As his office did not expire with the King’s trial, Parliament on the 6th February allowed him to appoint a deputy to supply his place at Guildhall, where he had sat as judge, and on the 14th of the same month, when Parliament made provision for the exercise of the executive authority by the appointment of a Council of State, he was selected by the House as one of the thirty-eight members. Of this body Bradshaw was chosen president, and his kinsman, John Milton, Latin secretary. At the first meeting (March 10), if we are to believe our old friend Whitelocke, he seemed “but little versed in such business,” and spent much of the time in making long speeches. Two days afterwards he was appointed Chief Justice of Wales, but he did not go there immediately, for on the 20th of the same month he sat again as Lord President of the Council, at whose discussions it would seem he was not disposed to remain a mere passive instrument, for, as Whitelocke remarks, he “spent much of their time in urging his own long arguments, which are inconvenient in State matters.” “His part,” as he adds, “was only to have gathered the sense of the council, and to state the question, not to deliver his own opinion.”
Whatever may have been his demeanour in the council, outside, at least, the duties of his office were discharged with firmness and energy, as the townsmen of Manchester had cause to know. When, in 1642, the town was threatened with an attack by Lord Derby, the Presbyterians had entrusted its defence to Colonel Rosworm, a German engineer, who had been trained in the wars of the Low Countries, and who had agreed to give his services for six months for the modest sum of £30. A faithful and valuable servant he proved, though a provokingly ill-tempered one, for he never ceased to bewail the beggarly remuneration he had agreed to accept, or to rail at the “despicable earthworms,” as he termed those who had offered it. As he refused to sign the national covenant, that not being included in the contract, and being, as he thought, no part of a soldier’s duty, his employers took an irreconcileable hatred against him, and, when the danger was past, repudiated their share of the bargain. Unable to obtain the pittance for which he had risked his life, he left the town in disgust, and repaired to London to lay his grievances before the Government, and implore their interference. As a consequence, the following peremptory letter was addressed to the town by Bradshaw, which no doubt had a salutary effect on the “despicable earthworms,” whom the angry old soldier had charged with being “matchless in their treachery, and setting the devil himself an example of villainy”:—
For the town of Manchester, and particularly for those who contracted with Lieut.-Colonell Roseworme, these are.
Gentlemen,—The condition of the bearer being fully made known, and his former merit attested to us by honourable testimony, and very well known to yourselves, himself also being by birth a stranger, and unable to present his complaints in the ordinary legall forme, give us just occasion to recommend him to you for a thorough performance of what, by your contract and promise, is become due unto him for his speciall service done to your town and country, whereto we conceive there is good cause for you to make an addition, and that there can be no cause at all for your backwardness to pay him what is his due.
As touching that which is otherwise, due to him from the State, after some other greater businesses are over, he may expect to be put in a way to receive all just satisfaction. In the meane time we committ him and the premises to your consideration for his speedy relief, and we doe require you to give us notice of your resolutions and doings herein, within one month after the receipt thereof.
Signed in the name and by order of the Council of State appointed by authority of Parliament.
Jo. Bradshawe, Pr. Sedt. Whitehall, 7th July, 1649.
It must be confessed that the President, with all his “rare modesty” and patriotism, was not so self-denying but that he looked sharply after the main chance. On the 19th June, 1649, Parliament voted him a sum of £1,000, and on the same day ordered that it should be referred to a committee to consider how he was to be put into possession of the value of £2,000 a year, to be settled as an inheritance upon him and his heirs for ever.
Wealth and honours were literally showered upon him, and for a time the history of the Government was little else than a history of Bradshaw. On the 30th June he was re-appointed to the office of Chief Justice of Chester, Humphrey Macworth, of Shrewsbury, who afterwards acted as President of the court-martial which tried Lord Derby, being named as his deputy. On the 15th July a Bill passed through Parliament settling £2,000 a year on him and his heirs, and nine days later (July 24th) another £2,000 per annum was granted to him and them out of the sequestrated estates of the Earl of St Albans at Somerhill, in Kent, and those of Lord Cottington in Wiltshire, the latter including the famous Fonthill. This last-named grant was in all probability the one referred to in the order of June 19, when a committee was ordered to consider how an annual payment of that amount could be settled.
