Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/332

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Bridges
320
Bridges

Shaftesbury, who was thought to be willing to be more compliant. The warrant from Charles to Henry Coventry to receive the seal from Bridgeman is dated 16 Nov. (Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. 234 b}. He at once went into retirement at Teddington, and after an illness in the spring of 1673, from which, however, he had completely recovered in April, he died on 25 June 1674, and was buried at Teddington. He was twice married: first to Judith, daughter and heir of John Kynaston of Morton, Shropshire; secondly, in May 1670 (ib. 7th Rep. 488 ), to Dorothy, daughter of Dr. Saunders, provost of Oriel College, Oxford, widow of George Craddock of Carswell Castle, Staffordshire. By his first marriage he had one son, by his second two sons and a daughter, the latter of whom, in 1677, married Sir Thomas Middleton of Chirk Castle, bringing with her 6,000l., left her by her father (ib. 470 a). The present Earl of Bradford is the direct lineal descendant of the lord keeper by his first wife.

[The principal modern authority for Bridgeman's life is Foss's Lives of the Judges, to which the writer of this article desires to own the fullest obligation. This, however, deals purely with his legal career. A good many notices of him occur in the Records of the Hist. MSS. Commission, and in the Calendar of State Papers, of which the most important are referred to above. North's Examen and Life of Lord-keeper Guildford, and the articles in the last edition of the Biog. Brit., have also been consulted. Prince, in his Worthies of Devon, has one or two interesting facts.]

G. A.


BRIDGES. [See also Brydges.]


BRIDGES, CHARLES (1794–1869), evangelical divine, was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, and proceeded B.A. 1818, M.A. 1831. He was ordained deacon in 1817, priest in 1818, and in 1823 was presented to the vicarage of Old Newton, near Stowmarket in Suffolk. In 1849 he was nominated vicar of Weymouth, where he remained till failing health induced him to retire to the rectory of Hinton Martell in Dorsetshire, to which he was presented by Lord Shaftesbury. Bridges was a prominent member of the evangelical party in the church, and author of many popular devotional and theological treatises. Among his works may be mentioned a 'Memoir of Miss M. J. Graham' (1823), of which several editions were published, a similarly executed 'Memoir of Rev. J. T. Nottidge' (1849), and a 'Life of Martin Boos, Roman Catholic Priest in Bavaria' (1855), which forms the fifth volume of the 'Library of Christian Biography,' edited by R. Bickersteth. Besides these devotional biographies, he wrote 'An Exposition of Psalm cxix.' (1827), which ran through several editions, and was also translated into German; 'An Exposition of the Book of Proverbs' (1846); 'Forty-eight Scriptural Studies' (5th ed. 1833); 'Fifty-four Scriptural Studies '(1837); and several smaller devotional and practical tracts. A book entitled 'The Christian Ministry, with an Inquiry into the causes of its Inefficiency, and with special reference to the Ministry of the Establishment' (1830) reached many editions. He also published several sermons, one of the latest of which, against 'Vain Philosophy' (1860), is a counterblast to the teaching of broad-church divines. A small selection from Bridges' correspondence was published at Edinburgh in the year after his death, under the title of 'Letters to a Friend.'

[Register and Mag. of Biography, i. 399; Brit. Mus. Cat.]

R. B.


BRIDGES, JOHN (d. 1618), bishop of Oxford and controversialist, was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, where he proceeded B.A. in 1556, and M.A. in 1560. He was elected fellow of Pembroke in 1556, and obtained the degree of D.D. from Canterbury in 1575. He spent some years in Italy in his youth; translated, about 1558, three of Machiavelli's discourses into English, which were not published, and afterwards received a benefice at Herne in Kent. He preached a sermon at Paul's Cross in 1571, which was printed, and published in 1572 a translation from the Latin of Rudolph Walther's 175 'Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles.' In the following year he replied to two catholic treatises—Thomas Stapleton's 'Counterblast' and Sanders's 'Visible Monarchie of the Romaine Church' in a book entitled 'The Supremacie of Christian Princes over all Persons throughout their Dominions.' Bridges was appointed dean of Salisbury in 1577. In 1581 Bishop Aylmer directed him, with other divines, to reply to Edmund Campion's 'Ten Reasons' in favour of the church of Rome. In 1582 he was a member of a commission appointed to hold a conference with some papist dialecticians. But his most important contribution to polemical literature was 'A Defence of the Government established in the Church of Englande for Ecclesiasticall Matters' (London, by John Winder, 1587). It is a quarto of 1412 pages, directed against Calvinism. It undertakes especially to answer two books—Thomas Cartwright's 'Discourse of Ecclesiastical Government,' or a 'briefe and plaine declaration,' 1574 (a translation from the Latin of Walter Travers),