[2] Brydges was born on the 6 January 1673 at Dewsall, Herefordshire, the fourth, but eldest surviving son of James Brydges, 8th Baron Chandos and his wife Elizabeth Barnard, daughter of Sir Henry Barnard, merchant of St Dunstan-in-the-East, London, and of Bridgnorth, Shropshire.

Brydges was a Freeman of Ludlow in 1697, and was returned unopposed as Member of Parliament for Hereford at the 1698 English general election.

He was Chancellor of the University of St Andrews (where he established the Chandos Chair of Medicine and Anatomy in 1721) from 1724 for the rest of his life.

The ethics of his financial operations were called into question at the time, but it was generally accepted that people could profit from public office.

He continued to engage in speculative investments after being made Duke of Chandos in 1719, but lost money in the South Sea Bubble and the York Buildings Company.

Brydges is said to have considered building a private road across his own lands between this place and his never completed house in Cavendish Square, London, probably also designed by Gibbs.

[8] The Duke is chiefly remembered on account of his connections with George Frideric Handel, for whom he acted as a major patron, and with Alexander Pope,[2] seen as having slandered Chandos in one of his poems.

[9] Before Chandos was made a duke, he employed the young composer George Frideric Handel over a period of two years, 1717–18.

In 1719 Chandos was one of the main subscribers in the Royal Academy of Music, not the currently well-known conservatoire of that name but a corporation that produced baroque opera on stage in London.

[10][11] Alexander Pope, who in one of his Moral Essays (the Epistle to Burlington) was alleged to have ridiculed Cannons under the guise of Timon's Villa, later referred to the Duke in the line, "Thus gracious Chandos is belov'd at sight"; but Jonathan Swift, less complimentary, called him "a great complier with every court".

Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu in a letter, dated Sandleford, 21 December 1750 to Miss Anstey, wrote: "My dear Miss Anstey, ... A little before I went to London I lost my very good neighbour, the Dutchess of Chandos, a stroke of the palsy carried her off in a few days: her bodily pains were great, but her mind felt the serenity that gilds the evening of a virtuous life.

She quitted the world with that decent fare-well which people take of it, who rather consider it as a place in which they are to impart good than to enjoy it Her character has made a great impression on me, as I think her a rare instance that age could not make conceited and stiff, nor retirement discontented, nor virtue inflexible and severe..."[14] In a letter to Mrs. Donnellan dated Sandleford, 30 December 1750, Mrs. Montagu continued, "My rich neighbours are dull, and my poor ones are miserable ...

To make the poor happy one must make them industrious..."[14] Chandos was succeeded by his son, Henry Brydges, 2nd Duke of Chandos, who found the estate so encumbered by debt that a demolition sale of Cannons was held in 1747, which dispersed furnishings and structural elements, with the result that elements of Cannons survive in several English country houses, notably Lord Foley's house, Witley Court at Great Witley, with its chapel (ceiling paintings by Bellucci and stained glass by Joshua Price of York after designs by Francesco Sleter).