His grandfather was Colonel John Bridges of Alcester, Warwickshire, whose eldest son of the same name purchased the manor of Barton Seagrave about 1665, and as an improving landowner introduced the cultivation of sainfoin.
In 1718 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and in the following year he began the formation of voluminous manuscript collections for the history of Northamptonshire.
He made a circuit of the county, and employed several persons to make drawings, collect information, and transcribe monuments and records.
Left by Bridges as an heirloom to his family, they were placed by his brother William, secretary of the stamp office, in the hands of Gibbons, a stationer and law-bookseller at the Middle Temple Gate, who circulated proposals for their publication by subscription, and engaged Samuel Jebb to edit them.
Before many numbers had appeared Gibbons became bankrupt, and the manuscripts remaining in the hands of the editor, who had received no compensation for his labours, were at length secured by William Cartwright, M.P., of Aynho, for his native county, and a local committee was formed to accomplish the publication of the work.
The first volume appeared in 1762, and the first part of the second in 1769; but delay arose after the death of Sir Thomas Cave, chairman of the committee, and the entire work was not published till 1791.