BRADLEY, JAMES (1693-1762), English astronomer, was born at Sherborne in Gloucestershire in March 1693. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, on the 15th of March 1711, and took degrees of B.A. and M.A. in 1714 and 1717 respectively. His early observations were made at the rectory of Wanstead in Essex, under the tutelage of his uncle, the Rev. James Pound (1669-1724), himself a skilled astronomer, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on the 6th of November 1718. He took orders on his presentation to the vicarage of Bridstow in the following year, and a small sinecure living in Wales was besides procured for him by his friend Samuel Molyneux (1689-1728). He, however, resigned his ecclesiastical preferments in 1721, on his appointment to the Savilian professorship of astronomy at Oxford, while as reader on experimental philosophy (1729-1760) he delivered 79 courses of lectures in the Ashmolean museum. His memorable discovery of the aberration of light (see [Aberration]) was communicated to the Royal Society in January 1729 (Phil. Trans. xxxv. 637). The observations upon which it was founded were made at Molyneux’s house on Kew Green. He refrained from announcing the supplementary detection of nutation (q.v.) until the 14th of February 1748 (Phil. Trans. xlv. 1), when he had tested its reality by minute observations during an entire revolution (18.6 years) of the moon’s nodes. He had meantime (in 1742) been appointed to succeed Edmund Halley as astronomer royal; his enhanced reputation enabled him to apply successfully for an instrumental outfit at a cost of £1000; and with an 8-foot quadrant completed for him in 1750 by John Bird (1700-1776), he accumulated at Greenwich in ten years materials of inestimable value for the reform of astronomy. A crown pension of £250 a year was conferred upon him in 1752. He retired in broken health, nine years later, to Chalford in Gloucestershire, and there died on the 13th of July 1762. The printing of his observations was delayed by disputes about their ownership; but they were finally issued from the Clarendon Press, Oxford, in two folio volumes (1798, 1805). The insight and industry of F.W. Bessel were, however, needed for the development of their fundamental importance.
Rigaud’s Memoir prefixed to Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence of James Bradley, D.D. (Oxford, 1832), is practically exhaustive. Other sources of information are: New and General Biographical Dictionary, xii. 54 (1767); Biog. Brit. (Kippis); Fouchy’s “Éloge,” Paris Memoirs (1762), p. 231 (Histoire); Delambre’s Hist. de l’astronomie au 18me siècle, p. 413.
BRADSHAW, GEORGE (1801-1853), English printer and publisher, was born at Windsor Bridge, Pendleton, Lancashire, on the 29th of July 1801. On leaving school he was apprenticed to an engraver at Manchester, eventually setting up on his own account in that city as an engraver and printer—principally of maps. His name was already known as the publisher of Bradshaw’s Maps of Inland Navigation, when in 1839, soon after the introduction of railways, he published, at sixpence, Bradshaw’s Railway Time Tables, the title being changed in 1840 to Bradshaw’s Railway Companion, and the price raised to one shilling. A new volume was issued at occasional intervals, a supplementary monthly time-sheet serving to keep the book up to date. In December 1841, acting on a suggestion made by his London agent, Mr W.J. Adams, Bradshaw reduced the price of his time-tables to the original sixpence, and began to issue them monthly under the title Bradshaw’s Monthly Railway Guide. In June 1847 was issued the first number of Bradshaw’s Continental Railway Guide, giving the time-tables of the Continental railways just as Bradshaw’s Monthly Railway Guide gave the time-tables of the railways of the United Kingdom. Bradshaw, who was a well-known member of the Society of Friends, and gave considerable time to philanthropic work, died in 1853.
BRADSHAW, HENRY (c. 1450-1513), English poet, was born at Chester. In his boyhood he was received into the Benedictine monastery of St Werburgh, and after studying with other novices of his order at Gloucester (afterwards Worcester) College, Oxford, he returned to his monastery at Chester. He wrote a Latin treatise De antiquitate et magnificentia Urbis Cestriae, which is lost, and a life of the patron saint of his monastery in English seven-lined stanza. This work was completed in the year of its author’s death, 1513, mentioned in “A balade to the auctour” printed at the close of the work. A second ballad describes him as “Harry Braddeshaa, of Chestre abbey monke.” Bradshaw disclaims the merit of originality and quotes the authorities from which he translates—Bede, William of Malmesbury, Giraldus Cambrensis, Alfred of Beverley, Henry of Huntingdon, Ranulph Higden, and especially the “Passionary” or life of the saint preserved in the monastery. The poem, therefore, which is defined by its editor, Dr Carl Horstmann, as a “legendary epic,” is rather a compilation than a translation. It contains a good deal of history beside the actual life of the saint. St Werburgh was the daughter of Wulfere, king of Mercia, and Bradshaw gives a description of the kingdom of Mercia, with a full account of its royal house. He relates the history of St Ermenilde and St Sexburge, mother and grandmother of Werburgh, who were successively abbesses of Ely. He does not neglect the miraculous elements of the story, but he is more attracted by historical fact than legend, and the second book narrates the Danish invasion of 875, and describes the history and antiquities of Chester, from its foundation by the legendary giant Leon Gaur, from which he derives the British name of Caerleon, down to the great fire which devastated the city in 1180, but was suddenly extinguished when the shrine of St Werburgh was carried in procession through the streets. The Holy Lyfe and History of saynt Werburge very frutefull for all Christen people to rede (printed by Richard Pynson, 1521) has been very variously estimated. Thomas Warton, who deals with Bradshaw at some length,[1] quotes as the most splendid passage of the poem the description of the feast preceding Werburgh’s entry into the religious life. He considered Bradshaw’s versification “infinitely inferior to Lydgate’s worst manner.” Dr Horstmann, on the other hand, finds in the poem “original genius, of a truly epic tone, with a native simplicity of feeling which sometimes reminds the reader of Homer.” Most readers will probably adopt a view between these extremes. Bradshaw expresses the humblest opinion of his own abilities, and he certainly had no delicate ear for rhythm. His sincerity is abundantly evident, and his piety is admitted even by John Bale[2], hostile as he was to monkish writers. W. Herbert[3] thought that a Lyfe of Saynt Radegunde, also printed by Pynson, was certainly by Bradshaw. The only extant copy is in the Britwell library.
Pynson’s edition of the Holy Lyfe is very rare, only five copies being known. A reprint copying the original type was edited by Mr. Edward Hawkins for the Chetham Society in 1848, and by Dr Carl Hortsmann for the Early English Text Society in 1887.
[1] History of English Poetry (ed. W.C. Hazlitt, 1871; iii. pp. 140-149).