Harrington, paymaster of the English forces in France. Bradford at this time was gay and thoughtless, and to support his extravagance he seems to have appropriated some of the money entrusted to him; but he afterwards made full restitution. In April 1547 he took chambers in the Inner Temple, and began to study law; but finding divinity more congenial, he removed, in the following year, to St Catharine’s Hall, Cambridge, where he studied with such assiduity that in little more than a year he was admitted by special grace to the degree of master of arts, and was soon after made fellow of Pembroke Hall, the fellowship being “worth seven pound a year.” One of his pupils was John Whitgift. Bishop Ridley, who in 1550 was translated to the see of London, sent for him and appointed him his chaplain. In 1553 he was also made chaplain to Edward VI., and became one of the most popular preachers in the kingdom, earning high praise from John Knox. Soon after the accession of Mary he was arrested on a charge of sedition, and confined in the Tower and the king’s bench prison for a year and a half. During this time he wrote several epistles which were dispersed in various parts of the kingdom. He was at last brought to trial (January 1554/5) before the court in which Bishop Gardiner sat as chief, and, refusing to retract his principles, was condemned as a heretic and burnt, with John Leaf, in Smithfield on the 1st of July 1555.
His writings, which consist chiefly of sermons, meditations, tracts, letters and prayers, were edited by A. Townsend for the Parker Society (2 vols. 8vo, Cambridge, 1848–1853).
BRADFORD, WILLIAM (1590–1657), American colonial governor and historian,
was born in Austerfield, Yorkshire, England, probably in March 1590. He
became somewhat estranged from his family, which was one of considerable
importance in the locality, when in early youth he joined the Puritan
sect known as Separatists, and united in membership with the
congregation at Scrooby. He prepared in 1607, with other members of the
church, to migrate to Holland, but the plan was discovered and several
of the leaders, among them Bradford, were imprisoned. In the year
following, however, he joined the English colony at Amsterdam, where he
learned the trade of silk weaving. He subsequently sold his Yorkshire
property and embarked in business on his own account at Leiden, where
the English refugees had removed. He became an active advocate of the
proposed emigration to America, was one of the party that sailed in the
“Mayflower” in September 1620, and was one of the signers of the compact
on shipboard in Cape Cod Bay. After the death of Governor John Carver in
April 1621, Bradford was elected governor of Plymouth Colony, and served
as such, with the exception of five years (1633, 1634, 1636, 1638 and
1644) until shortly before his death. After 1624, at Bradford’s
suggestion, a board of five and later seven assistants was chosen
annually to share the executive responsibility. Bradford’s rule was firm
and judicious, and to his guidance more than to that of any other man
the prosperity of the Plymouth Colony was due. His tact and kindness in
dealing with the Indians helped to relieve the colony from the conflicts
with which almost every other settlement was afflicted. In 1630 the
council for New England granted to “William Bradford, his heires,
associatts, and assignes,” a new patent enlarging the original grant of
territory made to the Plymouth settlers. This patent Bradford in the
name of the trustees made over to the body corporate of the colony in
1641. Bradford died in Plymouth on the 9th of May 1657. He was the
author of a very important historical work, the History of Plimouth Plantation (until 1646), first published in the Proceedings of the
Massachusetts Historical Society for 1856, and later by the state of
Massachusetts (Boston, 1898), and in facsimile, with an introduction by
John A. Doyle, in 1896. The manuscript disappeared from Boston during
the War of Independence, was discovered in the Fulham library, London,
in 1855, and was returned by the bishop of London to the state of
Massachusetts in 1897. This work has been of inestimable value to
writers on the history of the Pilgrims, and was freely used, in
manuscript, by Morton, Hubbard, Mather, Prince and Hutchinson. Bradford
was also undoubtedly part author, with Edward Winslow, of the “Diary of
Occurrences” published in Mourts' Relation, edited by Dr H.M. Dexter
(Boston, 1865). He also wrote a series of Dialogues, on church
government, published in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s
Publications (1870.)
For Bradford’s ancestry and early life see Joseph Hunter, Collections concerning the Founders of New Plymouth, in Massachusetts Historical Society’s Collections (Boston, 1852); also the quaint sketch in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia (London, 1702), and a chapter in Williston Walker’s Ten New England Leaders (New York, 1901).
BRADFORD, WILLIAM (1663–1752), American colonial printer,
was born in Leicestershire, England, on the 20th of May
1663. He learned the printer’s trade in London with Andrew
Sowle, and in 1682 emigrated with William Penn to Pennsylvania,
where in 1685 he introduced the “art and mystery” of printing
into the Middle Colonies. His first imprint was an almanac,
Kalendarium Pennsilvaniense or America’s Messenger (1685).
At the outset he was ordered “not to print anything but what
shall have lycence from ye council,” and in 1692, the colony then
being torn by schism, he issued a tract for the minority sect of
Friends, whereupon his press was seized and he was arrested.
He was released, however, and his press was restored on his
appeal to Governor Benjamin Fletcher. In 1690, with William
Rittenhouse (1644–1708) and others, he established in Roxboro,
Pennsylvania, now a part of Philadelphia, the first paper mill
in America. In the spring of 1693 he removed to New York,
where he was appointed royal printer for the colony, a position
which he held for more than fifty years; and on the 8th of
November 1725 he issued the first number of the New York Gazette, the first paper established in New York and from 1725
to 1733 the only paper in the colony. Bradford died in New
York on the 23rd of May 1752.
His son, Andrew Sowle Bradford (1686–1742), removed from New York to Philadelphia in 1712, and there on the 22nd of December 1719 issued the first number of the American Weekly Mercury, the first newspaper in the Middle Colonies. Benjamin Franklin, for a time a compositor in the office, characterized the paper as “a paltry thing, in no way interesting”; but it was continued for many years and was edited by Bradford until his death.
The latter’s nephew, William Bradford (1722–1791), established in December 1742 the Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, which was for sixty years under his control or that of his son, and which in 1774–1775 bore the oft-reproduced device of a divided serpent with the motto “Unite or Die.” He served in the War of American Independence, rising to the rank of colonel. His son, William Bradford (1755–1795), also served in the War of Independence, and afterwards was attorney-general of Pennsylvania (1791), a judge of the supreme court of the state, and in 1794–1795 attorney-general of the United States.
BRADFORD, WILLIAM (1827–1892), American marine painter,
was born at New Bedford, Massachusetts. He was a Quaker,
and was self-taught, painting the ships and the marine
views he saw along the coast of Massachusetts, Labrador and
Nova Scotia; he went on several Arctic expeditions with Dr
Hayes, and was the first American painter to portray the frozen
regions of the north. His pictures attracted much attention by
reason of their novelty and gorgeous colour effects. His “Steamer
'Panther' in Melville Bay, under the Light of the Midnight
Sun” was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1875.
Bradford was a member of the National Academy of Design,
New York, and died in that city on the 25th of April 1892. His
style was somewhat influenced by Albert van Beest, who worked
with Bradford at Fairhaven for a time; but Bradford is minute
and observant of detail where van Beest’s aim is general effect.
BRADFORD, a city, and municipal, county and parliamentary borough, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 192 m. N.N.W. of London and 8 m. W. of Leeds. Pop. (1891) 265,728; (1901) 279,767. It is served by the Midland and the North Eastern railways (Midland station), and by the Great Northern and the Lancashire & Yorkshire railways (Exchange station). It lies in a small valley opening southward from that of the
