BARKER, John I (d. aft. 1669), of Coventry, Warws.

The Barker family had been drapers and Coventry city officials since Tudor times. Barker’s grandfather, father and uncle had all been mayors.35Keeler, 96; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warws. 13. Himself a draper, Barker surfaces in local affairs in December 1625 when, with William Jesson*, certainly a cousin and probably his brother-in-law, he was despatched by the corporation to follow up on its drive to punish those found frequenting alehouses on the sabbath.36Coventry Archives, BA/H/C/17/1 f. 228v. He was sworn of the mayor’s council in April 1632 and appointed mayor in 1634.37Coventry Archives, BA/H/C/17/1 f. 311v, 327; Add. 11364, f. 16. At the end of the latter year his father died and within months Barker became an alderman.38Coventry Archives, BA/H/C/17/1 f. 333v. When still mayor, in September 1635 he went with Jesson and Simon Norton* on a delegation to the sheriff of Warwickshire to argue that the city had been over-rated in the Ship Money assessment, citing the decay of trade and depopulation.39Coventry Archives, BA/4/K/2/1 ff. 8v, 12v, 13v. In February 1636 the trio sent the clergy’s contribution to the imposition to the privy council, while later that year they acted together in viewing civic lands; over this decade all were prominent in transactions involving the Drapers’ Company and in its disputes with the Weavers’ Company.40Coventry Archives, BA/4/K/2/1 f. 57v, BA/H/C/17/1 f. 336; PA/100/12/35; PA/101/140/3; PA/1573/57/1; PA/1573/84/1; PA/1573/86/2.

Meanwhile, often with others, Barker seems to have been accumulating leasehold and freehold property in Coventry and north Warwickshire. A notable acquisition, in 1637, was Maxstoke Park.41Coventry Docquets, 707; Warws. RO, CR2981/Dining room/Cabinet/Drawer 6/61. He may have been the John Barker who was among the ‘undertakers’ of coal works near Coventry who complained in 1632 to the privy council of damage done to their mines and sought restitution.42CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 270. He certainly had the confidence and status to secure a licence in 1634 to eat meat in Lent.43Coventry Docquets, 170.

On 13 October 1640 Barker was returned to what became the Long Parliament for the senior seat for Coventry, replacing Jesson, who had occupied it in the spring, and partnering Norton, who was elected again. Once at Westminster, Barker and Norton offered £1,000 towards security for the loan from the City of London to supply the army in the north (21 Nov.).44D’Ewes (N), 52. On 22 December Barker was added with several more prominent MPs to the committee to investigate complaints against William Piers, bishop of Bath and Wells.45CJ ii. 56b. His sole committee nomination in 1641, to consider the bill to reform abuses in the ecclesiastical courts, suggests that he was behind the religious reform then in hand.46CJ ii. 128b. But his only other appearance in the record that year was on 12 July, when he reported Norton’s death and sought a by-election to replace him, obtaining a writ the same day and an poll a mere eight days later which returned Jesson.47Procs. LP v. 608; CJ ii. 206b; s.v. ‘Coventry’.

