John Bradford

Life and Ministry

John Bradford was born at Manchester about AD 1510, served in the army of Henry VIII under Sir John Harrington, converted on hearing Hugh Latimer preach in AD 1547, gave away his personal estate to the poor in restitution for accountancy he believed had been done dishonestly, and entered the Inner Temple to study law before discerning a call to the ministry. He was ordained deacon by Nicholas Ridley in AD 1550, made chaplain to Edward VI, and given a prebend at St Paul's. He preached itinerantly through Lancashire and Cheshire in the years AD 1551-1553, gathering early-Reformation congregations in the cities of the northwest.

Circumstances of Death

Arrested at St Paul's on 13 August AD 1553 for preaching against the Marian restoration after pacifying a riot that had nearly killed Bishop Bonner's chaplain, Bradford was committed to the Tower with Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley. From there he wrote a remarkable body of devotional treatises and letters — A Defence of Election, Meditations on the Lord's Supper, the Hurt of Hearing Mass — that constitute the most substantial single English Reformed corpus to come out of the Marian prisons. Examined repeatedly and refusing to recant, he was condemned and burned at Smithfield on 1 July AD 1555 with the young apprentice John Leaf. His last words to Leaf at the stake — Be of good comfort, brother, for we shall have a merry supper with the Lord this night — became one of the famous quotations of the period.

Legacy

Bradford is the author of the line traditionally rendered There but for the grace of God go I — said as he watched a man being led to the gallows from his Tower cell — a phrase which has passed into the common English tongue. His witness combines pastoral tenderness with doctrinal precision: he writes more on assurance and on the sacraments than any of his Marian fellow-prisoners and remains the spiritual ancestor of the Puritan devotional tradition. The merry supper with the Lord that he expected after the fire was, for Bradford, the supper the Mass had failed to be; he went home to it the same night.