Henry Bradshaw was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 scholar and librarian.

Henry Bradshaw was the son of Joseph Hoare Bradshaw, a banker. He was educated at Eton

Eton College

Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....

 and King's College, Cambridge

King's College, Cambridge

King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....

, where he became a fellow in 1853. After a brief spell from 1854 to 1856 as an Assistant Master at Saint Columba's College, Dublin, he accepted an appointment in the Cambridge University Library

Cambridge University Library

The Cambridge University Library is the centrally-administered library of Cambridge University in England. It comprises five separate libraries:* the University Library main building * the Medical Library...

 as an extra assistant.

Bibliographical work

When he found that his official duties absorbed all his leisure he resigned his post, but continued to give his time to the examination of the manuscripts and early printed books in the library. There was then no complete catalogue of these sections, and Bradshaw soon showed a rare faculty for investigations respecting old books and curious MSS.

Celtic and Waldensian texts

In addition to his achievements in black-letter bibliography he threw great light on ancient Celtic language and literature by the discovery, in 1857, of the Book of Deer

Book of Deer

The Book of Deer is a 10th-century Latin Gospel Book from Old Deer, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, with early 12th-century additions in Latin, Old Irish and Scottish Gaelic. It is most famous for containing the earliest surviving Gaelic literature from Scotland...

, a manuscript copy of the Gospels in the Vulgate version, in which were inscribed old Gaelic

Gaels

The Gaels or Goidels are speakers of one of the Goidelic Celtic languages: Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. Goidelic speech originated in Ireland and subsequently spread to western and northern Scotland and the Isle of Man....

 charters. This was published by the Spalding Club in 1869. Bradshaw also discovered some Celtic glosses on the MS. of a metrical paraphrase of the Gospels by Juvencus

Juvencus

Gaius Vettius Aquilinus Juvencus, known as Juvencus or Juvenk, was a Roman Spanish Christian and composer of Latin poetry in the 4th century.-Life:...

. He made another find in the Cambridge library of considerable philological and historical importance; Cromwell's envoy, Sir Samuel Morland

Samuel Morland

Sir Samuel Morland, 1st Baronet , or Moreland, was a notable English academic, diplomat, spy, inventor and mathematician of the 17th century, a polymath credited with early developments in relation to computing, hydraulics and steam power.-Education:The son of Thomas Morland, the rector of...

 (1625-1695), had brought back from Piedmont MSS. containing the earliest known Waldensian records, consisting of translations from the Bible, religious treatises and poems. One of the poems referred to the beginning of the 11th century, though the MSS. did not appear to be of earlier date than the 15th century. On this Morland had based his theory of the antiquity of the Waldensian doctrine, and, in the absence of the MSS., which were supposed to be irretrievably lost, the conclusion was accepted. Bradshaw discovered the MSS. in the university library, and found in the passage indicated traces of erasure. The original date proved to be 1400. Incidentally the correct date was of great value in the study of the history of the language.

Simonides and Lydgate

He had a share in exposing the frauds of Constantine Simonides

Constantine Simonides

Constantine Simonides , palaeographer, dealer of icons, man with extensive learning, knowledge of manuscripts, miraculous calligraphy...

, who had asserted that the Codex Sinaiticus

Codex Sinaiticus

Codex Sinaiticus is one of the four great uncial codices, an ancient, handwritten copy of the Greek Bible. It is an Alexandrian text-type manuscript written in the 4th century in uncial letters on parchment. Current scholarship considers the Codex Sinaiticus to be one of the best Greek texts of...

 brought by Tischendorf from the Greek monastery of Mount Sinai

Mount Sinai

Mount Sinai , also known as Mount Horeb, Mount Musa, Gabal Musa , Jabal Musa meaning "Moses' Mountain", is a mountain near Saint Catherine in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. A mountain called Mount Sinai is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus in the Torah and the Bible as well as the Quran...

 was a modern forgery of which he was himself the author. Bradshaw exposed the absurdity of these claims in a letter to the Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

(January 26, 1863). In 1866 he made a valuable contribution to the history of Scottish literature

Scottish literature

Scottish literature is literature written in Scotland or by Scottish writers. It includes literature written in English, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Brythonic, French, Latin and any other language in which a piece of literature was ever written within the boundaries of modern Scotland.The earliest...

 by the discovery of 2200 lines on the siege of Troy incorporated in an MS. of Lydgate

John Lydgate

John Lydgate of Bury was a monk and poet, born in Lidgate, Suffolk, England.Lydgate is at once a greater and a lesser poet than John Gower. He is a greater poet because of his greater range and force; he has a much more powerful machine at his command. The sheer bulk of Lydgate's poetic output is...

's Troye Booke, and of the Legends of the Saints, an important work of some 40,000 lines. These poems he attributed, erroneously, as has since been proved, to Barbour.

International Relations

In the absence of easily accessible library catalogs, Bradshaw played an important role in providing English literature and language scholars from other countries with access to and information about the location of medieval manuscripts. Ewald Flügel

Ewald Flügel

Ewald Flügel was one of the international pioneers of the study of Old and Middle English Literature and Language and one of the founding professors of English Studies at Stanford University.-Biography:Flügel, whose father and grandfather Ewald Flügel (May 8, 1863, in Leipzig, Germany, - November...

, a German scholar who had moved from Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

 to Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

, praised him as the "librarian of librarians," and Bernhard ten Brink, first chair of English Philology in Germany, called him "the most thorough" of "all living Chaucer scholars."

Administration

Unfortunately Bradshaw allowed his attention to be distracted by a multiplicity of subjects, so that he has not left any literary work commensurate with his powers. The strain upon him was increased when he was elected (1867) university librarian, and as dean of his college (1857-1865) and praelector (1863-1868) he was involved in further routine duties. Besides his brilliant isolated discoveries in bibliography, he did much by his untiring zeal to improve the standard of library administration. His fugitive papers on antiquarian subjects were collected and edited by Mr F. Jenkinson in 1889.

He had a great influence on Karl Pearson

Karl Pearson

Karl Pearson FRS was an influential English mathematician who has been credited for establishing the disciplineof mathematical statistics....

.

Further reading

• Collected Papers of Henry Bradshaw; comprising 1. 'Memoranda'; 2. 'Communications' read before the Cambridge Antiquarian Society; together with an article contributed to the 'Bibliographer', and two papers not previously published; ed. for the Syndics of the University Press [by Francis Jenkinson]. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1889.
• Henry Bradshaw's Correspondence on Incunabula with J. W. Holtrop and M. F. A. G. Campbell; edited by Wytze and Lotte Hellinga. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Hertzberger, 1966 [i.e.1968]; A. L. Van Gendt, 1978 (Vol.2: Commentary)
• Sayle, Charles (1916) A Catalogue of the Bradshaw Collection of Irish Books in the University Library, Cambridge. 3 vols. Cambridge: Printed for the University Library