John Barkham, D.D. was an English clergyman, antiquary and historian. Highly reputed in his time as an authority, he published relatively little. He supported the efforts of John Speed

John Speed

John Speed was an English historian and cartographer.-Life:He was born at Farndon, Cheshire, and went into his father's tailoring business where he worked until he was about 50...

, and may have been a source for the Display of Heraldry of John Guillim

John Guillim

John Guillim was an antiquarian and officer of arms at the College of Arms in London. He is, perhaps, best remembered for his monumental work A Display of Heraldry which was first published in London in 1610....

 (the book was attributed to him as a publication under Guillim's name, for some time).

Barkham made a very extensive collection of coins, which he gave to William Laud

William Laud

William Laud was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633 to 1645. One of the High Church Caroline divines, he opposed radical forms of Puritanism...

; who presented them to the Bodleian library

Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library , the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library...

. He left also a treatise on coins in manuscript, which was never published.

Life

Barkham was born in the parish of St. Mary-the-Moor, Exeter

Exeter

Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the...

, about 1572. He entered Exeter College, Oxford

Exeter College, Oxford

Exeter College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England and the fourth oldest college of the University. The main entrance is on the east side of Turl Street...

 in 1587, and in the following year was admitted scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Corpus Christi College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom...

. He became B.A, in February 1591, M.A. in 1594, and probationer fellow of Corpus Christi College in 1596.

In 1603 he took the degree of B.D., and some time after he was made chaplain to Dr. John Bancroft

John Bancroft

Dr John H.J. Bancroft is a physician who was Director of The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University from 1995 to 2004. He is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Indiana University School of Medicine....

, Archbishop of Canterbury

Archbishop of Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...

, an office which he also held under his successor, George Abbot. In June 1608 he was collated to the rectory of Finchley

Finchley

Finchley is a district in Barnet in north London, England. Finchley is on high ground, about north of Charing Cross. It formed an ancient parish in the county of Middlesex, becoming a municipal borough in 1933, and has formed part of Greater London since 1965...

, Middlesex

Middlesex

Middlesex is one of the historic counties of England and the second smallest by area. The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time...

. He was then given livings in Essex

Essex

Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...

: in March 1615 the rectory of Packlesham; in May following the rectory of Lackington; and in December 1616 the rectory and deanery of Bocking

Bocking

Bocking can refer to:*Bocking, a village near Braintree, Essex*Bocking 14, a cultivated strain of the plant Comfrey*Powerbocking, the use of powered stilts patented by Alexander Böck...

. In 1615 he resigned the rectory of Finchley and in 1617 that of Packlesham. At Bocking he had as curate in the period 1627 to 1631 Nathaniel Rogers

Nathaniel Rogers (minister)

Nathaniel Rogers was an English clergyman and early New England pastor. According to the Dictionary of National Biography article on Rogers , his descendants in America were at that time more numerous than those of any other early English emigrant family.-Life:He was the second son of John Rogers,...

, who later emigrated to New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 as pastor of Ipswich, Massachusetts

Ipswich, Massachusetts

Ipswich is a coastal town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 12,987 at the 2000 census. Home to Willowdale State Forest and Sandy Point State Reservation, Ipswich includes the southern part of Plum Island...

.

He died at Bocking on 25 March 1642, and was buried in the chancel of the church there. He married Anne, daughter of Robert Rogers, of Dartford

Dartford

Dartford is the principal town in the borough of Dartford. It is situated in the northwest corner of Kent, England, east south-east of central London....

, Kent, by whom he had one son.

Works

Barkham had the reputation of being an accomplished linguist, an able divine, and an antiquary and historian of great erudition ; but he published comparatively little, and this more for the benefit of others than himself. John Speed, the author of the History of Britain, received assistance from him, and Barkham also wrote for the work the Life and Reign of King John, and the Life and Reign of Henry II. According to Anthony à Wood he composed in his younger days a book on heraldry, which he gave to Guillim, who, 'after adding some trivial things,' published it in 1610, with the author's sanction, under his own name. There is, however, reason to suppose that he gave to Guillim notes, not in such a complete form for publication as Wood represents.

In 1625 he published, with a preface, the posthumous volume of Richard Crakanthorpe

Richard Crakanthorpe

Richard Crakanthorpe was an English clergyman, remembered both as a logician and as a religious controversialist.His logical works still had currency in the eighteenth century, and there is an allusion in Tristram Shandy. As a logician he was conservative, staying close to Aristotle and the...

, Defensio Ecclesiae Anglicanae contra M. Antonii de Dominis injurias, a reply to Marc'Antonio de Dominis.