Chapter 22

BRIDGETT, THOMAS EDWARD (1829-1899), Roman Catholic priest and historical writer, was born at Derby on the 20th of January 1829. He was brought up a Baptist, but in his sixteenth year joined the Church of England. In 1847 he entered St John's College, Cambridge, with the intention of taking orders. Being unable to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles he could not take his degree, and in 1850 became a Roman Catholic, soon afterwards joining the Congregation of the Redemptorists. He went through his novitiate at St Trond in Belgium, and after a course of five years of theological study at Wittem, in Holland, was ordained priest. He returned to England in 1856, and for over forty years led an active life as a missioner in England and Ireland, preaching in over 80 missions and 140 retreats to the clergy and to nuns. His stay in Limerick was particularly successful, and he founded a religious confraternity of laymen which numbered 5000 members. Despite his arduous life as a priest, Bridgett found time to produce literary works of value, chiefly dealing with the history of the Reformation in England; among these are _The Life of Blessed John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester_ (1888); _The Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More_ (1890); _History of the Eucharist in Great Britain_ (2 vols., 1881); _Our Lady's Dowry_ (1875, 3rd ed. 1890). He died at Clapham on the 17th of February 1899.

For a complete list of Bridgett's works see _The Life of Father Bridgett_, by C. Ryder (London, 1906).

BRIDGEWATER, FRANCIS EGERTON, 3RD DUKE OF (1736-1803), the originator of British inland navigation, younger son of the 1st duke, was born on the 21st of May 1736. Scroop, 1st duke of Bridgewater (1681-1745), was the son of the 3rd earl of Bridgewater, and was created a duke in 1720; he was the great-grandson of John Egerton, 1st earl of Bridgewater (d. 1649; cr. 1617), whose name is associated with the production of Milton's _Comus_; and the latter was the son of Sir Thomas Egerton (1540-1617), Queen Elizabeth's lord keeper and James I.'s lord chancellor, who was created baron of Ellesmere in 1603, and in 1616 Viscount Brackley (_q.v._).

Francis Egerton succeeded to the dukedom at the age of twelve on the death of his brother, the 2nd duke. As a child he was sickly and of such unpromising intellectual capacity that at one time the idea of cutting the entail was seriously entertained. Shortly after attaining his majority he became engaged to the beautiful duchess of Hamilton, but her refusal to give up the acquaintance of her sister, Lady Coventry, led to the breaking off of the match. Thereupon the duke broke up his London establishment, and retiring to his estate at Worsley, devoted himself to the making of canals. The navigable canal from Worsley to Manchester which he projected for the transport of the coal obtained on his estates was (with the exception of the Sankey canal) the first great undertaking of the kind executed in Great Britain in modern times. The construction of this remarkable work, with its famous aqueduct across the Irwell, was carried out by James Brindley, the celebrated engineer. The completion of this canal led the duke to undertake a still more ambitious work. In 1762 he obtained parliamentary powers to provide an improved waterway between Liverpool and Manchester by means of a canal. The difficulties encountered in the execution of the latter work were still more formidable than those of the Worsley canal, involving, as they did, the carrying of the canal over Sale Moor Moss. But the genius of Brindley, his engineer, proved superior to all obstacles, and though at one period of the undertaking the financial resources of the duke were almost exhausted, the work was carried to a triumphant conclusion. The untiring perseverance displayed by the duke in surmounting the various difficulties that retarded the accomplishment of his projects, together with the pecuniary restrictions he imposed on himself in order to supply the necessary capital (at one time he reduced his personal expenses to £400 a year), affords an instructive example of that energy and self-denial on which the success of great undertakings so much depends. Both these canals were completed when the duke was only thirty-six years of age, and the remainder of his life was spent in extending them and in improving his estates; and during the latter years of his life he derived a princely income from the success of his enterprise. Though a steady supporter of Pitt's administration, he never took any prominent part in politics.

He died unmarried on the 8th of March 1803, when the ducal title became extinct, but the earldom of Bridgewater passed to a cousin, John William Egerton, who became 7th earl. By his will he devised his canals and estates on trust, under which his nephew, the marquess of Stafford (afterwards first duke of Sutherland), became the first beneficiary, and next his son Francis Leveson Gower (afterwards first earl of Ellesmere) and his issue. In order that the trust should last as long as possible, an extraordinary use was made of the legal rule that property may be [v.04 p.0558] settled for the duration of lives in being and twenty-one years after, by choosing a great number of persons connected with the duke and their living issue and adding to them the peers who had taken their seats in the House of Lords on or before the duke's decease. Though the last of the peers died in 1857, one of the commoners survived till the 19th of October 1883, and consequently the trust did not expire till the 19th of October 1903, when the whole property passed under the undivided control of the earl of Ellesmere. The canals, however, had in 1872 been transferred to the Bridgewater Navigation Company, by whom they were sold in 1887 to the Manchester Ship Canal Company.

