BARLOW, WILLIAM, bishop of Chichester, descended of an ancient family in Wales, was born in the county of Essex. In his youth he favoured the Reformation; and travelled to Germany to be instructed by Luther, and other preachers of the new doctrine. How long he continued a Protestant is uncertain: but from his letter to King Henry VIII. quoted below, it appears that he wrote several books against the church of Rome. However, he was a regular canon in the Augustine monastery of St. Otho in the county of Essex, and studied some time at Oxford with the brothers of that order, where he took the degree of doctor in divinity. He was then made prior of the convent at Bisham in Berkshire; and afterwards succeeded to the several priories of Blackmore, Typtree, Lega, Bromhole, and Haverford-west. On the dissolution of abbeys, he resigned not only with a good grace, but persuaded several other abbots to follow his example. King Henry was so pleased with his ready obedience on this occasion, that he sent him, in 1535, on an embassy to Scotland; in the same year made him bishop of St. Asaph; in two months after, translated him to the see of St. David's, and in 1547 to that of Bath and Wells. During this time, our good bishop, as appears from the following epistle to the king, was, or pretended to be, a staunch Papist: it was written in 1533. "Prayse be to God, who of his infynyte goodness and mercy ineffyable hath brought me out of darkness into light, and from deadly ignorance into the quick knowledge of the truth. From which, through the fiend's intigation and false persuasion, I have greatly swerved. In so much that I have made certain books, and have suffered them to be emprinted, as the trefis of the Buryall of the Meft, &c. In these trefis I perceive and acknowledge myself grievously to have erred, namely against the blessed sacrament of the altare; disallowing the masse and denying purgatory, with slanderous infamy of the pope and my lord cardinal, and outrageous raying against the clergy; which I have forsaken and utterly renounced—Afsk pardon William Barlow." However, when Edward VI. came to the crown, he was again a Protestant; and for
Barlow. that reason, on Queen Mary's accession, was deprived of his bishopric, and sent prisoner to the Fleet, where he continued some time. At length he found means to escape, and immediately joined the other English Protestants in Germany. When Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, our prelate was raised to the see of Chichester, and soon after made first prebendary of the collegiate church of Westminster. He died in 1568, and was buried in the cathedral at Chichester. He had five daughters, each of whom married a bishop. He wrote, 1. The Burial of the mass. 2. The climbing up of Fryers and religious Persons, portred with Figures. 3. Christian Homilies. 4. A book upon Cosmography. 5. The godly and pious Institution of a Christian Man, commonly called the Bishop's Book; and several other works. He is said to be the translator of the Apocrypha as far as the book of Wisdom. His letters to M. Parker are in manuscript in Corpus Christi college, Cambridge, Misc. i. 445.