Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/292

 Yet, dead though the book itself is, and as it has been from the first, as an authority, it will long be regarded as a curiosity from its association with ‘the marvellous boy’ Chatterton. The full title of the work runs:—

‘The History and Antiquities of the City of Bristol, compiled from original records and authentic manuscripts, in public offices or private hands; illustrated with copperplate prints. By William Barrett, surgeon, F.S.A.,’ Bristol, 1789, 4to, pp. xix, 704.

 BARRI, GIRALDUS (1146?-1220?), ecclesiastic. [See .]  BARRINGTON, DAINES (1727–1800), lawyer, antiquary,and naturalist, fourth son of, first Viscount Barrington [q. v.], was born in 1727. He is said to have studied at Oxford, though it does not appear that he took any degree. Choosing the profession of the law, he was called to the bar as a member of the Inner Temple. The Barringtons had influential friends in the Pelham government, and it was no doubt through these friends that advancement come to him while he was still young. He was only twenty-four years of age when he was made marshal of the High Court of Admiralty, a post which he resigned when, two years later, he became secretary for the affairs of Greenwich Hospital; while in the law he gradually attained to a considerable position. In 1757 he was appointed Justice of the counties of Merioneth, Carnarvon, and Anglesey; in 1764 he succeeded Sir Michael Foster as recorder of Bristol; he was made a king's counsel, and afterwards a bencher of his inn; and between 1778 and 1785 he was second justice of Chester. While holding this last office he sat with Lord Kenyon, then chief justice of Chester, to hear the application for the adjournment of the dean of St. Asaph's trial (21 State Trials, 847). Barrington's friends said it was only want of ambition that prevented him from rising to a higher judicial position. Bentham, who in other respects admired him greatly, was of a different opinion; 'He was a very indifferent judge; a quiet, good sort of a man; not proud but liberal; and vastly superior to Blackstone in his disposition to improvement: more impartial in his judgment of men and things—less sycophancy, and a higher intellect. He was an English polyglot lawyer. &hellip; He never got higher than to be a Welch judge. He was not intentionally a bad judge, though he was often a bad one' ( 'Memoirs,' in Works, x. 121; see also i. 239 n.). In 1785 he resigned all his offices except that of commissary-general of the stores Gibraltar which he held till his death, and which gave him a salary of over 500l. a year. He was now possessed of very considerable wealth, having retired from the bench with a pension, and was able to abandon law and to devote himself to a somewhat erratic study of antiquities and natural history.

His writings had already given him a varied fame. His 'Observations on the Statutes,' his first work and the only work of any permanent value which he ever wrote, appeared in 1766. An incident concerning it is recorded which is not a little to his credit. In 1768 he found that he had many additions to make, when fully a hundred copies of the second edition remained unsold; but he determined to print the new edition at once, and refused to allow any of the old copies to be sold. There is no very definite purpose in the 'Observations.' 'The book is everything,' said Bentham, 'apropos of everything. I wrote volumes upon his volume.' Beginning with Magna Charta, he passes in review many of the chief statutes down to the time of James I, illustrating them with notes, legal, antiquarian, historical, and etymological. It was not the purely legal aspect of the subject which attracted him. His general reading placed him at a point of view which gives the book a peculiar significance. He saw how great a light our early statutes could throw upon our history, and how little their value had been appreciated by historians. He saw likewise that an intelligible history of English law could not be written without a knowledge of other systems to which English law is related.