Isaac after an uncle, who died in 1680, Bishop of St. Asaph. Young
Isaac Barrow was educated at the Charterhouse School, and at
Felstead, before he went, in 1643, to Cambridge. He entered first
at Peterhouse, where his uncle Isaac was a Fellow, but at that time
his uncle was ejected from his Fellowship for loyalty to the King's
cause, and removed to Oxford; the nephew, who entered at Cambridge,
therefore avoided Peterhouse, and went to Trinity College. Young
Barrow's father also was at Oxford, where he gave up all his worldly
means in service of the King.

The young student at Cambridge did not conceal his royalist feeling,
but obtained, nevertheless, a scholarship at Trinity, with some
exemptions from the Puritan requirements of subscription. He took
his B.A. degree in 1648, and in 1649 was elected to a fellowship of
Trinity, on the same day with his most intimate college friend John
Ray, the botanist. Ray held in the next year several college
offices; was made in 1651 lecturer in Greek, and in 1653 lecturer in
Mathematics. Barrow proceeded to his M.A. in 1652, and was admitted
to the same degree at Oxford in 1653. In 1654, Dr. Dupont, who had
been tutor to Barrow and Ray, and held the University Professorship
of Greek, resigned, and used his interest, without success, to get
Barrow appointed in his place. Isaac Barrow was then a young man of
four-and-twenty, with the courage of his opinions in politics and in
church questions, which were not the opinions of those in power.

In 1655 Barrow left Cambridge, having sold his books to raise money
for travel. He went to Paris, where his father was with other
royalists, and gave some help to his father. Then he went on to
Italy, made stay at Florence, and on a voyage from Leghorn to Smyrna
stood to a gun in fight with a pirate ship from Algiers that was