Isaac Bargrave

Isaac Bargrave
A 1636 painting of Isaac Bargrave by Cornelis Janssens van Ceulen
Born	1586
Died	January 1643, aged 56 or 57 Canterbury
Resting place	Canterbury Cathedral 51°16′47″N 1°04′59″E / 51.279722°N 1.083056°E / 51.279722; 1.083056
Residence	Canterbury
Nationality	English
Years active	1625-43

Isaac Bargrave (1586 – January 1643) was an English royalist churchman, Dean of Canterbury from 1625 to 1643.

Isaac was the sixth son of Robert Bargrave, of Bridge, Kent, and was educated at Clare Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. and M.A. On 9 July 1611 he was incorporated M.A. of Oxford, and in the October following became rector of Eythorne. In 1612 he held the office of 'taxor' at Cambridge, and he acted in the Latin comedy Ignoramus performed at the university before James I on 8 March 1615 and written by George Ruggle of his college.

Shortly afterwards Bargrave went to Venice as chaplain to Sir Henry Wotton, the English ambassador there, and befriended Paolo Sarpi. In 1618 he returned to England with a letter of introduction from Wotton to the king. In 1622 he received the degree of D.D. at Cambridge, and was appointed a prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral. It was about the same time that he was granted the living of St. Margaret's, Westminster, and became chaplain to Prince Charles, an office which he retained after the prince ascended the throne in 1625.

On the death of John Boys of Canterbury, who had married Bargrave's sister, Bargrave succeeded to the deanery, to which he was formally admitted on 16 October 1625. He obtained the vicarage of Tenterden in 1626, and was presented to the benefice of Lydd by the king in September 1627, but only held it for a few weeks. On 5 June 1628 he received the vicarage of Chartham, which he continued to hold till his death.

In the last years of James I's reign Bargrave had preached a sermon which threw him into disfavour with the court; but as dean of Canterbury he supported the policy of Charles I. A sermon preached by him before Charles I on 27 March 1627 supported the collection of that year's arbitrary loan. In later years Bargrave did not live on good terms with his diocesan William Laud, or with the cathedral clergy. In 1634-5 he insisted on the Walloon congregation at Canterbury and the Belgian church of Sandwich conforming to the ritual of the church of England; but the archbishop did not approve of these orders. Bargrave claimed precedence over the deans of London and Westminster, and engaged in a dispute with William Somner, the registrar of the diocese.