Richard Barre

Whether Barre was a native of England or of Normandy is unknown, but his surname appears to derive from the Norman village of La Barre, near Bernay, in the present-day department of Eure. After finishing his schooling, Barre seems to have worked for either Robert de Chesney, the Bishop of Lincoln, or Nicholas, Archdeacon of Huntingdon; the main evidence for this is that Barre witnessed charters for both men from 1160 to 1164. By 1165, Barre had joined the household of King Henry II of England. ==Service to King Henry==

Barre served King Henry during the king's quarrel with Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had gone into exile in 1164 over the dispute about the limits of royal authority over the English Church. Because of Barre's close ties to King Henry, Becket considered him one of the king's "evil counselors", and Barre was the subject of denunciations by the archbishop. In September 1169, Barre was sent along with two other clerks to Rome to complain about the behaviour of papal envoys during negotiations with Becket held at the beginning of September. The papal negotiators initially agreed to a compromise, but the next day claimed the proposal was unacceptable. Following the failure of the negotiations, Becket restored the sentences of excommunication against a number of royal officials, but Barre was not among those specifically named, even though many of his colleagues were. The historian Frank Barlow argues that Barre was not specifically named in the restoration of excommunications, as Becket considered him already excommunicated because of his association with those under the church's ban. During January and February 1170 the king sent Barre on a diplomatic mission to the pope in Rome, on a matter related to the king's dispute with Becket. The mission attempted to secure the rescinding of the excommunication of those whom Becket had placed under clerical ban, but it was unsuccessful; Barlow thinks it possible that Barre received a verbal agreement from the pope in January to allow the coronation, but there is no written evidence that Alexander agreed to allow the coronation in 1170. After Becket's murder in December 1170, The mission's objective was to make it clear to Alexander that Henry had had nothing to do with Becket's murder and that the king was horrified that it had taken place. Barre was at first refused a meeting with Alexander, but eventually the envoys were allowed to meet with the pope. Shortly afterwards, Barre was granted the office of Archdeacon of Lisieux, probably as a reward for his efforts in Rome in 1171. He was named chancellor to King Henry's eldest living son Henry for a brief period in 1172 and 1173, but when the younger Henry rebelled against his father and sought refuge at the French royal court, Barre refused to join him in exile and returned to the king's service. Barre took with him the younger Henry's seal. and the prebend of Moreton and Whaddon in the Diocese of Hereford from 1180 through 1184. He continued to hold the archdeaconry at Lisieux until 1188, and was at Lisieux for most of the late 1170s and 1180s. In 1179 he was at Rouen for the display of the body of Saint Romanus and was one of the witnesses to the event. While holding his Norman archdeaconry, he gave land to the abbey of St-Pierre-sur-Dives along with Ralph, Bishop of Lisieux. In February or March 1188, King Henry sent Barre on a diplomatic mission to the continent with letters to Frederick Barbarossa, the German Emperor; Béla III, the King of Hungary; and Isaac II Angelos, the Emperor at Constantinople, seeking assistance for his projected crusade. Barre carried letters to the three rulers requesting passage through their lands and the right to procure supplies. ==Later years and death==

After the death of King Henry, Barre joined the service of William Longchamp, the Bishop of Ely, who was justiciar and Lord Chancellor. Longchamp named Barre as Archdeacon of Ely, Longchamp's exile meant that Barre did not serve as a royal justice again until King Richard I returned to England in 1194. He also served as a lawyer for the new Bishop of Ely, Eustace, But Barre had incurred the hostility of the king's younger brother Prince John, and when John succeeded Richard as king in 1199, Barre ceased to be employed as a royal justice, instead returning to Ely and business in his clerical office. His last sure mention in the historical record is on 9 August 1202, Barre maintained his friendship with Stephen of Tournai, who corresponded with him later in their lives. ==Literary work==

Barre wrote a work on the Bible entitled Compendium de veteri et novo testamento, which he dedicated to Longchamp. The work arranged passages from the Bible under topics, and then annotated the passages with marginal notations such as were done with glosses on Roman law. The Harley manuscript is shorter than the Lambeth manuscript. Richard Sharpe, a modern historian who studied both works, stated that the Harley manuscript "provides [a] well structured and systematic (though not complete) coverage of the whole Bible." Because of the dedication to William Longchamp as "bishop, legate, and chancellor", it is likely that the work was composed between January 1190 and October 1191, as Longchamp only held those three offices together during that period. The prologue to the work describes it as something to be used privately, and thus Sharpe feels that it was not intended to be a publicly published work; instead Barre may have intended it for Longchamp's private use in preparing sermons. A third copy of Barre's Compendium may have existed at Leicester Abbey, where a late-15th-century library catalogue records a work by Barre on the Bible, titled "Compendium Ricardi Barre super utroque testamento". The title and contents make this manuscript likely to be a copy of the Compendium. The same catalogue also records five books once owned by Barre—copies of Gratian's Decretum, Justinian's Codex, glossed copies of the Psalter and some of the Epistles of Paul, as well as Peter Lombard's Sentences. Also, another Leicester Abbey manuscript records some satirical verses that were said to have been written by Barre. ==Notes==