BARKER, Abel (1616-1679), of Hambleton, Rutland.

Barker’s grandfather, a wealthy yeoman, had settled at Hambleton by the 1580s; and his father – also styled ‘yeoman’ – purchased the Old Hall there in 1634.29Leics. RO, DE1797/3/76, 81, 115; DG11/943; VCH Rutland, ii. 67. Barker himself, an enterprising gentleman wool grazier, managed not only his own estate but also farmed lands in Rutland owned by the future royalist Sir Kenelm Digby and the future parliamentarians Sir Edward and Sir James Harington*.30HMC 5th Rep. 387, 388; Leics. RO, DG11/534, 538-9, 586, 616; PROB11/173, f. 437v. There is no evidence that he received a gentleman’s education at university or the inns of court. Nevertheless, he apparently had no difficulty penning letters in Latin on occasion.31HMC 5th Rep. 387.

Although Barker aligned with the Rutland parliamentarian interest in the 1640s, he would probably have preferred to have remained aloof from and untouched by the civil war altogether. In his voluminous correspondence, a good deal of which has survived, he referred to the hardness of the times: ‘expecting daily when my house should be plundered, myself carried away (as most of our gentry already are) and my goods be exposed to the fury of the merciless troopers’. At some point in the early years of the war he was ‘carried prisoner’ to Belvoir castle, Leicestershire – a royalist garrison from early 1643 – and compelled to honour a rent that he had already paid to Sir Edward Harington.32HMC 5th Rep. 388. The losses to his estate as a result of military requisitioning during the war amounted at least £208.33HMC 5th Rep. 403.

In the contested ‘recruiter’ election for Rutland, in July 1646, Barker joined William Sheild* and other leading freeholders as a party to the indenture returning Sir James Harington and Thomas Waite to the Long Parliament. A different group of gentlemen signed an alternative indenture returning Harington and his brother-in-law, and Rutland county committeeman, Christopher Browne; but it was rejected by the Commons.34Supra, ‘Rutland’; C219/43/2/114-15; Leics. RO, DE730/3, ff. 54v-55. Later that same month, Barker married the daughter of a Leicestershire baronet who had fought for the king in the war.35Nichols, Leics. ii. 817; CCAM 163. Pricked for sheriff of Rutland that December, Barker was involved in attempts by the county’s godly, early in 1647, to prosecute the Baptist preacher and ‘dangerous schismatic’, Samuel Oates.36Leics. RO, DE730/1/44, 46; HMC 5th Rep. 390, 397; A. Betteridge, ‘Early Baptists in Leics. and Rutland’, Baptist Quarterly, xxv. 204-6; Oxford DNB, ‘Samuel Oates’. Having been added to the Rutland bench early in 1647, Barker was removed from the magistracy in July 1652 – probably because of doubts as to his political reliability.37C231/6, pp. 74, 244. This may also account for the Rump’s decision to bring his term as sheriff of Leicestershire to an abrupt end in November, after he had been a mere ten days in office.38CJ vii. 215a, 221b; List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 75. His second wife, whom he married in September 1655, was a cousin of the Rutland royalist peer Baptist Noel*, 3rd Viscount Campden, and the niece of Geoffrey Palmer*.

Barker stood as a candidate for Rutland in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656. Christopher Browne, who was probably his electoral partner, warned him that Major-General William Boteler* was claiming that he could ‘allege that against you which will frustrate you and your friends’ designs in the election’.39Leics. RO, DE730/1/70. But although Barker was duly returned, the other county seat was secured by William Sheild. Presumably because of his royalist connections, and his less than whole-hearted support for Parliament during the civil war, Barker was excluded by the council of state as an opponent of the protectorate.40CJ vii. 425b. He was possibly the ‘Mr Berker’ nominated to a committee on 6 October; although given that this entry follows that of George Berkeley, it may well have been a mistake by the clerk.41CJ vii. 434b. Barker’s only confirmed appointment in this Parliament came on the very day of its dissolution, 4 February 1658, when he added to a committee on a bill for repairing highways.42CJ vii. 592a.

At the Restoration, Barker signed the declaration of loyalty to Charles II from the leading inhabitants of Rutland, and he was proposed for the order of the Royal Oak with an estate of approximately £1,000 a year.43SP29/1/43, f. 83; VCH Rutland, i. 200-1; Burke, Commoners, i. 691. The claim that he stood as a candidate for Rutland in the elections to the Cavalier Parliament is apparently unfounded.44Leics. RO, DE730/1/77; DE730/4, ff. 53-4; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Rutland’. Elected for Rutland in August 1679 to the first Exclusion Parliament, he died before he could take his seat, and was buried at Lyndon (where he had acquired the manor and advowson in 1662) on 2 September.45HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Sir Abel Barker’; Leics. RO, DG11/729, 731; The Gen. iii. 332. In a will that he had made nine years earlier, he had asked to be buried at Hambleton ‘in decent manner but without any funeral solemnity’. He had also bequeathed £1,500 to each of his three daughters.46Leics. RO, DE730/1/111-12; DG11/1005. There is no evidence that this will or any other by him was entered in probate. He was the only member of his immediate family to sit in Parliament.