eculator and builder, afterwards resided. Barebone
(probably Barbon, of a French Huguenot family) was one of those gloomy
religionists who looked on surplices, plum-porridge, theatres, dances,
Christmas pudding, and homicide as equally detestable, and did his best
to shut out all sunshine from that long, rainy, stormy day that is
called life. He was at the head of that fanatical, tender-conscienced
Parliament of 1653 that Cromwell convened from among the elect in
London, after untoward Sir Harry Vane had been expelled from Westminster
at the muzzles of Pride's muskets. Of Barebone, also, and his crochetty,
impracticable fellows, Cromwell had soon enough; and, in despair of all
aid but from his own brain and hand, he then took the title of Lord
Protector, and became the most inflexible and wisest monarch we have
ever had, or indeed ever hope to have. Barebone is first heard of in
local history as preaching in 1641, together with Mr. Greene, a
felt-maker, at a conventicle in Fetter Lane, a place always renowned for
its heterodoxy. The thoughtless Cavaliers, who did not like long
sermons, and thought all religion but their own hypocrisy, delighted in
gaunt Barebone's appropriate name, and made fun of him in those ribald
ballads in which they consigned red-nosed Noll, the brewer, to the
reddest and hottest portion of the unknown world. At the Restoration,
when all Fleet Street was ablaze with bonfires to roast the Rumps, the
street boys, always on the strongest side, broke poor Barebone's
windows, though he had been constable and common-councilman, and was a
wealthy leather-seller to boot. But he was not looked upon as of the
regicide or extreme dangerous party, and a year afterwards attended a
vestry-meeting unmolested. After the Great Fire he came to the
Clifford's Inn Appeal Court about his Fleet Street house, which had been
burnt over the heads of his tenants, and eventually he rebuilt it.

In Irving's "History of Dissenters" there is a curious account, from an
old pamphlet entitled "New Preachers," "of Barebone, Greene the
felt-maker, Spencer the horse-rubber, Quartermaine the brewer's clerk,
and some few others, who are mighty sticklers in this new kind of
talking trade, which many ignorant coxcombs call preaching; whereunto is
added the last tumult in Fleet Street, raised by the disorderly
preachment, pratings, and prattlings of Mr. Barebone the leather-seller,
and Mr. Greene the felt-maker, on Sunday last, the 19th D