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 1513, 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 Cestriae; 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 Etheldreda, a life of St Sexburg, the foundation and history of Chester, and the chronicles of some kings.

JOHN, descended of an ancient family, originally from Derbyshire, and born in 1586, officiated as president of the court, assembled at Whitehall, which tried Charles I. and condemned that unfortunate prince to lose his head on the scaffold. Being appointed speaker or president of the Parliament under Cromwell, he had a guard assigned him for the safety of his person, together with apartments in Westminster, a sum of L5000 sterling, and considerable territorial domains. But he was not destined to enjoy long the recompense of the judicial service he had rendered; for, according to the pamphlets of the time preserved in the British Museum, he withdrew from Parliament, and died in obscurity on the 31st October 1659, a year after the death of the Protector. On the restoration of Charles II. the bodies of Bradshaw, Cromwell, and Ireton, were disinterred, suspended on the gallows at Tyburn, and then burned. But several collectors of anecdotes have asserted that Bradshaw's remains escaped this posthumous indignity; for, according to them, having caused a report of his death to be circulated, he passed into the colonies under a feigned name, in order there to enjoy the fortune he had acquired; and signalized himself in various contests in which the colonists were involved with the native Indian tribes. Some suppose that he retired to Barbadoes; others that he sought refuge in Jamaica, the conquest of Cromwell, where his epitaph is said to have been met with, written in the style of the most ardent republican. (Gentleman's Magazine, vol. liv. p. 834.) In Pecoril of the Peak this story is put into the mouth of one of the characters, Major Ralph Bridgenorth, and told with admirable felicity, though, of course, with very considerable embellishment.