BARRINGTON, John Shute, Lord Viscount Barrington, a nobleman distinguished for theological learning, was the youngest son of Benjamin Shute, merchant, and was born at Theobald, in Hertfordshire, in 1678. He received part of his education at the university of Utrecht; and, after returning to England, studied law in the Inner Temple. In 1701 he published several pamphlets in favour of the civil rights of Protestant dissenters, to which body he belonged. On the recommendation of Lord Somers, he was employed to engage the Presbyterians in Scotland to favour the union of the two kingdoms; and, in 1708, he was rewarded for this service by being appointed to the office of commissioner of the customs. From this, however, he was removed on the change of administration in 1711; but his fortune had, in the meantime, been improved by the bequest of two considerable estates; one of them left him by Francis Barrington of Tofts, Esq., whose name he assumed by act of parliament; the other by John Wildman of Becket, Esq. Mr Barrington now stood at the head of the dissenters. On the accession of George I. he was returned member of parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed; and in 1720 the king raised him to the Irish peerage, by the style and title of Viscount Barrington of Ardglass. But having unfortunately engaged in one of the bubbles of the time, the Harburg lottery, he incurred the disgrace of expulsion from the House of Commons in 1723; a punishment which was thought greatly too severe, indeed altogether unmerited on his part. In 1725 he published his principal work, entitled Miscellanies Sacra, or a New Method of considering so much of the History of the Apostles as is contained in Scripture, in an Abstract of their History, an Abstract of that Abstract, and four Critical Essays, 2 vols. 8vo; afterwards reprinted with additions and corrections, in 3 vols. 8vo, 1770, by his son, the Bishop of Durham. In the same year he published An Essay on the several Dispensations of God to Mankind. He was the author of various other tracts, chiefly on subjects relating to religious toleration. He died in 1734, leaving a number of children, five of whom rose to high stations in the church, the law, the army, and the navy. Lord Barrington was a friend and disciple of Locke, whose sentiments he adopted as to the right and advantage of free inquiry, and the value of civil and religious liberty; and he contributed greatly to the rising spirit of liberal scriptural criticism amongst those who wished to render religion a subject of rational belief. He was a man of great moderation, and, though chiefly connected with the dissenters, he occasionally communicated with the Established church.