Isaac Barrow

Isaac Barrow (1613 – 24 June 1680) was an English clergyman and Bishop, consecutively, of Sodor and Man and St Asaph, and also served as Governor of the Isle of Man. He was the founder of the Bishop Barrow Trust. During his time as Bishop of Sodor and Man and Governor of the Isle of Man, he enacted significant social, political, and ecclesiastical reforms. He is sometimes confused with his more famous namesake and nephew, Isaac Barrow (1630–1677), the mathematician and theologian. Origins and early career Barrow was the son of Isaac Barrow of Spinney Abbey, Wicken, Cambridgeshire, a landowner and justice of the peace for over forty years. In July 1629 he was admitted to Peterhouse, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1635. In 1641 he was appointed rector of Hinton, a college living, but was expelled by the Presbyterians in 1643. Thereafter, he served as a chaplain at New College, Oxford, until the surrender of Oxford to the Parliamentary army in 1646. Ecclesiastical advancement Following the Restoration (and by now a Doctor of Divinity), Barrow received back his fellowship at Peterhouse and was appointed a Fellow of Eton College on 12 July 1660. In 1660 he was also presented to the rectory of Downham, in the diocese of Ely. Bishop and Governor of Mann In July 1663, having resigned his fellowship of Peterhouse in the previous year, he was consecrated bishop of Sodor and Man. His nephew preached the consecration sermon. The bishopric was not a lucrative one, and the Isle of Man was in a period of serious economic decline following the English Civil War. Even by 1681, when Cumbrian traveller Thomas Denton visited the Island some time before 1681 he valued the diocese as being "worth £200 a year". The cathedral of St German at Peel was also reportedly in ruins by the time Barrow was appointed in 1663.