George Granville Bradley


George Granville Bradley, CVO, DD was an English divine, scholar, and schoolteacher, who was Dean of Westminster.

Life

George Bradley's father, Charles Bradley, was vicar of Glasbury, Brecon, mid Wales.
Bradley was educated at Rugby under Thomas Arnold. He won an open scholarship at University College where, in 1844 Bradley gained a First Class degree in literis humanioribus. He was immediately elected to a Fellowship at University and, in the following year, won the Chancellor’s prize for the Latin essay. He was an assistant master at Rugby from 1846 to 1858, when he succeeded G.E.L. Cotton as Headmaster of Marlborough College in Wiltshire. In the same year he look Holy Orders.
In 1870, Bradley was elected Master of his old college at Oxford. Under his mastership, he and the fellows of the College celebrated its apocryphal thousandth anniversary since its supposed founding by Alfred the Great. In 1874 he was appointed examining chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Archibald Campbell Tait, under whom he had served at Rugby. In 1874 and 1875 he was Select Preacher at Oxford; he was also Honorary Chaplain to the Queen, becoming Chaplain in Ordinary in 1876.
In 1881 Bradley was given a canonry in Worcester Cathedral; in August that year he was appointed Dean of Westminster in succession to Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, whose pupil and intimate friend he had been, and whose biographer he became. Shortly afterwards he was conferred the degree of DD by University College, Oxford. By the turn of the 19th century, he was in declining health, and had to be absent from his duties for considerable periods. He took part in the Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra on 9 August 1902, and asked the King to be allowed to resign from his duties later the same month. For his service, he was invested as a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order two days after the ceremony, on 11 August 1902.
Bradley was an Acting Chaplain of the 13th Middlesex Volunteer Rifle Corps for 20 years, and received the Volunteer Officers' Decoration on 21 February 1902.
The very reverend George Granville Bradley, of 42 Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster died on 13 March 1903. He was buried at Westminster Abbey on 17 March. The pall-bearers included the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, Henry Montagu Butler; the Master of University College, Oxford, James Franck Bright; and the Headmasters of Marlborough and Rugby.

Works

Besides his Recollections of A. P. Stanley and Life of Dean Stanley, Bradley published a revised version of Thomas Kerchever Arnold's Latin Prose Composition ; his more advanced intended work on Aids to Writing Latin Prose: with Exercises was edited and completed by T. L. Papillon. Further works were Lectures on Job and Ecclesiastes.

Family

Bradley married Marian Jane Philpot at Great Cressingham on 18 December 1849. They had two sons and five daughters; of these children one son, Arthur Granville Bradley, and four daughters were writers, including Margaret Louisa Woods, Emily Tennyson Bradley, Mabel Charlotte, the Lady Birchenough and Rose Marian Bradley.