BRADSHAW, HENRY (c. 1450-1513), English poet, was born at Chester. In his boyhood he was received into the Bene dictine monastery of St. Werburgh, and after studying with other novices of his order at Gloucester (afterwards Worcester) college, Oxford, he returned to his monastery at Chester. He wrote a Latin treatise De antiquitate et magnificentia Urbis Cestriae, which is lost, and a life of the patron saint of his monastery in English seven-lined stanza. This work, The Holy Ly f e and History of saynt Werburge very f rute f ull for all Christen people to rede (printed by Richard Pynson, 1521) contains a good deal of history beside the actual life of the saint.
St. Werburgh was the daughter of Wulfere, king of Mercia, and Bradshaw gives a description of the kingdom of Mercia, with a full account of its royal house. He relates the history of St. Ermenilde and St. Sexburge, mother and grandmother of Wer burgh, who were successively abbesses of Ely. The second book narrates the Danish invasion of 875, and describes the history and antiquities of Chester, from its foundation by the legendary giant Leon Gaur, from which he derives the British name of Caerleon, down to the great fire which devastated the city in 1180, but was suddenly extinguished when the shrine of St. Werburgh was carried in procession through the streets.
Pynson's edition of the Holy Lyle is very rare, only five copies being known. A reprint copying the original type was edited by Edward Hawkins for the Chetham Society in 1848, and by Carl Hortsmann for the Early English Text Society in 1887.