About 1734 he was bound apprentice to Charles Worral, a Manchester factor, trading at the Golden Ball, Lawrence Lane, London.
Very quickly (about 1741) he took a London partner, James Dawson, near the Axe Inn, Aldermanbury, and he married a Miss Waggstaff of Manchester.
Having accepted a captaincy in Colonel Francis Towneley's Manchester Regiment he marched to Derby, paying his men out of his own purse; he headed his company on horseback in the skirmish at Clifton Moor; he attended Charles Edward Stuart's levée on the retreat through Carlisle in December; and preferring to be in Lord Elcho's troop of horse when the Jacobite army was back in Scotland in the early weeks of 1746, he fought at the Battle of Falkirk Muir.
In his scaffold speech later that year, Bradshaw made scathing remarks about the commander of the Hanoverian forces, The Prince William, Duke of Cumberland.
His counsel (who only had limited input into the trial, in accordance with the legal rules of the time) argued that Bradshaw had always had "lunatick pranks", and had been driven entirely mad by the death of his wife and child.
[1] His scaffold speech gave an effective and eloquent defence of his Jacobite principles, including religion: 'I die a member of the Church of England, which I am satisfied would flourish more under the reign of a Stewart than it does now, or has done for many years.