His mother died, and while the boy was still an infant, his father, a manufacturer, married Elizabeth Horne (1760–1833), moved to London, and then engaged in the malting business at Hertford.

After a year as a tutor in Liverpool, Barton spent the rest of his life at Woodbridge, Suffolk, for the most part as a clerk in Messrs Alexander's Bank.

[1] Barton became friends with Southey, Lamb, and other men and women of letters, including the local children's writer Anne Knight, with whom he lodged, while providing poems for some of her books.

His best-known hymns are "Lamp of our feet, whereby we trace", "Walk in the light, so shalt thou know", "Fear not, Zion's sons and daughters", "Hath the invitation ended?"

Lucy published a selection of her father's poems and letters, to which Edward Fitzgerald, translator of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and her future husband, wrote a biographical introduction.