BARKER, John II (1619-aft. 1662), of Netherham, High Ham, Som.

John Barker was born at High Ham in 1619. His parents, John and Elizabeth, had married in 1617 and a short-lived first son, also called John, had been born a year later. Two other sons, Joseph and William, and a daughter, Dionysia, followed.16High Ham par. reg. Probably their father was no more than a tenant farmer at Netherham. In 1642 he was required to pay 2s 6d there by the assessment commissioners.17Som. Protestation Returns, 284. The transformation in the social status of his eldest surviving son by the 1650s is therefore very dramatic. This was evidently the result of John Barker junior’s participation in the civil war, in which he probably fought as an ordinary soldier or as a subaltern at most. By 1646 he was a lieutenant in the ‘committee troop’ that guarded and served the Somerset county committee under its leader, Colonel John Pyne*. Barker would become one of Pyne’s closest and most trusted associates.18CCC 194, 209; Underdown, Som. 126; Williams, ‘County and Municipal Government’, 155.

In February 1649, the army officers’ committee for troops and garrisons recommend ‘Captain Barker of Somersetshire’ for commissioning in the regiment of Leveller ‘mad boys’ that the republican grandee and regicide Henry Marten* had raised the previous year to resist moves towards a treaty with the king. Whether the committee was thereby endeavouring to regularise the regiment’s existing officer corps or whether Barker was simply being drafted in to help bring it up to full strength is not clear.19Infra, ‘Henry Marten’; Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke ms LXXII, unfol. (order of officers’ cttee. for garrisons, 16 Feb. 1649). At any rate, nothing seems to have come of this recommendation, for by May 1649, Barker was serving as a captain under Thomas Harrison I*.20Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, i. 106, 140, ii. 50, 67; QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 222, 298. As such, he suppressed some unrest at Deptford in early May 1651.21Original Letters, ed. Nickolls, 66. He may also have been the Captain Barker to whom blank commissions were issued by the council of state several weeks later.22CSP Dom. 1651, p. 272.

One other development which helped transform Barker’s local standing was the sequestration of the estates of Sir John Stawell*. The manor of Netherham, formerly belonging to the Hext family, had been inherited by Stawell via his wife and become one of his principal residences.23VCH Som. viii. 75. The Barkers were almost certainly Stawell’s tenants. By 1651 the Committee for Compounding had leased the manor to Barker for six years for £116.24CCC 517. This elevated Barker almost into the ranks of the county gentry. His rise in status continued when in the spring of 1653 he was added to the Somerset commission of the peace. Later that year he was appointed a judge for the relief of poor prisoners and an assessment commissioner.25C231/6, p. 254; A. and O.; An Act for an Assessment (1653). Over the next seven years he proved an energetic justice of the peace.26QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 203-376.

So complete was Barker’s transformed position within the county that in 1654 he was elected to the first Protectoral Parliament in the Somerset by-election created by the decision of John Disbrowe* to sit for Cambridgeshire. However, Barker left no trace at Westminster. In March 1655 he joined Pyne and other Somerset parliamentarians in helping to suppress John Penruddock’s royalist rising.27TSP iii. 237. In May, Barker was trusted by the government to conduct the investigation into the escape of Thomas Hunt, who had been convicted at the Somerset assizes as a co-conspirator with Penruddock, but had escaped from Ilchester gaol on the eve of his execution. The investigation by Barker and a second justice of the peace, John Cary, cleared the sheriff, Robert Hunt*, of any misconduct.28Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 73. Barker was among the commissioners who assisted Disbrowe as major-general for south-west England in 1655-6.29Williams, ‘County and Municipal Government’, 173.

Barker appears not to have stood for re-election as an MP in 1656, but seems to have followed parliamentary proceedings with some interest. He later accused one of the army officers stationed in Scotland, Captain William Gough, of having sent him a letter describing the Humble Petition and Advice as ‘a second Magna Charta’. Barker also claimed that Gough had circulated an address in favour of Cromwell accepting the crown among the army officers in Scotland. Clearly, Barker strongly disapproved of Gough’s views and in 1659 one of his servants testified that Barker had then preferred ‘a commonwealth against a single person’.30CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 238-9. Yet, despite their differences, it was Gough who apparently suggested to Barker that he stand at Ilchester in the elections for the 1659 Parliament. According to Gough, he foresaw that ‘there would be a commonwealth party in the House’ that Barker would find congenial.31CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 239. However, once again Barker made no visible mark at Westminster. Presumably before leaving for London, in his capacity as a justice of the peace, he took the deposition from Joseph Applyn of Somerton concerning the rude remarks made by Andrew Ball of Long Sutton about John Harington II* and his recent election as MP for Bath.32QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 376.

Barker probably welcomed the fall of Richard Cromwell* and the recall of the Rump. On 30 June 1659 the Rump approved his appointment as a lieutenant in the regiment of horse to be commanded by John Okey*. He received his commission two days later, but received a second commission as captain on 13 July.33CJ vii. 698a, 700b, 715b. Barker was also appointed to and was active on the Somerset militia commission of July 1659.34A. and O.; Williams, ‘County and Municipal Government’, 179, 180. However, he quickly lost his position as a captain in Okey’s regiment. Barker’s explanation was that he had been removed for ‘dissatisfaction’, although Gough alleged that it was because Barker had refused to be posted to Scotland.35CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 239. A dispute between them led Barker to present allegations against Gough in a set of articles which were read in Parliament on 29 September.36CJ vii. 789a. They were then referred to the committee of safety, which considered them on 4 October.37CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 238-9. In raising these complaints now, Barker was seeking to taint Gough with a reputation as a Cromwellian loyalist at a time when republicans like himself seemed to be in the ascendant. Such considerations also ensured that Barker’s removal from the army was only temporary. An equivalent position had already been found for him in the regiment of Nathaniel Rich*.38Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, ii. 129. This was confirmed by the Rump on 20 January 1660.39CJ vii. 817b; Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, ii. 147, 170. But far from helping to entrench the republic, it soon fell to Barker to assist in crushing the republicans’ last hope. That spring he and his men were among the forces taken by Rich’s replacement, Richard Ingoldsby*, to hunt down John Lambert* and he was present when Ingoldsby arrested Lambert at Daventry on 24 April. It was claimed at the time that the sight of Barker’s men with Ingoldsby helped disillusion John Alured’s* troop and so encourage them to abandon Lambert.40Mercurius Publicus no. 17 (19-26 Apr. 1660), 269-70 (E.183.6). Barker then escorted Lambert to London.41Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 161.

The Restoration was grim news for Barker. Stawell finally regained possession of his estates at High Ham, while Barker lost his army position and his place on the Somerset commission of the peace. He did not go quietly. The last certain reference to him is from July 1662 when he was one of the ex-army officers arrested at Taunton under suspicion of plotting to overthrow the restored monarchy.42CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 444. However, he was probably also the John Barker who petitioned the privy council in 1664 after he was caught contravening Charles II’s proclamation banning ex-parliamentarian soldiers from visiting London; he claimed that he needed to be in the capital to pursue several court cases which now threatened to ruin him.43CSP Dom. 1664-5, p. 54. The last certain reference to the family at High Ham dates from 1668, when one of his daughters, Elizabeth, was buried.44High Ham par. reg. It is just possible that the ex-MP was the John Barker ‘of Bridgwater’ who leased a small plot of land at Woolavington from Sir Charles Pym (son of Charles Pym*) in 1685.45Som. RO, DD\BW/2/338.