Jane Barker (1) (1652–1732)

Jane Barker was born during the time of the English Civil Wars into a Royalist family. Her father Thomas Barker was a soldier and one of the Secretaries of the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England. She was brought up in Wilsthorp in Lincolnshire. She never married, and converted to the Roman Catholic faith, a dangerous move in England in that era. She published a collection of her early writings 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 made Jane an heiress to her parents’ property, and she inherited their Wilsthorpe manor house and Northamptonshire lands. She published novels, including Exilius; or, The Banished Roman (1715), Love's Intrigues; or, the History of the Amours of Bosvil and Galesia (1719), and an anthology of short stories and poems called A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies (1723). It appears that she left England for France again in 1727 and died at St. Germain-en-Laye.