Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/258

This page has been validated.
Barnes
252
Barnes

penses of his edition of Homer. But his most notorious exploit was the dedication, in 1685, of a ‘Pindarick Congratulatory Poem’ to Judge Jeffreys on his return from the bloody western circuit. Some letters of Barnes are preserved among the ‘Rawlinson MSS.’ (c. 146) in the Bodleian Library.

[Biographia Britannica; Gent. Mag. 1779, 546, 640; St. James's Chronicle, October 1781; Halliwell's Dictionary of Old Plays, pp. 2, 84, 141; Cole's MS. Athenæ; Memoirs of William Stukeley, M.D., published by the Surtees Society, i. 95–6; Hearne's Collections (Oxford Hist. Soc.). In the Monthly Review for March 1756 there is printed a letter of Bentley's, containing a severe criticism on Barnes's Homer.]

A. H. B.

BARNES, JULIANA (b. 1388?), writer on hawking, hunting, and heraldry. [See Berners.]

BARNES, RICHARD (1532–1587), bishop of Durham, was son of John Barnes and Agnes Saunderson, his wife, and born at Bould, near Warrington, in Lancashire, 1532. At the parish school of Warrington Barnes doubtless received his first education. In 1552 he was ‘elected a fellow of Brasenose College [Oxford] by the authority of the king's council.’ He proceeded B.A. 1553, and M.A. 1557. Having received holy orders, he was presented to the small livings of Stonegrave and Stokesley, Yorkshire. On 12 July 1561 he was admitted chancellor of the church at York, and later became canon-residentiary and prebendary of Laughton in the same church (Le Neve's Fasti, iii. 165). He was also chosen public reader of divinity there. On 4 Jan. 1567 he was created suffragan-bishop of Nottingham (Le Neve, iii. 241; Pat. 9 Eliz. p. 11, m. 33). The consecration took place in the church of St. Peter at York by the archbishop (Sandys), assisted by the bishops of Durham (Pilkington) and Chester (Downman). He was elected to the see of Carlisle on 25 June 1570, and received the royal assent 13 July, the temporalities being restored to him on the 26th of the same month (Le Neve, iii. 241). By the influence of his patron, Burghley, the queen granted him ‘a license to hold in commendam, with his bishopric, the chancellorship of York, the rectories of Stonegrave and Stokesley, and also the rectory of Romaldkirk, Yorkshire, as soon as it fell vacant.’ He resigned the chancellorship in 1571 (Le Neve, iii. 165). On 5 April 1577 he was elected to the most splendid of all the sees, Durham, in succession to its first protestant bishop, Pilkington, who died 23 Jan. 1575–6. He obtained the royal assent on the 19th of the same month, the archbishop's confirmation on 9 May following, and the temporalities on the 29th of same month (Le Neve, iii. 294). Burghley was responsible for this appointment, and in a letter to him dated 23 March 1576 Barnes writes: ‘Your lordship was mine only preferrer to Carlell, where I have served my seven years, and I trust discharged the promise yee then made unto her highness on my behalf, which in this poore and bare living was all that I could do; now by your means being preferred to a better, if in time I be not thankful. …’ Barnes's gratitude took the shape of delivering up (practically) to the crown, a long string of ‘Manores’ belonging to the see. Barnes has been severely blamed for this compliance; but it is doubtful if, in any single case, bishopric or other dignity ever was then presented under any other conditions (Strype, ii. App. 65). Bishop Pilkington had neglected his great diocese, and Barnes, writing to his patron, describes his see as ‘this Augiæ stabulum, the church of Durham … whose stinke is grievous in the nose of God and men, and which to purge far passeth Hercules labours.’ It is important, with reference to the charges afterwards brought against Barnes, to continue the quotation. ‘The malicious of the county are remarkably exasperated against me; and whereas at home they dare neither by words nor deeds deal undutifully against me, yet abroad they deface me by all slanders, false reports, and shameless lyes; though the same be never so inartificial or incredible, according to the northern guise, which is never to be ashamed, however they bely and deface him whom they hate, yea, though it be before the humblest’ (Strype, ii. 482–3).

Barnes has been accused of acting rapaciously, with the help of his brother John, chancellor in his court. But John was not his chancellor, and his ‘Clavis Ecclesiastica,’ an elaborate account of all the livings in the province of York, remains to show that his diocese was admirably administered. His own naturally unworldly temperament doubtless exposed him to being ‘preyed upon’ by those who served him; and that, combined with his enforced dispute about ‘dilapidations’ with Bishop Pilkington's widow, his quarrels with Archbishop Grindal, and his generous protection of the puritans, made him many enemies. A full and candid examination of the facts, however, leaves Bishop Barnes beyond most of his age—as he was early called—‘learned, affable, and generous;’ and if at times over-indulgent to offenders, pecuniarily and otherwise, the magnanimous weakness was a ‘failing’ that ‘leaned to virtue's