Note 133 — 1854-1856.
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The ancestry of the Bradfords can be traced, traditionally, to a very remote period. It commenced, as far as the family information extends, with Ranulph de Broade Forde—since contracted into Bradford—who in 1191 served under Richard I. in the Holy War, and fought at the siege of Ascalon in the third crusade. Apparently, the patronymic of the Broade Fordes was derived from a fortress held by Ranulph as the heir of his race, which defended a ford at the confluence of two streams important in border warfare on the marches of Wales.
Without attempting to renew the links in the broken chain of genealogical succession, it seems that in the direct line from Ranulph sprang John Bradford, who was born at Manchester about 1522. At an early age, under Sir John Harington, Knight of Exton in Rutland, “treasurer of the King’s camps and buildings,” and chief engineer at Boulogne, he served as paymaster at the siege of Montreuil in 1544. Three years later he was a student of common law at the Inner Temple, where he became a convert to Protestantism; and relinquishing, in 1548, his secular intentions, became a student at Cambridge, and soon after a Fellow of Pembroke College. Ridley, Bishop of London, ordained him deacon in 1550, and next year he was installed as a prebendary of St. Paul’s, and appointed one of the six chaplains of Edward VI. to preach in the distant parts of the kingdom. In 1553, a month after the king’s death, and the accession of Queen Mary, Bradford was a State prisoner. The truthfulness of his preaching, his great popularity as a minister, and Christian firmness in promoting the reformed doctrines, did not suit the religious régime which, under the bigoted intolerance of the Queen, had commenced to disturb the fabric of the reformation. On a trumped-up charge of sedition and heresy he suffered two years incarceration in the Tower and King’s Bench, and, at length, refusing to retract his pious convictions, was martyred, by burning, at Smithfield, 1st July, 1555.
From a brother of this “champion of the faith” lineally descended the Rev. Edward Bradford, rector of Buckland Filleigh.
John, a son of the rector, married Gertrude Coham, of Coham. Considerable landed property was held by the family from the Earl of Oxford and his successors, the Lords Clinton; but the estates having been placed in chancery, leases without the possibility of renewing them, and an extensive fire having consumed a great part of the market-town of Sheepwash, laid the foundation of a series of calamities from which the family have never recovered.
Among the offspring of John, were John, William, and Michael. The two first were surgeons in the royal navy, William perished in the foundering of the “Royal George” at Spithead, June, 1782. Michael was likely to have retrieved the fortunes of the family by his success as a surgeon, but he died young, leaving, among other children—
Michael, an orphan of four years of age. There was enough for the son when he arrived at man’s estate to pass comfortably through life, and he married well. His wife was Mary Tamlyn, daughter of Bamfylde Tamlyn, by Mary, second daughter of Richard Somers, Esq., of Northtawton, Devon, and sister of the wife of Robert Harrington, Esq., of Worden. The father of Bamfylde Tamlyn, was the Rev. Gregory Tamlyn, rector of Bradford. In the Will of John Bamfylde of Arlington, the relationship of Rector Tamlyn with the family is acknowledged in a passage which affectionately styles him “my beloved cousin.” The pedigree of the Bamfyldes is of undoubted antiquity, and this branch of it is a shoot from the stem to which cling the Baronets and Lords of Poltimore. Young Michael, who had increased by his marriage, his pecuniary competence and standing in society, was not remarkable for the economy of his pursuits. He was fond of sporting in all its phases, and indulged in other expensive habits, which ended in his ruin.
From this marriage sprang five sons and a daughter. Michael the quartermaster is the second son. He is thus a collateral descendant of Bradford the martyr, and a “poor relation” of a few families of repute and distinction at the present day.