James Bradley

James Bradley, the renowned astronomer, was born at Sherborne, near Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, in March 1693, the third son of William Bradley and Jane Pound. Educated at Northleach Grammar School, he entered Balliol College, Oxford on 15 March 1711, attaining a B.A. in 1714 and an M.A. in 1717. During these early years, he lived with his uncle the Rev. James Pound, rector of Wanstead, and became curate of Wanstead. Pound was a keen amateur astronomer and friend of Isaac Newton, having erected a 123-foot object glass positioned on a maypole which had formerly stood in the Strand in Wanstead. He passed on this love of astronomy to his nephew, and it was at Wanstead that Bradley made some of his most important early observations. The Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) states of Pound:

“A warm attachment sprung up between him and his nephew. He nursed him through the small-pox in 1717; he reinforced the scanty supplies drawn from a somewhat straitened home; above all, he discerned and cultivated his extraordinary talents. Bradley quickly acquired all his instructor’s skill and more than his ardour. Every spare moment was devoted to cooperation with him.”     

On November 6th 1718, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. The following year, he took orders and became a vicar at Bridstow in Wales, at the presentation of Hoadly, the bishop of Hereford. Early in 1720, he became rector of Llandewi-Velfry in Pembrokeshire, a sinecure living that had been procured for him by his friend Samuel Molyneux, and chaplain to the bishop of Hereford. The DNB states:

“His prospects of promotion were thus considerable, but he continued to frequent Wanstead, and took an early opportunity of extricating himself from a position in which his duties were at variance with his inclinations.”

In 1721, when the Savilian chair of astronomy at Oxford became vacant, he resigned his ecclesiastical preferments and took up the post, reading his inaugural lecture on April 26th 1722. As a reader of experimental philosophy at Oxford, he delivered 79 courses of lectures at the Ashmolean museum.

On 16th November 1724, Rev. James Pound died and was buried in the chancel of the old parish church, where his grave can still be seen today. His widow left the rectory and moved to a small house on her brother’s estate, the Grove. This house stood on the site of the Corner House in the High Street. Bradley resided with his aunt for some years in this house, hence the green plaque on the Corner House today. In the upper room of this house in 1727, he had a zenith sector of 12½ feet radius mounted for him. He moved to Oxford with his aunt in 1732, but still returned to Wanstead to make observations with this instrument, until it was moved to Greenwich observatory in 1749.

Bradley worked with Samuel Molyneux until Molyneux’s death in 1728, making observations at the latter’s house in Kew. They attempted to measure the parallax of Gamma Draconis, and in the process found an unexplained motion which Bradley realised was caused by the aberration of light. This discovery was conclusive evidence for the movement of the Earth and therefore the correctness of Copernicus and Kepler’s theories, and was announced to the Royal Society in January 1729. This made Bradley the first person to prove that the Earth revolved around the sun. The discovery also allowed Bradley to accurately estimate the speed of light.

On 3rd February 1742, Bradley was appointed Astronomer Royal upon the death of Edmund Halley, with a salary of £100 a year. A crown pension of £250 a year was conferred upon him in 1752. In 1761, he retired in ill health to the Cotswold village of Chalford in Gloucestershire and died there at Skiveralls House on 13 July 1762.  

Nicholas Dixon

Sources:

Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911

The Dictionary of National Biography, 1921-1922

The Parish of Wanstead, by Graham Dixon and Patricia Wilkinson

Wanstead Through the Ages, by Winifred Eastment (quoting an 1893 article by Walter Crouch F.Z.S. in the Wanstead parish magazine)