 |
| Nicholas Brady's hair (or whig) virtually defies gravity |
Nicholas Brady
was born in Bandon, Country Cork Ireland on 28 October 1659 to Major Nicholas
Brady, a Protestant Irish army officer, and his wife Martha, daughter of Luke
Gernon, Munster provincial judge. Brady’s great- grandfather was Hugh Brady, the
first Protestant bishop of Meath. Before being sent to England at the age of
twelve, Brady was educated at St. Finbarre’s School in Cork by a Dr. Tindall. In
England, he was admitted to the Westminster School, where he became a captain
and a king’s scholar by 1763. Brady began his religious career in December 1678
upon his admittance on a Westminster Studentship to Christ Church, Oxford and
enrolled on 4 February 1689. It is mentioned that he was “sent down for some
unknown offense in 1682” (Sambrook). He finished his education back in Ireland
at Trinity College, from which he graduated BA in 1685 and MA in 1686. After
becoming an ordained priest in Cork during September of 1687, Edward Wetenhall,
bishop of Cork and Ross, took him in as his domestic chaplain. Wetenhall helped
him secure a prebend on 9 July 1688, which is a stipend taken from the revenue
of a cathedral (or collegiate church) to a canon or member of the chapter, in the
Cork Cathedral. He also obtained livings at Ballymoney, Drinagh, and Kilmeen.
Brady became popular among the
Jacobites by staying in Ireland after the Roman Catholic viceroy of James II
came to power and by preaching ideologies near and dear to the Jacobite heart,
such as the divine right of kings. During this time, Brady was a marked
supporter of the Revolution but as a result, Brady would eventually suffer some
loss. When trouble broke out in Ireland in 1689/90 after the Bandon Protestants
took over, James ordered three times for Brady’s hometown to be burned. Brady
had a close relationship with general Justin McCarthy, to whom the order was
given, and managed to persuade McCarthy on all three occasions to leave the
town alone and settle for an indemnity of 1,500 pounds. The people of the town
respected Brady and requested that he present their grievances to Parliament,
which included a petition for compensation, that same year.
Brady eventually married into a
family with a long religious background on 29 June 1690. His new wife,
Laetitita, was the daughter of Richard Synge, archdeacon of Cork and
granddaughter of Edmond Synge, bishop of Cork. The couple would have four sons
and four daughters but unfortunately, two daughters and one son died in
infancy. Brady was promoted on 16 July 1691 to curate of St. Katherine Cree and
chosen as a lecturer of St. Michael’s on Wood Street, which led him to relinquish
his preferments in Ireland and settle his family in London. In London, Brady
became “noted for his abilities in the pulpit” (Kippis, 2.564) and he reentered
to the position as chaplain but this time for James Butler, second duke of Ormond.
Although Brady had spent part of his time in Ireland friendly with the
Jacobites, by this time Brady had become an avid supporter of the Protestant
king, William III.
In 1692, Brady decided to try his
poetic hand at playwriting and produced a tragedy, The Rape, also known as The
Innocent Imposters, which involved fifth- century Vandals and Goths. Its
first performance occurred in May 1692 at Drury Lane. Dramatist Thomas Shadwell
helped put the play on stage and wrote the epilogue while Brady wrote a
dedication to the earl of Dorset, Charles Sackville. Unfortunately, Brady’s
play did not gain much recognition and disappeared until after his death, when
it was recast and performed four times at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in November of 1729. In
1730, the play went through several changes, the biggest of these being the
replacement of Goths and Vandals with Spanish and Portuguese. Language such as
“rape” was replaced with “crime,” “ravish” with “dishonor,” and “lustful” with
“hateful.” The graphic rape scenes and the role of a cross-dressing male were
also removed. Nevertheless, Brady had better luck with his “Ode on St.
Cecilia’s Day,” in part because Henry Purcell was the one who set it to music. His
ode was sung in public for the first time on 22 November 1692.