BRIDGEWATER, FRANCIS HENRY EGERTON, 8TH EARL OF (1756-1829), was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and became fellow of All Souls in 1780, and F.R.S. in 1781. He held the rectories of Middle and Whitchurch in Shropshire, but the duties were performed by a proxy. He succeeded his brother (see above) in the earldom in 1823, and spent the latter part of his life in Paris. He was a fair scholar, and a zealous naturalist and antiquarian. When he died in February 1829 the earldom became extinct. He bequeathed to the British Museum the valuable Egerton MSS. dealing with the literature of France and Italy, and also £12,000. He also left £8000 at the disposal of the president of the Royal Society, to be paid to the author or authors who might be selected to write and publish 1000 copies of a treatise "On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation." Mr Davies Gilbert, who then filled the office, selected eight persons, each to undertake a branch of this subject, and each to receive £1000 as his reward, together with any benefit that might accrue from the sale of his work, according to the will of the testator.

The Bridgewater treatises were published as follows:--1. _The Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Condition of Man_, by Thomas Chalmers, D.D. 2. _The Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man_, by John Kidd, M.D. 3. _Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to Natural Theology_, by William Whewell, D.D. 4. _The Hand, its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as evincing Design_, by Sir Charles Bell. 5. _Animal and Vegetable Physiology considered with reference to Natural Theology_, by Peter Mark Roget. 6. _Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology_, by William Buckland, D.D. 7. _The Habits and Instincts of Animals with reference to Natural Theology_, by William Kirby. 8. _Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Digestion, considered with reference to Natural Theology_, by William Prout, M.D. The works are of unequal merit; several of them took a high rank in apologetic literature. They first appeared during the years 1833 to 1840, and afterwards in Bohn's Scientific Library.

BRIDGITTINES, an order of Augustinian canonesses founded by St Bridget of Sweden (_q.v._) c. 1350, and approved by Urban V. in 1370. It was a "double order," each convent having attached to it a small community of canons to act as chaplains, but under the government of the abbess. The order spread widely in Sweden and Norway, and played a remarkable part in promoting culture and literature in Scandinavia; to this is to be attributed the fact that the head house at Vastein, by Lake Vetter, was not suppressed till 1595. There were houses also in other lands, so that the total number amounted to 80. In England, the famous Bridgittine convent of Syon at Isleworth, Middlesex, was founded and royally endowed by Henry V. in 1415, and became one of the richest and most fashionable and influential nunneries in the country. It was among the few religious houses restored in Mary's reign, when nearly twenty of the old community were re-established at Syon. On Elizabeth's accession they migrated to the Low Countries, and thence, after many vicissitudes, to Rouen, and finally in 1594 to Lisbon. Here they remained, always recruiting their numbers from England, till 1861, when they returned to England. Syon House is now established at Chudleigh in Devon, the only English community that can boast an unbroken conventual existence since pre-Reformation times. Some six other Bridgittine convents exist on the Continent, but the order is now composed only of women.

See Helyot, _Histoire des ordres religieux_ (1715), iv. c. 4; Max Heimbucher, _Orden u. Kongregationen_ (1907), ii. § 83; Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopädie_ (ed. 3), art. "Birgitta"; A. Hamilton in _Dublin Review_, 1888, "The Nuns of Syon."

(E. C. B.)

BRIDGMAN, FREDERICK ARTHUR (1847- ), American artist, was born at Tuskegee, Alabama, on the 10th of November 1847. He began as a draughtsman in New York for the American Bank Note Company in 1864-1865, and studied art in the same years at the Brooklyn Art School and at the National Academy of Design; but he went to Paris in 1866 and became a pupil of J.L. Gérôme. Paris then became his headquarters. A trip to Egypt in 1873-1874 resulted in pictures of the East that attracted immediate attention, and his large and important composition, "The Funeral Procession of a Mummy on the Nile," in the Paris Salon (1877), bought by James Gordon Bennett, brought him the cross of the Legion of Honour. Other paintings by him were "An American Circus in Normandy," "Procession of the Bull Apis" (now in the Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington), and a "Rumanian Lady" (in the Temple collection, Philadelphia).

