Background
Barkham was born in the parish of Saint Mary-the-Moor, Exeter, about 1572.
Barkham was born in the parish of Saint Mary-the-Moor, Exeter, about 1572.
Highly reputed in his time as an authority, he published relatively little. He supported the efforts of John Speed, and may have been a source for the Display of Heraldry of John Guillim (the book was attributed to him as a publication under Guillim"s name, for some time). Barkham made a very extensive collection of coins, which he gave to William Laud.
Who presented them to the Bodleian library.
He left also a treatise on coins in manuscript, which was never published. He entered Exeter College, Oxford in 1587, and in the following year was admitted scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
He became Bachelor of Arts, in February 1591, Master of Arts in 1594, and probationer fellow of Corpus Christi College in 1596. In 1603 he took the degree of Bachelor of Divinity, and some time after he was made chaplain to Doctor John Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, an office which he also held under his successor, George Abbot.
In June 1608 he was collated to the rectory of Finchley, Middlesex.
He was then given livings in Essex: in March 1615 the rectory of Packlesham. In May following the rectory of Lackington. And in December 1616 the rectory and deanery of Bocking.
In 1615 he resigned the rectory of Finchley and in 1617 that of Packlesham.
At Bocking he had as curate in the period 1627 to 1631 Nathaniel Rogers, who later emigrated to New England as pastor of Ipswich, Massachusetts. He died at Bocking on 25 March 1642, and was buried in the chancel of the church there.
