resigned the rectory of Bangor,[1] which he had held for many years in commendam. In this benefice he was succeeded by his son, Henry Bridgeman, who was admitted thereto on the presentation of Lord Stanley and Strange,[2] and paid his first-fruits 31st May, 1641.[3]
After the year 1640 it is more difficult to trace the bishop's proceedings, for his accurate and methodical Leger containing his annual accounts and other memoranda closes with that year, and there are none of his private letters preserved among the family papers after this date. If he was able to go up to London for the opening of the Long Parliament on 3rd November, 1640, he did not stay there long, and it is probable that in that case this was his last journey to London.
The imprisonment of Laud, and the execution of the Earl of Strafford on 12th May, 1641, must have been a terrible blow to the bishop. His son Orlando Bridgeman, M.P. for Wigan, had the courage to speak against the iniquitous attainder of Strafford, and to argue against the charge of treason brought against him.[4] But the bishop, in his impaired health, was unable to attend parliament at this time, or take his part, with archbishop Williams and the other bishops, in opposing the bill for depriving the prelates of their seats in the House of Lords. He seems at this time to have remained quietly at Chester or at his house at Great Lever.
In a supplementary account to that contained in the oft-quoted Leger of sums disbursed for him by his son Orlando and others, and written in his own autograph, is an item of £10 9s. 6d, for a new year's gift to the King at Christmas, 1641. It was the custom
- ↑ Private letter of archbishop Laud inter Family Evidences, dated 22nd August, 1640, in which he says that the King had already heard of the bishop's voidance of the living, and promised it to one of the ejected Scottish ministers.
- ↑ Chester Institutions, quoted by Rev. M. H. Lee, Palatine Note-Book, vol. ii. p. 215.
- ↑ First-Fruits Composition Books, Record Society (Lancashire and Cheshire), vol. viii. p. 406.
- ↑ Clarendon's Hist. of the Rebellion, ed. of 1826, vol. ii. p. 605. Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors.
