Sex

Male

Marital Status

Married

Spouse Name

Margaret

Occupation Status

Clerk; rector of Warmingham and Malpas

Remarks

CCEd person ID 35561 (Warmingham)

Career: appointed rector of Warmingham on 26 August 1536; rector of the Higher Rectory of Malpas from 30 January 1562 on the resignation of William Hill on a pension of £16 for life on a bond from Barlow. He was buried at Malpas on April 28 1585 as ‘John Barlow, Clerke, late Parson of Malpasse and Warmingham’.

Further notes: He seems to have married late in life, perhaps for a second time, to Margaret Silcock, and he names in his will four sons and two daughters. His son William was apprenticed in Shrewsbury, his son John was apprenticed to a mercer in Chester. His son Richard was probably underage at the time of John Barlow’s death. Another son, Randle, Ralph or Randolph, baptised on 13 January 1572, had a distinguished academic career and after ordination took up a series of clerical appointments in Ireland, culminating in the post of archbishop of Tuam from 1629 to 1638.

After his death in 1595 his widow remarried Mr Thomas Wilson, the schoolmaster at Malpas, on 26 May 1596.

Although his tenure of the parish of Warmingham may seem unrealistically long, he certainly did hold both parishes in plurality for some years until his death, although it is possible that two men of the same name held Warmingham in succession. At the metropolitan visitation of 1578, following the death of the bishop, William Downham, the presentments at Warmingham include a note that ‘John Barlowe there person is not resident and cometh seldome amongest them. They have but fewe Sermons Ther parsonage is in Decaie’. A marginal note reads ‘he is Resydent at Malpas he is enioyned to […] sermons hereafter and to Repayre his hous before mydsomer next.’

Sources:

Borthwick Institute, York, V 1578-9 CB 3, f. 32v.

CALS, 220830, Malpas St Oswald Parish Registers.

George Ormerod, The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester, (second edition, revised and enlarged by T. Helsby, 3 vols, London: George Routledge & Sons, 1882), vol ii, pp. 608-610, vol iii, pp. 233-235.

Rev. G. J. Piccope (ed.), Lancashire and Cheshire wills and inventories from the Ecclesiastical Court, Chester, 3 volumes (Chetham Society, old series, 54, 1861 (Third Portion)), pp. 87-89.

Details of the career of Ralph Barlow; A Cambridge Alumni database https://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/

Causes

EDC 5/1566/10 – witness to the sentence. He was probably in attendance at court because a tithe cause in which he had an interest was being heard at this time.