As tension mounted in 1642, on 9 April Barker was among MPs who promised £1,000 towards the suppression of the Irish rebellion; he advanced a total of £1,200 in payments on 30 April and 19 July.48Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 564; SP63/294, ff. 125, 129. He had been appointed a deputy lieutenant for Warwickshire by 21 June, when he was among local Members despatched to the county to oversee the implementation of the Militia Ordinance.49CJ ii. 635a. In the vanguard, he and Alderman Basnett distributed ribbons for hats, while royalist aldermen did the same for the king; reportedly, ‘neighbours were in great fear of each other’.50Add. 11364, f. 16v. Writing on 25 June to Parliament’s lord lieutenant, Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, Barker described how he had informed Spencer Compton, 2nd earl of Northampton, who had arrived in Coventry to execute the king’s commission of array, that ‘I was a Member of the House of Commons … and, according to the trust reposed in me, would oppose’ it.51LJ v. 164b-165a. Two days later the Lords agreed the detailed instructions for further action he had requested, and Brooke commissioned him as a colonel of volunteers to be raised in and around Coventry for its defence.52LJ v. 165a-166a; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 641. At the heart of the county’s war effort, he entertained Brooke at his house in early July and on the 5th was a signatory to the embryonic county committee’s report to Parliament, which gave an up-beat assessment of support for the cause locally.53Coventry Archives, BA/A/A/26/3, p. 100; LJ v. 195b. From August, if not earlier, he was governor of Coventry, while his place (with Jesson) on the county committee, based in the city, was formalised in January 1643.54SP28/136/19; Coventry Archives, BA/H/C/17/2, f. 31, BA/H/Q/A79/205; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 103; Add. 11364, f. 17v. Kept busy locally, he seems not to have appeared at Westminster during the first civil war.55Coventry Archives, BA/H/C/17/2, ff. 34-35v; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 176.

Following the death of Brooke early in 1643, the radical godly faction of the county committee, including Barker, came into conflict with the parliamentarian gentry and the regional commander Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh. On hearing representations from the respective parties, on 2 December the Commons took steps ‘to compose these difference[s]’, but confirmed Barker as governor.56Warws. RO, CR2017/C9/13, 33, 35; Add. 31116, p. 195; Add. 18779, ff. 19, 20v. At a call of absentee Members on 5 April 1644, he was listed as ‘in service’, while in May he and Jesson acquired further responsibilities when they were added to the sequestration commissioners for the city and its hinterland.57CJ iii. 390a, 482b. Although in the summer Parliament again heard of confrontation between Denbigh and local hardliners, with the earl complaining of ‘obstructions’ encountered in his latest expedition ‘and principally how he was opposed by Col[onel] Barker … and how he endeavoured to betray Coventry to the king’s forces’, Barker not only survived the accusations but in the autumn became mayor as well as governor after the removal of the previous incumbent for disaffection.58Warws. RO, CR2017/C9/117; Add. 31116, p. 309; Coventry Archives, BA/H/C/17/2, f. 41v. One observer of his regime described how Barker ‘wore a sword and buff coat under his gown; was attended by military as well as civic officers; and when he proceeded to proclaim the great fair, was accompanied by a group of cavalry’.59Bodl. Top. Warws. c.4, p. 94.

This dual dominance was ended by the Self-Denying Ordinance, despite petitioning that Barker might retain both roles.60Coventry Archives, BA/H/C/17/2, f. 44. In the early summer of 1645 he was replaced as governor and as colonel of the regiment of foot by Thomas Willoughby*.61CJ iv. 169a; LJ vii. 394b, 421a. The minister Richard Baxter, who had stayed in Barker’s house for as much as two years, preaching to the garrison and enjoying ‘pious converse’ with other ministers and with county committee members Sir Richard Skeffington*, George Abbot II* and Godfrey Bossevile*, decided at this juncture to join the New Model army, and reported that ‘Barker was content in his discontent that I should go out with him, that he might be missed the more’.62R. Baxter, Richard Baxter’s Penitent Confession (1691), 13, Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), 43-4, 52. In practice, Barker remained influential as mayor and a core member with Skeffington and Willoughby of the committee at Coventry, to which he and Jesson were given the opportunity to nominate new members for approval by the Commons (17 Nov.).63Warws. RO, CR2017/C10/98; CJ iv. 346a.

