BAKER, Thomas, a very ingenious and learned antiquary, descended from an ancient family distinguished by its loyalty, was born at Crook in 1656. He was educated at the free school at Durham, and thence removed, in 1674, to St John's College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of A.M. in 1681, and afterwards was elected fellow. Lord Crew, bishop of Durham, collated him to the rectory of Long-Newton in his diocese, in 1687; and further intended to give him that of Sedgfield, with a golden prebend, had he not incurred his lordship's displeasure for refusing to read King James II.'s declaration for liberty of conscience. The bishop, who disgraced him for this refusal, and was excepted out of King William's pardon, took the oaths to that king, and kept his bishopric till his death. Baker resigned Long-Newton on the 1st of August 1690, refusing to take the oaths; and re-
tired to St John's, in which he was protected till the 20th of January 1716-17, when he, with one-and-twenty others, was deprived of his fellowship. After the passing of the Registering Act in 1723, he was desired to register his annuity of L.40, which the last act required before it was amended and explained. Though this annuity, left him by his father for his fortune, with L.20 per annum out of his collieries by his elder brother, was now his whole subsistence, he could not be prevailed on to secure himself against the act. He retained a lively resentment of his deprivations; and wrote himself in all his books, as well as in those which he gave to the college library, socius ejectus, and in some rector ejectus. He continued to reside in the college as commoner-master till his death, which happened on the 2d of July 1740, in consequence of a paralytic stroke.
Having been appointed one of the executors of his elder brother's will, by which a large sum was bequeathed to pious uses, he prevailed on the other two executors, who were his younger brother Francis and the Hon. Charles Montagu, to lay out L.1310 of the money upon an estate to be settled upon St John's College for six exhibitioners. He likewise gave to the college L.100 for the consideration of L.6 a year, then only legal interest, during his life; and to the library several choice books, both printed and in manuscript, with medals and coins; besides what he left to it by his will viz. "all such books, printed and manuscript, as he had, and were wanting there." All that he ever published were, Reflections on Learning, showing the Insufficiency thereof in its several particulars, in order to evince the usefulness and necessity of Revelation, Lond. 1709-10; and the preface to Bishop Fisher's Funeral Sermon for Margaret Countess of Richmond and Derby, 1708; both without his name. His manuscript collections relative to the history and antiquities of the university of Cambridge, amounting to forty-nine volumes in folio and three in quarto, are divided between the British Museum and the public library at Cambridge: the former possesses twenty-three volumes, the latter sixteen in folio and three in quarto. Dr Knight styles him "the greatest master of the antiquities of this our university;" and Hearne says, "Optandum est ut sua quoque collectanea de antiquitatibus Cantabrigiensibus juris faciat publici Cl. Bakerus, quippe qui eruditione summa iudicioque acri et subacto polleat." He had intended something like an Athenæ Cantabrigienses, on the plan of the Athenæ Oxonienses. The life of Baker has been written by Robert Martin, 8vo, 1784; and by Horace Walpole, in the quarto edition of his works.