Four days after these grants were made, an Act was passed constituting him Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, an office that subsequently, when others were abolished, was on his account specially retained, and on the 2nd April, 1652, secured to him. His name appears on the list of Justices of the Peace for his native county in 1650; in the same year he was again named of the Council of State, and retained his office of President. The following letter, extracted from the State papers, is interesting as showing the relations existing between Bradshaw and Cromwell, and the estimation in which he was held by the Lord General:—
My Lord,—I return you my humble and heartie thanks for your late noble and friendly letter, whereby I have the comfort and assurance of your lordship’s faire interpretation of my past, and (so I dare call them) well ment actions, which I shall not desyre to account for or justify to any man lyving so soon as to yourself; of whome I shall ever have that esteeme as becomes me to have of one who daylie approves himself religion’s and his countrey’s best friend, and who may justly challenge a tribute of observance from all that syncerely wysh them well, in which number I shall hope ever to be found.
My Lord, I have (’tis true) taken the boldness to write some few letters to you since your late departure hence, and I have satisfaction enough that they were receyved, and are not dyspleasing to you. Your applycation to the gentleman, named in yours, who is of so knowne fytnesse and abylytie to procure you effectuall returnes, was an act, in my apprehension, savouring of your usuall prudence, and tending to the advantage of the publique affayres committed to your trust and care; neither can any wyse man justifie any charge of seeming neglect of others in that respect. I am sorry your lordship hath bene put to any expense of your so pretious tyme, for removing any such doubts; but these my over carefull fryends, who have created your lordship this trouble, have, I must confess, occasyonally contrybuted to my desyred contentment, which is, and ever hath been, synce I had the honour to be knowne unto you, to understand myself to be reteyned and preserved in your good opinion. And if my faithfull endeavours for the publique, and respects unto your lordship in everything wherein I may serve you, may deserve a contynuance thereof, I may not doubt still to find that happiness; and this is all the trouble I shall give your lordship as to that matter.
We are now beginning with a new councell another yeare. I might have hoped, either for love or something els, to have been spared from the charge, but I could not obtaine that favour; and I dare not but submyt, where it is cleare to me that God gives the call. He also will, I hope, give His poore creature some power to act according to His mynd, and to serve Him in all uprightness and syncerytie, in the way wherein He hath placed me to walk.
My Lord, I have no more, but to recommend you and all your great affaires to the guydance, mercy, and goodness of our good God, and to subscrybe myself, in all truth of affection,
Your lordship’s ever to be disposed of Jo. Bradshawe. Whytehall, 18 Feb., 1650.
The customer who wronged Sir James Lidod is ordered to restore and satisfie, and to come up to answer his charge, which, probably, will fall heavy upon him.
For his Excellency the Lord General Cromwell, These.
Bradshaw acted as President of the Council of State in 1651, and again in the year following. So far his success had been uninterrupted, and as the supreme magistrate his power and influence was second only to that of Cromwell himself. His authority was almost absolute. The amiable Evelyn, in his diary, records that he could not witness the burial of Dorislaus, “the villain,” as he writes, “who manag’d the trial against his sacred Majesty,” until “I got a passe from the rebell Bradshaw, then in great power;” and again, when he went to Paris with only “an antiquated passe, it being so difficult to procure one of the rebells without entering into oathes, which I never would do,” and he had to bribe the officials at Dover, he found “money to the searchers and officers was as authentiq as the hand and seale of Bradshawe himselfe,” “where,” he adds, “I had not so much as my trunk open’d.”
The very rapidity with which Bradshaw had attained to power made him a formidable competitor with, if not indeed a dangerous rival to, the man in whose goodwill he had said it was his “desyred contentment” “to be reteyned and preserved;” and there can be little doubt that his boldness and unflinching adherence to the principles he had espoused brought about his own undoing, for it was not long before an incident occurred which for ever alienated Cromwell’s friendship from him. The occasion was one memorable in the annals of England—the dissolution of the Long Parliament, on the 20th April, 1653. Finding the action of the “Rump,” as it was called, inimical to his designs, Cromwell, who seems to have begun to think that government by a single person was desirable, went down to Westminster with a force of 300 men, broke up the House, expelled the members, and, pointing to the mace, directed Col. Worsley—Manchester’s first Parliamentary representative—to “take away that bauble,” which having been done, he ordered the doors to be locked, and then returned to his lodgings at Whitehall. And so, without a struggle or a groan, unpitied and unregretted, the Long Parliament, which for 12 years had under a variety of forms alternately defended and invaded the liberties of the nation, fell by the parricidal hands of its own children.