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Church; on a brass plate we find the following

simple

Epitaph:

"HIC JACET REVERENDUS IN CHRISTO PATER, ROBERTUS

DAWSON, EPISCOPUS CLONEFERTENSIS ET DUCENSIS
HIBERNICUS, QUI OBIIT DIE DECIMA TERTIA
APRILIS, 1643."

ве

Chomas Barlow*.

BISHOP OF LINCOLN, ARCHDEACON OF OXFORD,

MARGARET PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY.

1607-1691.

"Whose honesty they all durst swear for,

Though not a man of them knew wherefore."

HUDIBRAS.

'HIS man had a very-very large share of knowledge in the latin and greek tongues; it is said also of school divinity, and of the civil law: but, withal, a man whom truth and justice bid us to describe as a time-server and a sycophant. Be assured, that the plant which supplied the material for the web of his life wanted the staple of honesty.

Fuller speaks of him, it is true, in another and different tone, and exclaims "O that I had but re

*There is a very fine portrait of him in Queen's College, Oxford.

ceived some information from my worthy friend Dr. Thomas Barlow, Provost of Queen's College in Oxford, who for his religion and learning is an especial ornament of Westmorland." Our amiable and intelligent friend, Mr. John Barnabas Maude, the present Senior Fellow of the same College, has also a high regard for his memory. May we ask him, and those who think so, to reconsider their verdict.

Barlow was the son of Richard Barlow, and born in 1607, at Lang-hill, in the parish of Orton. He several times told Anthony Wood (from whom this Memoir is for the most part taken) that he sprung from the ancient house of Barlow, in the county of Lancaster.

He was educated at Appleby School under Mr. Pickering. In 1624 he went thence to Queen's College, Oxford, where he became Fellow in 1633. In 1635 he was Metaphysic Reader of the University, and his lectures, being much approved, were afterwards published. When the garrison of

Oxford was surrendered for the use of the Parliament in 1646, he sided with the men then in power, and by the favor of Colonel Thomas Kelsey, Deputy-Governor of the said garrison, to whom he made application, he kept his Fellowship during the Parliamentarian visitation in 1648; as, in like manner, did Job Houghton of Brasen-nose, and Tim Baldwin of All Souls, who, with Barlow, had presented to the wife of the said Kelsey certain

gifts. In 1652 he was elected Head Keeper of the Bodleian Library; and about the same time Lecturer of Churchill, near Burford, in Oxfordshire. In 1657 he was elected Provost of his College, upon the death of the learned Gerard Langbaine. After the Restoration, he procured himself to be one of the Commissioners appointed first by the Marquis of Hertford, Chancellor of the University, afterwards by King Charles II., for the restoring those members unjustly ejected in 1648. In 1660 he was not only actually created D.D. among the Royalists, but designed Margaret Professor, and upon the ejection of Wilkinson, was afterwards elected thereto*. Barlow was next made Archdeacon of Oxford, respecting which a law-suit arose between him and Dr. Thomas Lamplugh, which was decided in Barlow's favor, at the March Assizes at Oxford, in 1663. He was installed in that dignity on the 13th of June 1664, and after long expectation he procured the Bishoprick of Lincoln: though, as was then said, not by the consent of Archbishop Sheldon, but through

* In 1627 King Charles the First annexed to this Professorship a Prebendary Stall in Worcester Cathedral, since commuted by a recent Act of Parliament for a Canonry in Christ Church, and he must have held this also, although not mentioned by Wood. He seems to have been Margaret Professor from 1660 to 1676. The election for it is for two years, but by re-election sometimes continues for life. The stipend was then twenty marcs. Dr. Collinson, Provost of Queen's, was elected Margaret Professor in 1798.

the entreaties of certain temporal Lords attending his Majesty, and by the endeavours of both the Secretaries of State, Hen. Coventry Esq., and Sir Jos. Williamson*, both sometimes of his College, and the first his pupil, before he was elected Fellow of All-Souls. On the 22nd of April, 1675, being the very day that Dr. Fuller, Bishop of Lincoln, died, after several discourses that passed between his Majesty and certain persons of honor then present, concerning the person to be preferred, Dr. Barlow was introduced into the presence of his Majesty, and forthwith kissed hands on the grant of the See. On the 27th of June following, he was consecrated, not in Lambeth Chapel, but in that belonging to Ely House, in Holborn. All the while he was a Bishop, he never was at Lincoln, or visited this part of his diocese in his own person. The reason of the former was, as he said, because he had no house there, and that Bugden was in the centre of his diocese! Yet that Lincoln might not think him unkind, or that he neglected them, he once sent them £.100, of which £.50 was to go to the Church, and the other £.50 to the city. At

*This is the Sir Jos. Williamson who wrote to the Countess of Pembroke to induce her to return a Court Candidate for the Borough of Appleby, and who received from that extraordinary woman the following answer:-" Sir, I have been bullied by an usurper, I have been neglected by a Court, but I will not be dictated to by a subject: your man sha'nt stand.

"Yours, &c."

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