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Barton
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Barton

House of Lords, and on 21 March it received the royal assent. According to its terms Elizabeth, Bocking, Bering, Rich, Risby, Gold, and Masters, were condemned to death, while Fisher, Adeson, Abel, Thwaytes, and two others were sentenced to a forfeiture of goods and a term of imprisonment, which was afterwards remitted. Elizabeth with the priests and friars was executed at Tyburn on 20 April following. Rich did not suffer the final punishment, but whether he died between the drafting of the bill of attainder and the execution of the sentence, or was pardoned in the interval, is uncertain. The nun in a pathetic speech from the scaffold completed her former confessions by affirming that she was responsible for her own death and that of her companions, but she complained that she, 'a poor wench without learning,' had been puffed up by the praises of learned men, who made her feigned revelations a source of profit to themselves.

[A full history of the conspiracy appears in the published Act of Attainder, 25 Henry VIII, cap. 12, which is given almost verbatim in Hall's Chronicle (1548), fol. 218 b et seq., but so far as it implicates Queen Catherine, its statements must be received with caution. See also Froude's History, i. and ii.; Paul Friedmann's Anne Boleyn (1884); Wright's Suppression of the Monasteries (Camden Soc.), pp. 13–34, where a number of documents relating to the nun are printed from the Cottonian MS. (Cleopatra E. iv.); Gairdner's Letters and Papers of Henry VIII for 1533–4; Gayangos's Calendar of State Papers, Spain, for 1533-4, where Chappuys's letters to the Emperor Charles give an apparently impartial account of the nun's conspiracy; Strype's Cranmer; Strype's Memorials, I. i. 271, where many examples of the nun's oracles are printed; Burnet's Hist. Reformation (ed. Pocock), i. 246; Fuller's Church History (ed. Brewer), iii. 74–5.]

S. L. L.


BARTON, FRANCES, (1737–1815) [See Abington.]

BARTON, JOHN de (fl. 1304), judge, otherwise called de Ryton and de Fryton, a Yorkshire gentleman, is with Ralph Fitzwilliam, the king's lieutenant in Yorkshire, a member of the itinerary court constituted by the first commission of Trailbaston for Yorkshire, for which Hemingford gives as date 1304 (as to date Spelman's 'Glossary' is silent). A parliamentary writ of 23 Nov. 1304 is addressed to Barton and Fitzwilliam, with two others (Parliamentary Writs, i. 407); but their names do not appear in the later and greater commission for all the counties. "Whence it seems probable the offences they were to try were found to require judges of more experience and greater powers. He was appointed a commissioner to inquire as to a specie chest found on the Yorkshire coast and claimed as wreck by the king, and also in 8 Edward II to levy scutage in Yorkshire. In 24 Edward I he was summoned to military service against the Scots (Abb. Rot. Orig. i. 214), and was on the commission of array for Yorkshire in 28 Edward I, and again in 31 Edward I (Parliamentary Writs, i. 277, 345, 370).

[Foss's Lives of the Judges.]

J. A. H.


BARTON, JOHN (15th cent.), writer on Lollardy, appears to have flourished in the reign of Henry V, to whom he dedicated his 'Confutatio Lollardorum.' A manuscript copy of this work is preserved in the library of All Souls' College, Oxford, written in a hand which Mr. Coxe assigns to the fifteenth century. Other manuscripts of this author are mentioned by Tanner, who apparently would identify him with a certain John Barton, Esq., buried in St. Martin's Church, Ludgate, 1439; but there does not appear to be any valid ground for this identification. Tanner says that he was possibly chancellor of Oxford; but for this statement likewise he fails to give any authority, and it is better to be content with Barton's own description of himself, as quoted by Bale—'plain John Barton, the physician.'

[Tanner; Coxe's Catalogue, All Souls', ii. 13.]

T. A. A.


BARTON, MATTHEW (1715?–1795), admiral, entered the navy in 1730, on board the Fox, under the command of Captain Arnold, and served with him on the coast of South Carolina. Afterwards he served in the Mediterranean under Captains John Byng, Vanbrugh, and Lord Augustus Fitzroy; and in March 1739, being then a midshipman of the Somerset, was made lieutenant in the St. Joseph prize by Admiral Haddock. He was then appointed to the Lennox, of 70 guns, and was engaged in her in the capture of the Princesa, 18 April 1740. In October he was transferred to the Princess Caroline, 80 guns, commanded by Captain Griffin, forming part of the fleet which sailed with Sir Chaloner Ogle for the West Indies. On arriving at Jamaica, Admiral Vernon selected the Princess Caroline for his flag, and Captain Griffin was removed to the Burford, taking Lieutenant Barton with him. After the failure at Cartagena the Burford came home and paid off. Barton was appointed to the Nonsuch, 50 guns, in which ship he went to the Mediterranean and continued till after the battle off Toulon,