BARRET, JOHN. - English Carmelite, a native of King's Lynn (Norfolk), d. 12 July 1593 at Norwich. He graduated in 1533 from the University of Cambridge. When the religious Orders were suppressed under Enrico VIII (1538), he was expelled from his convent and made parish priest
at Hetherset (1541), then professor of theology at the college of Norwich (1542). He was subsequently made (1558) a canon of Norwich Cathedral, and steadfastly preserved the Catholic faith, despite the snares and calumnies of his opponents and the enticements of certain friends.
Some of his writings, such as Commentaria in epistolos s. Pauli, Commentaria in I. epist. s. Johannis, Collectanea in communes locos digesta ex eruditioribus... germanorum protestantium scriptoribus, remain unpublished in the library of «Corpus Christi College» at Cambridge, whereas his Epistola apologetica to the heretic Roberto Watson was published by the latter in his Aetiologia (1556). Another of his works, Magistri Parisienses, a catalogue of the Carmelites who obtained doctorates at the University of Paris (1560-63), is preserved in Fr. Zimmerman’s Monumenta historica Carmelitana (Lerino 1907), pp. 394-419.