Bun′yan, John, author of The Pilgrim's Progress, was born near Bedford, England, in 1628. His father was a tinker, and John was trained to that craft. He was very fond of dancing on the village green and of ringing the church bells—things he afterward thought sinful. He served in the army for some time during the English Civil War, though only 16 years old. After the war he married a poor girl and became deeply interested in religion. He began to preach to the poor people in the villages around Bedford, and, getting into discussions with the Quakers, in 1656 he published a book against them. It was a remarkable book for an uneducated craftsman to write. This led to further discussion and the publication of other works, Bunyan being finally arrested and imprisoned. He was in prison 12 years, though he was continually told that he would be set free if he would give up preaching; to which he replied: “If you let me go to-day, I will preach again to-morrow.” He supported himself and his family while in prison by making lace, the remainder of his time being spent in reading the Bible, preaching to the other prisoners and writing religious papers and books. He finally was released in 1672, and preached for three years, after which he was again put in prison, but was let out again six months later. While he was in prison the second time he wrote The Pilgrim's Progress. He became pastor of the Bedford Church, where he remained 16 years, dying in 1688. The Pilgrim's Progress at once became very famous and has since been translated into nearly a hundred languages.
Bur′bank, Luther, the “Plant Wizard,” after four years of patient effort, developed the famous Burbank potato from small tubers of scanty yield when only a boy on the farm on which he was born near Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1849. Although his achievement soon added $20,000,000 a year to the value of our potato crop, he sold his rights to a local seedsman for $150. Not long after, his health requiring outdoor life, he went to California, worked at odd jobs as a farm hand and finally saved enough to start a small nursery. When it was bringing him a profit of nearly $10,000 a year, he gave it up, against the protest of friends, and began the series of experiments on his farm at Santa Rosa which have given us not only the thornless, edible, fruit-bearing cactus, but a long list of other wonders of the plant world, including the crimson poppy, the Shasta daisy, a combination of plum and apricot called the plumcot, the white blackberry, new varieties of apples, pears and cherries, and a walnut tree that produces a wood like mahogany and of remarkably rapid growth. His thornless cactus is a forage plant showing great improvement in productiveness even over alfalfa. The fruit has a flavor between the raspberry and the pineapple, and will grow on the desert as well as the spiny variety. Thousands of acres have been planted, not only in this, but in almost every foreign country. Where alfalfa grows five to ten tons per acre, this cactus produces fifty to two hundred tons. The money derived by Mr. Burbank from the sale of improved varieties, considering the outlay required to produce them, has been small—from $100 to $500 each. Having disposed of the commercial department of his work he now gives his exclusive attention to producing improved varieties of trees, plants and flowers.
Burdett-Coutts, Lady. In 1814 there was born in Ramsburg, Wiltshire, England, a little girl named Angela, the daughter of Sir Thomas Burdett, a celebrated parliamentarian, and granddaughter of Thomas Coutts, a London banker. At the age of 22 she inherited a great fortune and became head of a banking firm that was second only to the Bank of England. People expected her to take a high place at the young queen's court and to marry a duke or prince. Instead she quietly set about the task of bringing light and hope to the swarming millions of East London. At a cost of $450,000 she built St. Stephen's Church, the first institutional church in the world. It combined the religious function with the social settlement. Other churches, schools, model tenements, scholarships in universities, evening schools, penny dinners for poor school children, a fishing school and fleet for famine-stricken west Ireland and a great market-house in the slums of East London, followed in rapid succession. Then plain Angela Burdett added her grandfather's name to her own and the Queen made her a baroness—the only woman of the people ever raised to the peerage in Great Britain. As Lady Burdett-Coutts, she secured the Children's Charter from Parliament, to protect children from cruelty; also a law to stop cruelty to animals. In a time of cholera she cleaned East London and forced new sanitary laws. She assisted starving Irish peasants to emigrate and carried on relief work in the Turko-Russian War. For 70 years she was the friend of the queen and of every celebrated man and woman of her time, from Charles Dickens to the Duke of Wellington. Walter Besant made her the heroine of his novel All Sorts and Conditions of Men. At the age of 68, she married her private secretary, Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett, who took her name and entered parliament to further her ideas of public good. She died in 1907 at the age of 93, universally mourned.
Burgoyne (bûr-goin′), John, an English general during the American Revolution. His surrender to the Americans, Oct. 7, 1777, at Saratoga, (q. v.) was one of the most important victories of the war. Entering the army as a subordinate he had risen by distinguished service in Portugal before being sent to America. On returning to England he wrote an account of
