William Barnes II was born by 1533, the first son of William Barnes I.  He married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Eden of Sudbury, Suffolk.

There was a Barnes family at Bold in Lancashire, but unless William Barnes II is to be identified with either William Barne or William Barnes I he almost certainly came of the Essex family and was thus presumably a nominee of Sir Robert Rochester, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. As owners of Fryerning, the Barnes family were neighbours and friends of Sir William Petre, who may have been the intermediary with Rochester. Alternatively, William Barnes the younger may already have been able to claim kinship with the chancellor through his wife Elizabeth Eden, whose mother was a Waldegrave.

Barnes made his will on 7 July and died on 4 Sept. 1559, only three months after he had received licence to enter on his father’s lands. He entrusted the care of his sister Elizabeth to ‘my very good lady and motherly friend my lady Petre’ and Sir William Petre acquired the wardship of Barnes’s own children, Thomas and Griselda. Griselda Barnes later married Thomas, a younger son of Richard Baker of Sissinghurst, Kent, who sat for Lancaster in the Parliament of November 1554.