[1] Bradshaw wrote a Latin treatise De antiquitate et magnificentia Urbis Cestricie, which is lost, and a life of the patron saint of his monastery in English seven-lined stanza.
Bradshaw disclaims the merit of originality and quotes the authorities from which he translates—Bede, William of Malmesbury, Giraldus Cambrensis, Alfred of Beverley, Henry of Huntingdon, Ranulph Higden, and especially the "Passionary" or life of the saint preserved in the monastery.
He does not neglect the miraculous elements of the story, but he is more attracted by historical fact than legend, and the second book narrates the Danish invasion of 875, and describes the history and antiquities of Chester, from its foundation by the legendary giant Leon Gaur, from which he derives the British name of Caerleon, down to the great fire which devastated the city in 1180, but was suddenly extinguished when the shrine of St Werburgh was carried in procession through the streets.
Thomas Warton, who deals with Bradshaw at some length,[2] quotes as the most splendid passage of the poem the description of the feast preceding Werburgh's entry into the religious life.
Dr Horstmann, on the other hand, finds in the poem "original genius, of a truly epic tone, with a native simplicity of feeling which sometimes reminds the reader of Homer."