Thomas Bradley (priest)
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Thomas Bradley (1596/7-1673) was a 17th century English divine.
Thomas Bradley was born in 1596 or 1597, the son of Henry Bradley of Wokingham and his wife, Barbara daughter of Walter Lane of Reading. His grandfather, however, was a Yorkshireman. Bradley was educated at Exeter College, Oxford and was admitted to the degree of Doctor of Divinity. His sons appear to have been educated at Winchester College.
He was chaplain to George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, whom he accompanied on trips to the Île de Ré and to La Rochelle. In 1628 he was appointed chaplain to Charles I. He became Rector of Castleford in 1630 and from 1643 he was additionally Rector of Ackworth. On 5 March 1631 he married Frances, youngest daughter of John, Baron Savile of Pontefract, who had died in 1630.
His parishes were in a strongly Royalist part of Yorkshire. During the siege of Pontefract in 1644 he was a preacher to the Royalist troops under Sir George Wentworth. The Parliamentarian troops occupied Ackworth in 1645 and he was deprived of his livings. He underwent much suffering during the Interregnum. He attended King Charles the Martyr at his execution on 30 January 1649.
He was restored to his livings in 1660. He was a Canon and Prebendary of York Minster from 1660 until 1670. In 1663 he was appointed Chaplain to Charles II.
In 1666 he founded two almshouses at Ackworth. He resigned from his livings in 1672 and died on 10 October 1673.
[edit] Publications
- Comfort from the cradle, as well as from the crosse of Christ, 2 sermons (Oxford, 1650)
- A præsent for Cæsar, of 100000 l. in hand and 50000 l. a year (London, 1658)
- A sermon ad clerum (York, 1663)
- Nosce te ipsum, in a comparison between the first, and second Adam (York, 1668)
- Elijah's nunc dimittis. Or the authors own funerall sermons (York, 1669)
- Elijah's epitaph, and the motto of all mortalls (York, 1670)
[edit] Sources and further information
- Rootsweb.com
- Genealogy.com on the will of Thomas Bradley
- Ackworth in 1927, from Kelly’s Directory of the West Riding of Yorkshire
- Ackworth Local History page on Thomas Bradley
- Supplementary information from Ackworth Local History
- 'Prebendaries: North Newbald', Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1541-1857, vol. 4: York diocese (1975), pp. 48-9
- Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses: the members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714: their parentage, birthplace, and year of birth, with a record of their degrees: Being the matriculation register of the University (4 vols, Oxford; London: Parker, 1891-92), vol. 1
- John Walker, The Sufferings of the Clergy during the Great Rebellion (Oxford: John Henry and James Parker, 1862), or, John Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy 1642-60 (rev. edn, Oxford University Press, 1948)
