In company with fifty-eight Cheshire ministers he signed the attestatinn to the solemn league and covenant in 1648 (Calamy, Comtinuation, i. 171). In this document his name is spelt Burghah, and by Calamy Burgal. In 1658 he preached and published a sermon at the dedication of the free school at Acton (ib.) From the year 1655 he complains that he was much molested by the quakers, and speaks of their opinions with great asperity (Diary for 1655, 1660; Calamy, Abridgement of Baxter's Life and Times. ii. 128).
When the Act of Uniformity was passed, Durghall, after preaching farewell sermons at his churches of Wrenbury and Acton, was on 3 Oct. 1662 suspended from the vicarage of Acton, and on the 28th his successor Kirks was appointed. The diary ends in the year 1663, when expelled from the vicarage he was reduced to poverty; the last note in the diary complains that he was defrauded of his right to the tithes. A school was formed by public subscription for his maintenance (Ormerod, iii. 185, n.; Lysons, Magna Brit. vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 471, from answers to the queries of Bishop Porteus in the bishops’ registry, 1778). Burghall died 8 Dec. 1665, steadfast in his religious faith (Calamy, Continuation, i. 171). His diary was left in manuscript. It was printed in 1778 in an anonymous ‘History of Cheshire,' in two vols., which incorporated King's ‘Vale Royal’ with this and similar narratives (Lysons, Magna Brit. ii. ii. 466 ; Omerod, iii. 222-8). It is more accessible in Barlow’s ‘Cheshire’ (1855). Its title is ‘Providence improved’ and it begins with the year 1628. Before the civil war the entries only record what the author regarded as the special interventions of Providence in the neighbourhood of Bunbury. In the year 1641 Burghall first notices political events, and afterwards gives a very detailed account of the military operations in Cheshire. The reason was that Byron took his church at Acton and made it a basis for the siege of Nantwich. The narrative throws additional light on some disputed points in the history of the war. Barlow in one of his notes to the diary (many of these notes, he says, were furnished by Mr. Aspland) states that Burghall married a sister of John Bruen, but he does not give any authority for the statement; and all the marriages of Bruen's sisters are shown in Ormerods pedigree of the Bruen family (Ormerod, Cheshire, ii. 175).
[Burghall Diary; Omerod's Cheshire; Lysons's Magna Brit. vol. ii. pt. pp, 466-71; Calamy's Abridgement, ii. 128, Continuation, i. 171; Palmer's Nonconf. Memorial, i. 255; Chetham Society's publications vols. viii. and xv.; Account of the Siege of Nantwith (1774).]
BURGHERS, MICHAEL (d. 1727), a Dutch engraver and draughtman, came to England when young, and settled at Oxford. He engraved the print in the ‘University Almanac’ for 1676, and most of those which followed it up to 1720. He made many small views of buildings at Queen's College and Christ Church. He also engraved the following portraits: William Sommer, the antiquary; Francis Junius, after A. van Dyck; John Barefoot, letter-doctor to the university, 1681; head of James II in an almanac, 1686; William Penderill of Boscobel in Salop; Robert Eglesfield, founder of Queen's College; Sir W. Read, chemical physician; and the Visage of Christ, engraved in the manner of Claude Mellan. In mezzotinto Burghers executed a portrait of Anthony à Wood, the antiquary. On several of his plates he added to his name ‘Academiæ Oxon. chalcographis,’ but sometimes marked them with the initials M.B. only. He died, according to Hearne’s ‘Reliquiæ,’ on 10 Jan. 1726-7.
[Redgraves Dictionary of Artists (1878); MS. notes in British Museum]
BURGHERSH, BARTHOLOMEW, Lord, the elder (d. 1355), was the second (or perhaps the third) son of Robert, lord Burghersh, and succeeded to his father's title and estates on the death of his elder brother Stephen. He was the nephew on the mother’s side and namesake of Bartholomew, lord Badlesmere, one of the most powerful of the barons. He married Elizabeth, one of the three coheiresses of Theobald, lord Verdon, an alliance by which his wealth and power were increased. Lord Badlesmere was a bitter enemy of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, and we find Burghersh taking an active part in the unhappy contests of parties in Edward II’s reign as an adherent of his uncle, whom in 1317 he accompanied in an expedition to Scotland. In October 1321, when Leeds Castle, Kent—the gates of which had been shut against Queen Isabella by Lady Badlesmere—surrendered to Edward, who had with unwonted spirit raised a force of thirty thousand men to avenge the insult offered to his wife, Burghersh, who was one of the garrison, was taken risoner and incarcerated in the Tower of London. This imprisonment was probably the means of saving him from the fate of his uncle after the disastrous battle of Boroughbridge. He was spared to aid in the overthrow of his unfortunate sovereign. On the landing of Isabella, on 24 Sept. 1326, his brother Henry
