Barrow, Henry

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Barrow, Henry (c.1550–93). An early puritan separatist, Barrow was born in Norfolk, educated at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and became a member of Gray's Inn. While living a dissolute life, he had a conversion experience (c.1580) and dedicated himself to theology, especially Brownist ideas. Arrested in 1586, he was examined personally by Whitgift and Burghley. From prison he smuggled his illicit writings to the Netherlands. Eventually he and John Greenwood were tried for writing ‘with malicious intent’ and hanged. Separatism multiplied rapidly, but the separatist churches of London and Amsterdam deriving from Barrow were regarded as the ‘ancient’ churches of the separation.

Revd Dr William M. Marshall

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