græna, 2nd edit. 136, 137). Previously to the year 1641 Barber was kept eleven months in Newgate for denying the baptism of infants and that the payment of tithes to the clergy was God's ordinance under the gospel (Preface to his Treatise of Baptism; and his petition to the king and parliament). He preached his doctrines in season and out of season, and he has himself left an account of the disturbance he caused in 1648 in the parish church of St. Benet Fink. The date of his death is unknown, but in 1674 he was succeeded in the care of the baptist church in Bishopsgate by Jonathan Jennings.
He is the author of: 1. ‘To the King's most Excellent Maiesty, and the Honourable Court of Parliament. The humble Petition of many his Maiesties loyall and faithfull subiects, some of which having beene miserably persecuted by the Prelates and their Adherents, by all rigorous courses, for their Consciences, practising nothing but what was instituted by the Lord Jesus Christ,’ &c., London, 1641, s. sh. fol. This petition, which prays for liberty of worship for the baptists, is signed ‘Edward Barber, sometimes Prisoner in Newgate for the Gospel of Christ.’ 2. ‘A small Treatise of Baptisme, or, Dipping, wherein is cleerely shewed that the Lord Christ ordained Dipping for those only that professe repentance and faith. (1) Proved by Scriptures; (2) By Arguments; (3) A paralell betwixt circumcision and dipping; (4) An answer to some objections by P[raisegod] B[arebone],’ London, 1641, 4to. 3. ‘A declaration and vindication of the carriage of Edward Barber, at the parish meeting house of Benetfinck, London, Fryday the 14 of Iuly 1648, after the morning exercise of Mr. Callamy was ended, wherein the pride of the Ministers, and Babylonish or confused carriage of the hearers is laid down,’ London, 1648, 4to. 4. ‘An Answer to the Essex Watchmens Watchword, being 63 of them in number. Or a discovery of their Ignorance, in denying liberty to tender consciences in religious worship, to be granted alike to all,’ London, 1649, 4to.
[T. Crosby's Hist. of the English Baptists, i. 151, 219, iii. 3; Ivimey's Hist. of the English Baptists, ii. 390; H. Brook's Puritans, iii. 330; Adam Taylor's Hist. of the English General Baptists, i. 119, 168, 250; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.]
BARBER, JOHN, D.C.L. (d. 1549), clergyman and civilian, of All Souls College, Oxford, graduated doctor of civil law and became a member of the College of Advocates in 1532. He was one of Archbishop Cranmer's chaplains, and official of his court at Canterbury, but his special vocation was to advise the archbishop on civil-law matters. In 1537 he was consulted by Cranmer on behalf of Henry VIII, on a subtle point of law touching the dower of the Duchess of Richmond, widow of the king's natural son; and in 1538 the archbishop, in a letter to Cromwell, requests that Dr. Barbor, ‘his chaplain’ (who Jenkyns says is probably John Barber), may be one of a royal commission to try and examine whether the blood of St. Thomas of Canterbury was not ‘a feigned thing and made of some red ochre, or of such like matter.’ In the same year Cranmer used his influence with Cromwell to obtain for ‘his chaplain, Doctor Barbar,’ a prebendal stall at Christ Church, Oxford. But he does not appear to have been successful, for Dr. Barbar's name is not mentioned by Wood in his account of Christ Church. In this letter to Cromwell the archbishop speaks of Cromwell's knowledge of the ‘qualities and learning’ of Barber, and he himself calls him ‘an honest and meet man.’ Barber is probably identical, too, with the John Barbour who appeared as proctor for Anne Boleyn on the occasion of her divorce. In 1541 Cranmer appointed him to visit, as his deputy, for the second time, the college of All Souls, whose ‘compotations, ingurgitations, and enormous commessations’ had excited the archbishop's indignation (Strype, Life of Cranmer, i. 131). He is said by Rose to have assisted in the preparation of the famous ‘King's Book,’ a revised and enlarged edition of the ‘Bishops' Book,’ but his name does not appear upon the list of ‘composers.’ He was probably, however, consulted in the matter, for his signature is appended to ‘a declaration made of the functions and divine institution of priests,’ and to a Latin judgment on the rite of confirmation, both documents framed to suit the demands of the time. Barber made a poor return to Cranmer for all his kindness by joining, in 1543, a plot for his ruin. Foxe, on the authority of Ralph Morice, Cranmer's secretary, tells us that the archbishop elicited from Barber and the suffragan of Dover a condemnation of a hypothetical case of treachery, and then by producing their letters showed that they were the guilty persons, and magnanimously forgave them. Strype says, however, that Cranmer ‘thought fit no more to trust them, and so discharged them of his service.’ Barber died in 1549, and was buried at Wrotham in Kent, of which living—a ‘peculiar’ in the patronage of the Archbishop of Canterbury—he was probably incumbent. Hasted in his list of the rectors and vicars of Wrotham leaves a blank for the period likely to cover Barber's incumbency.
