BRIDGEWATER, JOHN

Catholic theologian, known also as Aquapontanus; b. Yorkshire, c. 1532; d. probably at Trèves, c. 1596. He was admitted to Brasenose College, Oxford, on Feb. 4, 1552 (N.S.; 1551, O.S.), and supplicated as a B.A. of Cambridge on Feb. 21, 1555 (N.S.; 1554, O.S.). He received the degree of B.A. at Oxford on March 13, 1555(N.S.; 1554, O.S.) and the M.A. two years later. He was the recipient of several ecclesiastical appointments that included St. Austell, Cornwall, in 1550; Yelling, Huntingdonshire, in 1554; Aldeburgh, Suffolk, in 1554; the archdeaconry of Rochester in 1560 (N.S.; 1559, O.S.); Columb Major, Cornwall, in 1559; Luccombe, Somerset, in 1563; Porlock, Somerset, in 1565; Prebend of Combell in 1564; and Compton Bishop in the Cathedral of Wells in 1572. On April 14, 1563, he was elected rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, but resigned this and his other preferments in 1574 and went abroad. It is unlikely that he ever returned to England. Pedro de Ribadaneira, Nathaniel Southwell, and Henry Foley claim him as a member of the Society of Jesus, but this is questioned. His two polemical works of theology are Confutatio virulentae disputationis theologicae, in qua Georgius Sohn, professor academiae Heidelbergensis, conatus est docere Pontificem Romanum esse antichristum a prophetis et apostolis praedictum (Trèves 1589) and Concertatio ecclesiae catholicae in Anglia adversus Calvinopapistas et Puritanos sub Elizabetha regina quorundam hominum doctrina et sanctitate illustrium renovata et recognita (Trèves 1589–94).

Bibliography: Douai, English College, The First and Second Diaries of the English College Douay, ed. Fathers of the Congregation of the London Oratory (London 1878) 99, 119, 128, 130, 146,408. A Literary and Biographical History or Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics from 1534 to the Present Time 1:294–295. The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900 (London 1885–1900) 2:1232–33. h. foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, 7 v. (London 1877–82) 4:485–488.

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