See H.B. Woodward, “Jurassic Rocks of Britain,” Mem. Geol. Survey, vol. iv. (1904).
BRADFORD-ON-AVON, a market town in the Westbury parliamentary division of Wiltshire, England, on the rivers Avon and Kennet, and the Kennet & Avon Canal, 98 m. W. by S. of London by the Great Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 4514. Its houses, all built of grey stone, rise in picturesque disorder up the steep sides of the Avon valley, here crossed by an ancient bridge of nine arches, with a chapel in the centre. Among many places of worship may be mentioned the restored parish church of Holy Trinity, which dates from the 12th century and contains some interesting monuments and brasses; and the Perpendicular Hermitage or Tory chapel, with a 15th or 16th century chantry-house. But most notable is the Saxon church of St Lawrence, the foundation of which is generally attributed, according to William of Malmesbury (1125), to St Aldhelm, early in the 8th century. It consists of a chancel, nave and porch, in such unchanged condition that E.A. Freeman considered it “the most perfect surviving church of its kind in England, if not in Europe.” It has more lately, however, been held that the present building is not Aldhelm’s, but a restoration, dating from about 975, and attributable to the influence of Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury. Kingston House, long the seat of the dukes of Kingston, is a beautiful example of early 17th-century domestic architecture. The local industries include the manufacture of rubber goods, brewing, quarrying and iron-founding.
Bradford (Bradauford, Bradeford) was the site of a battle in 652 between Kenwal and his kinsman Cuthred. A monastery existed here in the 8th century, of which St Aldhelm was abbot at the time of his being made bishop of Sherborne in A.D. 705. In 1001 Æthelred gave this monastery and the town of Bradford to the nunnery of Shaftesbury, in order that the nuns might have a safe refuge against the insults of the Danes. No mention of the monastery occurs after the Conquest, but the nunnery of Shaftesbury retained the lordship of the manor until the dissolution in the reign of Henry VIII. In a synod held here in 954, Dunstan was elected bishop of Winchester. Bradford appears as a borough in the Domesday survey, and is there assessed at 42 hides. No charter of incorporation is recorded, however, and after returning two members to the parliament of 1295 the town does not appear to have enjoyed any of the privileges of a borough. The market is of ancient origin, and was formerly held on Monday; in the survey the tolls are assessed at 45 shillings. Bradford was at one time the centre of the clothing industry in the west of England, and was especially famous for its broadcloths and mixtures, the waters of the Avon being especially favourable to the production of good colours and superior dyes. The industry declined in the 18th century, and in 1740 we find the woollen merchants of Bradford petitioning for an act of parliament to improve their trade and so re-establish their credit in foreign markets.
BRADLAUGH, CHARLES (1833-1891), English free-thinker and politician, was born at Hoxton, London, on the 26th of September 1833. His father was a poor solicitor’s clerk, who also had a small business as a law stationer, and his mother had been a nursemaid. At twelve years old he became office-boy to his father’s employer, and at fourteen wharf-clerk and cashier to a coal merchant in the City Road. He had been baptized and brought up in the Church of England, but he now came into contact with a group of free-thinkers who were disciples of Richard Carlile. He was hastily labelled an “atheist,” and was turned out of his situation. Thus driven into the arms of the secularists, he managed to earn a living by odd jobs, and became further immersed in the study of free-thought. At the end of 1850 he enlisted as a soldier, but in 1853 was bought out with money provided by his mother. He then found employment as a lawyer’s clerk, and gradually became known as a free-thought lecturer, under the name of “Iconoclast.” From 1860 he conducted the National Reformer for several years, and displayed much resource in legal defence when the paper was prosecuted by the government on account of its alleged blasphemy and sedition in 1868-1869. Bradlaugh became notorious as a leading “infidel,” and was supported by the sympathy of those who were enthusiasts at that time for liberty of speech and thought. He was a constant figure in the law courts; and his competence to take the oath was continually being called in question, while his atheism and republican opinions were adduced as reasons why no jury