Biographical catalogue of the portraits at Weston, the seat of the Earl of Bradford

by Mary Louisa Boyle

BORN 1575, DIED 1657-8.

By Jansen.

EDWARD BRIDGEMAN was the younger son of William Bridgeman of Dean Parva, in the county of Gloucester. He settled in the city of Exeter, and was, in 1578, High-Sheriff of the said city and the county of Devon. His son John was born in Exeter, in a house not far from the palace-gate, which seemed an omen of his future dignity. He was a studious boy, and loved his books, and was carefully kept at school until it was deemed advisable ‘to transplant him to the University,’ when he was entered at Magdalen College, Cambridge, of which he became a Fellow, and eventually the Master. In 1600, being M.A., he was admitted ad eundem at Oxford, and here he attained the degree of Doctor of Divinity, being the highest, we are told, ‘a scholar can receive, or the University bestow.’ Dr. Bridgeman’s character for learning and piety, combined with refinement of manners and good breeding, had reached the ears of King James the First, who appointed him one of his Domestic Chaplains, and soon afterwards he became incumbent of Wigan in Lancashire. For upwards of two hundred years, even to the present day, the living in question has been held, with scarcely any intermission, by a member of the family of Bridgeman. In 1619 the Doctor was raised to the See of Chester, being consecrated at Lambeth, at the same time as the Bishops of Oxford and Bristol. Now the King taking into consideration that the Bishopric of Chester was less lucrative than some others, His Majesty also preferred John Bridgeman to the living of Bangor in Wales, which he was to hold ad commendam, or temporarily. Collins tells us that his Lordship was not present in the Upper House, in the year 1641, when the bishops protested against the proceedings in Parliament, and were impeached, and sent to the Tower, whereby he was saved the tedious imprisonment to which his right reverend brethren were subjected. But all his proclivities were Royalist, and during the usurpation, his estates being sequestrated, he took refuge at his son’s country house at Moreton, near Oswestry, in Salop, where he died about the year 1657 or 1658, being buried in the neighbouring church of Kinnerley, and not in the Cathedral of Chester, as some writers have it.

This worthy Prelate was said to have been ‘as ingenious as he was brave, and a great patron of those gifts in others which he himself owned. He, moreover, was the father of that great and good man, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, the Lord-Keeper, who was a glory to his family, and indeed to the country at large.’ The Bishop of Chester married Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. Helyar (of a good old Somersetshire family), Canon of Exeter, and Archdeacon of Barnstaple, by whom he had five sons—

1. Sir Orlando Bridgeman, afterwards First Baronet, and eventually Lord-Keeper.

2. Dove, Prebendary of Chester, married Miss Bennet of Cheshire (who survived him), by whom he had one son, Charles, Archdeacon of Richmond, in Yorkshire, who died unmarried 1678. The widow of Dove Bridgeman married, as her second husband, Dr. John Halkett, Bishop of Lichfield.

3. Henry Bridgeman, who was indeed rich in church preferment, being successively Rector of Bangor and Barrow, and Bishop of the Isle of Man. He married Catherine, daughter of Robert Lever, of Lancashire, Gent., by whom he had one daughter, who married Sir Thomas Greenhalgh of Brundlesham, County Lancaster.

4. Sir James Bridgeman, Knight, who married the daughter of one Mr. Allen, a gentleman of Cheshire, by whom he had (beside a son and daughter, who died unmarried) Frances, wife of William, Lord Howard of Escrick, and Magdalen, wife of William Wynder, Esq.

5. Richard, a merchant in Amsterdam, married the daughter of one Mr. Watson, also an English merchant in that city, by whom he had a daughter, Elizabeth, married to John Dove, Surveyor of the Customs; and a son, William, of Westminster, some time Secretary of the Admiralty, and one of the Clerks of the Privy Council, who married Diana, daughter of Mr. Vernatti, an Italian gentleman. Their children were Orlando, and Catherine, married to a relative, son of Sir John Bridgeman, Bart.