Quaker poet. He was a clerk in Alexanders’ Bank in Woodbridge, Suffolk, and disliked travelling, but carried on an extensive correspondence with a number of men of letters, including Southey and Lamb. Barton asked for Southey’s help with some of his literary projects, but the two met only once, in 1824. His half-brother, the economist John Barton (1789–1852; DNB), married Ann Woodruffe Smith (d. 1822), the daughter of Grosvenor Bedford’s friend, Thomas Woodruffe Smith.