the Commonwealth, he lived in retirement, practising only as chamber counsel and conveyancer. It is to the meditations of him and other lawyers under like conditions, that the composition of the forces of common law (seizin and terms of years), statute law (uses), and chancery law (trusts), pressed into a family settlement, by which so intractable a subject as land is subdivided into a variety of interests without destroying its integrity, was matured.—(See Booth, James.) His forms long continued in repute, and were printed in a collection still found in law-book catalogues. At the Restoration he was rewarded with the office of lord chief-baron of the exchequer. He presided at the trial of the regicides, the shedding of whose blood he, with the acrimony of the times, urged on the jury as a proper expiatory sacrifice. Next he was made a baronet, and chief-justice of the common pleas, where he showed himself a good lawyer. He had acted as deputy or occasional speaker of the house of lords; and in 1667, on the great seal being taken from Lord Clarendon, it was given to him. This was intended to be a mere temporary arrangement, but he held the office five years. In this post, according to a contemporary witness (R. North), alike narrow in his observations and mind, he did not increase his fame. He was inapt, timid, trimming to suitors and counsel, and not sufficiently servile to the king. Upon that illegal act of the cabal ministry, the shutting up the exchequer, he could not be persuaded to grant injunctions to restrain suits against the bankers who had their customers' money locked up there; and whilst he "boggled," a successor deemed less scrupulous. Lord Shaftesbury, slipped in. He died in 1674. The earldom of Bradford is held by his descendants.—S. H. G.
BRIDGET, St., of Sweden, otherwise called Birgit or Birgitta, was born in the year 1302. She was of royal blood, being the daughter of Birger, legislator of Upland, and Ingeburgis, a lady descended from the Gothic kings. When very young, she was given in marriage to Ulpho, prince of Nericia, by whom she had eight children. From her earliest years, Bridget had striven to walk in the paths of christian perfection, and she found in her husband a willing partner, both in her frequent prayers and meditations, and in her unceasing works of charity. About the year 1343 they both went on a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. James, at Compostella, and shortly after their return Ulpho died. Bridget divided her husband's estates among her children, and devoted herself, for the rest of her life, to labours connected with religion. She founded, soon after her husband's death, the double monastery of Wastein in the diocese of Linkopen in Sweden, under the rule of St. Augustine, with certain particular constitutions. The nuns were called Brigittines, and many monasteries of them still subsist in different parts of Europe. After spending two years at Wastein, Bridget repaired to Rome, according to a practice common in that age, to visit the tombs of the apostles. Like a more celebrated Swedish princess of a later age—Christina, daughter of Gustavus Adolphus—Bridget seems to have been so powerfully attracted by the Eternal City, as to be induced to make it her permanent dwelling-place for the chief part of her afterlife. She employed herself in ascetical practices of devotion, and in various works of mercy among the sick and poor. We read in Fleury of a remarkable prediction made by her to Pope Urban V., whom she visited at Montefiascone in 1370, to obtain the confirmation of the rule she had given to her new order. The pope was about to return to Avignon, and St. Bridget, after in vain endeavouring to shake his resolution, predicted to Alfonso, bishop of Jaen, that if the pope returned to Avignon he would die immediately, and would have to give account to God for his conduct. Fleury proceeds to say, that nevertheless the pope left Italy, reached Avignon about the end of September, and died on the 9th December following. After obtaining the confirmation of her rule, Bridget visited Naples and Sicily, and soon after went on a pilgrimage to the holy places in Palestine. Being returned to Rome, she lived there one year longer, during which she was a martyr to disease. Feeling her death-hour approach, she summoned to her side her son, Birger, and her daughter, St. Catharine of Sweden, and after giving them her last counsels and instructions, being laid on sackcloth, she breathed her last on the 23d July, 1373. Her body was buried in a convent of Poor Clares at Rome, but was translated to her monastery of Wastein in the following year. She was canonized by Boniface IX. in 1391, during the time of the great schism in the papacy. At the council of Constance in February, 1415, the ambassadors of the kingdoms of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, fearing lest a process carried on during the schism should upon any pretext be set aside, appeared before the assembled fathers, and demanded that St. Bridget should be enrolled among the saints. Her canonization was then solemnly recognized and confirmed. The works of St. Bridget consist of—Prayers on the sufferings and love of Christ, several of which still retain a place in manuals of devotion; her Rule; her Revelations (approved as profitable for instruction, but no further, by the council of Basle); and a treatise "On the Excellencies of the Blessed Virgin."—(Butler; Fleury.)—T. A.
