View source for Robert Brady (writer)

{{Short description|English academic and historical writer}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2016}}
{{Use British English|date=September 2016}}
[[File:Robert Brady by Daniel de Koninck.jpg|thumb|Robert Brady by [[Daniel de Koninck]]]]
'''Robert Brady''' {{Post-nominals|list=[[Doctor of Medicine|MD]]}} (1627–1700) was an English academic and historical writer supporting the [[royalist]] position in the reigns of [[Charles II of England]] and [[James II of England]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rose |first=Jacqueline |date=2007 |title=Robert Brady's Intellectual History and Royalist Antipopery in Restoration England |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20108305 |journal=The English Historical Review |volume=122 |issue=499 |pages=1287–1317 |issn=0013-8266}}</ref> He was also a physician.

==Biography==
Brady was born in [[Denver, Norfolk]] in 1627.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pocock |first=J. G. A. |date=1951 |title=Robert Brady, 1627-1700. A Cambridge Historian of the Restoration |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3021085 |journal=Cambridge Historical Journal |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=186–204 |issn=1474-6913}}</ref> He was son of Thomas Brady, an attorney of [[Denver, Norfolk]]. He was educated in [[Downham Market]] and at [[Caius College, Cambridge]].<ref>{{acad|id=BRDY643R|name=Brady, Robert}}</ref> He was made Master of Caius College in 1660, on the [[English Restoration]]. In the 1670s, he hoped to write for the prominent politicians [[Joseph Williamson (English politician)|Joseph Williamson]] and [[Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury]], but they declined the offer. It was only when [[William Sancroft]] became [[Archbishop of Canterbury]] that Brady found a patron.<ref name = Pyle/>

Beginning in 1677, Brady held the position of [[Regius Professor of Physic (Cambridge)|Regius Professor of Physic]] at Cambridge. He sat as Member of Parliament for the [[Cambridge University (UK Parliament constituency)|University]] in 1681 and 1685.<ref>''Concise Dictionary of National Biography''</ref>

In historical controversy, he was opposed to [[William Petyt]] and [[James Tyrrell (writer)|James Tyrrell]], along what would become [[Tory]] versus [[British Whig Party|Whig]] lines, then forming in the [[Exclusion crisis]] of the 1680s. Brady is regarded as holding to an uncompromising royalist position.<ref>{{cite book|author=Colin Kidd|title=British Identities Before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I2EIlJISeUMC&pg=PA79|accessdate=5 May 2012|date=13 March 1999|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-62403-9|pages=79–}}</ref> Others on the Whig side were [[William Atwood]], Edward Cooke, and [[Sir John Somers]].

[[J. P. Kenyon]] takes him as a pioneer among the royalist scholars of English medieval history, who were working towards a formulation akin to Kenyon's viewpoint.<ref>{{cite book|author=J. P. Kenyon|title=Revolution Principles: The Politics of Party, 1689–1720|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LH9HUtKkFfcC&pg=PA36|accessdate=5 May 2012|date=27 July 1990|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-38656-2|pages=36–}}</ref> [[J. G. A. Pocock|John Pocock]]<ref>{{cite book|author=John Greville Agard Pocock|title=The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gb4brksd2IQC&pg=PA444|accessdate=5 May 2012|date=27 January 2003|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0-691-11472-9|page=444}}</ref> regards as "unforgettably damaging" the effect the (proto-)Tory Brady and others made, in attacking the doctrine of the "[[Ancient constitution of England|Ancient Constitution]]" as a failed description of the real circumstances of political arrangements in the England of the Middle Ages. On the narrow point of the actual legal effects of the [[Norman Conquest]], Brady had been anticipated by [[Samuel Daniel]], in views that are quite close to some modern scholars.<ref>Patrick Wormald, ''The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century'' (2001), p. 8 {{ISBN|0631227407}}.</ref> He moved from there to argue for [[Absolutism (European history)|absolutism]],<ref>{{cite book|author=J. H. Burns|title=The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TiVKeH-cMPUC&pg=PA364|accessdate=5 May 2012|date=17 November 1994|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-47772-7|pages=364–}}</ref> and that [[Magna Carta]] was not a major charter for popular freedom.<ref>{{cite web|title=CHAPTER II: The Colonial Perspective: Ancient and Medieval – Trevor Colbourn, The Lamp of Experience [1965]|url=http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=674&chapter=77319&layout=html&Itemid=27|work=Online Library of Liberty|publisher=[[Liberty Fund, Inc.]]|accessdate=15 January 2012}}</ref>  Brady's ideas drew on [[Henry Spelman]] and [[Robert Filmer]].<ref name = Pyle>[[Andrew Pyle (philosopher)|Andrew Pyle]] (editor), ''Dictionary of Seventeenth Century British Philosophers'' (2000), article pp. 117–8.</ref>

[[David C. Douglas]] remarks that although his motivations as a scholar were at least as political as those of his opponents, his techniques were so far superior that his work remained of importance.<ref>David C. Douglas, ''English Scholars'' (1939), p. 155.</ref> Brady was aided in his later work by a position from 1686 in the archives of the [[Tower of London]].<ref name = Pyle/><ref>{{cite book|author=David Bates|title=England and Normandy in the Middle Ages|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_2ydotlxKeUC&pg=PA7|accessdate=5 May 2012|year=1994|publisher=Continuum International Publishing Group|isbn=978-1-85285-083-8|pages=7–}}</ref>

==Offices held==
{{s-start}}

{{s-aca}}
{{s-bef|before=[[Francis Glisson]]}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[Regius Professor of Physic (Cambridge)|Regius Professor of Physic]]|years=1677–1700}}
{{s-aft|after=[[Christopher Green (physician)|Christopher Green]]}}

{{s-bef|before=[[Thomas Batchcroft]]}}
{{s-ttl|title=Master of [[Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge|Gonville and Caius College]]|years=1660–1700}}
{{s-aft|after=[[James Halman]]}}

{{s-par|uk}}
{{s-bef|before=[[Thomas Exton|Sir Thomas Exton]]|before2=[[James Vernon (politician, born 1646)|James Vernon]]}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[Member of Parliament]] for [[Cambridge University (UK Parliament constituency)|Cambridge University]]|years=1681–1689|with=[[Thomas Exton|Sir Thomas Exton]] 1679–1689}}
{{s-aft|after=[[Isaac Newton|Sir Isaac Newton]]|after2=[[Robert Sawyer (Attorney General)|Sir Robert Sawyer]]}}

{{s-end}}

==Bibliography==
*''A Full and Clear Answer to a Book Written by William Petit, Esq.'' (1681)
*''An Introduction to the Old English History'' (1684)
*''A Complete History of England'' (1685)
*''An Historical Treatise of Cities and Burghs'' (1690)

==References==
{{Reflist|35em}}

{{Gonville and Caius Masters}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brady, Robert}}
[[Category:1627 births]]
[[Category:1700 deaths]]
[[Category:17th-century English historians]]
[[Category:17th-century English medical doctors]]
[[Category:Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge]]
[[Category:Regius Professors of Physic (Cambridge)]]
[[Category:Masters of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge]]
[[Category:Members of the pre-1707 Parliament of England for the University of Cambridge]]
[[Category:People from Denver, Norfolk]]