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 BARRIERE

309

BARROW

John 11 of Castile and Leon called him to his court, to be his confessor and tutor to the heir presumptive, afterwards Henry IV. Because of his ability and prudence, he was then made Grand Chancellor of State and Inquisitor General. He became succes- sively Bishop of Segovia, 1439; of Avila, 1442; of Cuenca, 1444. Later he refused the Archbishopric of Compostella. John II, in his last will and testa- ment, 1454, also named him tutor to Prince Alphon- 8US, a younger son. By his wise counsel and eminent statesmanship, he rendered his king and country conspicuous service. He also did much in the way of religious reformation and works of charity, and was a liberal patron of learning. His name fre- quently appears in the Spanish history of those troublous times. His -nTitings comprise a treatise on the sacraments, a compendium of moral theology, a commentary on a part of the "Book of Decretals'' (all in Latin), and several Spanish manuscripts on ecclesiastical matters and doctrinal subjects.

TouRoN, Hist, des hovimea ill. de I'ordre de Saint Dominique (Paris, 1743-49), III ; Echard, Script. Ord. Prcrd. (Paris, 1719-21), I ; Mariana, Hietoria de rebus Hispaniir (Toledo, 1 592).

Victor F. O'Danikl.

Bariiere, Jean de la. See Feuill.\nts.

Barros, Joao de, historian, b. in Portugal, 1496; d. 20 October, 1570. Of his early youth httle is known. In 1522, he went to Mina in Portuguese Africa, and was made treasurer of the Casa da India, Mina, and Ceuta (African possessions) in 1525, and again in 1532. Here he cultivated his literary inclinations and attached himself to the Crown of Portugal by other ties than those of a faithful subordinate and accountant. At the age of twenty-four, he pub- lished a romance of the Emperor Clarimimdo, a legendary ancestor of the kings of Portugal. In 1539, when Brazil had begim to be looked upon as an important accession to Portuguese colonial pos- sessions, he obtained a grant of fifty leagues along the coast at the mouth of the Amazon and forthwith equipped an expedition to occupy it. Ten vessels with nine hundred men, under command of Aires da Cunha, set sail for Brazil, but were wrecked at the bar of the Maranhao, and nearly everybody perished. Two sons of Barros were in the expedition, but their fate is not given. This brought Barros almost to the verge of poverty. He thereafter clung to historic studies, protected and favoured by the king, at whose instigation he wrote his classical work, "Asia", considered of value as a fine piece of Portuguese literature and for the information it affords. Be- sides giving an account of discovery and conquest, it touches frequently upon the earliest attempts at Christianization by the Portuguese in their African and Asiatic possessions, the founding of churches, etc. The first decade appeared in 1552. Only three have been fully published. A fourth, of some- what questionable authenticity, has been partly printed.

On the life of Barros, see De Feria, Vida de Joao de Barros (Lisbon, 1778); Silva, Diccionario bibliogrdfico portti- guez (Lisbon, 1859), III; Biographic univeraelle (Paris, 1854), I. Ad. F. B.tNDELIEU.

Barrow, John, priest, descended from a family of stanch Catholic yeomen, b. 13 May, 1735, at Westby- in-the-Fylde, Lancashire; d. 12 February. 1811, at Claughton, Lancashire. His uncle. Father Ed- ward Barrow, S.J., had been serving the mis.sion at Westby Hall in 1717 when he was outlawed as a popish priest and his goods forfeited. John Barrow, after a course of seven years at the English College in Rome, was impressed at Portsmouth and served five years in the na\'y. Deserting at Dunkirk, he was acquitted by the court-martial through pre- ten<iing successfully to understand no language but Itahan. In 1761, after escorting two young women from London to the Convent of the Poor Clares at

Gravelines, where his sister was a mm, he resumed his studies at Douai, and was ordained there 27 June, 1766. After a short stay in London at the house in Red Lion Square occupied by the parents of Bishop Milner, he set out on liorseback for Claughton in Lancashire. At this mission, which had been for- merly attached to the Hall, the seat of the ancient family of Brockholes, he remained from the time of his arrival, in July, 1766, until his death. He was buried at the adjoining mission of New House.

Father Barrow was a man of notable courage, will, and industry. He was a master of French and Italian, wrote elegant Latin and forceful English. "He may sometimes have shown but scant courtesy to the wishes or commands of his own bishop, but he insisted that everybody else should be obedient and deferential to ecclesiastical authority" (Gillow). He enlarged the parish church of Claughton, in 1794, improved the roads as township overseer, made wise reinvestments of the fund for the secular clergy, and negotiated with Sir Edward Smythe for the ac- quirement by exchange of the land for Ushaw College. Though his name is on the list of Douai writers, no description of his writings is recorded. It is hkely that he contributed to the Catholic Com- mittee controversy. Gillow's quotations from un- pubhshed letters would imply that Barrow was no gentle opponent. In a letter preserved at Claughton the Cardinal Secretary of State praises warmly Father Barrow's Catholic loyalty and his zeal for the cause of the Holy See.

Gillow, Bibl. Diet. Eng. Cath.. 1, 145; Ghadwell, Historical Sketch of the Mission of Claughton in the Liverpool Catholic Almanac, 1885.

J. V. Crowne.

Barrow, William, Venerable (alias Waring, alias Harcourt), an English Jesuit martyr, b. in Lancashire, in 1609; d. 30 June, 1679. He made his studies at the Jesuit College, St. Omers, and entered the Society at Watten in 1632. He was sent to the English mission in 1644 and worked on the London District for thirty-five years, becoming, in the be- ginning of 1678, its superior. In May of that year he was arrested and committed to Newgate on the charge of complicity in the Gates Plot. The trial, in w-hich he had as fellow-prisoners his colleagues. Fathers Thomas Whitbread, John Fenwick, John Gavan, and Anthony Turner, commenced 13 June, 1679, and is famous, or rather infamous, in history. Lord Chief Justice Scroggs presided, and Oates, Bedloe, and Dugdale were the principal witnesses for the Crown. The prisoners were charged with having conspired to kill the king and subvert the Protestant religion. They made a brave defence, and by the testimony of their ovm witnesses and their cross-examinations of their accusers proved clearly that the latter were guilty of wholesale per- jury. But Scroggs laid down the two monstrous principles that (1) as the ■witnesses against them had recently received the royal pardon, none of their undeniable previous misdemeanours could be le- gally admitted as impairing the value of their tes- timony; and (2) that no Catholic witness was to be believed, as it was presumable that he had received a dispensation to lie. Moreover, he obstructed the defence in every way by his brutal and constant in- terruptions. Accordingly, Father Barrow and the others, though manifestly innocent, were found guilty, and condemned to undergo the punishment of high treason. They suffered together at Tyburn, 20 June, 1679. By the papal decree of 4 December, 1886, this martyr's cause was introduced under the name of "William Harcourt".

CoBBETT, State Trials, VII; Tanner, Brevis Relatio (Prague, 1683); Florus Anglo-Bavaricus (Li^ge. 1685); Foley. Record* of the English Province, S.J., V; Gillow. Bibt. Diet. Eng. Cath., e. V. Barrow; Ideu, Lancashire Recusants.

Sydney F. Smith.