Henry Barley

Henry Barley or Barlee (1487 – 12 November 1529), of Albury, Hertfordshire, was a Member of Parliament during the Tudor period.

Family Henry Barley, born about 1487, was the son of William Barley (1451–1521) of Albury, Hertfordshire, and Elizabeth Darcy (died 1520), the daughter of Sir Robert Darcy of Danbury, Essex. He had three sisters:

Ann Barley (died after 1 Oct 1557), who married first Sir Robert Sheffield (ca. 1462-1518); secondly, Sir John Grey, who was the son of the 1st Marquis of Dorset; and lastly, Sir Richard Clement of Ightman Mote, Kent (d. 1538). Dorothy Barley (died 1557), the last Abbess of Barking Abbey. Elizabeth Barley, who married firstly, as his third wife, Sir Ralph Jocelyn (d. 25 October 1478), Lord Mayor of London in 1464 and 1476, and secondly Sir Robert Clifford (d. 15 March 1508), third son of Thomas Clifford, 8th Baron de Clifford. Sir Robert Clifford was a Knight of the Body and Master of the Ordnance to King Henry VII, and one of the earliest supporters of the pretender to the Crown, Perkin Warbeck. There is a canopied altar tomb with brasses to Elizabeth (née Barley) and her second husband, Sir Robert Clifford, in the parish church at Aspenden, Hertfordshire, and portraits of Elizabeth and both her husbands in the stained glass windows of Holy Trinity church, Long Melford, Suffolk.

Career Although in 1495 Barley’s father, William, was attainted of treason for his support of Perkin Warbeck, and thereby forfeited his property to the Crown, he was pardoned three years later, and by 1501 was once again in possession of his lands, including the manors of Wicken, Elsenham, Albury, Wickhamstead and Moulsham. According to the History of Parliament, Barley had one son and three daughters by Anne (née Jerningham); however according to Challen and Richardson, there were no issue of the marriage, and Barley's children were all his children by his first wife, Elizabeth.

After Barley's death, his widow, Anne (née Jerningham) married Sir Robert Drury, and after his death, Sir Edmund Walsingham. She died in 1559, having had no issue by any of her marriages.