BRIDGMAN, LAURA DEWEY (1829-1889), American blind deaf-mute, was born on the 21st of December 1829 at Hanover, New Hampshire, U.S.A., being the third daughter of Daniel Bridgman (d. 1868), a substantial Baptist farmer, and his wife Harmony, daughter of Cushman Downer, and grand-daughter of Joseph Downer, one of the five first settlers (1761) of Thetford, Vermont. Laura was a delicate infant, puny and rickety, and was subject to fits up to twenty months old, but otherwise seemed to have normal senses; at two years, however, she had a very bad attack of scarlet fever, which destroyed sight and hearing, blunted the sense of smell, and left her system a wreck. Though she gradually recovered health she remained a blind deaf-mute, but was kindly treated and was in particular made a sort of playmate by an eccentric bachelor friend of the Bridgmans, Mr Asa Tenney, who as soon as she could walk used to take her for rambles a-field. In 1837 Mr James Barrett, of Dartmouth College, saw her and mentioned her case to Dr Mussey, the head of the medical department, who wrote an account which attracted the attention of Dr S.G. Howe (_q.v._), the head of the Perkins Institution for the Blind at Boston. He determined to try to get the child into the Institution and to attempt to educate her; her parents assented, and in October 1837 Laura entered the school. Though the loss of her eye-balls occasioned some deformity, she was otherwise a comely child and of a sensitive and affectionate nature; she had become familiar with the world about her, and was imitative in so far as she could follow the actions of others; but she was limited in her communication with others to the narrower uses of touch--patting her head meant approval, rubbing her hand disapproval, pushing one way meant to go, drawing another to come. Her mother, preoccupied with house-work, had already ceased to be able to control her, and her father's authority was due to fear of superior force, not to reason. Dr Howe at once set himself to teach her the alphabet by touch. It is impossible, for reasons of space, to describe his efforts in detail. He taught words before the individual letters, and his first experiment consisting in pasting upon several common articles such as keys, spoons, knives, &c., little paper labels with the names of the articles printed in raised letters, which he got her to feel and differentiate; then he gave her the same labels by themselves, which she learnt to associate with the articles they referred to, until, with the spoon or knife alone before her she could find the right label for each from a mixed heap. The next stage was to give her the component letters and teach her to combine them in the words she knew, and gradually in this way she learnt all the alphabet and the ten digits, &c. The whole process depended, of course, on her having a human intelligence, which only required stimulation, and her own interest in learning became keener as she progressed. On the 24th of July 1839 she first wrote her own name legibly. Dr Howe devoted himself with the utmost patience and assiduity to her education and was rewarded by increasing success. On the 20th of June 1840 she had her first arithmetic lesson, by the aid of a metallic case perforated with square holes, square types being used; and in nineteen days she could add a column of figures amounting to thirty. She was in good health and happy, and was treated by Dr Howe as his daughter. Her case already began to interest the public, and others were brought to Dr Howe [v.04 p.0559] for treatment. In 1841 Laura began to keep a journal, in which she recorded her own day's work and thoughts. In January 1842 Charles Dickens visited the Institution, and afterwards wrote enthusiastically in _American Notes_ of Dr Howe's success with Laura. In 1843 funds were obtained for devoting a special teacher to her, and first Miss Swift, then Miss Wight, and then Miss Paddock, were appointed; Laura by this time was learning geography and elementary astronomy. By degrees she was given religious instruction, but Dr Howe was intent upon not inculcating dogma before she had grasped the essential moral truths of Christianity and the story of the Bible. She grew up a gay, cheerful girl, loving, optimistic, but with a nervous system inclining to irritability, and requiring careful education in self-control. In 1860 her eldest sister Mary's death helped to bring on a religious crisis, and through the influence of some of her family she was received into the Baptist church; she became for some years after this more self-conscious and rather pietistic. In 1867 she began writing compositions which she called poems; the best-known is called "Holy Home." In 1872, Dr Howe having been enabled to build some separate cottages (each under a matron) for the blind girls, Laura was moved from the larger house of the Institution into one of them, and there she continued her quiet life. The death of Dr Howe in 1876 was a great grief to her; but before he died he had made arrangements by which she would be financially provided for in her home at the Institution for the rest of her life. In 1887 her jubilee was celebrated there, but in 1889 she was taken ill, and she died on the 24th of May. She was buried at Hanover. Her name has become familiar everywhere as an example of the education of a blind deaf-mute, leading to even greater results in Helen Keller.

See _Laura Bridgman_, by Maud Howe and Florence Howe Hall (1903), which contains a bibliography; and _Life and Education of Laura Dewey Bridgman_ (1878), by Mary S. Lamson.

(H. CH.)

