Bradford, John

BRADFORD, JOHN: Church of England Protestant martyr; b. at Manchester about 1510; burned at Smithfield July 1, 1555. He was in the service of Sir John Harrington, the king's paymaster in France; began to study law in the Temple 1547, but the next year turned to divinity and entered St. Catherine's Hall, Cambridge (M.A., by special grace, 1549); was elected fellow of Pembroke Hall 1549; became prebendary of Kentish Town in the church of St. Paul, 1551; was chaplain to Bishop Ridley, in 1552 one of the king's six chaplains in ordinary, and preached in many localities with great fervor and earnestness. In August, 1553 (six weeks after the accession of Mary), he was arrested on the charge of preaching seditious sermons and committed to the Tower; he was examined before Bishops Gardiner, Bonner, and others in January, 1555, and condemned as a heretic. His writings (chiefly sermons, letters, and devotional pieces) were edited for the Parker Society by Aubrey Townsend (2 vols., Cambridge, 1848–53).

Bibliography: W. Stephens, Memoirs of John Bradford, London, 1832; The Life of John Bradford, vol. iii of Library of Christian Biography, London, 1855; DNB, vi, 157–159.