side.’ His humility and clemency are well illustrated by a story in the life of Bernard Gilpin, in Brook's ‘Lives of the Puritans’ (i. 256–8). We are there told how Gilpin, who was an energetic preacher in the wild border-country, was ordered to preach before Barnes, and boldly denounced him for his want of due severity. The bishop went home with Gilpin, and said to him, ‘Father Gilpin, I acknowledge you are fitter to be the bishop of Durham than I am to be the parson of your church. I ask forgiveness of past injuries. Forgive me, father. I know you have enemies, but while I live bishop of Durham, be secure; none of them shall cause you any further trouble’ (cf. Carleton's and Gilpin's Lives of Bernard Gilpin).
In 1578 Barnes was on a commission for the visitation of the church of Durham. In February 1579 he was created D.D. at Oxford, having taken the degree of B.D. at Cambridge. On 24 May 1580, the queen commissioned him, Lord Hunsdon, and others to proceed to the borders of Scotland for ‘redress of grievances.’
Barnes died on 24 Aug. 1587, and was buried in the choir of his cathedral. The dean of Durham (Dr. Toby Matthew) preached his funeral sermon on 7 Sept., from Psalm ciii. 15, 16. The following epitaph is still to be read on his tomb:—
Reverendo in Christo patri ac domino, dom. Richardo Barnes, Dunelmi episcopo, præsuli prædocto, liberali, et munifico, P.S. præclarissimo patri P.P.P. Obiit xxiv. Augusti, A.D. 1587, ætatis suæ 55. Mors mihi lucrum.
Astra tenent animam, corpusque hoc marmore clausum;
Fama polos penetrat; nomen nati atque nepotes
Conservant; vivit semper post funera virtus.
Barnes married first Fredesmund, daughter of Ralph Gifford, of Claydon, Bucks, by whom he had issue five sons and four daughters. The third son was Barnabe Barnes, the poet of ‘Parthenophil and Parthenophe’ [see Barnes, Barnabe]. Barnes married secondly, in 1582, Jane, a French lady, by whom he had no issue; after his death she became the wife of Dr. Leonard Pilkington, master of St. John's College, Cambridge. His ‘Injunctions and other Ecclesiastical Proceedings’ were edited by J. Raine for the Surtees Society in 1850.
[Introduction to Barnabe Barnes's Poems, in Dr. Grosart's Occasional Issues (1875); Surtees and Hutchinson's Durham (the latter misplaces ‘Bould’ in Lincolnshire instead of Lancashire); Strype's Annals, ii. 431, appendix 105, p. 521, et alibi; Rymer's Fœdera, xv. p. 785; Willis's Cathedrals, i. 229; Fuller's Church History, lib. ix. p. 191; Raine's History of Auckland Castle; Clavis Ecclesiastica, ut supra; Cooper's Athen. Cantab. ii. 15–16; Wood's Athenæ (Bliss), ii. 826; Lansdowne MSS. i. 48, 50, 51, 71, ii. 247; Strype's Grindal, ep. ded. and p. 164; Strype's Parker, i. 240; Bedford's Blazon of Episcopacy, 117; Ussher's Letters, 26; Thorpe's Cal. of State Papers, 405, 520.]
BARNES, ROBERT, D.D. (1495–1540), protestant divine and martyr, was a Norfolk man, born in the neighbourhood of Lynn. Bishop Bale, who was born in 1495 and studied with him at Cambridge in 1514, says that he was of the same age with himself. It must have been two or three years before that date—in fact, while he was still a boy, if we are to interpret Bale's word impubes strictly—that he was made an Augustinian friar, and joined the convent of Austin friars at Cambridge. Here he discovered a taste for learning, and was sent for a time to study at Louvain; on his return to Cambridge, he was made prior of the house. A devoted pupil named Thomas Parnell came back from Louvain with him, and read with him, as Foxe informs us, ‘copia verborum et rerum,’ not the well-known work of Erasmus so entitled, but classical authors such as Terence, Plautus, and Cicero; by which ‘he caused the house shortly to flourish with good letters, and made a great part of the house learned who before were drowned in barbarous ignorance.’ It is strange that in telling us this Foxe should have glanced at the title of a work of Erasmus without mentioning him by name, especially as the great Dutch scholar must have been at Cambridge at least part of the time that Barnes was there, and could scarcely have been ignorant of the efforts of a fellow-worker to revive learning at the university. But it is more extraordinary still that, if Barnes produced any marked impression in this way, not a word should be said about him, good or evil, in all the correspondence of Erasmus. We cannot, however, reasonably doubt that he drew to himself at Cambridge a number of congenial souls, of whom Foxe mentions five by name, one of them being Miles Coverdale, afterwards so well known for his translation of the Bible. He discussed questions of divinity at the university, and was made D.D. in 1523. He then became acquainted with the writings of Luther, and adopted his opinions, to which it appears he was converted by Thomas Bilney, the Norwich martyr. He first laid himself open to a charge of heresy by a sermon delivered at St. Edward's church, at Cambridge, on Sunday, 24 Dec. 1525, on the text, ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway’ (Phil. iv. 4), in which he depreciated the special observance of great festivals
