John Bradshaw

Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where Bradshaw attempted the robbery and murder of a senior fellow.

John Bradshaw (b. 1658/9) was an English criminal, convicted of the robbery and attempted murder of an Oxford fellow in 1677. The crime is known through the contemporary account of antiquarian and diarist Anthony Wood.

Early life Bradshaw was born in Maidstone, Kent, around 1658-9, to Alban Bradshaw, an attorney of Maidstone. He matriculated on 23 February 1674 from Corpus Christi College, Oxford, aged fifteen, and was admitted as a scholar on 20 April.

Robbery and prosecution In the early morning of 13 July 1677, two scholars of Corpus Christi, Bradshaw and Robert Newlin, broke into the chambers of John Wickes, a senior fellow at the college and (Wood notes with some disgust) Bradshaw's "patron and benefactor". but modern biographer Stephen Wright considers it unlikely that Bradshaw would have authored "this ultra-loyalist work" and have "shortly become a Quaker, or a Roman Catholic".

Wright notes that neither Quaker nor Catholic denominations have any record of John Bradshaw, and fundamentally "his later career remains a matter for speculation". Neither Bradshaw's place or date of death are known.