(1747–March 30, 1812), was a signer of the United States Constitution. He was the delegate from Delaware to the Constitutional Convention, where he played a considerable part in the Federal Convention.1343 In 1789, he was appointed to the First Federal District Court by President Washington. Gunning Bedford attended Princeton University, sharing rooms with James Madison. He studied under the influence of John Witherspoon, one of the nation’s premier theologians and legal scholars.1344
As a delegate from the State of Delaware, Gunning Bedford would have complied with the requirements for office, as stipulated by that State’s constitution:
Article XXII. Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust … shall … make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: “I, _____, do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be given by divine inspiration.”1345