Isaac Barré

Barré was born in Dublin on 15 October 1726, the son of Marie Madelaine (Raboteau) Barré and Peter Barré, Huguenot refugees who escaped to Ireland.{{cite book |date=1901 |title=The Publications of the Huguenot Society of London |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=619FAQAAMAAJ&q=%22isaac+barr%C3%A9%22 |location=London, UK |publisher=The Huguenot Society of London |page=77}}{{cite magazine |last=Elliott |first=Hugh F. (Macmillan's Magazine) |date=6 January 1877 |title=Colonel Barre and His Times |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TKU2AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA22 |magazine=Littell's Living Age |location=Boston, MA |publisher=Littell & Gay |page=22 |ref={{sfnRef|"Colonel Barre and His Times"}}}} Peter Barré became a linen dealer and served as High Sheriff of Dublin City.[http://www.godrules.net/library/smiles/95smiles4.htm Distinguished Huguenot Refugees and Their Descendants] Isaac Barré was educated at Trinity College, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1745.{{cite book |editor-last1=Burtchaell |editor-first1=George Dames |editor-last2=Sadleir |editor-first2=Thomas Ulick |date=1935 |title=Alumni Dublinenses: A Register of the Students, Graduates, Professors and Provosts of Trinity College in the University of Dublin (1593-1860) |url=https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/concern/works/70795b624 |location=Dublin, Ireland |publisher=Alex. Thom & Co., Ltd. |page=42 |via=Digital Collections: The Library of Trinity College Dublin}} His parents hoped he would study law, and David Garrick thought he had potential as an actor and offered to hire and train him, but Barré decided on a military career and entered the British Army in 1746.{{sfn|"Colonel Barre and His Times"|page=22}}

{{further|Great Britain in the Seven Years War}}

Barré joined the 32nd Regiment of Foot as an ensign in 1746.{{sfn|"Colonel Barre and His Times"|page=22}} The regiment was based in Flanders during the War of the Austrian Succession, and Barré gained his initial army experience prior to the end of the conflict in 1748.{{sfn|"Colonel Barre and His Times"|pages=22-23}} He continued to serve, and was promoted to lieutenant in 1755, and captain in 1756. During the French and Indian War, he served under his patron General James Wolfe on the Rochefort expedition of 1757, when he first met Lord Shelburne, and afterwards in Canada where he was appointed adjutant-general, fighting at both Louisbourg (1758) and Quebec (1759).{{sfn|"Colonel Barre and His Times"|pages=23-24}} In 1759, he was promoted to major, but the rank applied only during his service in America. In the Quebec expedition, in which Wolfe was killed, Barré was severely wounded by a bullet in the cheek and lost the use of his right eye.{{sfn|"Colonel Barre and His Times"|page=24}} He was among the group gathered around the dying Wolfe, which was immortalised in Benjamin West's celebrated picture.{{cite web |url=https://www.gallery.ca/bulletin/num7/stacey1.html |title=Benjamin West and 'The Death of Wolfe' |last=Stacey |first=C. P. |date=1986 |website=Gallery.ca |publisher=National Gallery of Canada |location=Ottawa, Ontario, Canada }}

Returning to England in September 1760, despite many years of commendable service, Barré was denied promotion by William Pitt the Elder{{cite web |url=http://www.wilkes.edu/pages/198.asp |title=Wilkes Naming Wilkes-Barre |access-date=2 June 2008 |last=Petrillo |first=F. Charles |year=1988 |work=John Wilkes and Isaac Barre: Politics and Controversy in Eighteenth Century Graphics |publisher=Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes University |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080513123349/http://www.wilkes.edu/pages/198.asp |archive-date=13 May 2008 }} and turned to Shelburne for help. After undertaking a tour of Shelburne's Irish estates, he was advanced to lieutenant colonel of the 106th Foot, and in 1763 he was appointed to the lucrative posts of adjutant general of the British Army and Governor of Stirling Castle.{{sfn|"Colonel Barre and His Times"|page=28}}

File:Brooklyn Museum - Colonel Isaac Barré - Gilbert Stuart - overall.jpg, 1785, by Gilbert Stuart]]

