[1] The same year, Bridgeman became a fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge and was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple.

The following week, on 7 June 1660, he was created a Baronet, of Great Lever, in the County of Lancaster.

From 1660 to 1668, Bridgeman was Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and from 1667 to 1672 Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, resigning because he refused to apply the Great Seal to the Royal Declaration of Indulgence, which he regarded as too generous to Catholics.

In his final years, Bridgeman appointed the priest, theologian, and metaphysical poet Thomas Traherne (c. 1637 – 1674) as his private chaplain at Teddington and supported the publication of his writings.

Bridgeman was highly regarded in his time for his participation in the trial of the regicides of King Charles I in 1660, and also for devising complex legal instruments for the conveyance of estates in land.

Among Bridgeman's most enduring inventions was a device for the 22nd Earl of Arundel, which led to the creation in the Duke of Norfolk's Case, 3 Ch.