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 mercy, but he appeared to least advantage as the judge of [q. v.], a royalist charged with conspiracy against the Commonwealth. He sought by repeated cross-examinations to convict Andrews out of his own mouth, and kept him in prison for very many months. Finally Bradshaw condemned him to death on 6 Aug. 1650 ( account of the trial, 1660, reprinted in State Trials, v. 1-42). Bradshaw did not continue, however, to perform work of this kind. His place was filled by Serjeant Keeble in 1651, and by Serjeant 1'Isle in 1654.

Bradshaw found other occupation in the council of state, to which he was elected by a vote of the commons on its formation (14 Feb. 1648-9), and chosen its permanent president (10 March). He did not attend its sittings till 12 March, after which he was rarely absent. No other member was so regular in his attendance. He was in frequent correspondence with Oliver Cromwell during the campaigns of 1649 and 1650 in Ireland and Scotland, and during those years offices and honours were heaped upon him. On 20 July 1649 parliament nominated him attorney-general of Cheshire and North Wales, and eight days later chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, a post in which he was continued by a special vote of the house on 18 July 1650. On 19 June 1649 parliament, having taken his great merit into consideration, paid him a sum of 1,000l., and on 15 Aug. 1649 formally handed over to him lands worth 2,000l. a year. The estates assigned him were those of the Earl of St. Albans and Lord Cottington. He was re-elected by parliament a member of the council of state (12 Feb. 1649-50, 7 Feb. 1650-1, 24 Nov. 1651, and 24 Nov. 1652), and presided regularly at its sittings, signing nearly all the official correspondence. He was not very popular with his colleagues there. He seemed 'not much versed in such businesses,' writes Whitelocke, 'and spent much of their time by his own long speeches.'

Cromwell's gradual assumption of arbitrary power did not meet with Bradshaw's approval. On 20 April 1653 Cromwell, who had first dissolved the Long parliament, presented himself later in the day before the council of state, and declared it at an end. Bradshaw, as president, rose and addressed the intruder in the words: 'Sir, we have heard what you did at the house in the morning, and before many hours all England will hear it; but, sir, you are mistaken to think the parliament is dissolved, for no power under heaven can dissolve them but themselves; therefore take you notice of that' (, Memoirs, 195). Bradshaw did not sit in Barebones's parliament, which met on 4 July 1653, but an act was passed (16 Sept.) by the assembly continuing him in the chancellorship of the duchy of Lancaster. He was elected [for Stafford] to the next parliament, which assembled on 4 Sept. 1654, but declined on 12 Sept. to sign the 'recognition' pledging members to maintain the government 'as it is settled in a single person and a parliament.' He was summoned by Cromwell before the council of state formed by him on becoming protector, together with Vane, Rich, and Ludlow, and was bidden by Cromwell to take out a new commission as chief justice of Chester. He refused to submit to the order. He declared that he had been appointed during his good behaviour, and had done nothing to forfeit his right to the place, as he would prove before any twelve jurymen. Cromwell did not press the point, and Bradshaw immediately afterwards went his circuit as usual. But Cromwell revenged himself by seeking to diminish Bradshaw's influence in Cheshire. In the parliament which met 17 Sept. 1656 Bradshaw failed to obtain a seat, owing to the machinations of Tobias Bridges, Cromwell's major-general for the county (, vi. 313). There had been a proposal to nominate him for the city of London, but that came to nothing. 'Serjeant Bradshaw,' writes Thurloe jubilantly to Henry Cromwell in Ireland (26 Aug. 1656), 'hath missed it in Cheshire, and is chosen nowhere else.'

Bradshaw was now an open opponent of the government. According to an anonymous letter sent to Monk he entered early in 1655 into conspiracy with Haslerig, Pride, and others, to seize Monk as a first step towards the army's overthrow (, Papers, iii. 185). He was also suspected, on no very valid ground, of encouraging the fifth-monarchy men in the following year. In August 1656 an attempt was made by Cromwell to deprive him of his office of chief justice of Chester. In private and public Bradshaw vigorously denounced Cromwell's usurpation of power, and he is credited with having asserted that if such conduct ended in the Protector's assumption of full regal power, he and Cromwell 'had committed the most horrid treason [in their treatment of Charles I] that ever was heard of' (Bradshaw's Ghost, being a Dialogue between the said Ghost and an apparition of the late King, 1659). Under date 3 Dec. 1657 Whitelocke writes of the relations between Cromwell and Bradshaw that 'the distaste between them' was perceived to increase. During the last years of the protectorate Bradshaw took no part in politics.

The death of the great Protector (3 Sept. 1658), and the abdication of Richard