Thomas Barlow

Thomas Barlow (1607, 1608 or 1609 – 8 October 1691) was an English academic and clergyman, who became Provost of The Queen's College, Oxford, and Bishop of Lincoln. He was seen in his own time and by Edmund Venables in the Dictionary of National Biography to have been a trimmer (conforming politically for advancement's sake), and have a reputation mixed with his academic and other writings on casuistry. His views were Calvinist and strongly anti-Catholic – he was among the last English bishops to dub the Pope Antichrist. He worked in the 1660s for "comprehension" of nonconformists, but supported a crackdown in the mid-1680s and declared loyalty to James II of England on his accession, though he had supported the Exclusion Bill, which would have denied it to him. Early life Barlow was the son of Richard Barlow of Long-gill in the parish of Orton, Eden in Westmorland (now Cumbria). He was educated at Appleby grammar school. Aged 16, he entered Queen's College, Oxford, as a servitor, rising to be a tabarder (scholar). He took his BA degree in 1630 and his MA in 1633, when he was elected a fellow of his college. In 1635 he was appointed metaphysical reader to the university, being seen as a master of casuistry, logic, and philosophy. Among his pupils was John Owen. He associated at Oxford with Robert Sanderson and particularly with Robert Boyle, who made Oxford his chief residence from 1654 to 1668. Barlow was a learned Calvinist, who opposed Jeremy Taylor and George Bull, and with Thomas Tully was one of the guardians in Interregnum Oxford of acceptable orthodoxy. On the death of John Rouse, Barlow was elected to the librarianship of the Bodleian on 6 April 1652, a post he held until he succeeded to the Lady Margaret professorship in 1660. He favoured the scholars Anthony à Wood, Anthony Horneck, whom he had appointed as chaplain in Queen's, and Thomas Fuller, and was hospitable to Christopher Davenport. He spoke of infant baptism in a letter to John Tombes, which later affected his prospect of preferment. Barlow retained his fellowship in 1648 with support from John Selden and his former pupil John Owen, having contributed anonymously a tract on the parliamentary visitation of Oxford in that year. He became Provost of his college in 1657. In 1658 he brought tactful support to Sanderson on behalf of Boyle.