h an attorney at Congleton, was admitted into
Gray's Inn in 1620, and was called to the bar in 1627, becoming a
bencher in 1647. He was mayor of Congleton in 1637, and later high
steward or recorder of the borough. According to Milton he was assiduous
in his legal studies and acquired considerable reputation and practice
at the bar. On the 21st of September 1643 he was appointed judge of the
sheriff's court in London. In October 1644 he was counsel with Prynne in
the prosecution of Lord Maguire and Hugh Macmahon, implicated in the
Irish rebellion, in 1645 for John Lilburne in his appeal to the Lords
against the sentence of the Star Chamber, and in 1647 in the prosecution
of Judge Jenkins. On the 8th of October 1646 he had been nominated by
the Commons a commissioner of the great seal, but his appointment was
not confirmed by the Lords. In 1647 he was made chief justice of Chester
and a judge in Wales, and on the 12th of October 1648 he was presented
to the degree of serjeant-at-law. On the 2nd of January 1649 the Lords
threw out the ordinance for bringing the king to trial, and the small
remnant of the House of Commons which survived Pride's Purge, consisting
of 53 independents, determined to carry out the ordinance on their own
authority. The leading members of the bar, on the parliamentary as well
as on the royalist side, having refused to participate in proceedings
not only illegal and unconstitutional, but opposed to the plainest
principles of equity, Bradshaw was selected to preside, and, after some
protestations of humility and unfitness, accepted the office. The king
refused to plead before the tribunal, but Bradshaw silenced every legal
objection and denied to Charles an opportunity to speak in his defence.
He continued after the king's death to conduct, as lord president, the
trials of the royalists, including the duke of Hamilton, Lord Capel, and
Henry Rich, earl of Holland, all of whom he condemned to death, his
behaviour being especially censured in the case of Eusebius Andrews, a
royalist who had joined a conspiracy against the government. He received
large rewards for his services. He was appointed in 1649
attorney-general of Cheshire and North Wales, and chancellor of the
duchy of Lancaster, and was given a sum of L1000, together with
confiscated estates worth L2000 a year. He had been nominated a member
of the council of state on the 14th of February 1649, and on the 10th of
March became president. He disa