18 September 1643 A.D. Gilbert Burnet Born—Church of England Bishop & Scholar of the English Reformation
18
September 1643 A.D. Gilbert Burnet Born—Church of England Bishop
& Scholar of the English Reformation
Burnet’s Thirty-nine
Articles is a must-read for serious Protestant, Reformational, and Reformed
Anglicans. It annoyed Laud-billies. It’s
available at: http://www.amazon.com/Exposition-Thirty-Nine-Articles-Church-England/dp/0559005334/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400790971&sr=8-1&keywords=gilbert+burnet+thirty-nine+articles/
Burnet’s History of the
Reformation. There are several
volumes. Here is Vol. 4 at: http://www.amazon.com/The-History-Reformation-Church-England/dp/1498123953/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1400791064&sr=8-4&keywords=gilbert+burnet+history+of+the+reformation
No author. “Gilbert Burnet.” Soylent Communication: NNDB. N.d.
http://www.nndb.com/people/219/000102910/. Accessed 22 May 2014.
Gilbert Burnet
Born: 18-Sep-1643
Birthplace: Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 17-Mar-1715
Cause of death: unspecified
Remains: Buried, St. James's Churchyard, Clerkenwell, London, England
Birthplace: Edinburgh, Scotland
Died: 17-Mar-1715
Cause of death: unspecified
Remains: Buried, St. James's Churchyard, Clerkenwell, London, England
Gender: Male
Religion: Anglican/Episcopalian
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Religion, Historian
Religion: Anglican/Episcopalian
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Religion, Historian
Nationality: Scotland
Executive summary: Bishop of Salisbury
Executive summary: Bishop of Salisbury
English
bishop and historian, born in Edinburgh on the 18th of September 1643, of an
ancient and distinguished Scottish house. He was the youngest son of Robert
Burnet, who at the Restoration became a lord of session with the title of Lord
Crimond. Robert Burnet had refused to sign the Scottish Covenant, although the
document was drawn up by his brother-in-law, Archibald Johnstorie, Lord
Warristoun. He therefore found it necessary to retire from his profession, and
twice went into exile. He disapproved of the rising of the Scots, but was none
the less a severe critic of the government of Charles
I and of
the action of the Scottish bishops. This moderate attitude he impressed on his
son Gilbert, whose early education he directed. The boy entered Marischal
College at the age of nine, and five years later graduated M.A. He then spent a
year in the study of feudal and civil law before he resolved to devote himself
to theology. He became a probationer for the Scottish ministry in 1661 just
before episcopal government was re-established in Scotland. His decision to
accept episcopal orders led to difficulties with his family, especially with
his mother, who held rigid Presbyterian views. From this time dates his
friendship with Robert Leighton, who greatly influenced
his religious opinions. Leighton had, during a stay in the Spanish Netherlands,
assimilated something of the ascetic and pietistic spirit of Jansenism, and was
devoted to the interests of peace in the church. Burnet wisely refused to
accept a benefice in the disturbed state of church affairs, but he wrote an
audacious letter to Archbishop Sharp asking him to take measures to restore
peace. Sharp sent for Burnet, and dismissed his advice without apparent
resentment. He had already made valuable acquaintances in Edinburgh, and he now
visited London, Oxford and Cambridge, and, after a short visit to Edinburgh in
1663, when he sought to secure a reprieve for his uncle Warristoun, he
proceeded to travel in France and Holland. At Cambridge he was strongly
influenced by the philosophical views of Ralph
Cudworth
and Henry More, who proposed an unusual degree of toleration within the
boundaries of the church and the limitations imposed by its liturgy and
episcopal government; and his intercourse in Holland with foreign divines of
different Protestant sects further encouraged his tendency to
latitudinarianism.
When he returned
to England in 1664 he established intimate relations with Sir Robert Moray and
with John Maitland, earl and afterwards first duke of Lauderdale, both of whom
at that time advocated a tolerant policy towards the Scottish covenanters.
Burnet became a member of the Royal Society, of which Moray was the first
president. On his father's death he had been offered a living by a relative,
Sir Alexander Burnet, and in 1663 the living of Saltoun, East Lothian, had been
kept open for him by one of his father's friends. He was not formally inducted
at Saltoun until June 1665, although he had served there since October 1664.
