He studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and at New College, Oxford, but does not seem to have taken a degree at either university. He afterwards removed to Staple's Inn, and was attached to the household of his kinsman, Sir William Cecil. In 1563 he became a gentleman pensioner to Queen Elizabeth. He was absent in Spain when his poems were sent to the printer by a friend, L Blundeston. Googe then gave his consent, and they appeared in 1563 as Eglogs, Epytaphes, and Sonettes.
There is extant a curious correspondence on the subject of his marriage with Mary Darrell, whose father refused Googe's suit on the ground that she was bound by a previous contract. The matter was decided by the intervention of Sir William Cecil with Archbishop Parker, and the marriage took place in 1564 or 1565. Googe was provost-marshal of the court of Connaught, and some twenty letters of his in this capacity are preserved in the record office.
He was an ardent Protestant, and his poetry is coloured by his religious and political views. In the third "Eglog," for instance, be laments the decay of the old nobility and the rise of a new aristocracy of wealth, and he gives an indignant account of the sufferings of his co-religionists under Mary. The other eclogues deal with the sorrows of earthly love, leading up to a dialogue between Corydon and Cornix, in which the heavenly love is extolled. The volume includes epitaphs on Nicholas Grimald, John Bale and on Thomas Phaer, whose translation of Virgil Googe is uncritical enough to prefer to the versions of Surrey and of Gavin Douglas.
A much more charming pastoral than any of those contained in this volume, "Phyllida was a fayer maid" (Tottel's Miscellany) has been ascribed to Barnabe Googe. He was one of the earliest English pastoral poets, and the first who was inspired by Spanish romance, being considerably indebted to the Diana Enamorada of Montemayor.
His other works include a translation from Marcellus Palingenius (said to be an anagram for Pietro Angelo Manzolli) of a satirical Latin poem, Zodiacus vitae (Venice, 1531?), in twelve books, under the title of The Zodyake of Life (1560); The Popish Kingdome, or reign of Antichrist (1570), translated from Thomas Kirchmeyer or Naogeorgus; The Spiritual Husbandrie from the same author, printed with the last Foure Bookes of Husbandrie (1577), collected by Conradus Heresbuchius; and The Proverbes of Lopes de Mendoza (1579).
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