Baxter did nothing which brought him into public notice, and when he died at Oxford, 1 Nov. 1871, in his eighty-fourth year, his name had become ‘a tradition of the past rather than a fact of the present.’
[Gardeners' Chronicle, 1871, 1426; Gardeners' Magazine, x. (1834), 110–13.]
BAYARD, NICHOLAS (fl. 1300?), theologian, was, according to Bale, a Dominican theologian at Oxford, where he obtained his doctor's degree. Pits's account tends in the same direction, and both biographers praise their author for his knowledge of pontifical law. Bale adds that he was very skilled for his age in Aristotelian studies, but accuses him of distorting the Scriptures by ‘allegorical inventions and leisurely quibbles.’ His principal work appears to have been entitled ‘Distinctiones Theologiæ,’ and, according to the last-mentioned authority, this book was largely calculated to corrupt the simplicity of the true faith, as it consisted, like Abelard's ‘Sic et Non,’ of an assortment of theological opinions opposed to one another. A manuscript of this work is still preserved in Merton College library (cclii.), and Tanner gives a list of other writings of this author that are to be found in English libraries. The date assigned to Nicholas Bayard by his English biographers is about 1410; but this can hardly be correct if Mr. Coxe is right in assigning the handwriting of the Merton manuscript to the previous century. The whole question of the era in which this writer lived, and his nationality, is minutely discussed by Quétif in his ‘Scriptores Ordinis Prædicatorum,’ who inclines to believe that Bayard was a Frenchman of the thirteenth century. This, according to Quétif, is the opinion of an ancient French writer, Bernard Guido. Quétif also shows how, in the collections of that age, preserved up to his days in the Sorbonne, Bayard's sermons constantly occurred in company with those of William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris (1228–48), and other great characters of Louis IX's reign. More conclusive as to the date is Quétif's assertion that in the ‘Liber Rectoris Universitatis Parisiensis’ Bayard's great work is mentioned as being for sale in Paris before the year 1303; that several other discourses of Bayard were for sale in Paris at the same time; and that his ‘Sermones Dominicales’ formed part of a parchment folio in the Sorbonne library, containing Robert de Sorbonne's ‘Liber de Conscientiâ’ (d. 1274). Quétif does not, however, adduce any indubitable evidence that Bayard was a Frenchman. But if he was the writer of the ‘Summa de Abstinentia,’ which Quétif unhesitatingly assigns to him, and does really, as Quétif asserts, mingle French words with the Latin text, the fact of his French residence, if not of his French birth, may perhaps be considered as proved. Lastly, as regards the order to which Bayard belonged, Quétif observes that there is no certain evidence whether he was a Franciscan or a Dominican. In all the manuscripts excepting one he appears to be called simply Frater Nicholas de Bayard, and in the only one which is more precise he is called a Minorite. Only one of Bayard's works seems to have been printed, and that one of somewhat doubtful authenticity, the ‘Summa de Abstinentia,’ which was published under the title of ‘Dictionarius Pauperum’ by John Knoblouch at Cologne in 1518, and again at Paris in 1530. A longer list of Bayard's works is given by Bale.
[Bale, 544; Pits, 588; Tanner; Quétif, i. 123; Coxe's Catalogue of Oxford Coll. MSS. Merton, i. 40; Fabric. Biblioth. Med. et Inf. Latinit. sub ‘Byart.’]
BAYES, JOSHUA (1671–1746), divine, was son of the Rev. Samuel Bayes, who was ejected by the Act of Uniformity of 1662 from a living in Derbyshire, and after 1662 lived at Manchester until his death. It is believed that Joshua was born in Manchester in 1671. He received his entire secular education in the grammar school of his native town. Being dedicated from his birth to the nonconformist ministry, he was placed under the tuition of the Rev. Richard Frankland, of Attercliffe in Yorkshire, on 15 Nov. 1686. On the conclusion of his course he proceeded to London, and was admitted for ‘examination’ by a number of the elder ministers ‘according to the practice of the times.’ He was ordained preacher of the gospel and minister on 22 June 1694. This—the first public ordination amongst dissenters in the city after the Act of Uniformity—took place in the meeting-house of Dr. Annesley in Little St. Helens. There were six ‘candidates,’ one of whom was Dr. Edmund Calamy. It appears that young Bayes ‘served’ the churches around London as a kind of itinerant or evangelist for some years. But about 1706 he settled at St. Thomas's meeting-house, Southwark, as assistant to John Sheffield, one of the most original of the later puritan writers. This engagement requiring his attendance only in the morning of each Sunday, he also acted as assistant to Christopher Taylor at Leather Lane. When Matthew Henry died, leaving his ‘Commentary’ unfinished, its completion was entrusted to a select number of presbyterian divines, including Bayes, to whom was assigned the Epistle to the Galatians. The continuation has never secured
