Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/189

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Bargeny
183
Bargrave

appointed not by the speaker but by the house, it was resolved, 9 May 1770, that the king be addressed to confer some dignity upon him. He was consequently installed a prebendary of Canterbury in June of the same year. In 1773 he resigned Fordingbridge for the rectory of Kimpton, Hertfordshire, which he held along with the living of Allhallows, Lombard Street, till his death in November 1792. He married in 1764. A Latin dissertation of Barford's on the ‘First Pythian’ is published in Dr. Huntingford's edition of Pindar's works, to which is appended a short life of the author, a list of his works, and a eulogium of his learning. The list consists of poems on various political events in Latin and Greek, written in his capacity of public orator, a Latin oration at the funeral of Dr. George, provost of King's College, 1756, and a ‘Concio ad Clerum,’ 1784, written after his installation as canon of Canterbury. Dr. Jacob Bryant, in the preface to the third volume of his ‘New System of Mythology,’ pays a high tribute to Barford's talents and erudition, thanking him for his ‘zeal,’ his ‘assistance,’ and his ‘judicious remarks.’ In the life of Bryant, prefixed to the six-volume edition of the ‘New System,’ Barford is put first in the list of his friends.

[Gent. Mag. lxii., lxiii. (lxiii. 418 for an account of the proceedings in the House of Commons, and Commons Journal, xxxii.); Harwood's Alumni Etonenses; Concio ad Clerum, Camb. 1784, in Brit. Mus.]

R. B.


BARGENY, second Baron. [See Hamilton, John, d. 1598.]


BARGRAVE, ISAAC (1586–1643), dean of Canterbury, was the sixth son of Robert Bargrave, of Bridge, Kent, and was born in 1586. He was educated at Clare Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. and M.A. On 9 July 1611 he was incorporated M.A. of Oxford, and in the October following became rector of Eythorne. In 1612 he held the office of 'taxor' at Cambridge, and he played the part of 'Torcol, portugallus, leno' in the Latin comedy of 'Ignoramus,' performed at the university before James I on 8 March 1614-15 (Nichols's Progresses, iii. 52). The author of the comedy, George Ruggle, was Bargrave's 'fellow-collegiate.' Shortly afterwards Bargrave proceeded to Venice as chaplain to Sir Henry Wotton, the English ambassador there, and became intimate with Padre Paolo, well known as Father Paul, the author of the 'History of the Council of Trent.' In 1618 he returned to England with a letter of introduction from "Wotton to the king, in which his 'discretion and zeale' were highly commended (Wotton's Letters (Roxburgh Club), p. 26). In 1622 he received the degree of D.D. at Cambridge, and was appointed a prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral. It was about the same time that he was granted the living of St. Margaret's, Westminster, and became chaplain to Prince Charles, an office which he retained after the prince ascended the throne in 1625. On the death of John Boys, dean of Canterbury, who had married Bargrave's 'sister, Bargrave succeeded to the deanery, to which he was formally admitted on 16 Oct. 1625. He obtained the vicarage of Tenterden in 1626, and was presented to the benefice of Lydd by the king in September 1627, but only held it for a few weeks. On 5 June 1628 he received the vicarage of Chartham, which he continued to hold till his death.

In the last years of James I's reign Bargrave had shown much sympathy with the popular party in parliament, and had preached a sermon which threw him into disfavour with the court; but as dean of Canterbury he supported the policy of Charles I. A sermon preached by him before Charles I on 27 March 1627 is stated to have greatly aided the collection of that year's arbitrary loan (Birch's Court of Charles I, i. 214-15). In later years Bargrave did not live on very good terms with his diocesan, Archbishop Laud, or with the cathedral clergy. The latter were constantly complaining of their dean's partiality in the distribution of patronage, and Laud constantly rebuked him for his 'peevish differences,' his 'petty quarrels,' and the 'revilings in chapter.' In 1634-5 he insisted on the Walloon congregation at Canterbury and the Belgian church of Sandwich conforming to the ritual of the church of England; but the archbishop did not approve of these high-handed orders. Bargrave claimed precedence over the deans of London and Westminster, and was long engaged in a dispute with William Somner, the registrar of the diocese of Canterbury. Soon after the opening of the Long parliament Bargrave became a special object of attack with the popular leaders. When the bill for the abolition of deans and chapters was introduced by Sir Edward Dering, the first cousin of his wife, he was fined 1,000l. as a prominent member of convocation. On 12 May 1641 he went to the House of Commons to present petitions from the university of Cambridge and from the officers of Canterbury Cathedral against the bill. Although the bill was ultimately dropped, Bargrave's unpopularity increased. At the beginning of the civil war, in August 1642, Sandys, a parliamentary colonel, to whom the dean is said to have shown special kind--