BRIDGNORTH, a market town and municipal borough in the Ludlow parliamentary division of Shropshire, England, 150 m. N.W. by W. from London by the Great Western railway, on the Worcester-Shrewsbury line. Pop. (1901) 6052. The river Severn separates the upper town on the right bank from the lower on the left. A steep line of rail connects them. The upper town is built on the acclivities and summit of a rock which rises abruptly from the river to the height of 180 ft., and gives the town a very picturesque appearance. The railway passes under by a long tunnel. On the summit is the tower of the old castle, leaning about 17° from the perpendicular. There are also two parish churches. That of St Leonard, formerly collegiate, was practically rebuilt in 1862. This parish was held by Richard Baxter, the famous divine, in 1640. St Mary's church is in classic style of the late 18th century. The picturesque half-timbered style of domestic building is frequently seen in the streets. In this style are the town hall (1652), and a house dated 1580, in which was born in 1729 Thomas Percy, bishop of Dromore, the editor of the _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_. The grammar school, founded in 1503, occupies an Elizabethan building; there are also a college of divinity, a blue-coat school, and a literary institute with library and school of art. There are large charities. Near the town is a curious ancient hermitage cave, in the sandstone. At Quatford, 1 m. south-east, the site of a castle dating from 1085 may be traced. This dominated the ancient Forest of Morf. Here Robert de Belesme originally founded the college which was afterwards moved to Bridgnorth. Bridgnorth manufactures carpets; brewing is carried on, and there is trade in agricultural produce. The town is governed by a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 3018 acres.

The early history of Bridgnorth is connected with Æthelfleda, lady of the Mercians, who raised a mound there in 912 as part of her offensive policy against the Danes of the five boroughs. After the Conquest William I. granted the manor of Bridgnorth to Earl Roger of Shrewsbury, whose son Robert de Belesme transferred his castle and borough from Quatford to Bridgnorth, but on Robert's attainder in 1102 the town became a royal borough. It is probable that Henry I. granted the burgesses certain privileges, for Henry II. confirmed to them all the franchises and customs which they had in the time of Henry I. King John in 1215 granted them freedom from toll throughout England except the city of London, and in 1227 Henry III. conferred several new rights and liberties, among which were a gild merchant with a hanse. These early charters were confirmed by several succeeding kings, Henry VI. granting in addition assize of bread and ale and other privileges. Bridgnorth was incorporated by James I. in 1546. The burgesses returned two members to parliament in 1295, and continued to do so until 1867, when they were assigned only one member. The town was disfranchised in 1885. A yearly fair on the feast of the Translation of St Leonard and three following days was granted to the burgesses in 1359, and in 1630 Charles I. granted them licence to hold another fair on the Thursday before the first week in Lent and two following days.

BRIDGWATER, a market town, port and municipal borough in the Bridgwater parliamentary division of Somerset, England, on the river Parret, 10 m. from its mouth, and 151¾ m. by the Great Western railway W. by S. of London. Pop. (1901) 15,209. It is pleasantly situated in a level and well-wooded country, having on the east the Mendip range and on the west the Quantock hills. The town lies along both sides of the river, here crossed by a handsome iron bridge. Among several places of worship the chief is St Mary Magdalene's church; this has a north porch and windows dating from the 14th century, besides a lofty and slender spire; but it has been much altered by restoration. It possesses a fine painted reredos. A house in Blake Street, largely restored, was the birthplace of Admiral Blake in 1598. Near the town are the three fine old churches of Weston Zoyland, Chedzoy and Middlezoy, containing some good brasses and carved woodwork. The battlefield of Sedgemoor, where the Monmouth rebellion was finally crushed in 1685, is within 3 m.; while not far off is Charlinch, the home of the Agapemonites (_q.v._). Bridgwater has a considerable coasting trade, importing grain, coal, wine, hemp, tallow and timber, and exporting Bath brick, farm produce, earthenware, cement and plaster of Paris. The river is navigable by vessels of 700 tons, though liable, when spring-tides are flowing, to a bore which rises, in rough weather, to a height of 9 ft. Bath brick, manufactured only here, and made of the mingled sand and clay deposited by every tide, is the staple article of commerce; iron-founding is also carried on. The town is governed by a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 926 acres.

A settlement probably grew up in Saxon times at Bridgwater (_Briges_, _Briggewalteri_, _Brigewauter_), owing its origin as a trade centre to its position at the mouth of the chief river in Somerset. It became a mesne borough by the charter granted by John in 1201, which provided that the town should be a free borough, the burgesses to be free and quit of all tolls, and made William de Briwere overlord. Other charters were granted by Henry III. in 1227 (confirmed in 1318, 1370, 1380), which gave Bridgwater a gild merchant. It was incorporated by charter of Edward IV. (1468), confirmed in 1554, 1586, 1629 and 1684. Parliamentary representation began in 1295 and continued until the Reform Act of 1870. A Saturday market and a fair on the 24th of June were granted by the charter of 1201. Another fair at the beginning of Lent was added in 1468, and a second market on Thursday, and fairs at Midsummer and on the 21st of September were added in 1554. Charles II. granted another fair on the 29th of December. The medieval importance of these markets and fairs for the sale of wool and wine and later of cloth has gone. The shipping trade of the port revived after the construction of the new dock in 1841, and corn and timber have been imported for centuries.

See S. G. Jarman, "History of Bridgwater," _Historical MSS. Commission_, Report 9, Appendix; _Victoria County History: Somerset_, vol. ii.