For the next five years he devoted himself to his parish, where he won the
respect of all parties. In 1666 he alienated the Scottish bishops by a bold
memorial (printed in vol. II of the Miscellanies of the Scottish
Historical Society), in which he pointed out that they were departing from the
custom of the primitive church by their excessive pretensions, and yet his
attitude was far too moderate to please the Presbyterians. In 1669 he resigned
his parish to become professor of divinity in the University of Glasgow, and in
the same year he published an exposition of his ecclesiastical views in his Modest
and Free Conference between a Conformist and a Nonconformist (by "a
lover of peace"). He was Leighton's right hand in the efforts at a
compromise between the episcopal and the presbyterian principle. Meanwhile he
had begun to differ from Lauderdale, whose policy after the failure of the
scheme of "Accommodation" moved in the direction of absolutism and
repression, and during Lauderdale's visit to Scotland in 1672 the divergence
rapidly developed into opposition. He warily refused the offer of a Scottish
bishopric, and published in 1673 his four "conferences", entitled Vindication
of the Authority, Constitution and Laws of the Church and State of Scotland,
in which he insisted on the duty of passive obedience. It was partly through
the influence of Anne (d. 1716), duchess of Hamilton in her own right, that he
had been appointed at Glasgow, and he made common cause with the Hamiltons
against Lauderdale. The duchess had made over to him the papers of her father
and uncle, from which he compiled the Memoirs of the Lives and Actions of
James and William, dukes of Hamilton and Castleherald. In which an Account is
given of the Rise and Progress of the Civil Wars of Scotland... together with
many letters... written by King Charles I (London, 1677), a book which was
published as the second volume of a History of the Church of Scotland,
Spottiswoode's History forming the first. This work established his
reputation as an historian. Meanwhile he had clandestinely married in 1671 a
cousin of Lauderdale, Lady Margaret Kennedy, daughter of John Kennedy, 6th earl
of Cassilis, a lady who had already taken an active part in affairs in
Scotland, and was eighteen years older than Burnet. The marriage was kept
secret for three years, and Burnet renounced all claim to his wife's fortune.
Lauderdale's
ascendancy in Scotland and the failure of the attempts at compromise in
Scottish church affairs eventually led Burnet to settle in England. He was
favorably received by Charles II in 1673, when he went up
to London to arrange for the publication of the Hamilton Memoirs, and he
was treated with confidence by the duke of York. On his return to Scotland
Lauderdale refused to receive him, and denounced him to Charles II as one of
the chief centers of Scottish discontent. Burnet found it wiser to retire to
England on the plea of fulfilling his duties as royal chaplain. Once in London
he resigned his professorship (September 1674) at Glasgow; but, although James
remained his friend, Charles struck him off the roll of court chaplains in
1674, and it was in opposition to court influence that he was made chaplain to
the Rolls Chapel by the master, Sir Harbottle Grimston, and appointed lecturer
at St. Clement's. He was summoned in April 1675 before a committee of the House
of Commons to give evidence against Lauderdale, and disclosed, without
reluctance according to his enemies, confidences which had passed between him
and the minister. He himself confesses in his autobiography that "it was a
great error in me to appear in this matter", and his conduct cost him the
patronage of the duke of York. In ecclesiastical matters he threw in his lot
with Thomas Tillotson and John Tenison, and at the time of the Revolution had
written some eighteen polemics against encroachments of the Roman Catholic
Church. At the suggestion of Sir William Jones, the attorney-general, he began
his History of the Reformation in England, based on original documents.
In the necessary research he received some pecuniary help from Robert
Boyle,
but be was hindered in the preparation of the first part (1679) through being
refused access to the Cotton library, possibly by the influence of Lauderdale.
For this volume he received the thanks of parliament, and the second and third
volumes appeared in 1681 and 1715. In this work he undertook to refute the
statements of Nicholas Sanders,, whose De Origine et progressu schismatis
Anglicani libri tres (Cologne, 1585) was still, in the French translation
of Maucroix, the commonly accepted account of the English reformation. Burnet's
contradictions of Sanders must not, however, be accepted without independent
investigation. At the time of the Popish Plot in 1678 he displayed some
moderation, refusing to believe the charges made against the duke of York,
though he chose this time to publish some anti-Roman pamphlets. He tried, at
some risk to himself, to save the life of one of the victims, William Staly,
and visited William Howard, Viscount Stafford, in the Tower
of London.
To the Exclusion Bill he opposed a suggestion of compromise, and it is said
that Charles offered him the bishopric of Chichester, "if he would come
entirely into his interests." Burnet's reconciliation with the court was
short-lived. In January 1680 he addressed to the king a long letter on the
subject of his sins; he was known to have received the dangerous confidence of
Wilmot, earl of Rochester, in his last illness; and he was even suspected, unjustly,
in 1683, of having composed the paper drawn up on the eve of death by William
Russell, Lord Russell, whom he attended to the scaffold. On the 5th of November
1684 he preached, at the express wish of his patron Grimston, and against his
own desire, the usual anti-Catholic sermon. He was consequently deprived of his
appointments by order of the court, and on the accession of James
II
retired to Paris. He had already begun the writing of his memoirs, which were
to develop into the History of His Own Time.