Freedom from military responsibilities apparently did nothing to increase Barker’s visible activity in the Commons, although more may have been going on under the surface. He was present on 28 January 1646 to take the Covenant, but received no committee appointments before 16 June, when he was given leave to go into the country.64CJ iv. 420b, 578a. Writing to the Coventry corporation on 14 September, Richard Knightley* was uncertain whether Barker and Jesson were in London or not.65Coventry Archives, BA/H/Q/A79/210a. Knightley’s letter related to the ongoing conflicts between the county committee, to which Barker’s allegiance seems to have fluctuated during this period, and the Coventry sub-committee of accounts, which enjoyed the support of the more moderate Jesson; these divisions were now playing out at Westminster against the backdrop of national skirmishing between Independents and Presbyterians. On 15 September Barker, still designated Colonel, was referred by the Commons to present his local accounts to the Presbyterian-dominated Committee of Accounts*.66CJ iv. 670a. On 25 January 1647 MPs were read a warrant signed by Barker and fellow county committee members including Bossevile and Thomas Basnet (the Coventry alderman regarded by Jesson as his chief antagonist) forbidding transaction with the sub-committee of accounts, and referred it to the central committee which had been set up to scrutinise the Committee of Accounts, adding for the purpose Knightley and Warwickshire MPs Jesson, Bossevile, Skeffington and Sir John Burgoyne.67CJ v. 63a. It is not clear that this did anything to resolve matters at issue. On 3 March Jesson managed to secure an order for disbanding the garrison at Coventry and slighting its defences, provoking rival petitions from the city expressing approval and protest. On the 24th Barker was among the half dozen warring Warwickshire MPs included on the committee to discuss the petitions and the continuing confrontation over demilitarisation and the raising of money to fund it.68CJ v. 104a, 122a-b.

During a summer of political turmoil at Westminster, Barker was nowhere to be seen. He surfaced in the Journal on 1 October 1647, when with Bossevile and numerous others with army experience he was named to investigate abuses in the payment of arrears to former officers and to consider how to satisfy those still owed money.69CJ v. 322a. Like Bossevile, on 6 January 1648 he was added to the committee for hospitals, plausibly with the needs of maimed soldiers in mind.70CJ v. 421a. His own accounts as governor of Coventry still unsettled, on 11 January he was again referred to the Committee of Accounts, although his record of money expended between August 1642 and November 1643 was noted in the House on 3 April as among those pending and does not seem to have been lodged with the committee’s records until May.71CJ v. 426a, 524a; SP28/136/1, ff. 153 seq. In the meantime he made no other appearance in the Journal, but in a letter of 22 February to Thomas Love, the current mayor of Coventry, he reported on the discussions of the committee reviewing unequal assessments and he promised that he and ‘cousin Jesson’ (with whom he was evidently on good terms again but had not seen for two days) would do their best to obtain a reduction for the city.72Coventry Archives, BA/H/Q/A79/212, 216. Barker’s affairs reappeared in the Journal on 4 August, when, on receipt of the report from the Committee of Accounts, the Commons ordered payment to him of £4,926, and on the 7th, when the ordinance was approved and carried to the Lords.73CJ v. 661b, 663a; LJ x. 422b. He was then (8 Aug.) appointed to a relatively small committee to confer with decommissioned officers over their arrears and added (12 Aug.) to the revived committee examining engagements on subsidies granted in 1641.74CJ v. 664b, 669b. On 23 September he and Bossevile were delegated to chase up the arrears of assessment in Warwickshire and on 9 October he was with Jesson among those nominated to prepare the ordinance for raising money for the maintenance of the horse guard around Parliament.75CJ v. vi. 30b, 47a.

