Nicholas Barham

Nicholas Barham was one of the victims of a pestilence that swept the Assize Court. He was the head of the old Sussex branch of a family which was later to produce from the Kentish offshoot of the house the author of the Ingoldsby Legends. Nicholas, a famous 16th-century lawyer, inherited property forfeited by an ancestor. Reginald Fitzurse, one of the murderers of Thomas Becket.

He played a leading part in the prosecution of the Duke of Norfolk in 1571 for his share in the conspiracy to dethrone Elizabeth in favour of Mary Stuart, an offence for which Barham was instrumental in sending the Duke to the block.

In 1577 Barham was engaged at the Oxford assizes on which descended a terrible pestilence known as gaol fever. He exerted all his skill in obtaining the conviction of a suspected Roman Catholic, whom he sent to the pillory to have his ears cropped.

The hearing had barely concluded when pestilence seized on those who had conducted the trial, the death-roll beginning, it is recorded, within a few hours of the case. With terrible suddenness Barham was fatally stricken, and with him Sir Robert Bell, the high sheriff and the deputy sheriff, Sir William Babington, four justices of the peace, three witnesses, and nearly all the jury.

From the court the epidemic spread to the city and in little more than a month 500 lives were destroyed by the deadly visitation.

One part of Barham's property came from the murderer of an archbishop, a second part was granted him by the Crown on the execution of a conspirator in the Wyatt rebellion; but with the passing of the Sussex iron trade the family fortunes sank, and the bearers of a proud name, falling from their high estate, joined the common multitude of men and vanished from the records of the known.

 

Top of Page       main page:  www.yeoldesussexpages.com