John de Barton was lord of the manor of Whenby and served his king as a justice on the Commission of Peace for the North Riding of Yorkshire. He was first appointed justice by Henry IV in 1412. After Henry IV died he continued to serve Henry V until 1423. He was not the first member of his family to do the work of the realm. As far back as the beginning of the thirteenth century members of his family had been serving the king.

The Barton family had lived in the neighborhood of Whenby, Fryton and Scackleton for more than 200 years when John de Barton became lord of Whenby. There is a Barton, a village about 30 miles away, from which they may have derived their name, but even the earliest records give no indication that they held land in that village. Information about the family is considerably better for generations after John than before, but there are records of the family as far back as very early in the thirteenth century.

Whenby is a tiny village in the North Riding of Yorkshire. John de Barton was the first Barton to hold the manor at Whenby, and it came to him about 1410 via the convoluted inheritance rules that were often involved in passing land from one generation to the next. But the family had lived very close to Whenby. It is less than ten miles between Whenby and Scackleton and Fryton: the de Barton neighborhood. [Barton Land Holdings]

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Justice and peace were in the hands of John de Barton and hundreds of his peers across England. Whenby was not a large manor; it was not an important manor. But it was from manors like this that the work of the realm was done. The king commissioned and John de Barton and his fathers before him did the good of the realm.