his imprisonment. On his release, after a long confinement, he could obtain no redress. In religion, as in politics, he was a pronounced liberal, though no controversialist. His manuscript sermons are unmistakably Arian, and in the original draft of his ‘Remarks’ he says, ‘Suppose now any legislator should so far forget common sense as to decree three one, and one three, &c.’ He was fond of quoting the Greek Testament in his sermons, and (marvellous to say) his draft of a petition to parliament from his presbytery contains two citations from Theodoret in the original. For an incident of his pastoral experience, turning on the difficulties of the then Irish marriage law, see Mem. of Catherine Cappe, 1822, p. 268. Montgomery assigns to him ‘a singularly vigorous mind, a cultivated taste, a ready wit, a fluent elocution, a firm purpose, an unsullied character, and a most courteous demeanour.’ He died 5 Sept. 1811, in his seventy-fourth year. In 1771 he married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the Rev. Andrew Kennedy, of Mourne, and had seven children, but no son survived him. His daughter Margaret, above mentioned (b. 12 Aug. 1782, d. 21 May 1875), married John Galt Smith, of Belfast, whose son, George Kennedy Smith, possesses Barber's portrait and manuscripts. He published: 1. Funeral Sermon for the Rev. George Richey [Job xxxiv. 15], Newry, 1772. 2. Volunteer Sermon [2 Sam. xiii. 28], 1782 (a very spirited piece, under apprehension of foreign invasion). 3. ‘Remarks on a Pamphlet … by Richard, Lord Bishop of Cloyne,’ Dublin, 1787. 4. ‘Synodical Sermon at Lurgan’ [Rev. xviii. 20], 1791 (reckons the Nicene council as the beginning of the reign of Antichrist, and the French revolution as the omen of its fall). Nos. 2 and 4 appear to have been published, but were also circulated in manuscript.
[Barber's MSS., including his own account of his Tryal, 1798; Glasgow Matriculation Book; Kennedy pedigree, MS.; Belfast News-Letter, 10 Sept. 1811; Teeling's Sequel to Personal Narrative of Irish Rebellion, 1832, p. 31; Irish Unitarian Mag. 1847, pp. 286, 291; Chr. Unitarian, 1866, p. 359; Witherow's Hist. and Lit. Mem. of Presbyterianism in Ireland, 2 ser. 1880; Porter's In Memoriam … Margaret Smith, 1875.]
BARBON, NICHOLAS, M.D. (d. 1698), a writer of two treatises on money, and the originator of fire insurance in this country, was born in London, and entered as a student of physic at the university of Leyden on 2 July 1661. He was probably the son of Praisegod Barbon [see Barbon, Praisegod]. In October 1661 he graduated M.D. at Utrecht, and was admitted an honorary fellow of the College of Physicians in December 1664. He represented Bramber in the parliaments of 1690 and 1695. After the great fire of 1666, Barbon was one of the first and most considerable builders of the city of London, and first instituted fire insurance in this country. He ‘hath sett up an office for it,’ writes Luttrell in his ‘Brief Relation,’ under date 30 Oct. 1681 (i. 135), ‘and is likely to gett vastly by it.’ While engaged in rebuilding London, he purchased ‘the Red Lyon feilds, near Graies Inn Walks, to build on,’ and 11 June 1684 a serious riot took place between his workmen and ‘the gentlemen of Graies Inn.’ As late as 1692 he was engaged in improving Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn. A square near Gerrard Street, Newport Market, is said to have been called Barbon Square in the reign of George II. Reynolds's ‘Wells Cathedral’ (pref. p. 67) gives the following from Chyle's (unpublished) history of the church of Wells. Exeter House, belonging to the see of Exeter, first went to Lord Paget, then to R. Dudley, earl of Leicester, and then to the Earl of Essex, and was called Essex House, ‘which ever since has kept the name, till last year, when one Dr. Barbone, the son, I am told, of honest prays God, bought it of the executors of the late Duchess of Somerset, d. of the said Robert (E. of Essex), not to restore it to the right owner, the Bp. of Exeter; but converted into houses and tenements for tavernes, ale houses, cooks-shoppes, and vaulting schooles, and the garden adjoining the river into wharfes for brewers and woodmongers.’ Barbon was the author of ‘A Discourse of Trade’ (12mo, London, 1690), and a ‘Discourse concerning coining the new money lighter, in answer to Mr. Lock's considerations about raising the value of money’ (12mo, London, 1696). This latter work was one of the numerous pamphlets which issued from the presses of London on the subject of the great controversy which raged at that time, when there was such urgent demand for a renewal of the currency—a controversy in which, as Flamsteed, the astronomer royal, is reported to have said, the real point at issue was, whether five was six or only five.
Barbon ranged himself under the banner of William Lowndes, whose ‘Essay for the Amendment of Silver Coins’ had become the text-book of a party composed partly of dull men who really believed what he told them, and partly of shrewd men who were perfectly willing to be authorised by law to pay a hundred pounds with eighty (Macaulay, Hist. of Eng. iv. 632).
