John Barnard

John Barnard (1765-1858) was a wealthy miller and maltster at Harlow Mill (the Universal British Directory listed him as  “victualler” of the King’s Head Tavern in the early 1790s [3.359]) and a trustee of the Particular Baptist congregation at Fore Street, Harlow, the same church that Benjamin and Eliza Flower attended.  William Barnard (1775-1852), John’s younger brother, was a prosperous farmer living at Harlowbury House, just outside of Harlow, and, like his brother, a prominent member at Fore Street.  The two brothers may have received their education under the tutelage of James Brown, the Baptist minister at nearby Potter Street from 1775 to 1803, who operated a  school for boys in his home. By 1806 John Barnard, like the Flowers, had adopted Unitarian beliefs, for he was listed as an original subscriber to the Unitarian Fund (Second Report 30). William Barnard would join him as a subscriber in 1808 (Fourth Report 33).   As Dissenters, the Barnards’s politics were largely in accord with that of Benjamin Flower and many of their Royston friends. John Barnard was included among the list of Stewards who attended the London dinner and festival commemorating the passage of the Repeal of the Test Acts on 18 June 1828, along with Benjamin Flower of Dalston, E. K. Fordham of Royston, and Ebenezer Foster of Cambridge (see Dissenters’ Collection, MS.3.FC:6, Spencer Library Special Collections, University of Kansas).  For more on the Barnards, see Joyce Jones, Seedtime and Harvest: The Diary of an Essex Farmer, William Barnard of Harlowbury 1807-23  (Chelmsford:  Essex Record Office, 1992).