Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Barton, Richard
BARTON, RICHARD (1601–1669), jesuit, whose real name was Bradshaigh or Bradshaw, was born in Lancashire in 1601. He was educated in the English college at Rome; entered the Society of Jesus in 1625; became a professed father in 1640; rector of the English college at Liège in 1642; provincial of the English province (1656–60) during the great political change in the collapse of the commonwealth and the restoration of the monarchy, and rector of the English college at St. Omer from 1660 till his death on 13 Feb. 1668–9. Dodd (Certamen utriusque Ecclesiæ, 12) ascribes to him a work on the ‘Nullity of the Protestant Clergy’ in reply to Archbishop Bramhall, but the correctness of this statement has been questioned. Some interesting letters written by him in 1659–60 to Father General Nickell upon English affairs are printed in Foley's ‘Records.’
[Oliver's Collections S.J. 51; Foley's Records, i. 227–32, vii. 78; Backer's Bibliothèque des Ecrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus (1849), i. 439.]