Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/223

Barkstead  emoluments are said to have been two thousand a year. In the parliament of 1654 he represented Colchester, in that of 1656 Middlesex, although chosen for Reading as well. In November 1655 he was appointed major-general of the county of Middlesex and the assistant of Skippon in the charge of London. His services were rewarded by knighthood (19 Jan. 1656) and by his appointment as steward of Cromwell's household. His conduct as governor of the Tower was attacked by all parties, and he was charged with extortion and cruelty (see ‘A Narrative of the late Parliament,’ and ‘A Second Narrative of the late Parliament,’ both in Harleian Miscellany, iii.; Truth's Perspective Glass, 1662; and Invisible John made visible, 1659). He was alderman of Cripplegate ward from 22 Feb. 1657–8 to 31 Jan. 1659–60, when he was discharged for ‘infirmity.’ In February 1659 he was summoned before the committee of grievances, was obliged to release some prisoners, and was in danger of a prosecution. At the Restoration Barkstead was one of the seven excepted both for life and estate (6 June 1660), but he contrived to escape to Germany, and to secure himself became a burgess of Hanau. In 1661, however, he ventured into Holland to see some friends, and Sir George Downing, the king's agent in the United Provinces, having obtained from the states a warrant for his apprehension, seized him in his lodgings with Colonel Okey and Miles Corbet. The three prisoners were immediately sent to England, and, as they had been previously outlawed, their trial turned entirely on the question of identity. Barkstead, with his companions, was executed on 19 April 1662. He showed great courage, thanked God he had been faithful to the powers he had served, and commended ‘the congregational way, in which he had found much comfort.’

[Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow; the Thurloe State Papers contain much of Barkstead's official correspondence; Noble's House of Cromwell (p. 419) gives a sketch of his career, which is repeated in the Lives of the Regicides; Kennet's Register gives extracts from Mercurius Publicus and other sources on his arrest and execution. See also The Speeches, Discourses, and Prayers of Col. Barkstead, &c., faithfully and impartially collected, 1662; A Narrative of Col. Okey, Col. Barkstead, &c., their departure out of England … and the unparallelled treachery of Sir G. D., 1662. On the side of the government there is the official narrative, The Speeches and Prayers of John Barkstead, &c., with some due and sober animadversions, 1662, and A Letter from Col. Barkstead, &c., to their friends in the Congregational Churches in London, with the manner of their apprehension, 1662 (this, according to a note of Wood's on the fly-leaf, was written by some royalist).]  BARKSTED, WILLIAM (fl. 1611), actor and poet, was the author of the poems ‘Mirrha, the Mother of Adonis; or Lustes Prodegies’ (1607); and ‘Hiren, or the Faire Greeke’ (1611). On the title-page of the latter, he describes himself as ‘one of the servants of his Maiesties Revels.’ William Barksted in 1606 performed in Ben Jonson's ‘Epicene,’ and in 1613 in Beaumont and Fletcher's ‘Coxcomb.’ When he performed in ‘Epicene’ he was of the company ‘provided and kept’ by Kirkham, Hawkins, Kendall, and Payne, and in Jonson's famous folio of 1616 he is associated with ‘Nat. Field, Gil. Carie, Hugh Attawel, Joh. Smith, Will Pen, Ric. Allen, and Joh. Blaney.’ In the reign of Elizabeth, this company of actors was known as the ‘children of the chapel;’ in the reign of James I, as the ‘children of the queen's revels.’ ‘Of the latter,’ says Mr. J. Payne Collier, ‘Barksted was a member, not of the former,’ correcting herein an oversight of Malone. But in the title-page of ‘Hiren’ it is ‘his Maiesties,’ not the ‘queen's’ revels, so that the designation must have varied.

Certain documents—a bond and articles of agreement in connection with Henslowe and Alleyn—introduce Barksted's name in 1611 and 1615–16, as belonging to the company of actors referred to. Nothing later concerning him has been discovered, except an unsavoury and unquotable anecdote worked into the ‘Wit and Mirth’ of John Taylor, the Water Poet, in 1629. In some copies also of the ‘Insatiate Countess,’ dated 1631, the name of John Marston is displaced by that of William Barksted. But neither the wording of the one nor the fact of the other positively tells us that he was still living in 1629 or 1631. He may have in some slight way assisted Marston, but no more. It was doubtless as ‘actor’ that he became acquainted with Henry, earl of Oxford, and Elizabeth, countess of Derby. The former he calls, in the verse-dedication of ‘Hiren,’ ‘the Heroicke Heros.’ The renowned Countess of Derby is addressed as ‘Your honor's from youth oblig'd.’ There is a poor ‘Prologue to a playe to the cuntry people’ in Ashmole MS. 38 (art. 198), which Mr. W. C. Hazlitt has given to Barksted, although it is subscribed ‘William Buckstead, Comedian.’ Such unhappily is the little personal fact that research has yielded.

Barksted's two poems, ‘Mirrha’ and ‘Hiren,’ were very carelessly printed, and the abundant errors show that Barksted was ill-