BARTON, Henry (1604-aft. 1663), of Carter Lane, London.

An obscure Londoner, Barton was born in the parish of Holy Trinity the Less, and in February 1632 married, as his second wife, the daughter of a haberdasher and vintner of St Antholin, Budge Row.5GL, MS 9155; Boyd’s Inhabitants, 8113. By the mid-1630s he had settled in Carter Lane, in the large puritan parish of St. Gregory by St Paul, although the family retained a strong connection with St Antholin’s, and the couple's children who died young were buried there.6GL, MS 10232; Inhabs. of London, 1638, 66; St Antholin Budge Row, 73-4, 77, 80, 83-4, 90. At Carter Lane, Barton set up in business as a draper, although he had not been apprenticed to the Drapers’ Company, and by 1642 had become one of the civic leaders of St Gregory’s.7Tai Lui, Puritan London (1986), 140. In July of that year he promised to supply to Parliament a horse and rider, armed with carbine, pistols and sword, at the cost of £27, and by early November he had provided a bay gelding to Captain Washborne’s troop of the City trained bands, although it is unlikely that he himself served in the parliamentarian army.8SP28/131/pt. 3/24; SP28/131/pt. 5, p. 8. From December 1642 Barton was elected as constable for his parish for two years running, and in April 1644 he was chosen as auditor for the accounts of the overseers of the poor.9GL, MS 1336/1, ff. 5, 7. He did not hold a City appointment until April 1648, when he became a commissioner for the London assessment arrears.10A. and O. In December 1649 he was elected a common councilman for the ward of Castle Baynard, and he held this position until December 1652.11GL, MS 1336/1, ff. 34v, 36; Farnell, ‘City of London’, 255, 351.

In July 1653 Barton was summoned to the Nominated Assembly as a representative for London, although the reasons for the choice are not obvious.12Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 125, 127. It is difficult to ascertain the extent of Barton’s activities in Parliament because the Journal does not always differentiate clearly between him and the Derbyshire Member, Major Nathaniel Barton. Since Barton himself appears to have had no military connection, it seems likely that the ‘Mr Barton’ referred to is the London MP. If this is the case, only four committee appointments can be attributed to him, the first of which was on 9 July on Scottish affairs.13CJ vii. 283b. He was appointed a member of the committee for receiving petitions on 20 July, and on 27 September he reported its decision that the dowager countess of Derby should be admitted to a composition, and was appointed, with Broughton, to draft a bill to that effect.14CJ vii. 287a, 325a-b. He was named to the committee to prepare a declaration for religious liberty, with safeguards against blasphemy, heresy and civil disorder, on 10 October; and on 25 October he was appointed to the committee to consider a petition from the aldermen and commons of the City.15CJ vii. 332b, 339b. A later printed list of the Members of the Nominated Assembly, marking which were in favour of ‘the godly learned ministry’, included Barton, but the precise nature of his religious views is unknown.16Tai Liu, Discord in Zion (1973), 168.

After the dissolution of the Assembly and the establishment of the protectorate, Barton concentrated on his business interests. He came briefly to public attention again in July 1659 when he was appointed a London militia commissioner by the restored Rump.17A. and O.; The Mystery of the Good Old Cause (1660), 55 (E.1923.2). He appears to have remained in the same parish in London, and was still alive on 4 February 1664, when his wife was buried at St Antholin’s.18St Antholin Budge Row, 90.