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 command of the expedition to France ( Fœdera, xv. 52–3), and was subsequently with Henry VIII at Calais. In 1546 he was present at the trial of the Earl of Surrey, and in February 1547–8 assisted at the coronation of Edward VI. Shortly afterwards Barker was made a knight of the Bath; a special exemption had to be procured to enable him to accept the honour, as the officials of the College of Arms were legally ineligible for such distinctions, and on no other member of the college before or since has a like dignity been conferred.

Sir Christopher died at the close of 1549 or early in January 1549–50. His will bears date 3 Dec. 1549, and was proved on 6 April following. He was buried ‘in the Long Chapple next S. Faith's Church in S. Paul's.’ Sir Christopher possessed large house property in Lime Street, St. Nicholas and Ivy Lanes, London, and land at Wanstead. He owned a house in Paternoster Row. His property in Lime Street was left on the death of his wife to the Company of Vintners and their successors for ever. Sir Christopher was thrice married: first, to May, daughter and coheir of Robert Spacelby of Worcestershire, who died in 1520; secondly, to Alice or Eleanor, daughter of Richard Dalton, by whom he had two sons; and, thirdly, to Edith, daughter of John Boys of Godneston, near Sittingbourne, Kent, who died in September 1550. Sir Christopher's only children, his two sons Justinian and Christopher, by his second wife, both died before him. Justinin was born in 1523, became Rougecroix pursuivant and Rysbank pursuivant extraordinary late in the reign of Henry VIII, and died while in Spain before 1549. Edward Barker, a nephew, ultimately succeeded to Sir Christopher's property.

A portrait of Barker is given in the picture of the procession of Edward VI from the Tower of London to Westminster before his coronation. He is there riding with the lord mayor between the emperor's ambassador and the Duke of Somerset. The picture, formerly at Cowdray House, Sussex, was burnt in 1793, but an engraving was previously prepared by the Society of Antiquaries and was published in 1797. A reduced copy of the engraving appears in the New Shakspere Society's edition of Harrison's ‘England.’ Another portrait of Barker is given in Dallaway's ‘Inquiries into Heraldry.’

[Noble's History of the College of Arms; Carlisle's Family of Carlisle, 1822, pp. 371–2; Anstis's Register of the Garter, i. 376–9; Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII for the years 1523, 1529, 1530, 1532–3.]  BARKER or BARKAR, CHRISTOPHER (1529?–1599), queen's printer, was born about the year 1529, and is said to have been the grand nephew of Sir Christopher Barker, Garter king of arms, whose heir-at-law was Edward Barker, son of his brother John, and believed to have been the father of the printer. He appears to have had some fortune, and was originally a member of the Drapers' Company. Barker began to publish books in 1569, when the first entry in the ‘Registers of the Company of Stationers’ (, i. 398) under his name is a license for ‘Morning and Evening Prayer … made by the Lady Elizabeth Tirwitt,’ printed by H. Middleton in 1574. In 1569 he was not a member of the company, and did not own a press. ‘Certen prayers of master Bullion’ was licensed for him at the same time. In 1575 the Genevan bible was first printed in England, both in quarto and octavo form, as well as two editions of Whittingham's New Testament, all by T. Vautrollier for Barker. In the same year Middleton printed for him, for sale ‘at the signe of the Grassehopper,’ two editions of Gascoigne's ‘Glasse of Government,’ with a preface stating that ‘this work is compiled upon these sentences following set down by mee, C. B.,’ which indicates that the publisher had given some editorial supervision to the book. It contains the punning device of a man barking a tree, with the lines, A Barker if ye will In name, but not in skill. His first appearance as an actual printer was in 1576, when he produced two different versions of the Bible, each with the imprint, ‘Imprinted at London by Christopher Barkar (sic), dwelling in Powles Churchyard at the signe of the tygre's head.’ One of these versions was revised by Laurence Tomson, under-secretary to Sir Francis Walsingham, in whose service Barker had been, and whose armorial bearing was the tiger's head used by him.

In 1573 Elizabeth granted a patent of privilege, or the right of disposing of certain licenses, to Francis Flower ‘as her Majesty's printer of the Latin,’ farmed out by him to Vautrollier and others; and about 1575 a patent was granted to Sir Thomas Wilkes as the queen's printer of the English tongue. These and other printing privileges granted by Elizabeth were the subject of one of the earliest and most remarkable documents connected with the history of the English bible and the book-producing trade of this country. This was a representation to the crown of their griefs signed by 45 stationers and printers in the name of 140 others, and prov-