should give damages for attacks on his character. In 1874 he became acquainted with Mrs Annie Besant (b. 1847), who afterwards became famous for her gifts as a lecturer on socialism and theosophy. She began by writing for the National Reformer and soon became co-editor. In 1876 the Bristol publisher of an American pamphlet on the population question, called Fruits of Philosophy, was indicted for selling a work full of indecent physiological details, and, pleading guilty, was lightly sentenced; but Bradlaugh and Mrs Besant took the matter up, in order to vindicate their ideas of liberty, and aggressively republished and circulated the pamphlet. The prosecution which resulted created considerable scandal. They were convicted and sentenced to a heavy fine and imprisonment, but the sentence was stayed and the indictment ultimately quashed on a technical point. The affair, however, had several side issues in the courts and led to much prejudice against the defendants, the distinction being ignored between a protest against the suppression of opinion and the championship of the particular opinions in question. Mrs Besant’s close alliance with Bradlaugh eventually terminated in 1886, when she drifted from secularism, first into socialistic and labour agitation and then into theosophy as a pupil of Mme Blavatsky. Bradlaugh himself took up politics with increasing fervour. He had been unsuccessful in standing for Northampton in 1868, but in 1880 he was returned by that constituency to parliament as an advanced Radical. A long and sensational parliamentary struggle now began. He claimed to be allowed to affirm under the Parliamentary Oaths Act, and the rejection of this pretension, and the refusal to allow him to take the oath on his professing his willingness to do so, terminated in Bradlaugh’s victory in 1886. But this result was not obtained without protracted scenes in the House, in which Lord Randolph Churchill took a leading part. When the long struggle was over, the public had gradually got used to Bradlaugh, and his transparent honesty and courageous contempt for mere popularity gained him increasing respect. Experience of public life in the House of Commons appeared to give him a more balanced view of things; and before he died, on the 30th of January 1891, the progress of events was such that it was beginning to be said of him that he was in a fair way to end as a Conservative. Hard, arrogant and dogmatic, with a powerful physique and a real gift for popular oratory, he was a natural leader in causes which had society against them, but his sincerity was as unquestionable as his combativeness.
His Life was written, from a sympathetic point of view, with much interesting detail as to the history of secularism, by his daughter, Mrs Bradlaugh Bonner, and J.M. Robertson (1894).
BRADLEY, GEORGE GRANVILLE (1821-1903), English divine and scholar, was born on the 11th of December 1821, his father, Charles Bradley, being at that time vicar of Glasbury, Brecon. He was educated at Rugby under Thomas Arnold, and at University College, Oxford, of which he became a fellow in 1844. He was an assistant master at Rugby from 1846 to 1858, when he succeeded G.E.L. Cotton as headmaster at Marlborough. In 1870 he was elected master of his old college at Oxford, and in August 1881 he was made dean of Westminster in succession to A.P. Stanley, whose pupil and intimate friend he had been, and whose biographer he became. Besides his Recollections of A.P. Stanley (1883) and Life of Dean Stanley (1892), he published Aids to writing Latin Prose Composition and Lectures on Job (1884) and Ecclesiastes (1885). He took part in the coronation of Edward VII., resigned the deanery in 1902, and died on the 13th of March 1903.
Dean Bradley’s family produced various other members distinguished in literature. His half-brother, Andrew Cecil Bradley (b. 1851), fellow of Balliol, Oxford, became professor of modern literature and history (1881) at University College, Liverpool, and in 1889 regius professor of English language and literature at Glasgow University; and he was professor of poetry at Oxford (1901-1906). Of Dean Bradley’s own children the most distinguished in literature were his son, Arthur Granville Bradley (b. 1850), author of various historical and topographical works; and especially his daughter, Mrs Margaret Louisa Woods (b. 1856), wife of the Rev. Henry George Woods, president of Trinity, Oxford (1887-1897), and master of the Temple (1904), London. Mrs Woods became well known for her accomplished verse (Lyrics and Ballads, 1889), largely influenced by Robert Bridges, and for her novels, of which her Village Tragedy (1887) was the earliest and strongest.