Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/233

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Bradley
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Bramwell

determined to raise the standard of industry and insisted that every commoner should read for an honour school. Some consequent unpopularity was increased by an edict banishing dogs from the college, but he had his way, and he strengthened his position by bringing back James Franck Bright from Marlborough as tutor in history, and importing from Cambridge his old Marlborough pupil, Samuel Henry Butcher [q. v. Suppl. II], as a tutor in classics. Moreover, contrary to the practice of heads of houses, he took an active part in the teaching. His lectures on Sophocles, Cicero, and Latin prose attracted many undergraduates from other colleges. Entrance to his own college became competitive, and of the commoners of this period four have since been cabinet ministers and many distinguished in other lines. In 1880 Bradley was nominated in succession to Lord Selborne a member of the University Commission, and his services were rewarded by a canonry of Worcester. In 1881 the death of his old friend Stanley vacated the deanery of Westminster, and Bradley was chosen by Gladstone to take his place.

Once more Bradley found himself in a difficult situation. Stanley was no man of business, and his devotion to the abbey church had not extended to the care of the masonry. There was 'a ruinous fabric and a bankrupt chapter.' After long negotiations and much opposition Bradley induced the government to act. The ecclesiastical commissioners were empowered to provide a sum for immediate repairs and an income for the future, but one so small that it had to be supplemented by the proceeds of a suppressed canonry. Thus the building was saved. In 1889, at Bradley's instigation, a parliamentary commission was appointed to consider the question of space for future monuments and interments. As a substitute for interments Bradley extended the system of memorial services. The chief actual burials in his time were those of Darwin, Browning, Tennyson and Gladstone. The chief ceremonials were the jubilee service of Queen Victoria on 21 June 1887 and the coronation of Edward VII on 9 Aug. 1902. After Stanley's example Bradley used to take parties of working men round the abbey weekly in spring and summer. In the proceedings of convocation he took some part, and though he left the liberal party on the home rule question, his ecclesiastical liberalism was never shaken. After the coronation he resigned the deanery on 29 September 1902, and retired to Queen Anne's Gate, where he died on 13 March 1903. He was buried in the south aisle of the nave of the abbey by the grave of Atterbury.

Bradley, whose wife survived him till 27 Nov. 1910, had two sons and five daughters. The elder son, Arthur Granville, is known as an author of historical and topographical works, the second daughter, Mrs. Margaret L. Woods, as a poet and novelist, and the fourth, Mrs. Alexander Murray Smith, as an historian of Westminster Abbey. There are portraits of him at Rugby by Lowes Dickinson, at Marlborough by W. W. Ouless, and at the deanery of Westminster by Reginald Higgins (posthumous).

Bradley published several sermons and some schoolbooks, one of which, 'A Practical Introduction to Latin Prose Composition' (1881; new impression 1910) is still in great demand. He also wrote:

  1. 'Recollections of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley,' three lectures delivered in 1882 at Edinburgh, 1883.
  2. 'Lectures on Ecclesiastes,' 1885.
  3. 'Lectures on the Book of Job,' 1887.

He co-operated in writing R. E. Prothero's 'Life and Correspondence of Dean Stanley,' 2 vols. 1883.

[History of Marlborough College, by A. G. Bradley and others, 1893, pp. 150 seq.; The Times, 13, 16 March 1903; Fortnightly Review, July 1903 (S. H. Butcher); Life of Tennyson, 1897, i. 204-207,467-469; ii. 35-57, 273-274; F. D. How's Six Great Schoolmasters, 1904, pp. 226-269; Tennyson and his Friends, ed. by Lord Tennyson, 1911; private information; personal knowledge.]

J. S.


BRAMPTON, Baron. [See Hawkins, Sir Henry, 1817–1907.]


BRAMWELL, Sir FREDERICK JOSEPH (1818–1903), engineer, born on 7 March 1818 in Finch Lane, Cornhill, was younger son of George Bramwell, a partner in the firm of Dorrien & Co., bankers, of Finch Lane, afterwards amalgamated with Glyn, Mills, Currie & Co. His mother was Elizabeth Frith. His elder brother, George, Lord Bramwell [q. v. Suppl. I], attained eminence at the bar and on the bench. After attending the Palace School, Enfield, Frederick was apprenticed in 1834 to John Hague, a mechanical engineer, whose works in Cable Street, Wellclose Square, were afterwards bought up by the Blackwall Rope railway. Hague invented a system for propelling railway trains by means of atmospheric pressure, which was adopted with some success on a short railway in Devonshire. Bramwell,