseded in consequence of a quarrel with some other colonial officer. In 1841 he again went to the West Indies in the capacity of private secretary to Colonel Macdonald, lieutenant-governor of Dominica, and in 1842 he acted for some time as colonial secretary in Barbados. The charges which had occasioned his previous return were, however, renewed, and the government cancelled his appointment. From that period he lived very precariously, and for many years solicited in vain a reversal of his sentence at the colonial office. He turned his moderate literary talents to account, and among some communications he made to the 'Gentleman's Magazine' were articles on 'The Last of the Paleologi' in January 1843, and a 'Memoir of Major-general Thomas Dundas and the Expedition to Guadaloupe' in August, September, and October in the same year. Latterly he practised all the arts of the professional mendicant. He committed suicide by drinking a bottle of prussic acid in the coffee-room of the St. Alban's Hotel, 12 Charles Street, St. James's Square, London, on 11 Oct. 1852.

[Cochrane's Wanderings in Greece (1837), p. 90; Gent. Mag. (1853), xxxix. 102; Morning Post, 13 Oct. 1852, p. 4, and 15 Oct. p. 6.]

G. C. B.

BRADFORD, JOHN (1510?–1555), protestant martyr, was born of gentle parents about 1510 in the parish of Manchester. A local tradition claims him as a native of the chapelry of Blackley. He was educated at the grammar school, Manchester. In his 'Meditations on the Commandments,' written during his imprisonment in the reign of Queen Mary, he speaks of the 'particular benefits' that he had received from his parents and tutors. Foxe records that Bradford entered the service of Sir John Harrington of Exton, Rutlandshire, who was treasurer at various times of the king's camps and buildings in Boulogne. At the siege of Montreuil in 1544 Bradford acted as deputy-paymaster under Sir John Harrington. On 8 April 1547 he entered the Inner Temple as a student of common law. Here, at the instance of a fellow-student, Thomas Sampson, afterwards dean of Christ Church, he turned his attention to the study of divinity. A marked change now came over his character. He sold his 'chains, rings, brooches, and jewels of gold,' and gave the money to the poor. Moved by a sermon of Latimer, he caused restitution to be made to the crown of a sum of money which he or Sir John Harrington had fraudulently appropriated. The facts are not very clear. Sampson in his address 'To the Christian Reader,' prefixed to Bradford's 'Two Notable Sermons,' 1574, states that the fraud was committed by Bradford and without the knowledge of his master; but Bradford's own words, in his last examination before Bishop Gardiner, are: 'My lord, I set my foot to his foot, whosoever he be, that can come forth and justly vouch to my face that ever I deceived my master. And as you are chief justice by office in England, I desire justice upon them that so slander me, because they cannot prove it' (Examination of Bradford, London, 1561, sig. a vi.) In May 1548 he published translations from Artopœus and Chrysostom, and in or about the following August entered St. Catharine's Hall, Cambridge, where his 'diligence in study and profiting in knowledge and godly conversation' were such, that on 19 Oct. 1549 the university bestowed on him, by special grace, the degree of master of arts. The entry in the grace book describes him as a man of mature age and approved life, who had for eight years been diligently employed in the study of literature, the arts, and holy scriptures. He was shortly afterwards elected to a fellowship at Pembroke Hall. In a letter to Traves, written about November 1549, he says: 'My fellowship here is worth seven pound a year, for I have allowed me eighteen-pence a week, and as good as thirty-three shillings fourpence a year in money, besides my chamber, launder, barber, &c.; and I am bound to nothing but once or twice a year to keep a problem. Thus you see what a good Lord God is unto me.' Among his pupils at Pembroke Hall was John Whitgift, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. One of his intimate friends was Martin Bucer, whom he accompanied on a visit to Oxford in July 1550. On 10 Aug. of the same year he was ordained deacon by Bishop Ridley at Fulham, and received a license to preach. The bishop made him one of his chaplains, received him into his own house, and held him in the highest esteem. 'I thank God heartily,' wrote Ridley to Bernhere [q. v.] after Bradford's martyrdom, 'that ever I was acquainted with our dear brother Bradford, and that ever I had such a one in my house.' On 24 Aug. 1551 Bradford received the prebend of Kentish Town, in the church of St. Paul. A