John Barber

Who is John Barber?

John Barber, D.C.L., was an English clergyman and civilian.

Barber was of All Souls College, Oxford, graduated doctor of civil law and became a member of the College of Advocates in 1532. He was one of Archbishop Cranmer's chaplains, and official of his court at Canterbury, but his special vocation was to advise the archbishop on civil-law matters. In 1537 he was consulted by Cranmer on behalf of Henry VIII, on a subtle point of law touching the dower of the Duchess of Richmond, widow of the king's illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy; and in 1538 the archbishop, in a letter to Thomas Cromwell, requests that Dr. Barbor, ‘his chaplain’, may be one of a royal commission to try and examine whether the blood of St. Thomas of Canterbury was not ‘a feigned thing and made of some red ochre, or of such like matter.’ In the same year Cranmer used his influence with Cromwell to obtain for ‘his chaplain, Doctor Barbar,’ a prebendal stall at Christ Church, Oxford. But he does not appear to have been successful, for Dr. Barbar's name is not mentioned by Wood in his account of Christ Church. In this letter to Cromwell the archbishop speaks of Cromwell's knowledge of the ‘qualities and learning’ of Barber, and he himself calls him ‘an honest and meet man.’