Shelburne introduced Barré to Lord Bute and brought him into parliament for his borough of Chipping Wycombe (1761–1774),{{sfn|"Colonel Barre and His Times"|page=24}} having selected him as a "bravo" to take on Pitt.{{cite book |last=Hume |first=David |editor1-last=Klibansky |editor1-first=Raymond |editor2-last=Mossner |editor2-first=Ernest C. |date=2011 |title=New Letters of David Hume |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u2VPBvzolYsC&pg=PA65 |location=London, England, United Kingdom |publisher=Oxford University Press|page=65 |isbn=978-0-1996-9323-8}} In 1774, Barré's constituency switched to Calne, and he served until 1790. One of the few self-made soldiers in parliament, Barré became one of Shelburne's principal supporters in the House of Commons. In his first political speech, he vehemently attacked the absent war minister William Pitt, renewing this assault the next day to Pitt's face. This caused a sensation, and set the tone of a long and colourful parliamentary career in which he acquired a fearsome reputation as an orator. However, he ultimately became a devoted Pitt adherent.

From 1766 to 1768, Barré was a Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. His 1782 appointment as Treasurer of the Navy, which carried a pension of £3,200 a year at a time when the government was ostensibly advocating stringency, caused great discontent. William Pitt the Younger replied that the pension was compensation for Barré's dismissal from his military offices in 1763; he then appointed Barré to the even more lucrative position of Paymaster General of the forces, with responsibility for England's entire army payroll, which he held from August 1782 to April 1783. In 1784, Barré relinquished his pension in exchange for appointment to the sinecure of Clerk of the Pells. Nominally responsible for maintaining records of all Exchequer income and payments, the Clerk of the Pells was paid on a percentage system, which enabled Barré to accumulate a sizable fortune.{{cite book |last=Miner |first=Sidney Roby |date=1901 |title=Colonel Isaac Barré, 1726–1802: Orator, Soldier, Statesman and Friend of the American Colonies |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xfE_AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA21 |location=Wilkes-Barre, PA |publisher=Wyoming Historical & Genealogical Society |pages=20–21 |ref={{SfnRef|Colonel Isaac Barré, 1726–1802}}}}

Barré's knowledge of North America (he was one of the few politicians with friendships among the American mercantile classes) made him a champion of the colonists. He opposed taxation of America. Barré called the colonists "Sons of Liberty" in response to Charles Townshend's observation when introducing the Stamp Act resolutions that the colonies should "contribute to the mother country which had planted, nurtured and indulged them":

They planted by your care? No! Your oppression planted 'em in America. They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and unhospitable country where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable, and among others to the cruelties of a savage foe, the most subtle, and I take upon me to say, the most formidable of any people upon the face of God’s earth....

They nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect of 'em. As soon as you began to care about 'em, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule over 'em, in one department and another, who were perhaps the deputies of deputies to some member of this house, sent to spy out their liberty, to misrepresent their actions and to prey upon 'em; men whose behaviour on many occasions has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them....

They protected by your arms? They have nobly taken up arms in your defence, have exerted a valour amidst their constant and laborious industry for the defence of a country whose frontier while drenched in blood, its interior parts have yielded all its little savings to your emolument .... The people I believe are as truly loyal as any subjects the king has, but a people jealous of their liberties and who will vindicate them if ever they should be violated; but the subject is too delicate and I will say no more."{{sfn|Middlekauff|2007|pp=79}}

In the Stamp Act crisis, Barré not only championed repeal but also followed Pitt in opposing the complete right of taxation as stated in the Declaratory Act.

Horace Walpole described Barré as "a black [meaning his hair was black], robust man, of a military figure, rather hard-favoured than not, young, with a peculiar distortion on one side of his face, which it seems was a bullet lodged loosely in his cheek, and which gave a savage glare to one eye".{{sfn|"Colonel Barre and His Times"|page=27}}

Barré became blind in 1783 and missed several sessions of Parliament.{{sfn|"Colonel Barre and His Times"|page=35}} He later resumed his seat, but was not as effective as he had been previously.{{sfn|"Colonel Barre and His Times"|page=35}} He retired in 1790.{{sfn|"Colonel Barre and His Times"|page=35}}

