Ruminations: The Bradleys of Westminster
ley as his lawyer in his private affairs, collecting and paying out sums for real estate,
prosecuting and defending law suits, and
sometimes loaning Ethan money on account, when funds were low.35 Ethan Allen hired him to defend a Green Mountain
Boy whose musket was seized for a debt in
1779. “Charge it to me,” Allen wrote Bradley, “my Warriors must not be cheated out
of their Fire Arms.”36
Where a lawyer was needed, there he
was, ready and capable. Bradley prosecuted Justice of the Peace John Barrett in
1785, on behalf of the State, for maladministration, using his office to manipulate the
judicial process, encouraging lawsuits and
“enhance[ing] bills of Costs to the oppression of the People.”37 Barrett was removed
from office by the governor and council.38
He was an indispensable man for Vermont throughout his public life, and for
the nation, while he was in the Senate. He
was the educated representative of Vermont, the opposite of the rough image of
Ethan Allen, making the Vermont cause respectable. He was a leader of the Senate,
said to be capable of defeating any legislation that he opposed, more successfully
than anyone who had served in that assembly before him.39 That was why missing the
critical vote on the War of 1812 was such a
blow to him.
In his later years, he built a pulpit in his
parlor, and invited the neighborhood in to
hear speakers and preachers, on current
subjects of interest, and he would preside
over the debates, as a judge, ruling upon
“all questions of propriety and admissibility,” with great humor.40 He was always
interesting, to the last, which occurred in
1830. His family brought him back to Westminster to the family plot. His son was forty-eight at the time.
Deafness
On the cover of Carpenter’s collection
of William Czar Bradley’s letters is a photo
of the subject, cupping his right ear. This
was how many remembered him, as a man
who was hard of hearing, for whom words
were often repeated in a louder voice. The
cause was treatment for scarlet fever when
he was two years old. As Bradley explained
it, the doctor put a “crescent of blistering
plaster behind my ear which relieved me as
soon as it began to draw, but brought on
a roaring and buzzing in my ear which has
never since ceased.”41
His granddaughter explained, “His deafness prevented his attending church; and
when once importuned to do so by a minister, for example’s sake, his ready reply was,
‘Are we not commanded never to turn a