BRIDGET or BRIDGID, Saint, an Irish virgin, eminent for her piety, was born at Feughart, near Dundalk, in the county of Louth, about the year 453, according to the Usher Colgan and Lanigan, while others place her birth as far back as 439. Her father, Dubhthach, was a man of rank. Colgan says he was a prince of the Hermonians of Leinster; Bale calls him a nobleman; and the Book of Howth says he was a captain of Leinster. It is possible each statement is correct. While yet an infant, she was committed to the care of a bard, who watched over her with paternal care, instructing her in all the knowledge of the age. She soon became distinguished for her extraordinary learning, wisdom, and piety; and, embracing a life of celibacy, she received the veil from Macaille, bishop of Usneach in Westmeath, in the sixteenth or seventeenth year of her age. About the year 480, according to Ware, or 487, as Lanigan asserts, she founded the famous monastery of Kildare, for nuns, and the institution was largely endowed by the kings of Leinster. Colgan says the place was called Kile Dara, or the Church of the Oak, from having been erected near a great oak-tree. St. Bridget travelled all over Ireland, and founded numerous establishments of the order of Brigidine nuns, which were celebrated through the country for many ages. The various acts of her life are collected by her numerous biographers, and though there is much of what is true, yet the truth is so interwoven with palpable fiction, that it would be a hopeless task to attempt to separate the one from the other. But it is beyond doubt that she was a very wise as well as a very holy person, and so highly was she esteemed by the bishops and clergy, not only of Ireland, but of Britain, that they frequently consulted her on the regulation of religious matters; and it is said, that on one occasion her advice was held to have been authoritative in a synod of Dublin. After a life of piety and charity (and the performance, as it is said, of many miracles), she died February 1, 525, being about seventy years of age. She was buried at Kildare, near the great altar, and her monument was ornamented with gold, silver, and precious stones, but when the Danes devastated that district in the ninth century, the remains of the saint, and the rich shrine in which they were contained, were removed to Downpatrick, and interred there in the same sepulchre as Saint Patrick and Saint Columkille. The memory of the saint has ever been held in veneration, especially in Ireland and Scotland, and numerous churches were dedicated to her. Several biographies of Saint Bridget were collected by Colgan, and published in his great work, "Trias than Mathurga."—J. F. W.
BRIDGEWATER, Francis Egerton, third and last duke of, left, it has been well said, his biography engraved in intaglio on the face of the country he helped to civilize and enrich. Pity that, in comparison with his great services, the materials for his written life should be so scanty and insufficient. He was born on the 21st May, 1736 (the birthyear of James Watt), the eighth child of Scroop, fourth earl and first duke of Bridgewater. In his twelfth year he succeeded to the dukedom, on the death of his elder brother, John (who died unmarried), having, three years before, been left an orphan by the death of his father, the first duke. In less than a twelvemonth after the death of her husband, the widowed duchess of Bridgewater was married again, to Sir Richard Lyttelton, a brother of the well-known literary lord of that name. Francis was a sickly boy, and it seemed unlikely that he would survive the four brothers who, at his father's death, stood between him and the dukedom. Happy in her second marriage, the duchess, it is hinted, ill-treated her youngest child. So far as she was concerned his education was neglected; and, according to family tradition, it was even contemplated to have him set aside at one time, on the score of mental deficiency. Little prepared to enjoy the classical associations and artistic treasures of the continent, he was sent in his eighteenth year by his guardians,
