Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/304

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Barrow
288
Barrow
giuen out in our name, upon which Articles their Priests were sent and injoyned to confer with vs in the seuerall prisons wherin we are by them detained.’
  1. ‘A Collection of certaine Letters and Conferences: lately passed betwixt certaine Preachers and two Prisoners in the Fleet’ (1590). 3. ‘A Brief Discourse of the False Church’ (1590).
  2. ‘Apologie or Defence of such true Christians as are commonly but uniustly called Brownists.’
  3. ‘A Petition directed to her most excellent Majestie, wherein is delivered, I. A meane how to compound the evill dissention in the Church of England; II. A proofe that they who write for Reformation do not offend against the stat. of 23 Eliz., and therefore till matters bee compounded deserve more favour.’
  4. ‘Mr. H. Barrowe's Platform. Which may serve as a Preparative to purge away Prelatisme with some other parts of Poperie. Made ready to be sent from Miles Mickle-bound to Much-beloved England.’ This work, written in 1593, was published in 1611, ‘after the untimely death of the penman of the aforesaid platform and his fellow prisoner.’
  5. ‘A plaine refutation of M. Giffard's booke, intituled A short treatise against the Donatistes of England. … Here also is prefixed a summe of the causes of our separation … which M. Giffard hath twice sought to confute, and hath now twice received answer by H. B. Here is furder inserted a brief refutation of M. Giff. supposed consimilitude betwixt the Donatistes and us. By J. Greenwood. …’ This work, which was published in London in 1605, has a dedicatory epistle signed by both Greenwood and Barrow. Copies of this and the former book are in the British Museum. Dr. Dexter, in his ‘Congregationalism,’ argues that Barrow and not John Penry was the author of the chief tracts, published under the pseudonym of Martin Marprelate, but the argument rests on a very doubtful basis, and is adequately refuted in Professor Arber's ‘Marprelate Controversy,’ pp. 187–96.

Barrow and Greenwood were ultimately ‘arraigned’ under a statute of the 23rd year of Elizabeth's reign, which made it felony, punishable by death, without benefit of clergy or right of sanctuary, to ‘write, print, set forth, or circulate, or to cause to be written, set forth, or circulated, any manner of book, ryme, ballade, letter or writing at all with a malicious intent, or ‘any false, seditious, and sclanderous matter to the defamation of the queen's majestie or to the stirring up of insurrection or rebellion.’ From first to last both prisoners protested against any charge of ‘malicious intent.’ At great length, on 21 March 1592–3, they were indicted at the Old Bailey. They were brought in guilty and sentenced to death. On 30 March (1592–3) they were taken to Tyburn in a cart and a rope put round their necks. They spoke modestly but bravely. But the journey to the scaffold was meant to terrify them into conformity. They were returned to Newgate. Seven days later, however, they were again huddled out of prison to Tyburn and there hanged on 6 April 1593 (Harleian MS. 6848).

Modern ‘congregationalists’ or ‘independents’ have put in an exclusive claim to Barrow as one of the main founders of congregationalism. Dr. Dexter, in his great work on ‘Congregationalism of the last Two Hundred Years,’ has argued for this with acuteness and fervour. In our judgment, whilst separate ‘meeting-houses’ of ‘believers’ grew out of Barrow's teachings and example, he himself had no idea corresponding with present-day congregationalism. It is even doubtful if cæteris paribus he objected to a national church, if only the ‘supreme authority’ of Jesus Christ and of Holy Scripture was unconditionally admitted. Barrow was not a mere ‘sectary.’ He protested against being called by that name.

[Harleian MSS., 5189 and 6848; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabrigienses, ii. 151–3; Baker MS. xiv. 305, xv. 1, 395; Egerton Papers (Camden Society), 166–179; Lansdowne MS. 65 art. 65, 982 art. 107; Dexter's Congregationalism; Brook's Puritans; Neal's Puritans; Marsden's Early Puritans; Hopkin's Puritans; Broughton's Works (folio), 731; Heylin's Hist. Presby., 2nd edition, 282, 322, 340, 342; Paul's Life of Whitgift, pp. 43–5, 49–52; Rogers's Cath. Doctrine, ed. Perowne, pp. 90, 93, 141, 167, 176, 187, 231, 238, 273, 280, 310, 311, 332, 344; Stow's Annals, 1272; Strype's Annals, ii. 534, iv. 93, 134, 136, 172, 177; Strype's Whitgift, pp. 414–17; Strype's Aylmer, 73, 162; Sutcliffe's Eccles. Disc., 165–6; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.; Thorndike's Works, i. 446, ii. 399, iv. 549; Bishop Andrewes's Minor Works, ix.; Bancroft's Pretended Holy Discipline, 4, 5, 36, 234, 236, 249, 418 seq., 425 seq., 430, 431; Brook's Cartwright, 306, 307, 449; Camden's Elizabeth; Hanbury's Memorials; Herbert's Ames.]

A. B. G.

BARROW, ISAAC, D.D. (1614–1680), bishop successively of Sodor and Man and of St. Asaph, was the son of Isaac Barrow, a Cambridgeshire squire, and born at his father's seat of Spiney Abbey, near Wickham in that county. He became a fellow of Peterhouse in Cambridge, and took holy orders. His loyalty to the royalist cause resulted in his ejection from his fellowship in 1643, the very year in which Isaac, his famous nephew and namesake [q. v.], the future master of