BRIDGET, St, one of the patron saints of Ireland, who lived during the 6th century, was a daughter of one of the princes of Ulster, and took the monastic vow at a very early age. Her cell, the first in Ireland, was erected under a large oak tree, whence the place was called Kil-dara, the cell of the oak. The city of Kildare is supposed to derive its name from St Bridget's cell. A whole collection of miraculous stories have clustered round her name, and her reputation was not confined to Ireland, for St Bride was a favourite saint in England and in Scotland.
BRIDGET, St, of Sweden, was born about the year 1302. She was descended from a family of royal blood, and at the age of sixteen was married to Alpho, prince of Nericia. The husband and wife were equally devoted to works of piety, and undertook together a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Jago de Compostella. On their return both embraced the monastic life, and after the death of Alpho, his wife founded a new kind of monastery for monks and nuns. She then went on a pilgrimage to Rome, where she founded a house for Swedish pilgrims and students, and composed her Revelationes. After another pilgrimage to Jerusalem, she died at Rome in 1373. She was canonized in 1391. The order of St Bridget nourished for some time; they had one house in Britain.
BRIDGEWATER, a municipal (and formerly a parliamentary) borough and seaport in Somersetshire, on the Great Western Railway, 29 miles S.S.W. of Bristol. It is 
Arms of Bridgewater. pleasantly situated in a level and well-wooded country, having on the east the Mendip range and on the west the Quantock hills. The town, which is well built, lies along both sides of the River Parret, here crossed by a handsome iron bridge. It has an ancient Gothic church with a spire 174 feet in height, a town-hall, court-rooms, a jail, a market-place, an infirmary, a free grammar school, and some alms-houses. The river, which is subject to a bore, often two fathoms deep at the mouth, is navigable for vessels of 700 tons up to the town. The customs duties in 1874 were £7227. The chief imports are grain, coals, wine, hemp, tallow, and timber; the exports, agricultural produce, earthenware, cement, plaster of Paris, and bath-bricks, which last constitute the staple trade of the town. The value of the imports in 1874 was £118,509, and of the exports £5011. The town returned two members to parliament till 1870, when the borough was disfranchised. Population in 1871, 10,259. Bridgewater is said to derive its name, which appears in earlier times as Brugge Walter, from a certain Walter de Douay, to whom the manor was presented at the Conquest. In the reign of Henry II. a splendid castle was built and a harbour constructed by William de Briwere; and in 1230 a Grey-Friars' monastery was founded by his son. The castle was taken by the Royalists in 1643, and was almost completely demolished after its capture by the Parliamentary forces in 1645. Admiral Blake was a native of Bridgewater.
BRIDGEWATER, Francis Egerton, third duke of, who has sometimes been styled "the Father of British Inland Navigation," was born in 1736. The navigable canal which he projected for the transport of the coal obtained on his estates, was (with the exception of the Sankey canal) the first great undertaking of the kind executed in Great Britain in modern times. The construction of this remarkable work was carried out by Brindley, the celebrated engineer. (See Brindley and Canal.) The untiring perseverance displayed by the duke in surmounting the various difficulties that retarded the accomplishment of his project, together with the pecuniary restrictions he imposed on himself in order to supply the necessary capital, affords an instructive example of that energy and self-denial on which the success of great undertakings so much depends. Though a steady supporter of Mr Pitt's administration, he never took any prominent part in politics. On his death, March 8, 1803, the ducal title became extinct.
BRIDGEWATER, the Rev. Francis Henry, eighth earl of, was born in 1758 and died on the 11th February 1829. He is best known as the originator of the Bridgewater Treatises. By his will he devised the sum of £8000, at the disposal of the president of the Royal Society, to be paid to the author or authors selected by the president to write and publish 1000 copies of a treatise "On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation." Mr Davies Gilbert, who then filled the office, selected eight persons, each to undertake a branch of this subject, and each to receive £1000 as his reward, together with any benefit that might accrue from the sale of his work, according to the will of the testator.
The treatises were published as follows:—1. The Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Condition of Man, by the Rev. Thomas Chalmers, D.D. 2. The Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man, by John Kidd, M.D. 3. Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to Natural Theology, by the Rev. William Whewell, D.D. 4. The Hand, its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as evincing Design, by Sir Charles Bell. 5. Animal and Vegetable Physiology considered with reference to Natural Theology, by Peter Mark Roget. 6. Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, by the Rev. William Buckland, D.D. 7. The Habits and Instincts of Animals with reference to Natural Theology, by the Rev. William Kirby. 8. Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Digestion, considered with, reference, to Natural Theology, by William Prout, M.D. The works are of unequal merit; several of them took a high rank in apologetic literature.
