Barker, Thomas

, esq. the descendant of an ancient and respectable family at Lyndon in Rutlandshire, was the son of Samuel Barker, esq. of Lyndon, by a daughter of the celebrated Whiston, who often acknowledges the assistance he received from his son-in-law in his ecclesiastical | researches. Mr. Samuel Barker was long employed in preparing a Hebrew grammar, which he probably did not live to finish, but in 1761 was published “Poesis vetus He^ braica restitutus. Accedunt quasdam de carmine Anacre^ ontis. De accentibus Graecis. De Scriptura vetere lonica, De literis consonantibus et vocalibus, et de pronuntiatione >inguae Hebraicoe,” 4to. He was then dead. His son, the subject of the present article, was the author of several tracts on religious and philosophical subjects among the former were, “The duty, circumstance, and benefits of Baptism, determined by evidence,1771, 8vo “The Messiah, being the prophecies concerning him methodized, with their accomplishment,1780, 8vo “The nature and circumstances of the Demoniacs in the Gospel,1780, 8vo. In some of these he is said to depart from the received opinions of the church. Of his philosophical works, which have done him far more credit, we may notice his meteorological journals, which were for many years published in the Philosophical Transactions, where likewise he wrote, 1. “An account of a Meteor seen in Rutland,1756. 2. “On the return of the Comet expected in 1757 or 1755, ibid. 1759. 3.” On the mutations of the Stars,“ibid. 1761. 4.” Account of a remarkable Halo,“ib. 1762, 5.” Observations on the quantity of rain fallen at Lyndon for several years, with observations for determining the latitude of Stamford,“ib. 1771. He published also separately,” Account of the discoveries respecting Comets," 1757, 4to. This contains a table of the Parabola, much valued by competent judges, and reprinted by sir Henry Englefield, in his excellent treatise on the same subject. Mr. Barker, by a course of uninterrupted abstemiousness, particularly from animal food, which he was under the necessity of leaving off in his infancy, prolonged his life and faculties to an unusual period, dying at Lyndon, Dec. 29th, 1809, in his eighty-eighth year. It ought to have been noticed, that he drew up the history of the parish of Lyndon, one of the few parts given to the public of a new edition of Wright’s history and antiquities of Rutland. 1

1

Nichols’s Life of Bowyer, vol. Ill, Biog. Brit. art. Whiston, note?? Winston’s Memoirs.