Jane Barker was born during the time of the English Civil Wars into a royalist family -- her father was a soldier and one of the Secretaries of the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England. She never married and converted to Catholicism. She published the collection entitled Poetical Recreations in 1688. When King James II fled the Glorious Revolution soon afterwards, Jane followed him into exile at St. Germain-en-Laye, near Paris in France. In about 1704, she returned to England. The premature death of her elder brother had made Jane an heiress to her parents’ property, and she inherited their Wilsthorpe manor house and Northamptonshire lands. Jane continued to publish her works and carried on a correspondence with the exiled Jacobite peer James Butler, Duke of Ormonde. She spent periods of time in London and at St.-Germain.
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