Of the early life and habits of the future Lord President nothing positively is known. From his will we learn that he received his early classical education at Bunbury, of which school that staunch Puritan, Edward Burghall, afterwards Vicar of Acton, was at the time master; subsequently he was sent to Queen Elizabeth’s Free School at Middleton, in Lancashire, then lately remodelled and endowed by Nowell, Dean of St Paul’s, and, “as part of his thankful acknowledgment,” he at his death bequeathed to each of these institutions £500 for “amending the wages of the master and usher.” There is a very general opinion that he was at King Edward’s Grammar School in Macclesfield also for a time; though there is no evidence of the fact, this is by no means improbable. Macclesfield was conveniently near to his home, and the school had at that time obtained a high reputation from the ability and scholarly attainments of at least two of its masters, John Brownswerd, “a schoolmaster of great fame for learning,” as Webb says, “who living many years brought up most of the gentry of this shire,” and Thomas Newton, one of the most distinguished Latin poets of the Elizabethan era; and some countenance is given to this supposition by the phrase in his will, “I had _part_ of my educa’con” at Middleton and Bunbury. The Macclesfield school at that time abutted upon the churchyard, and there is a tradition that young Bradshaw, while with some of his playmates, and in a boyish freak, wrote the following prophetic lines upon a gravestone there:— My brother Henry must heir the land, My brother Frank must be at his command, Whilst I, poor Jack, will do that That all the world shall wonder at. The authenticity of this production may very well be questioned, for, however ambitious his mind, we can hardly suppose that this young son of a quiet, unostentatious country gentleman could have had the faintest glimmering of his future destiny any more than that his muse was moved by prophetic inspiration.