BRADSHAW, JOHN (1602-1659), president of the "High Court of Justice" which tried Charles I., the second son of Henry Bradshaw, of Marple and Wibersley in Cheshire, was baptized on Dec. 1o, 1602. He was admitted into Gray's Inn in 1620, and was called to the bar in 1627, becoming a bencher in 1647. On Sept. 21, 1643, he was appointed judge of the sheriff's court in London. In Oct. 1644 he was counsel, with Prynne, in the prose cution 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. In 1647 he was made chief justice of Chester and a judge in Wales, and on Oct. 12, 1648, he was presented to the degree of serjeant-at-law. On Jan. 2, 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 S3 independents, determined to carry out the ordinance on their own authority. The leading members of the bar of both parties having refused to participate in the proceedings, Bradshaw was selected to preside. 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 also conducted the trials of several royalists, includ ing the duke of Hamilton and Lord Capel. He was appointed, in 1649, attorney-general of Cheshire and North Wales, and chan cellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and on March 1 o became presi dent of the Council of State. When, after the expulsion of the Long Parliament, Cromwell came to dismiss the council, Bradshaw is said, on the authority of Ludlow, to have confronted him boldly, and denied his power to dissolve the parliament. He re fused to sign the "engagement" pledging members of the parlia ment of 1654 to support the government drawn up by Cromwell, and in consequence withdrew from Parliament. After the abdica tion of Richard Cromwell, Bradshaw again entered Parliament, became a member of the Council of State, and on June 3, 1659, was appointed a commissioner of the great seal. He died on Oct. 31, 1659, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.