Perhaps because of his close association with Jesson, perhaps because of suspicion of his commitment to anything beyond the interests of his city and himself, Barker was secluded at Pride’s Purge.76A Vindication (1649), 29 (E.539.5); A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.52), Baker recte Barker. But he was not forgotten – the money due to him being listed on 21 April 1649 among sums to be transferred to the excise on security of dean and chapter lands – and on 23 July that year he was readmitted to the House.77CJ vi. 191, 268a. He was named to just three committees in the Rump: those for regulating the election of officeholders (2 Aug. 1649), investigating allegations about abuses in the accounts of Sir John Clotworthy* (9 Feb. 1650) and regulating the universities of Oxford and Cambridge (29 Mar. 1650).78CJ vi. 273b, 360a, 388b. A commission in June 1650, as insurrection threatened, as a colonel of militia foot and long-running lawsuits may have distracted him from parliamentary business, but in December 1650 he was instrumental with William Purefoy I* in obtaining in reduction in the Coventry assessment.79SP25/119, p. 77; C6/113/30; C6/124/16; C6/11/42; C6/41/111; C6/115/7; Coventry Archives, BA/4/K/2/1, f. 78. In November 1651 he was reappointed as a magistrate for the city, but his request in April 1655 to resign as alderman of Jordan Well ward seems to indicate a deliberate withdrawal from local affairs.80Coventry Archives, BA/H/C/17/2, ff. 101, 118v. Indeed, by July 1653, when he signed a letter of attorney authorising the drawing of lots on his behalf for Irish lands, he was living within the precincts of the college at Worcester, formerly belonging to the cathedral, and it was from College Green, as a ‘late Member of Parliament’ that he assigned his interests to others in December 1653 and March 1654.81SP63/283, f. 265; SP63/294, ff. 125-9. The move might have owed something to a continued friendship with Richard Baxter, who in 1650 had dedicated part of one of his publications to former governors of Coventry Barker and Willoughby.82R. Baxter, The Saints Everlasting Rest (1650), pt. iii dedication. Under the protectorate Barker was absent from local commissions. Continuing lawsuits are the only further evidence to have emerged of his life during that period.83C6/141/7; C6/141/24.

However, soon after the reassembly of the Rump Barker emerged in the Commons to what became a brief late flowering of his political career. Between 21 May and 26 September 1659 he received 16 committee appointments, the majority concentrated in May and June. A clutch were either military or fiscal in nature and very much within his usual purview: the Southwark and national militias (25 May, 27 June); cases concerning Colonels Matthew Alured and John Jones (9, 14 June); excise and assessment (8 June, 1 Sept.).84CJ vii. 664a, 676b, 678a, 684b, 694b, 772a. Other business relating to private petitions and far-flung local matters included those concerning Robert Reynolds* (6 July, the only individual case which progressed) and the government of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.85CJ vii. 668a, 670b, 705b, 748b, 752b, 781b. A few appointments concerned matters of primary political importance: the status of protectorate legislation (21 May); commissioners for Ireland (9 June); central office-holding (22 June, also a fiscal issue); prisoners of conscience (22 July, Barker being first among those added to the committee).86CJ vii. 661b, 687b, 691a, 728a. On 6 July he was among MPs granted lodgings in Whitehall.87CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 15.

That month Barker was appointed a militia commissioner for Coventry and Warwickshire.88A. and O. His stance on the ‘interruption’ of Parliament which occurred between October and December 1659 is unknown. Once the Rump was again restored, he was invisible in the Journal until 23 January 1660, when he was among those added to the committee debating the qualifications to be required of Members sitting in subsequent parliaments.89CJ vii. 818b. This was his sole appointment and it is not clear whether he continued to sit after the Members secluded at Pride’s Purge retook their seats in February.

It seems unlikely that Barker welcomed the Restoration. Surprisingly, he was still described as an alderman of Coventry in an assignment of November 1660, but in a conveyance by members of the city Drapers’ Company in April 1662 he was designated ‘late alderman and draper’.90Leics. RO, DE1110/76; Coventry Archives, PA1573/58/1. By this time he was probably in financial as well as political difficulty, perhaps because he had not received full payment of his arrears. On 19 July 1662 he wrote from Pressyard near Newgate – the London prison – explaining that his ‘present low condition’ necessitated asking favours.91Coventry Archives, BA/H/Q/A79/249. On 27 August the corporation decided that, since Barker was ‘brought very low’, £5 should be given to relieve him and his wife.92Coventry Archives, BA/H/C/17/2, f. 145v. In 1668 Barker thanked them for a (?further) £5 and in 1670 he requested ‘an allowance for his life’. Thereafter he disappears from view.93B. Poole, Hist. of Coventry (1852), 375. No further member of the family sat in Parliament.