Wherever he happened to be living, throughout his life Barrie Dobson drew inspiration from his native north of England, and his death after a long period of ill health on 29 March 2013 has deprived the region of one of its most eminent medieval historians. Born in Stockton and brought up in Teesdale, he was educated first at Barnard Castle School and afterwards at Wadham College, Oxford. On leaving Oxford in 1958 he taught for six years at the University of St Andrews and then for twenty-five very influential years at the new University of York before ending his career in 1988 as Professor of Medieval History at the University of Cambridge. The University of York awarded him an honorary professorship when he returned to York on his retirement from Cambridge in 1999.
Though he made major contributions to national history particularly in the fields of church history, urban history, social history and the history of education, most notably with his Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, and to the local history of other parts of England, especially medieval Cambridge, Canterbury and London, the history of the north of England in the middle ages always took pride of place. Barrie published a history of Selby Abbey and Town very soon after moving to York, following this in 1973 with his much acclaimed Durham Priory, 1400–1450, a substantially revised version of his doctoral thesis. Turning his attention then to the see of York he wrote an innovatory chapter on the late-medieval cathedral in G. E. Aylmer and R. Cant, A History of York Minster, while his 1974 Borthwick Paper on The Jews of Medieval York and the Massacre of March 1190, constantly reprinted, marked the beginning of his interest in medieval Jewish history. The York City Chamberlains’ Accounts, 1396–1500, which he edited for the Surtees Society, came out in 1980. The general public, however, perhaps know him best for the research he carried out in collaboration with his friend John Taylor on The Rymes of Robyn Hood. A collection of his many scholarly articles on northern history appeared as Church and Society in the Medieval North of England in 1996.
A fellow of the British Academy from 1988, Barrie also had the unique honour of serving as president of both the Ecclesiastical History Society and the Jewish Historical Society of England. In addition to his active participation on the committees of a number of national historical organizations, he was a member of the committee of the Record Series of the YAS for more than thirty years and for a time its general editor, chairman of the Surtees Society, chairman of the York Archaeological Trust, and a member of the York Glaziers’ Trust. The three Festschrift volumes, together with the celebratory volume of his own essays on medieval Jewish history with which he was presented after he retired, testify to the great affection and respect in which he was so widely held.