BARLEY, Henry

A family of no significance before the late Middle Ages, the Barleys had advanced themselves through marriage. Henry’s paternal grandmother was one of the coheiresses of Sir Walter Lee† and his mother, Katherine, the sister and coheir of John Walden, meaning that the Barleys came into possession of manors at Albury and Braughing in Hertfordshire and Farnham, Moulsham, Elsenham and Layer Breton in Essex. John Barley, Henry’s father, also held the manor of Wicken Bonhunt in the latter county, and further augmented his holdings by acquiring lands at Great and Little Hadham in Hertfordshire. John was of sufficient status by 1434 to receive a summons to a great council at Westminster, and tax records of the mid 1430s valued his lands at £100 p.a.6 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 131. Henry was therefore the heir to substantial estates, although the longevity of his mother, who survived his father by some 18 years, means that he is unlikely to have come fully into his own until late in life. He acquired possession of some of his inheritance during the lifetime of John Barley, who settled lands worth 40 marks p.a. in Albury on him and his first wife, Katherine.7 CIPM, xxvi. 397. There is no evidence for any property that Katherine may have brought to the Barleys, but Henry’s second wife Anne held manors in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk in dower from her previous husband, Sir John Colville, properties which afterwards descended to Sir John’s heirs.8 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 901, 1021, 1098-9. Henry’s status as a landowner ensured for him the role of a feoffee on behalf of his fellow gentry in Hertfordshire and Essex, most notably the influential John Say II*, who had married his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Cheyne, and was his feudal lord at Elsenham. Say was one of Henry’s own feoffees, a group which also included their mutual brother-in-law, John Cheyne II* (another Member of the Parliament of November 1449), Ralph Gray I*, William Calthorpe* and Thomas Brewes*.9 Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 38; C1/39/216-20, 249; CPR, 1461-7, p. 228; 1467-77, p. 182; E326/9788, 10874; VCH Herts. iii. 301; CAD, iii. D519; CCR, 1476-85, no. 345; C140/53/37.

Like his father, Henry entered Parliament at the very start of his public career. When he took up his seat, he was still under 30 years of age and had yet to hold any administrative office in his county. His sole Parliament was a momentous one, since it impeached the King’s chief minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. It does not appear that Sir Robert Wingfield*, his fellow MP, held any lands in Hertfordshire at this date, so Sir Robert might have owed his return to the Commons to his connexions with the court. There is, however, no evidence of any such links assisting Henry’s election. Barley’s allegiances -- if any -- are impossible to ascertain for certain, although his dismissal as a j.p. in late 1470 suggests that he was not fully trusted by the government of the newly restored Henry VI. Reappointed to the bench after Edward IV had recovered the throne, he received his last ad hoc commission in August 1473. He died on 11 Jan. 1476 and was buried at Albury.10 C140/53/37; Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ser. 5, vii. 195. His widow, Anne, afterwards remarried, taking as her third husband, Sir Robert Brandon†.11 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1021, 1099. Henry’s heir was his elder son, William, who married a daughter of Robert Darcy II*,12 The Commons 1509-1558, i. 380. although his younger son, Thomas, succeeded to Patmore, one of the Barley manors at Albury.13 VCH Herts. iv. 7. He also had at least four daughters, including perhaps the ‘Mestresse Barly’ briefly considered as a possible wife for John Paston† in early 1477.14 Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 499. The Barleys suffered temporary disgrace in the late fifteenth century because William Barley participated in Perkin Warbeck’s rebellion and forfeited his estates to the Crown. Fortunately, he was able to obtain a pardon in 1498 and to recover his lands a few years later. His son and heir, another Henry Barley†, was a knight of the shire for Hertfordshire in the Parliament of 1529.15 The Commons 1509-1558, i. 380; CPR, 1494-1509, pp. 134, 169, 245.