Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/170

 Bradford few months later he was appointed one of the king's six chaplains in ordinary. Two of the chaplains remained with the king, and four preached throughout the country. Bradford preached in many towns of Lancashire and Cheshire, also in London and Saffron Walden. Foxe says that 'sharply he opened and reproved sin; sweetly he preached Christ crucified; pithily he impugned heresies and errors; earnestly he persuaded to godly life.' John Knox, in his 'Godly Letter,' 1554, speaks with admiration of his intrepidity in the pulpit. Bradford's sermons ring with passionate earnestness. He takes the first words that come to hand, and makes no attempt to construct elaborate periods. 'Let us, even to the wearing of our tongue to the stumps, preach and pray,' he exclaims in the 'Sermon on Repentance;' and not for a moment did he slacken his energy. He spoke out boldly and never shrank from denouncing the vices of the great. In a sermon preached before Edward VI he rebuked the worldliness of the courtiers, declaring that God's vengeance would come upon the ungodly among them, and bidding them take example by the sudden fate that had befallen the late Duke of Somerset. At the close of his sermon, with weeping eyes and in a voice of lamentation, he cried out aloud: 'God punished him; and shall He spare you that be double more wicked? No, He shall not. Will ye or will ye not, ye shall drink the cup of the Lord's wrath. Judicium Domini, Judicium Domini! The judgment of the Lord, the judgment of the Lord!'

On 13 Aug. 1553, shortly after the accession of Queen Mary, a sermon in defence of Bonner and against Edward VI was preached at St. Paul's Cross by [q. v.], rector of High Ongar in Essex, and afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells. The sermon gave great offence to the hearers, who would have pulled him out of the pulpit and torn him to pieces if Bradford and John Rogers, vicar of St. Sepulchre's, had not interposed. On the same day in the afternoon Bradford preached at Bow Church, Cheapside, and reproved the people for the violence that had been offered in the morning to Bourne. Within three days after this occurrence Bradford was summoned before the privy council on the charge of preaching seditious sermons, and was committed to the Tower, where he wrote his treatise on 'The Hurt of Hearing Mass.' At first he was permitted to see no man but his keeper; afterwards this severity was relaxed, and he was allowed the society of his fellow-prisoner, Dr. Sandys. On 6 Feb. 1553-4 Bradford and Sandys were separated; the latter was sent to the Marshalsea, and the former was lodged in the same room as Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley, the Tower being then very full owing to the imprisonment of Wyatt and his followers. Latimer, in his protest addressed to the queen's commissioners at Oxford (Works, ii. 258-9, Parker Society), tells how he and his fellow-prisoners 'did together read over the New Testament with great deliberation and painful study.' On 24 March Bradford was transferred to the King's Bench prison. Here, probably by the favour of Sir William Fitzwilliam, the knight-marshal of the prison, he was occasionally allowed at large on his parole, and was suffered to receive visitors and administer the sacrament. Once a week he used to visit the criminals in the prison, distributing charity among them and exhorting them to amend their lives. On 22 Jan. 1554-5 he was brought up for examination before Bishops Gardiner, Bonner, and other prelates. There is an account (first published in 1561) in his own words of his three separate examinations before the commissioners on 22, 29, and 30 Jan. The commissioners questioned him closely on subtle points of doctrine, and endeavoured to convince him that his views were heretical; but he answered their arguments with imperturbable calmness, and refused to be convinced. Accordingly he was condemned as an obstinate heretic, and was committed to the Compter in the Poultry. It was at first determined to have him burned at his native town, Manchester; but, whether in the hope of making him recant or from fear of enraging the people of Manchester, the authorities finally kept him in London and waited some months before carrying out the sentence. At the Compter he was visited by several catholic divines, who endeavoured unsuccessfully to effect his conversion. Among these were Archbishop Heath, Bishop Day, Alphonsus a Castro, afterwards archbishop of Compostella, and Bartholomew Carranza, confessor to King Philip, and afterwards archbishop of Toledo. At length, as he refused to recant, a day was fixed for carrying out the sentence. On Sunday, 30 June 1555, he was taken late at night from the Compter to Newgate, all the prisoners in tears bidding him farewell. In spite of the lateness of the hour great crowds were abroad, and as he passed along Cheapside the people wept and prayed for him. A rumour spread that he was to be burned at four o'clock the next morning, and by that hour a great concourse of people had assembled; but it was not until nine o'clock that he was brought to the stake. 'Then,' says Foxe, 'was he led forth to Smithfield with a great company of weaponed men to conduct him thither, as the