In 1803 Bradshaw, a consummate businessman, was appointed one of the three trustees of the 3rd duke of Bridgwater’s will and sole superintendent of his canal interests. Conscientious to the point of obsession, he told the railway pioneer John Moss in October 1828 that ‘the old duke had made him promise 26 years ago to attend to the interests of the canal, from which day, he had not once dined out’. Bridgwater had returned him in 1802 for his pocket borough of Brackley in order to protect his canal interest, and after the duke’s death Bradshaw acquired the right to nominate both Members, under the patronage of the 2nd marquess of Stafford, Bridgwater’s nephew and principal beneficiary. At the 1820 general election he again returned himself. A silent Member, whose insistence on conducting all the business of the canal himself made him a lax attender, when present he continued to support the Liverpool ministry.
Bradshaw spent much of his time from 1824 to 1826 in trying to resist the Liverpool and Manchester railway bill. The demand for such a link has been partly attributed to the high tolls (which Bradshaw had doubled in 1810) and underinvestment in the maintenance of the canal. However, his room for manoeuvre was restricted by the terms of Bridgwater’s will, which determined that the profits from the canal were to be paid to Stafford, leaving little to invest, while legal restraints limited his freedom to borrow money for repairs or improvements to the navigation. His policies did ensure great profits for the canal in the short term. When the railway surveyors began their work in the autumn of 1824, he forbade them to come on his or the trust’s land and had guns fired in his grounds at night to prevent them from working under the cover of darkness. He and his fellow trustees petitioned against the railway and the Liverpool improvement bill, 21 Mar., and the railway bill was lost in June 1825. Thereafter its promoters changed their tactics and declared that they had no hostile feelings towards the canal. On 27 Sept. 1825 Bradshaw informed James Loch*, Stafford’s man of business:
The Manchester and Liverpool railroaders are certainly going to Parliament next session. Their existing surveyor has just been here to show me their plans, etc., and ask permission to go over our lands, to which (you will scarcely believe it) I have consented; but the man behaved so fairly and openly that I really could not refuse; am I not a liberal?
In January 1826 Stafford was persuaded by Loch of the merit of the railway and bought £100,000 of shares, apparently against Bradshaw’s advice. This ended his active opposition and, reconciled to the inevitability of the project, Bradshaw sought the contract for cutting a tunnel at the Liverpool end of the line. He also endeavoured to improve the canal’s position, instigating a number of repairs and improvements from August 1826. He wanted an estate bill to end the restriction on the trustees’ ability to borrow money, but Loch refused to recommend it to Stafford. When the railway opened in September 1830 Bradshaw slashed the tolls on the canal, but it was not enough, and profits fell sharply.
At the 1826 general election Bradshaw returned himself and his son for Brackley. He paired against Catholic relief, 6 Mar. 1827. He was probably the ‘Mr. Bradshaw’ who was granted a month’s leave on account of ill health, 16 Mar. 1827. Writing to Loch that July, he derided the ‘march of intellect’ and ‘the age of reason’ and declared himself ‘one of the old school’. In late February 1829 Planta, the Wellington ministry’s patronage secretary, predicted that he would vote ‘with government’ for their concession of emancipation, and he divided accordingly, 6 Mar. 1829.
Bradshaw’s paralysis ‘permanently impaired his judgement’ and his moods became unpredictable, oscillating between extremes of ‘excitement and irritability’, but he insisted on continuing to oversee the Bridgwater affairs. On 2 July 1833 James warned Loch that the situation had become critical and that unless action was taken there would be ‘an end of any profit from this concern’. Stunned by James’s suicide the following September, Bradshaw was eventually persuaded by Loch to retire in 1834, on full pay. Although he was entitled by Bridgwater’s will to nominate his successor, Loch managed to persuade him to overlook his elder son William Rigby Bradshaw (whom Bridgwater had suggested) and to appoint James Sothern, a canal employee of many years standing. Bradshaw gave up his company residence at Worsley and negotiated to sell his private estates in Lancashire (which he had acquired for their coal reserves) and at Brackley for £127,000. He retired to his Hertfordshire property at Woodmans, but soon became bedridden.