In the same year, July 11, a Cambridge D.D. was incorporated at Oxford, under the name of Peter Baro. In Haag we find his true name, Pierre Baron. He was a native of Estampes, and therefore designated by the adjective Stempanus. He had been incorporated in Cambridge on 3rd Feb. 1575, on presenting his French diploma as Licentiate of Civil Law of the College of Bourges. He had been hospitably received by Dr. Andrew Perne, Vice-chancellor, and was made Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity in Cambridge. He drew his first stipend in the year 1576; but probably he had been elected in 1574, for in a letter to Lord Hurghley, dated 1580, he speaks of his six years’ labours. He wrote many volumes and tractates, and unhappily signalized himself by combating the received opinions concerning divine grace in the salvation of men, and in suggesting propositions for a verbal and apparent harmonizing of Romish and Protestant doctrines on that subject and on kindred points. The Lambeth Articles defining and elucidating the Reformation doctrines were sent down to Cambridge to promote peace, and commanded to be held as statutory at least to the extent, “that nothing should be publicly taught to the contrary.” The only rebel was Dr. Baro, who, on 12th January 1595. preached a sermon to the clergy (Concio ad Clerum), re-asserting his own theorems. Queen Elizabeth had heard of the Doctor’s former irregularities, and communicated her warm displeasure to Archbisbop Whitgift, her Majesty being pleased to observe that “Dr. Baro, being an alien, ought to have carried himself quietly and peaceably in a country where he was so humanely harboured and enfranchised, both himself and his family.” Dr. Baro was touched by this appeal, and also by the Archbishop’s moderation; to the latter he wrote a letter dated 13th Dec. 1595, expressing his adherence to his own published doctrines, making this promise — “I will keep peace as long as I shall be here”; as to the Queen he said, “I wish it may be known at length to the Queen’s Majesty what my piety and reverence is toward her; indeed for her, and for the defence of the state of this church which she defends, I would shed my blood, if need were, with as willing and ready a mind as her own faithful subjects ought to do, and as she would have me do, since she has been willing to make me free of her kingdom, and my wife and children, and to confirm it with her seal.” The death of Dr. Whitaker had just happened, (viz., on 4th Dec), and Dr. Baro had desired to be promoted to the Regius Professorship of Divinity thus left vacant. For the sake of peace, however, he refrained from making any application for that chair; and in 1596 he withdrew from Cambridge, having resigned his Lady Margaret professorship. He settled in London, living for many years in Crutched Fryers: there he died, he was buried in the parish church of St. Olave in Hart Street. The city clergy attended his funeral (by order of the Bishop of London), and six Doctors of Divinity were his pall-bearers. Strype informs us that he left a large posterity behind him, and that his eldest son, Samuel Baro, was a physician, and lived and died in Lynn-Regis, in Norfolk. Anthony Wood says, “The Baro’s, or Barons (as they are by some called), who do now, or did lately, live at Boston, in Lincolnshire, and at King’s Lynn in Norfolk, are descended from him.” But neither of these great antiquaries are able to give the date of his death.
Pasteur Jean Castol, of the City of London French Church, was a zealous minister and an influential man at Court. In 1583 the learned Scottish Divine, Andrew Melville, had recourse to him to contradict false reports and insinuations regarding the Presbyterians; Melville’s Letter to Castol is still jireserved; Dr. M‘Crie informs us that it is in the Cotton MSS., Calig. C. IX., 59. Strype frequently mentions Castol, and calls him “a discreet and learned man,” — “a knowing person, who had considerable intelligence from abroad, and especially from France.” I have already given the substance of his letter to the Lord Treasurer in 1591, representing that the more wealthy members of his congregation had gone to the army of Henri IV. at their own expense, and that the poorer men, if able-bodied, had been provided with the means of joining that royal army; thus he demonstrated that no contribution could be sent for the equipment of the English auxiliary forces destined to fight under the same standard. The letter, “so piously and judiciously expressed,” is printed at full length in the original Latin in Strype’s Life of Whitgift, Book IV., Appendix No. XIII. It concludes thus:—
