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 gives a minute account of the symptoms, the chief of which were violent pain in the head and stomach, frenzy, hæmorrhage, and total inability to eat or sleep. Barham was survived by his wife, Mary, daughter of John Holt, of Cheshire, and one son, Arthur. He was the owner of two estates, one of which, known as Bigons or Digons, he had acquired by grant from the crown in 1554, the former proprietor having been implicated in the insurrection of Sir Thomas Wyatt; the other, the manor of Chillington, he purchased about the same time. Both estates were sold by his son Arthur. In the records of the corporation of Hastings is preserved a letter from one Nicholas Barham to the Right Hon. Lord Cobham, lord warden of the cinque ports, relative to a dispute between Hastings and Pevensey as to the title to some wreckage cast upon the shore in the neighbourhood of the latter town, as to which the opinion of the writer had been taken by the lord warden. The letter was read to the corporation of Hastings 29 April 1599, and, though undated, must have been written about that time. The author of a paper in the ‘Sussex Archæological Collections’ identifies this Nicholas Barham with the serjeant; but the contemporary evidence of Camden—who notes the epidemic at Oxford in 1577, and places Barham amongst the victims, and whose account Wood, while adding fresh details, follows in all essential particulars, together with the absence of any mention of Barham by Dugdale after 1573, though had he lived he would in all likelihood have been raised to the bench—appears to be conclusive against the identification, while there is nothing surprising in the coincidence of name, the Barhams being a numerous clan in Kent and Sussex, and Nicholas a name much affected by them. The Sussex branch of the family was largely concerned in the business of ironfounding, of which the county was, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the seat. Wadhurst Church contains many mural tablets of iron inscribed with the names and arms of the gentry who were engaged in the manufacture, to some of whom the decay of the industry was very disastrous. The Barhams in particular suffered severely, sinking gradually into the position of handicraftsmen. An engraving of one of these iron mural tablets, dedicated to one John Barham, Esq., of Great Butts, who died in 1648, may be seen in the ‘Sussex Archæological Collections,’ ii. 200.



BARHAM, RICHARD HARRIS (1788–1845), author of the ‘Ingoldsby Legends,’ was born at Canterbury on 6 Dec. 1788, and was the son of Richard Harris Barham of Tappington Everard in the county of Kent. He was educated at St. Paul's School and at Brasenose College, and, though originally intended for the bar, took orders in 1813, and in 1817 was presented by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the living of Snargate in Romney Marsh. An accident which confined him to the house directed his active mind to literary composition as a resource against ennui, and in 1819 he produced his first work, a novel entitled ‘Baldwin,’ which fell dead from the press. Nothing daunted, he began to write ‘My Cousin Nicholas,’ and in 1821 was placed in a more favourable position for literary effort by obtaining a minor canonry in St. Paul's Cathedral. His energy, good sense, and good humour soon gained him the esteem and confidence of the chapter, and more especially the friendship of Bishop Copleston, dean of St. Paul's from 1827 to 1849. In 1824 he was presented to the living of St. Mary Magdalene and St. Gregory, and was made priest in ordinary of the chapels royal. The latter appointment brought him into closer intimacy with the eccentric Edward Cannon, and connection with the press introduced him to other kindred spirits, whose society fostered the talent for humorous composition in verse of which he had already given proof. His acquaintance with Theodore Hook dated from their college days. He contributed to ‘Blackwood’ and the ‘John Bull,’ and in 1834 ‘My Cousin Nicholas,’ which had long lain in his desk, was completed and published in the former periodical. Though endowed with indefatigable powers of work, Barham seems to have always required some strong external prompting to composition of any extent. His first novel was the result of an accident; his second was forced into completion by a friend who printed the first chapters without his knowledge; and, although he was continually throwing off humorous verse with great freedom and spirit, the ‘Ingoldsby Legends’ would probably never have existed but for his desire to aid his old friend and schoolfellow, the