Burnet now
travelled in Italy, Germany and Switzerland, finally settling in Holland at the
Hague, where he won from the princess of Orange a confidence which proved
enduring. He rendered a signal service to William by inducing the princess to
offer to leave the whole political power in her husband's hands in the event of
their succession to the English crown. A prosecution against him for high
treason was now set on foot both in England and in Scotland, and he took the
precaution of naturalizing himself as a Dutch subject. Lady Margaret Burnet was
dying when he left England, and in Holland he married a Dutch heiress of
Scottish descent, Mary Scott. He returned to England with William and Mary, and
drew up the English text of their declaration. His earlier views on the
doctrine of non-resistance had been sensibly modified by what he saw in France
after the revocation of the edict of Nantes and by the course of affairs at
home, and in 1688 he published an Inquiry into the Measures of Submission to
the Supreme Authority in defense of the revolution. He was consecrated to
the see of Salisbury on the 31st of March 1689 by a commission of bishops to
whom Archbishop Sancroft had delegated his authority, declining personally to
perform the office. In his pastoral letter to his clergy urging them to take
the oath of allegiance, Burnet grounded the claim of William and Mary on the
right of conquest, a view which gave such offense that the pamphlet was burned
by the common hangman three years later. As bishop he proved an excellent
administrator, and gave the closest attention to his pastoral duties. He
discouraged plurality of livings, and consequent non-residence, established a
school of divinity at Salisbury, and spent much time himself in preparing
candidates for confirmation, and in the examination of those who wished to
enter the priesthood. Four discourses delivered to the clergy of his diocese
were printed in 1694. During Queen
Mary II's
lifetime ecclesiastical patronage passed through her hands, but after her death
William III appointed an
ecclesiastical commission, on which Burnet was a prominent member, for the
disposal of vacant benefices. In 1696 and 1697 he presented memorials to the
king suggesting that the first-fruits and tenths raised by the clergy should be
devoted to the augmentation of the poorer livings, and though his suggestions were
not immediately accepted, they were carried into effect under Queen
Anne by
the provision known as Queen Anne's Bounty. His second wife died of smallpox in
1698, and in 1700 Burnet married again, his third wife being Elizabeth
(1661-1709), widow of Robert Berkeley and daughter of Sir Richard Blake, a rich
and charitable woman, known by her Method of Devotion, posthumously
published in 1710. In 1699 he was appointed tutor to the royal duke of Gloucester,
son of the Princess Anne, an appointment which he accepted somewhat against his
will. His influence at court had declined after the death of Queen Mary;
William resented his often officious advice, placed little confidence in his
discretion, and soon after his accession is even said to have described him as ein
rechter Tartuffe. Burnet made a weighty speech against the bill (1702-03)
directed against the practice of occasional conformity, and was a consistent
exponent of Broad Church principles. He devoted five years labor to his Exposition
of the Thirty-nine Articles (1699), which was severely criticized by the
High Church clergy. But his hopes for a comprehensive scheme which might
include nonconformists in the English Church were necessarily destroyed on the
accession of Queen Anne. He died on the 17th of March 1715, and was buried in
the parish of St. James's, Clerkenwell.Burnet directed in his will that his most important work, the History of His Own Time, should appear six years after his death. It was published (2 vols., 1724-34) by his sons, Gilbert and Thomas, and then not without omissions. It was attacked in 1724 by John Cockburn in A Specimen of some free and impartial Remarks. Burnet's book naturally aroused much opposition, and there were persistent rumors that the manuscript had been unduly tampered with. He has been freely charged with gross misrepresentation, an accusation to which he laid himself open, for instance, in the account of the birth of James, the Old Pretender. His later intimacy with the Marlboroughs made him very lenient where the duke was concerned. The greatest value of his work naturally lies in his account of transactions of which he had personal knowledge, notably in his relation of the church history of Scotland, of the Popish Plot, of the proceedings at the Hague previous to the expedition of William and Mary, and of the personal relations between the joint sovereigns.
Of his
children by his second wife, William (d. 1729) became a colonial governor in
America; Gilbert (d. 1726) became prebendary of Salisbury in 1715, and chaplain
to George I in 1718; and Sir Thomas (1694-1753), his literary executor and
biographer, became in 1741 judge in the court of common pleas.
Father: Robert Burnet (b. 1592,
d. 1661)
Wife: Lady Margaret Kennedy (m. 1671)
Wife: Mary Scott (m. in Holland, d. 1698 smallpox)
Son: William Burnet (American Colonial governor, d. 1729)
Son: Gilbert Burnet (clergyman, d. 1726)
Son: Sir Thomas Burnet (b. 1694, d. 1753)
Wife: Elizabeth Blake (b. 1661, m. 1700, d. 1709)
Wife: Lady Margaret Kennedy (m. 1671)
Wife: Mary Scott (m. in Holland, d. 1698 smallpox)
Son: William Burnet (American Colonial governor, d. 1729)
Son: Gilbert Burnet (clergyman, d. 1726)
Son: Sir Thomas Burnet (b. 1694, d. 1753)
Wife: Elizabeth Blake (b. 1661, m. 1700, d. 1709)
University: MA, Marischal College
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