neglected since the ascendancy of Accursius) in a spirit which gave it new life, whilst he imparted to his teaching a practical interest, from the judicial experience which he had acquired while acting as assessor to the courts at Todi and at Pisa before he undertook the duties of a professorial chair. His treatises On Procedure and On Evidence are amongst his most valuable works, whilst his Commentary on the Code of Justinian has been in some countries regarded as of equal authority with the code itself.
BARTON, BENJAMIN SMITH (1766–1815), American naturalist, was born at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1766, studied for two years at Edinburgh, and afterwards graduated at Göttingen. He settled at Philadelphia, and soon obtained a considerable practice. In 1789 he was appointed professor of botany and natural history in the College of Philadelphia, now the University of Pennsylvania; he was made professor of materia medica in 1795, and on the death of Dr Benjamin Rush in 1813 he obtained the chair of practical medicine. In 1802 he was chosen president of the American Philosophical Society, of which he was a strong supporter. Barton was the author of various works on natural history, botany and materia medica, his Elements of Botany (1803) being the best known. He died at Philadelphia on the 19th of December 1815.
BARTON, BERNARD (1784–1849), English poet, was born at Carlisle on the 31st of January 1784. His parents were Quakers, and he was commonly known as the Quaker poet. After some experience of business, he became, in 1809, clerk to Messrs Alexander’s bank at Woodbridge, Suffolk, and retained this post till his death. His first volume of verse—Metrical Effusions—was published in 1812. It brought him into correspondence with Southey, and shortly afterwards, through the medium of a set of complimentary verses, he made the acquaintance of Hogg. From this time onwards to 1828 Barton published various volumes of verse. After 1828 his work appeared but rarely in print, but his Household Verses published in 1845 secured him, on the recommendation of Sir Robert Peel, a Civil List pension of £100 a year, £1200 having already been raised for him by some members of the Society of Friends. Barton is chiefly remembered for his friendship with Charles Lamb, which arose, curiously enough, out of a remonstrance addressed by him to the author of Essays of Elia on the freedom with which the Quakers had been handled in that volume. When Barton contemplated resigning his bank clerkship and supporting himself entirely by literature, Lamb strongly dissuaded him. “Keep to your bank,” he wrote, “and the bank will keep you.” Barton died at Woodbridge on 19th February 1849. His daughter Lucy married Edward FitzGerald.
See Poems and Letters of Bernard Barton, selected by Lucy Barton, with a biographical notice by Edward FitzGerald (1849).
BARTON, CLARA (1821–), American philanthropist, was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, in 1821. She was educated at the Clinton Liberal Institute (then in Clinton, New York). Ill-health compelled her to give up the profession of teaching, which she had taken up when she was only sixteen years old, and from 1854 to 1857 she was a clerk in the Patent Office at Washington. During the Civil War she distributed large quantities of supplies for the relief of wounded soldiers; and at its close she organized at Washington a bureau of records to aid in the search of missing men for whom inquiries were made. In connexion with this work, which was continued for about four years, she identified and marked the graves of more than twelve thousand soldiers in the National Cemetery at Andersonville, Georgia. In 1869 she went for her health to Switzerland. Upon her arrival at Geneva she was visited by members of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who sought her co-operation in the work of their society. The United States had declined to become a party to the treaty of Geneva on the basis of which the Red Cross Society was founded, but upon the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War Miss Barton went with members of this society to the seat of hostilities and assisted them in organizing their military hospitals. In 1871 she superintended the distribution of relief to the poor in Strassburg, and in 1872 performed a like service in Paris. For her services she was decorated with the Iron Cross by the German emperor. In 1873 she returned to the United States, where she at once began her efforts to effect the organization of the United States branch of the Red Cross and to bring her country into the treaty of Geneva, which efforts were successful in 1881–1882. She was the first president of the American Red Cross, holding the position until 1904: and represented the United States at the International conference held at Geneva, 1884; Karlsruhe, 1887; Rome, 1892; Vienna, 1897; and St Petersburg, 1903. She was the author of the American amendment to the constitution of the Red Cross which provides that the society shall distribute relief not only in war but in times of such other calamities as famines, floods, earthquakes, cyclones, and pestilence, and in accordance with this amended constitution, she conducted the society’s relief for sufferers from the yellow fever in Florida (1887), the flood at Johnstown, Pennsylvania (1889), the famine in Russia (1891), the hurricane along the coast of South Carolina (1893), the massacre in Armenia (1896), the Spanish-American War in Cuba (1898), the hurricane at Galveston, Texas (1900), and several other calamities. Upon her retirement from the Red Cross she incorporated and became president of “The National First Aid of America” for “first aid to the injured.” She wrote An Official History of the Red Cross (1882), The Red Cross in Peace and War (1898), A Story of the Red Cross (1904), and Story of my Childhood (1907).
BARTON, ELIZABETH (c. 1506–1534), “the maid of Kent,” was, according to her own statement, born in 1506 at Aldington, Kent. She appears to have been a neurotic girl, subject to epilepsy, and an illness in her nineteenth year resulted in hysteria and religious mania. She was at the time a servant in the house of Thomas Cobb, steward of an estate near Aldington owned by William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury. During her convalescence she passed into trances lasting for days at a time, and in this state her ravings were of such “marvellous holiness in rebuke of sin and vice” that the country folk believed her to be inspired. Cobb reported the matter to Richard Masters, the parish priest, who in turn acquainted Archbishop Warham. The girl having recovered, and finding herself the object of local admiration, was cunning enough, as she confessed at her trial, to feign trances, during which she continued her prophecies. Her fame steadily growing, the archbishop in 1526 instructed the prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, to send two of his monks to hold an inquiry into the case. One of these latter, Edward Bocking, obtained her admission as a nun to St Sepulchre’s convent, Canterbury. Under Bocking’s instruction Barton’s prophecies became still more remarkable, and attracted many pilgrims, who believed her to be, as she asserted, in direct communication with the Virgin Mary. Her utterances were cunningly directed towards political matters, and a profound and widespread sensation was caused by her declaration that should Henry persist in his intention of divorcing Catherine he “should no longer be king of this realm . . . and should die a villain’s death.” Even such men as Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and Sir Thomas More, corresponded with Barton. On his return from France in 1532 Henry passed through Canterbury and is said to have allowed the nun to force herself into his presence, when she made an attempt to terrify him into abandoning his marriage. After its solemnization in May 1533. her utterances becoming still more treasonable, she was examined before Cranmer (who had in March succeeded to the archbishopric on Warham’s death) and confessed. On the 25th of September Bocking and another monk, Hadley, were arrested, and in November, Masters and others were implicated. The maid and her fellow prisoners were examined before the Star Chamber, and were by its order publicly exposed at St Paul’s Cross, where they each read a confession. In January 1534 by a bill of attainder the maid and her chief accomplices were condemned to death, and were executed at Tyburn on the 20th of April. It has been held that her confession was extracted by force, and therefore valueless, but the evidence of her imposture seems conclusive.
