Edward Bridgen, antiquarian, was born in approximately 1720, likely to Edward Bridgen, a wine merchant in Bridgnorth, Shropshire. Married (1762) Martha Richardson (1737-1785), daughter of Samuel Richardson. Bridgen founded the lace merchants of Bridgen and Waller on Paternoster Row in the early 1760s and served as Treasurer to the Society of Antiquaries in 1777. Following the success of Bridgen and Waller in South Carolina, Bridgen became a correspondent of both Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. Though it is unclear how they met, Edward Bridgen was a friend of James Woodhouse, and offered his shop as a site to leave financial contributions for Woodhouse, as given in the 'Advertisement' to Poems on Sundry Occasions (1764). It is over their mutual relationship with James Woodhouse that Montagu and Bridgen correspond primarily, in a correspondence which lasts from 1766 to 1780. Bridgen died on 28 July 1787 in London.