History of the Royal Sappers and Miners, Volume 2 (of 2): From the Formation of the Corps in March 1712 to the date when its designation was changed to that of Royal EngineersConnolly, T. W. J. (Thomas William John)
History
History of the Royal Sappers and Miners, Volume 2 (of 2): From the Formation of the Corps in March 1712 to the date when its designation was changed to that of Royal Engineers
Connolly, T. W. J. (Thomas William John)
Great Britain. Army. Royal Sappers and Miners
French and a British soldier!
Footnote 132:
Of the party, Clabby, Hart, and Kelly only were at the fire. They
attached themselves to the engine nearest the building; so close was
it, that Kelly was struck on the shoulder with a piece of burning
timber. At one time the pipe burst, spirting the water over the
workmen. One of the Zouaves was up to his knees in water trying to
mend the fracture, when corporal Clabby went to his assistance, and
taking the handkerchief from his neck bound it round the pipe, and
partially removed the annoyance. This little act, so gracefully and
promptly performed, met with a shout of applause from the multitude,
and before the ringing of the acclamations had subsided, an officer
from the Marshal of the “Garde de Paris” made a note of their names;
with what object, perhaps, the future may tell.
Footnote 133:
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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