Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/350

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344


NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. iv. OCT. 28, 1911


Yet, well were we if his immortal hate

Had ended in the men of State

But who the Church's miseries will scan

Will find him England's Dioclesian

T'was not enough himself t' have guilty been

But Jeroboam must make Israel sin.

All must obedient be to his behests

Making the meanest of the people priests

And Golden Calves must now be God's to them

Bethel's preferred before Jerusalem

There must they sacrifice and incense burn

For fear the Crown to David's House return

Who, since that, Heaven, would not wish him

dead. Yet, that his hand had earlier withered.

The reference in this effusion to the mean " priests" (of whom Walker was the arch type) proves that it was Presbyterian in sympathy. It may be claimed, therefore, jas evidence of the Puritan sentiment about Cromwell.

The dates affixed to the tracts cited in the foregoing articles will enable the reader to trace them in the ' Catalogue of the Thom- ason Tracts.' J. B. WILLIAMS.

' The Civil Warres. By an Impartiall Pen," i.e., John Davies of Kidwelly, 1661, is a book for the most part of no authority. But the account of Cromwell's death and funeral is near to the date, and must repre- sent the current talk amongst the royalists of the time, so that it is worth a brief refer- ence :

" He first lay in State in Somerset-house, where his Effigies made of Wax .... (together with the Corps) first stood till it was thence removed into another room, and. . . .was exposed to publick view till the three and twentieth of November, when the Effigies and Corps were carryed to Westminster Abbey. . . .the Effigies was. . . .placed under a Momument [sic] of Wood framed for that purpose, and there some dayes .exposed to publick view : The Corps as was said had been before privately buryed in Harry the

.Sevenths Chappel "P. 363.

W. C. B.


BRADSHAW THE REGICIDE : HIS DESCEN- DANTS. The following reference to the last -of the Bradshaws appeared in The Irish Times of the 17th inst :

" DEATH OF THE LAST OF THE BRADSHAWS. At Coolree Farm Lodge, on the southern slope .of'tthe famous ' Three Rocks,' which was the camping ground of the rebels in '98, there has died recently Mr. Robert Armstrong Bradshaw, the last lineal descendant of one of the most famous men in English history. The Mr. Brad- shaw just deceased was the only surviving son of the late Rev. Paris Bradshaw, one time Rector of Dysart, co. Waterford, who was the last and only living descendant of Henry Bradshaw, the Regicide, who was appointed by the Cromwellian Parliament ' President of the Court of Justice,'


and ' Chief of the famous one hundred and thirty- two Commissioners,' who tried Charles I., and who eventually pronounced sentence on him, and signed the King's death warrant.

" On the restoration of the Stuarts, Bradshaw fled to Ireland for a time, and, though an Act of Attainder (Act 12 Car. II., c. 30) was passed, by which Bradshaw, Cromwell, Ireton, and their issues were declared traitors, and deprived of all civil rights and all lands or possessions they were enjoying, at the time the Act was passed Cromwell and Bradshaw had been sleeping in their graves some years. Yet, in the case of Bradshaw's heirs, the law did not seem to have been followed up by any very active measures, as their small Irish property was retained.

" The descendants of the Bradshaw family lived on in their Irish obscurity, on what pro- perty they possessed in this country, till now the last of this old Cromwellian stock ended his days almost forgotten, and almost unknown, in the old man who has just died near Wexford in his eighty-second year. One daughter still survives, who is married to a small farmer in the neighbourhood. But the name of Bradshaw is extinct.

" In the tumbledown old house at Coolree, near Wexford, there are preserved many strange relics and heirlooms of the family, and many curious documents. It is to be hoped at least some of these may be secured by some of the learned societies or museums as historic records of the stirring times when Henry Bradshaw played such a part in the troublous times of Cromwell, and who pronounced Charles Stuart ' a tyrant, a murderer, and a traitor to his country.' "

The Irish Times of the 18th inst. had this additional note :

" ' Death of the Last of the Bradshaws.' " In reference to the paragraph which appeared under this heading in the Irish Times of yester- day, Mr. Charles J. Hill writes to us to say that part of the historical sketch of the Bradshaw amily was incorrect. John, and not Henry, Bradshaw, he says, was the President of the 2ourt of Justice appointed by the Cromwellian Parliament, and John Bradshaw did not, as was stated, flee to Ireland after the restoration of the Stuarts. He died in 1659, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Mr. Hill adds that he has documentary evidence of the fact that Robert Armstrong Bradshaw, who recently died at Coolree, near Wexford, was not a direct lineal descendant of John Bradshaw, the President of

he High Court, who tried and condemned Charles

Stuart as ' a tyrant, a murderer, and a traitor

o his country.' "

WILLIAM MACARTHUR.

Dublin.

[The Irish Times was certainly wrong in its Cromwellian history. MB. S. A. D'AncY is hanked for sending a similar cutting.]

DANIEL'S ' WHOLE WOBKES,' 1623. In

he sale catalogue by Messrs. Sotheby

23 October and four following days) lot LI 00 consists of this book, and in the descrip- tion the words are added, " wants portrait." Although Messrs. Sotheby are probably