Barré died at his home on Stanhope Street in the Mayfair district of London on 20 July 1802.{{sfn|Colonel Isaac Barré, 1726–1802|page=21}} He was buried at St. Mary Churchyard in East Raynham.{{cite web |url=https://www.ancestry.com |title=Norfolk, England Church of England Baptism, Marriages, and Burials, 1535–1812, entry for Issac Barre |date=30 July 1802 |website=Ancestry.com |location=Provo, UT |publisher=Ancestry.com, LLC |url-access=subscription |access-date=17 March 2017}}

Barré's residuary legatee was Anne Townshend, Marchioness Townshend, whom he had known before her marriage to George Townshend, 1st Marquess Townshend.{{sfn|Colonel Isaac Barré, 1726–1802|pages=21–22}} She received approximately £24,000 (equivalent to about £2.3 million in 2018, or $3.2 million).{{sfn|Colonel Isaac Barré, 1726–1802|page=22}}

The city of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, is named for him, as is the town of Barre, Massachusetts.{{cite book |date=1917 |title=Early American Paintings: Catalogue of an Exhibition Held in the Museum of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences |url=https://archive.org/details/earlyamericanpa00musegoog |location=Brooklyn, NY |publisher=Museum of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences |page=[https://archive.org/details/earlyamericanpa00musegoog/page/n210 82] |ref={{sfnRef|Early American Paintings}}}} There are also a town and a city named for Barré in Vermont (Barre City and Barre Town),{{sfn|Early American Paintings|page=82}} as well as the towns of Barre, New York, and Barre, Wisconsin. There is a memorial to Barré in New York City,{{cite web |url=https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/city-hall-park/monuments/1981 |title=Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Barre Monument |last=Director of Art and Antiquities |website=City Hall Park Monuments |publisher=New York City Department of Parks and Recreation |location=New York, NY |access-date=3 April 2017}} and numerous eastern US cities have named streets for him.{{cite news |date=2019 |title=Charleston Streets |url=http://scottishritecalifornia.org/index.php/charlestonstreets/ |work=Scottish Rite California |publisher=Orient of California |location=Sacramento, CA}}{{cite news |date=2 June 2019 |title=What's in a name: Barre Street |url=https://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-sjw-barre-bs0043461642-20170601-photo.html |work=The Baltimore Sun |location=Baltimore, MD}}

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• {{cite book|last=Middlekauff|first=Robert|author-link=Robert Middlekauff|title=The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2007|isbn=978-0195315882}}

{{Wikisource1911Enc|Barré, Isaac}}

• {{cite IrishBio|wstitle=Barré, Isaac}}
• [http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?LinkID=mp00271 National Portrait Gallery (UK): Isaac Barré]

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{{succession box | title=Treasurer of the Navy | before=Welbore Ellis | after=Henry Dundas | years=1782}}

{{succession box | title=Paymaster of the Forces | before=Edmund Burke | after=Edmund Burke | years=1782–1783}}

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{{s-bef | before=Sir Edward Walpole}}

{{s-ttl | title=Clerk of the Pells | years=1784–1802}}

{{s-aft | after=Henry Addington}}

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{{s-bef | before=Viscount FitzMaurice |before2=Robert Waller}}

{{s-ttl | title=Member of Parliament for Wycombe | years=1761–1774

| with=Robert Waller}}

{{s-aft | after=Robert Waller | after2=Hon. Thomas FitzMaurice}}

{{s-bef | before = Hon. Thomas FitzMaurice | before2=John Dunning}}

{{s-ttl | title = Member of Parliament for Calne | years = 1774–1790 | with=John Dunning 1774–1782 | with2=James Townsend 1782–1787 |with3=Joseph Jekyll 1787–1790}}

{{s-aft | after = Joseph Jekyll | after2=John Morris}}

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Category:1726 births

Category:1802 deaths

Category:18th-century Irish politicians

Category:Alumni of Trinity College Dublin

Category:British MPs 1761–1768

Category:British MPs 1768–1774

Category:British MPs 1774–1780

Category:Huguenot participants in the American Revolution

Category:Irish people of French descent

Category:32nd Regiment of Foot officers

Category:Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for English constituencies

Category:Paymasters of the Forces

Category:Military personnel from Dublin (city)

Category:British Army personnel of the War of the Austrian Succession

Category:British Army personnel of the French and Indian War

Category:Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for Calne