This surname is derived from the name of an ancestor. 'the son of Berold,' the French Berraud. This great surname appears as a personal name in Domesday: Baret, Yorkshire.

Stephanus fil. Beroldi, Pipe Roll, 5 Henry II.

Berard de Wattlesfeld, Suffolk, 1273. Hundred Rolls.

Robert Berard, Bedfordshire, ibid.

Agnes Barat, Cambridgeshire, ibid.

Harvey Baret, Norfolk, ibid.

John Baret, Lincolnshire, ibid.

1575- Edward Barret, Devon, Register of the University of Oxford.

(French-Teut.) 1 theTeut. name-stem Ber- = Bear + the French diminutive suffs. -at, -et. Or Beraht-, also found as Bercht- Berat-, &c. = Bright. [O.H. Ger. beraht] Agnes Barat.—Hundred Rolls John Baret.— do.

2 for the French Barraud, Barrault, Teutonic Berwald, Berwalt = Bear-Might. [O.H. Ger. hero-Old Saxon *bero-Old English bera, bear + O.H. Ger. gi)walt = Old Saxon gi)wald = Old English ge)w(e)ald, might, power] (French) 1 belonging to Barret (France) = a Barrier, Gateway. [O.Fr, bar(r)et-barre + the diminutive suff. -et] 2 There has prob. been some confusion with the Old French barat, ‘fraud,’ ‘deceit’ (whence Middle English barat, baret), apparently of Celtic orig. This is the only meaning mis­takenly given to the Norm. surname Barat by Moisy (Noms de Fam. Norm., p. 9). In the Norm. dialect of Guernsey barat still = ‘fraud,’ ‘defrauder,' ‘smuggler’: v. Métivier, Dict. Franco-Norm.

“Cap-maker”, from Old French “Barette”, a cap or bonnet.

(English) Descendant of Barret (bear, rule).

This name is written in Domesday. In the time of Edward the Confessor, “Baret” was the owner of some lands in Yorkshire, which he held after the Conquest as a subtenant of Ilbert de Lacy. The family was very widely spread. Hasted, in his History of Kent, enumerates six different counties in which they were settled. In Wiltshire, they were seated at Titherton Lucas till 1627. In Cornwall, Leland tells us, “Barret a Man of mene Landes dwellith bytwixt Gullant and Lantient Pile.” But it is only with the Kentish family, the most considerable among them, that we have here to do.

Hasted does not trace them further back than 1335, when John de Barrett was seated at Perry Court, and held lands at Hawkhurst. His son Thomas was then dead, and he was succeeded by a grandson Robert de Barrett, who died 9 Ric. II., and was the father of Valentine and John.

Valentine left only a daughter behind him, married to John Darell of Cale Hill. He had served as Sheriff of Kent 6 Hen. IV.; and dying in 1440, was “buried in the chancel of Preston Church, where his portraiture in brass, habited in armour, with his sword and spurs on, still remains; as does that of Cicele his wife, who died two years afterwards.” She was one of the co-heirs of the Leses of Lese Court.

John Barrett, the younger brother, transplanted the family into Essex, where he acquired “the ancient and fair seat” of Aveley Belhouse through Alice eldest daughter of Nicholas de Belhouse—a cadet of an ancient Cambridgeshire family—from whom the place derived its name. On the death of her brother John in 1397, she became his co-heiress; and from that date till 1644, a period of nearly two hundred and fifty years, her inheritance was transmitted in regular succession to seven generations of descendants. Her husband was probably the John Barret who lies buried in a chapel he founded in St. Mary’s Church at Bury St. Edmund’s, at the end of the north nave aisle, and the roof above it bears his mottoes, “God me guyde,” and “Grace me governe,” placed diagonally on the rafters. They are repeated over the place of the great rood; and his altar tomb, bearing a figure in a winding sheet, and some half-effaced inscriptions, stands at the east end of the south aisle. Another John, their great grandson, became “eminent in the Law,” and is praised for his eloquence by Leland. He rebuilt Belhouse, and added to his estate. But in this respect, at least, his successor was even more fortunate, for his wife was the heiress of Thomas Dinely of Stoke-Dinely in Berkshire (whose widow became his father’s second wife), and brought him, with several illustrious quarterings,—she claimed descent from the old Barons Fitzherbert and Milo Earl of Hereford—a very considerable property in Berkshire and Hampshire.

The most note-worthy of the family was its last representative, Sir Edward Barrett, who received a Scottish peerage from Charles I. He succeeded to his grandfather very early in life; and soon after coming of age in 1601 set out on his travels, spending several years abroad. “He was at Florence in 1606; and before that had been in Spain. King James I. knighted him; and in 1618, granted him a Charter of Free-warren in his Manor of Belhouse, &c., about which time he made the Park. In the beginning of the year 1625 he was appointed Embassador to France; but it doth not appear that he went thither. The 17th of October, 1627, he was created Baron Newburgh of Fife in Scotland; and 20th July, 1628, was sworn Privy Counsellor to King Charles I. The 20th of August following he took his seat as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Afterwards he was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, which he enjoyed as long as he lived. Upon Bishop Juxon’s resigning the staff of Lord Treasurer, that office was put into the hands of the Lord Newburgh, with four other of the chief Officers of the Crown. He was a man of a very amiable and respectable character, and lived with great hospitality.”—Morant's Essex. He was twice married, but left no posterity at his death in 1644, and bequeathed Aveley Belhouse to a remote kinsman, Richard Lennard, the younger son of Lord Dacre. From this Richard, who added the name of Barrett to his own, and quartered their coat, descended Thomas Barrett Lennard, seventeenth Baron Dacre.

Lord Newburgh’s only sister Dorothy, the wife of Charles, second and last Lord Stanhope of Harrington, was childless.

Fuller quotes the following account of “an Esquire of signall note” belonging to this family: “Thomas Barryt Squyr to Kyng Harry the Sixt, oftentimes employed in the French warrs under the command of John Duc of Norfolk, being alway trew leige man to his Soveraign Lord the King, having taken Sanctuary at Westminstre to shon the fury of his and the King’s enemyes, was from these hayled forth, and lamentably hewyn a peces, about whilke tym or a lityl before, the Lord Skales late in an evening entrying a Wherry Bott with three persons, and rawghing toowards Westminstre, there likewise too have taken Sanctuary, was discride by a woman, where anon, the wherry man fell on him murthered him, and cast his mangled corpes alond by St. Marie Overy.” This happened in 1461.

Weever, in his Funeral Monuments, identifies this murdered squire with Thomas, son and heir of John Barret and the heiress of Belhouse. But, according to Morant, “it is plain from an ancient deed bearing date twenty years before 1461 that he was then Dead.”

&c. Baret, a personal name of Teutonic origin, is found here in Saxon times. See Domesd. In various forms it has always been very common in France and England.

A Norman name: From the Domesday Book, Baret.