JOHN BARRET. - English Carmelite, originally from King’s Lynn (Norfolk), died 12 July 1563 at Norwich. He graduated in 1533 from the University of Cambridge. After the suppression of religious orders under Henry VIII (1538), he was expelled from his convent and appointed parish priest at Hetherset (1541), then professor of theology at the college of Norwich (1542). In 1558 he became a canon of Norwich Cathedral and steadfastly maintained the Catholic faith despite the snares and calumnies of his adversaries and the blandishments of certain friends.
Of his writings, some—such as Commentaria in epistolas s. Pauli, Commentaria in I. epist. s. Johannis, and Collectanea in communes locos digesta ex eruditioribus... germanorum protestantium scriptoribus—remain unpublished in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, while his Epistola apologetica to the heretic Robert Watson was published by Watson himself in his Aetiologya (1556). Another work, Magistri Parisienses, a catalogue of Carmelites who took doctorates at the University of Paris (1360–63), is preserved in the Monumenta historica Carmelitana of Fr. Zimmerman (Lerino 1907), pp. 394–419.