VI.

N a sermon on the duty of restitution, preached before King Edward the Sixth, Bishop Latimer said: At my first preaching of restitution, one good man took remorse of conscience, and acknowledged himself to me, that he had deceived the King, and willing he was to make restitution: and so the first Lent came to my hands twenty pounds to be restored to the King's use. I was promised twenty pounds more the same Lent, but it could not be made, so that it came not. Well, the next Lent came three hundred and twenty pounds more. I received it myself, and paid it to the King's Council. Well, now this Lent came one hundred and fourscore pounds ten shillings which I have paid and delivered this day to the King's Council.' An abundantly authenticated tradition states that the unnamed restorer was John Bradford, at one time in the employment of Sir John Harrington, paymaster of the English troops at Boulogne. It is not quite certain whether Bradford had obtained the money from Sir John, or whether he had sold his own patrimony to procure it; but it is quite certain that his master was the real peculator, and that he himself had not received the slightest benefit from the crime.

Memoranda in the Council Book show that 'Mr. Doctor Latymer' made the last payment on March 10, 1550. The first instalment of the conscience money would therefore be paid to him in the spring of 1548. As John Bradford was born in 1510, he was thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old when he heard the first of the Lenten sermons which impressed him so powerfully. At that time he was studying law in the Temple. He had resigned his office of profit under the Crown, probably on account of the fraud, though his abilities and opportunities promised him a prosperous career. He had friends, too, from whose influence

he could fairly expect advancement, being related to Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, the founder of the Manchester Grammar School, of which school he was one of the earliest pupils. Perhaps we may regard Latimer's sermons as the instrument of Bradford's conversion; doubtless it was by that preacher's advice that he forsook the law for the ministry of the Word, and entered himself at Clare Hall, Cambridge, to prepare for it. He came to the University no mean scholar, and while there devoted himself so diligently to his books that the degree of Master of Arts was granted him after a residence of little more than a year. As soon as he had acquired the necessary degree he was elected Fellow of Pembroke Hall. In the year 1550, he took deacon's orders from the hands of Bishop Ridley, afterwards his fellow martyr and companion in the Tower. In due course he was licensed to preach, and the Bishop immediately conferred upon him a prebendal stall in St. Paul's Cathedral.

It was not without reluctance that Bradford accepted ordination; the deep-seated humility that was one of his most marked characteristics caused him to deem himself unfit for the office of a public teacher. He yielded at length to the persuasions of Martin Bucer, who answered all his diffident pleas with, 'If thou hast not fine manchet-bread [the best wheaten bread], yet give the poor people barley bread, or whatever else the Lord hath committed unto thee.' Latimer, Ridley, and Bucer had formed a truer estimate of his preaching powers than he had himself. He speedily became one of the most popular and successful preachers in the metropolis, popular and successful in the best sense of those words. When Edward VI. appointed Ministers to traverse the kingdom, proclaiming the doctrines of the Reformation, Bradford was chosen one of the number. He selected as his headquarters his native town of Manchester. The parish church, now the cathedral, could not contain the crowds that flocked to listen to him. He itinerated throughout Lancashire, chiefly, however, over the southern part of the county. 'Sharply he opened and reproved sin, sweetly he preached Christ crucified, pithily he impugned heresies and errors, earnestly he persuaded to a godly life' (Foxe). For he did not confine himself to

exposing the corruptions of the Romish clergy and the unscripturalness of their teaching, he spoke with equal boldness against the sins his hearers were addicted to, and exhorted them to repentance. The wakes and revels, with their vice and rioting, specially aroused his ire, and he incurred considerable unpopularity by his opposition to them. He was not content to exercise his ministry only in public. In whatever company he found himself he bore witness to the truth, rebuking sin unsparingly, yet so gently that his rebukes rarely gave offence.

Foxe's delineation of Bradford's private life and character represents him as ever a pardoned penitent,' keeping strictest watch over himself, and perpetually anxious that men, seeing his good works, should glorify his Father in heaven. He could not forget that he had reached middle life before he began to serve God. His favourite signature to his letters is the 'miserable caitiff, John Bradford.' Again and again when he saw a criminal led to execution, he was known to say, 'There goes John Bradford but for the grace of God.' 'He used to make unto himself a journal, in which he used to write all such notable things as either he did hear or see each day that passed; but whatsoever he did hear or see, he did so pen it, that a man might see in that book the smitten heart. For if he did hear or see any good in any man, by that sight he found and noted the want thereof in himself, and added a short prayer, craving mercy and grace to amend. If he did hear or see any plague or misery, he noted it as a thing procured by his own sins, and still added, "Lord, have mercy upon me." He used in the same book to note such evil thoughts as did rise in him, as of envying the good of other men, thoughts of unthankfulness, of not considering God in His works, of hardness and insensibleness of heart, when he did see others moved and affected. And thus he made to himself and of himself a book of daily practices of repentance.'

The accession of Queen Mary put fresh heart into the Papists, and every means was tried to move the populace in favour of the old religion. Bourne, afterwards Bishop of Bath, then the fanatical chaplain of the fanatical Bishop Bonner, preached one day at St. Paul's Cross, and urged his audience to reconcilu

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