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 Barlow catechised. Crewe resented being catechised in his turn, and a correspondence ensued which may be found in Barlow's 'Remains' (pp. 141-150).

Barlow took a prominent part in the two abortive schemes of comprehension which were set on foot in October 1667, and February 1668. The 'Comprehensive Bill,' as it was styled, was based on Charles II's declaration from Breda. It was drawn by Sir Robert Atkyns and Sir Matthew Hale, and revised and endorsed by Barlow and his friend Bishop Wilkins. The introduction of the bill was frustrated by a declaration of the House of Commons, and the whole plan was finally dropped. A careful report of the whole proceeding, written by Barlow, exists in manuscript in the Bodleian library, and is printed in Thorndike's Works (Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, v. 302-8; 's Church of the Restoration, iii. 371-9).

The credit of having been the means of obtaining the release of John Bunyan, the author of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' from his twelve years imprisonment in Bedford gaol, was erroneously assigned to Barlow by Bunyan's earliest biographer, Charles Doe, and the error was repeated with fuller details in the life of Barlow's famous pupil, Dr. John Owen, published in 1721. Bunyan, however, was set at liberty in 1672, and Barlow did not become bishop of Lincoln till 1675. It is not improbable that Barlow, as bishop, may have procured this favour for some friend of Bunyan at Owen's request, and that the mistake has thus arisen.

On the death of Fuller, bishop of Lincoln, 22 April 1675, Barlow, then in his sixty-ninth year, at last attained his long-desired elevation to the episcopate. Anthony à Wood charges him with indecent eagerness for the mitre, which he gained, against Archbishop Sheldon's wishes, through the good offices of the two secretaries of state, Sir Joseph Williamson and Mr. H. Coventry, both of Queen's College, the latter having been his pupil. He is said to have obtained the promise of the see on the very day of Bishop Fuller's death, and without an hour's delay to have been introduced into the royal presence and kissed hands. It deserves notice that Barlow's consecration (27 June) did not take place in the customary place, Lambeth chapel, but in the chapel attached to the palace of the Bishop of Ely (then Peter Gunning) in Holborn, and that Bishop Morley of Winchester, not the primate, was the consecrating prelate. Evelyn notes that he was present at the consecration of 'his worthy friend the learned Dr. Barlow, at Ely House, and that it was 'succeeded by a magnificent feast' (Diary, ii. 310, ed. 1879). Entering on a bishopric is always a costly business, and Barlow prudently kept his archdeaconry in commendam for a couple of years after his consecration (, Fasti, ii. 345).

Barlow resided so constantly at the episcopal palace at Buckden, near Huntingdon, and was so little seen in other parts of the diocese, that he was contemptuously styled the 'Bishop of Bugden,' and charged with never having entered his cathedral. Whether he ever visited Lincoln after he became bishop is uncertain, but that Barlow was not an absolute stranger to Lincoln is proved by a manuscript letter, written from Oxford half a year after his consecration, to Dr. Honywood, the dean, preserved in the chapter muniments, in which he says: 'I have seene and love ye place, and like it as ye fittest place of my abode,. . . but for some reasons I must a while reside at Bugden till I can make better accommodation at Lincoln for my abode there.' The ruined palace at Lincoln was at this time quite insufficient for a bishop's residence, but the 'better accommodation' proposed by Barlow was never provided until his prolonged absence from his cathedral city became a matter of public scandal. One of his own officials, Cawley, archdeacon of Lincoln, went so far as to publish a work affirming that bishops ought to reside in the cities where their cathedrals stand (Tanner MSS.). The Marquis of Halifax having remonstrated with Barlow on the subject in 1684, he wrote an elaborate apology, urging his age and infirmities, the example of his predecessors, and the central position of Buckden, but promising that as soon as God gave him ability he would not fail to visit Lincoln (Genuine Remains, p. 156). At the same time he told his friend, Sir Peter Pett, that the real ground of animadversion was not his absence from Lincoln, but the fact that he was 'an enemy to Rome and the miscalled catholic religion,' and that 'God willing, while he lived he would be so' (ibid.). This professed enmity to popery Barlow lost no opportunity of declaring, as long as to do so fell in with the popular feeling of the country. In 1678, when Titus Oates and his 'plot' had infected the whole nation with madness, he publicly declared his bitter enmity to the papists, and to their supposed leader, the Duke of York. On the introduction of the bill enforcing a test against popery which excluded Roman catholic peers from the House of Lords, Bishop Gunning of Ely having defended the church of Rome from the charge of idolatry, Barlow answered him with much vehemence and learning (, Own Time, i. 436). When two