Barclay was educated at Oxford and Cambridge, and upon his return to England after several years of residence abroad, he was made one of the priests of Saint Mary Ottery, an institution of devout practice and learning in Devonshire.  Here in 1508 was finished ’The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde translated out of Laten, Frenche, and Doche into Englysshe tonge by Alexander Barclay, Preste, and at that time chaplen in the sayd College.’

After his work was completed Barclay went to London, where his poem was “imprentyd ... in Fleet Street at the signe of Saynt George by Rycharde Pyreson to hys Coste and charge:  ended the yere of our Saviour MDIX. the XIII. day of December.”  That he became a Benedictine and lived at the monastery of the order at Ely is evident from his ‘Eclogues.’  Here he translated at the instance of Sir Giles Arlington, Knight, ’The Myrrour of Good Maners,’ from a Latin elegiac poem which Dominic Mancini published in the year 1516.

“It was about this period of his life,” says Mr. Jamieson in his admirable edition of the ‘Ship of Fools,’ “probably the period of the full bloom of his popularity, that the quiet life of the poet and priest was interrupted by the recognition of his eminence in the highest quarters, and by a request for his aid in maintaining the honor of the country on an occasion to which the eyes of all Europe were then directed.  In a letter to Wolsey dated 10th April, 1520, Sir Nicholas Vaux—­busied with the preparation for that meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I called the Field of the Cloth of Gold—­begs the Cardinal to send them ...  Maistre Barkleye, the Black Monke and Poete, to devise histoires and convenient raisons to florisshe the buildings and banquet house withal.”

He became a Franciscan, the habit of which order Bullim refers to; and “sure ’tis,” says Wood, “that living to see his monastery dissolv’d, in 1539, at the general dissolution by act of Henry VIII, he became vicar of Much Badew in Essex, and in 1546, the same year, of the Church of St. Matthew the Apostle at Wokey, in Somersetshire, and finally in 1552, the year in which he died, of that of All Saints, Lombard Street, London.  In his younger days he was esteemed a good poet and orator, but when years came on, he spent his time mostly in pious matters, and in reading the histories of Saints.”

‘The Ship of Fools’ is the most important work associated with Barclay’s name.  It was a translation of Sebastian Brandt’s ‘Stultifera Navis,’ a book which had attracted universal attention on the Continent when it appeared in 1494.  In his preface, Barclay admits that “it is not translated word by word according to the verses of my actor.  For I have but only drawn into our mother tongue in rude language the sentences of the verses as near as the paucity of my wit will suffer me, sometime adding, sometime detracting and taking away such things as seemeth me necessary.”  The classes and conditions of society that Barclay knew were as deserving of satire as those of Germany.  He tells us that his work was undertaken “to cleanse the vanity and madness of foolish people, of whom over great number is in the Realm of England.”