bidg, an excellent both player and painter.’ The author of the elegy says that Burbage ‘could the best both limne and act my grief.’ On 31 March 1613 Burbage received 44s. in gold ‘for paynting and making’ an heraldic device for the Earl of Rutland; Shakespeare received the same sum for some assistance he rendered the actor in the matter. On 25 March 1616 Burbage was paid 4l. 18s. for painting the earl of Rutland's ‘shelde and for the embleance’ (Rutland MSS. iv. 494, 508). At Dulwich College is an undoubted painting by Burbage. It was presented by William Cartwright, the actor, in the 17th century, and is described in Cartwright's own catalogue (still preserved among the college manuscripts) as ‘a woman's head on a boord done by Mr. Burbige, ye actor.’ Another of Cartwright's pictures at Dulwich College is a portrait of Burbage himself, which has been doubtfully ascribed to his own brush. It has been engraved in Harding's ‘Shakespeare illustrated,’ 1793. The painting resembles the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, which has been unjustifiably regarded as another work of the actor.
[Burbage's biography has been written by Mr. J. P. Collier, in his Lives of the Actors in Shakespeare's Plays (1846), pp. 1–58, and in his Hist. of English Dramatic Poetry (1879). Collier, however, relied on some forged documents, e.g. (1) a certificate of the shares of the Blackfriars Theatre, dated November 1589, from the Ellesmere Collection; (2) verses on Alleyn, Kemp, Burbage, and others, first printed in Collier's Memoirs of Alleyn, p. 13; (3) a petition of the players to the Privy Council in 1596, from the State Paper Office; and (4) an undated record of the shares in the Blackfriars and Globe Theatres held by various actors, from the State Paper Office. All authentic documents have been printed from the original manuscripts by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare (1885). See also Mr. F. G. Fleay's Hist. of the Stage (1890) and Actor Lists, 1578–1642, in the Royal Historical Society's Transactions (1881), ix. 44–81; Warner's Cat. Dulwich College MSS., pp. 202, 205, 341; the Variorum Shakespeare (1821); Collections of Documents relating to the Stage (Roxb. Club); Ingleby's Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse (ed. Miss L. Toulmin Smith), for New Shakspere Soc.]
BURCH, EDWARD (fl. 1771), sculptor and general engraver, was admitted as a student to the Academy schools in 1769, after having previously received some training in St. Martin's Lane. He obtained early notice on account of ‘the great delicacy, truth, and finish’ of his studies. He exhibited at the Academy exhibitions from 1771 till 1808, sending altogether eighty-six works. His contributions are described by Redgrave as consisting of models and portraits in wax, casts from gems, intaglios, and classical heads. He married a lady of great beauty, and from that time took to miniature-painting. He painted portraits of Mrs. Fitzherbert and of Mary, duchess of Gloucester. George III sat to him for a bust. He was elected A.R.A. in 1770, and R.A. in 1771. It was in 1794 that he was appointed librarian of the Royal Academy, and held the office till he died. The date of his death is generally fixed at 1814. Redgrave, with more caution, says ‘he lived to an advanced age, became nearly blind, and died in Brompton some time before 1840.’ In 1840, according to accounts which give 1730 as the year of his birth, he would have been 110, an age which (even when royal academicians are in question) it seems not unfair to describe as ‘advanced.’
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists, 1878; Graves's Dict. of Artists who have exhibited in the London Exhibitions, &c., 1884; Bryan's Dict. of Painters, 1884; Rose's Biog. Dict. 1857.]
BURCHARD, Saint (d. 754), the first bishop of Würzburg, is said to have been of a noble English family, but beyond this fact there is nothing authentic known respecting his origin. He was one of the most active associates of his countryman, St. Boniface, archbishop of Mayence, in the evangelisation of the partly German, partly Slavonic peoples who then inhabited the neighbourhood of the Main. In the autumn of 741 he was consecrated bishop of Würzburg by Boniface, who at the same time established two other bishoprics, Buraburg and Eichstädt, to which he appointed his friends Witta and Willibald. Boniface made known these appointments to Pope Zacharias, whose letter of ratification addressed to Burchard is still extant. The fact that papal confirmation was sought for these appointments is regarded as an important step in the development of the papal authority over the German church. Burchard's name is also associated with another great incident in this movement towards ecclesiastical unity, the Germanic council of 747, at which the German bishops formally acknowledged their subordination to the holy see. Burchard was the messenger who conveyed the decisions of this council to the pope. It is alleged that he was charged by the German princes with the mission of procuring papal sanction to the deposition of Childeric III and the elevation of Pepin to the Frankish throne. Although this statement rests on no contemporary authority, it is not intrinsically improbable. Burchard built the church of St. Martin at Würzburg, and translated thither the remains of St. Kilian, the first
