BRADSHAW, HENRY, a Benedictine monk, was born at Chester about the middle of the fifteenth century. Discovering an early propensity to religion and literature, he was received while a boy into the monastery of St Werberg in that city; and having there imbibed the rudiments of education, he was afterwards sent to Gloucester College, in the suburbs of Oxford. Here for a time he studied theology with the novices of his order, and then returned to his convent at Chester, where, in the latter part of his life, he applied himself chiefly to the study of history, and wrote several books. He died in the year 1518, the fifth of Henry VIII. His poetry is not inferior to that of any of his contemporaries. His works are, 1. De antiquitate et magnificentia Urbis Cestrie; 2. Chronicon; 3. The Life of the glorious virgin St Werberg, printed at London, 1521, 4to, in verse. The life of St Werberg forms only part of this work, which contains also a description of the kingdom of Mercia, a life of St Etheldred, a life of St Sexburg, the foundation and history of Chester, and the chronicles of some kings.