John Barkham 1571/2-1642

John BARKHAM or BARCHAM 1571/72-1642

Biographical Note

Born in Exeter, son of Lawrence Barkham of St Leonard’s, Devon. BA Corpus Christi College, Oxford 1591, MA 1594, fellow 1596, BD 1603, DD 1615. Chaplain to Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury; rector of Finchley, Middlesex 1608-15, prebendary of St Paul’s 1610, rector of Packlesham and of Lackington, Essex 1615, rector of Bocking 1616. He contributed towards John Speed’s History of Great Britaine (1611) and to John Guillim’s Display of heraldrie (1610) and edited, posthumously, Richard Crakanthorp’s Defensio ecclesiae Anglicanae (1625); he was noted as a scholar, a linguist, and an antiquary.

Books

Barkham gave 60 printed books and 1 manuscript to the Bodleian Library in 1602; he also gave books to Corpus Christi. His will makes no mention of books, but notes that much of his estate had already been settled on his son George by a separate deed of gift. He had a collection of coins, including ancient Greek and modern ones, which he disposed of between Archbishop Laud (who gave them to the Bodleian), and Corpus Christi. Examples: Bodleian 4to.C.95.Art, 8vo.G.8.Th, Auct.I.Q.6.13; Corpus Christi, Oxford Φ.B.6.1.

Sources

• Henderson, T. F., and D. R. Woolf. "Barkham, John (1571/2–1642), antiquary and historian." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• Jayne, S. Library catalogues of the English renaissance. Godalming, 1983, 136.
• Macray, W. D. Annals of the Bodleian Library. 2nd edn, Oxford, 1890.