John Barston (1545-1612)

The Hunt for John Barston - The Elusive Sixteenth-Century Tewkesburian

John Barston first came to the attention of the Tewkesbury Historical Society by a short article in History Today, that claimed Barston was a Tewkesbury resident who had written an important sixteenth-century work on the ‘Foundation of Civic Commonwealth’. This stated that Barston, an Elizabethan lawyer, supervised the incorporation of Tewkesbury into a fully-fledged borough.^[1] However, little is known about the existence of John Barston, his book or the Tewkesbury connection, and how is it that such an eminent figure of Tewkesbury’s past has been forgotten?

Barston was a product of his time, area of residence and his education. The sixteenth century saw the emergence of a ‘new learning’ that was open not only to the nobility and gentry, but also the middling sort. Barston’s family would have been suitably wealthy to afford to educate their son in Cambridge and at the Inns of Court, London. St. John’s College ‘reflected the cultural prominence of Renaissance humanism’, which actively encouraged Barston to research his work.^[2] His ‘treatise had been long in the making’ as Barston attended the college 1566-1570 and then pursued legal studies at the Inns of Court; it was only in 1576 that Barston was encouraged to publish his work.^[3] The full title of John Barston’s book was The safegarde of societie: describing the institution of lavves and policies, to preserue euery felowship of people by degrees of ciuill gouernement: gathered of the moralles and policies of philosophie. This was printed in London by Henry Bynneman.

The book was an ‘accessible distillation of classical learning’ that compared ‘the growth of our English lawes with the lawes of other nations’. However, Barston did not claim any originality, claiming his work borrowed speeches from other authors and that his argument had ‘been often handled’ as he relied on Holy Scripture, and the works of Greek philosophers, Roman moralists and historians. Barston had hoped his readership would have enjoyed the range of learned writers he used, illustrating his great education.Markku Peltonen describes in detail the contents of The Safeguard of Society^[4] but later calls the book ‘a hotch potch of quotations from classical authors’.^[5] Professor Withington claims The Safeguard of Society was the first printed text in English to have ‘society’ on its title page, illustrating its progressive nature.^[6]

 

References

1. The History Today article was provided by Steve Goodchild.
2. Phil Withington, Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2010), pp. 12, 120.
3. Markku  Peltonen, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1995), pp. 59-60.
4. Withington, Society in Early Modern England, p. 103: Peltonen, Classical Humanism, pp. 59-73.
5. Peltonen, ‘Citizenship and Republicanism in Elizabethan England’ in Martin Van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, Republicanism, A Shared European Heritage,  Vol.1 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2002), (85-106), p. 91.
6. Withington, Society in Early Modern England, p. 103.
7. Information from the Woodward Database.
8. Withington, Society in Early Modern England, pp. 103, 223.
9. Barston is believed to have died in 1612. (GRO TBR/A1/ 1). Withington, Society in Early Modern England, p. 223.  Peltonen, Classical Humanism, p. 59; https://www.biographies.net/biography/john-barston/m/0gls5jt (15 October 2015).
10. Gloucestershire Archives, TBR/A1/1, 1577, Withington, Society in Early Modern England , p. 223.
11. Norah Day, They Used to Live in Tewkesbury (Stroud: Sutton, 1991), p. 253.
12. https://search.worldcat.org/title/1066664511?oclcNum=1066664511 (15 October 2015)
13. Email from Professor Withington, University of Sheffield (30 April 2015.)
14. Withington, Society in Early Modern England, p. 223. 

Barston had returned to Tewkesbury by 1574 and he was described as a master chandler and a freeman.^[7] He was instrumental in securing the town’s charter in 1575, which raised the status of Tewkesbury. This was achieved by the efforts of some high-ranking inhabitants along with the patronage of the Earl of Leicester (Robert Dudley). Barston became the first town clerk and as a ‘legally qualified officer of the town would have been closely involved in the complex negotiations over the borough’s royal charter’; he was paid £27 for this. The Earl of Leicester was rewarded by having Barston’s book dedicated to him, a year later, along with other gifts including ‘a silver cup worth £16’ and ‘a great ox’.^[8] Barston afterwards served as treasurer and in 1589 was the senior of two bailiffs (mayors).  He was still living in 1609 when his name was on a list of men who secured a loan to allow the manor of Tewkesbury to be purchased by the Corporation. Barston was fortunate to see the final achievement of the town in 1610 when Tewkesbury became a parliamentary borough.^[9]

At some point, Barston married; he had at least a son and a daughter. His son Edward Barston was a merchant and a freeman in 1574. He served as a constable of the parish in the 1580s, and in 1591 he had an apprentice, William Coock.^[10] His son was buried in Tewkesbury Abbey. John Barston’s  daughter, Elinore, married Richard Hatch in 1598; they may have lived in Walton Cardiff. Barston’s granddaughter married Philip Surman, a gentleman and bailiff, who may have been replaced for political reasons in 1662; he owned land in and around Tewkesbury.^[11]