On 23 April 1694, Brady moved
positions again and became chaplain for the foot regiment under Colonel Sir
Richard Atkins. Yet, it was as chaplain of William III and Queen Mary when he
produced, in collaboration with Nahum Tate who was another protestant Irish clergyman,
the most popular work of his career. Titled, New Version of the Psalm of David, this joint work was a metrical
version of the Psalms with a smoother rhythm that contemporaries found sufficiently
pleasing and was published in 1696. The work was dedicated to William III and
petitioned to the king for its use in “Congregations as shall think fit to
receive it” (Brady and Tate). Evidently the king thought well of the
publication and on 3 December 1696 made the order that the New Version be used “in all Churches, Chapels and Congregations”
(Brady and Tate). Not only did this version win over the king but the Whigs
also found its subtle political allusions to their liking. Brady and Tate’s
work eventually replaced a version by Sternhold and Hopkins and held sway in
Anglican churches across England until the mid-nineteenth century. As a sign of
its popularity, the work ran to approximately three hundred versions.
While working on the New Version, Brady found himself in
Surrey, where he met and made a favorable impression on the vicar of Kingston,
Gideon Harding. Harding appointed Brady as perpetual curate of Richmond
chaperly, Surrey in June 1696. Upon this promotion, Brady resigned his position
at St. Katherine Creed. Brady’s intellectual achievements reached back to
Trinity College, which awarded him the degrees of BD and DD (Doctor of
Divinity) on 15 November 1699. Esteemed senior fellow, Dr. Pratt, made a trip
to England in order to deliver the honors to Brady in person. The earl of
Dorset helped him secure a vicarage at Stratford upon Avon, which Brady held
from 10 November 1702 until 15 October 1705. On 21 February 1706, Dame Rebekah
Adkins, who was the mother of Colonel Sir Richard Adkins, presented him to the
rectory of the Holy Trinity, Clapham, Surrey. Even with these various appointments
and responsibilities, Brady was also chaplain to Queen Anne and eventually
Caroline when she was Princess of Wales.
The accumulation of his various
preferments amounted to close to 600 pounds a year. It has been speculated that
with his qualifications, Brady could have been raised “to some of the greatest
dignities in the church” had he not had such expensive and hospitable habits or
chosen to settle in a country in which he was technically a foreigner (Kippis
2.565). Due this personality that “rendered him careless of his private
interest and fortune” (Kippis 2.565), Brady kept a school at Richmond, which
proved to be a slightly more fruitful scheme than his attempt in 1713 to
publish a blank- verse version of Virgil’s Aeneid
in English for four guineas a subscription. His translation was never noted
in the numerous criticisms of the translations of Virgil so it seems to have
“sunk into oblivion, if not contempt” (Kippis, 2.565).
Brady was remembered as a person of
“a most obliging, sweet, affable temper, a polite gentleman, an excellent
preacher, and a good poet” (Kippis, 2.565). In his lifetime he published three
volumes of his sermons, which were printed in London. After his death his eldest
son, Nicholas who was vicar at Tooting, Surrey, published three more volumes
of his father’s sermons in 1730. Nicholas Brady passed away on 20 May 1726 at
Richmond and was buried in Richmond church.
Resources:
Brady, Nicholas and Nahum Tate. A New Version of the Psalm of David: Fitted
to the Tunes Used in Churches. London: E. A. James, 1754. https://books.google.com/books?id=hzUPAAAAIAAJ&dq=New+Version+of+the+Psalm+of+David&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Kippis, Andrew. Biographia Britannia Vol. 2. London: W. and A. Strahan, 1780. https://archive.org/details/Biographia_britannica_vol21780
Lowenthal, Cynthia. Performing Identities on the Restoration Stage. SIU Press, 2003.
https://books.google.com/books?id=ADsXdzj1mNYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Sambrook,
James. “Brady, Nicholas
(1659–1726).” James Sambrook In Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, .
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3219 (accessed February 20, 2015).
The Encyclopedia Britannica.
New York: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7112818M/The_Encyclopaedia_Britannica
No comments:
Post a Comment