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 he became a scholar of King's College, Cambridge, early in 1850. His undergraduate life was uneventful. He studied in a desultory manner, spent much of his time in the university library, read Wordsworth and Keble, Tennyson and Kingsley with avidity, discussed literature and theology, and made many friends, among them E. W. Benson, F. J. A. Hort, H. M. Butler, H. R. Luard, B. F. Westcott, and George Williams. The college was then confined to Eton men, but most of Bradshaw's friends were outside its walls. Early in 1853 he became, in what was then the ordinary course of things, a fellow of his college. King's men still enjoyed the doubtful privilege of obtaining a degree without examination; but Bradshaw resolved to enter for honours, and in 1854 took a second class in the classical tripos. Soon afterwards he accepted a post as assistant-master in St. Columba's College, near Dublin, a school founded some ten years earlier on high-church lines. Here Bradshaw remained two years, but, finding the work more and more uncongenial, he resigned in April 1856, and returned to Cambridge.

In November 1856 Bradshaw became an assistant in the university library. He seems to have hoped that his appointment would afford him opportunities and leave him time for study ; but in this he was disappointed, and in June 1858 he resigned. He remained, however, at Cambridge, and employed his now too abundant leisure in mastering the earlier contents of the library. In order to retain his services for the university, a special post was created for him. The manuscripts — of which a catalogue was then in course of publication — were in disorder, and the early printed books were scattered. Bradshaw was appointed in June 1859 at a nominal salary, afterwards increased, to supervise and rearrange these treasures. In the space of eight years, during which he held this charge, he worked a complete reform in the department, made many discoveries, enabled a correct catalogue of the manuscripts to be drawn up, and established his reputation as a bibliographer. He laboured with unremitting industry, and in the process of identifying the printers of early books, or unravelling the history of manuscripts, he made frequent journeys to different parts of England and the continent, and gained a first-hand acquaintance with most of the great libraries of this country and of Europe. He also attained a knowledge of many languages, Oriental as well as European, sufficient at least for the purposes of identification and description. He had already, in 1857, discovered the 'Book of Deer,' a manuscript copy of the Gospels according to the Vulgate version, containing charters in Gaelic, which are among the earliest remains of that language. This volume was eventually edited by John Stuart (1813-1877) [q. v.], and published by the Spalding Club (1869). The discovery (1858) of a large number of Celtic 'glosses' in a manuscript of Juvencus was the first of many similar finds which placed the study of the early Celtic languages on a new basis. In 1862 Bradshaw rediscovered the Vaudois manuscripts, which had been brought to England by Samuel Morland, Cromwell's envoy to the court of Savoy, and, having been deposited in the university library, had been lost to view for nearly two centuries. This discovery possessed not only philological interest — for these manuscripts contain some of the earliest remains of the Waldensian language and literature — but were also historically important. On the strength of a date in the poem called 'La Nobla Leyçon,' Morland, in his ' History of the Evangelical Churches of Piedmont,' had dated back the origin of Vaudois Protestantism to the twelfth century. Bradshaw, however, discovered that an erasure had changed 1400 into 1100; and further examination proved that the poems themselves, and therefore, so far at least as their evidence was concerned, the tenets which they expressed, could not be dated earlier than the fifteenth century. In 1863 he took a prominent part in exposing the pretences of the forger Simonides, who professed to have written with his own hand the Codex Sinaiticus, discovered by Tischendorf in 1859. In 1866 Bradshaw made an important addition to early Scottish literature by bringing to light two hitherto unknown works, apparently by Barbour — the 'Siege of Troy' and the 'Lives of the Saints.' These poems were edited in 1881 by Dr. C. Horstmann. Their authorship is still matter of dispute. Meanwhile Barbour's greater contemporaries, Chaucer and Wycliffe, were engaging a large share of Bradshaw's attention. As an undergraduate he had studied Chaucer ; he now examined all the manuscripts of the poet, mastered the history of the text, discovered in the rhyme-test a means of detecting spurious works, and projected, along with Mr. Earle and Mr. Aldis Wright, a complete edition of the poet. He acquired such a knowledge of Wycliffe that he was invited by Walter Waddington Shirley [q. v.] to take part in the edition of Wycliffe 's works which that scholar was preparing; but, before anything came of this project, Shirley died (1866). At