Chapter XIII - The Proctorship of Ralph Barton, 1477–1490

Summary

When Byngham entered into the agreement, whose confirmation he did not live to execute, whereby Radulphus Barton was to be appointed college lecturer to Godshouse for life, Barton was described as ‘clerk’, and, in view of the reference there made to the time when he should be promoted to the degree of master of arts, it may be reasonably assumed that he had already reached such a stage in his qualifications as made his degree purely a question of completing the formalities. He would therefore be about twenty or twenty-one years of age in the early autumn of the year 1451, to which date we have ascribed the indenture recording the conditions of his agreement with Byngham. His age upon entry to the college would be thirteen or fourteen, and that would bring his admission into the period during which Byngham, having surrendered his ‘mansion’ to the king, was housing his scholars wherever he could find accommodation.

There is very little material to guide us in determining Barton's place of origin or parentage; what has been discovered points in more than one direction. The name itself has possible topographical relations so common that certainty is impossible in a period when men were frequently identified by placing after their baptismal name that of their native town or village, even to the displacement of their previously acquired surnames.