clared by the commissioners to be within reason; but the disappointed men refused to accept this decision, and much recrimination followed. Out of this probably arose a quarrel with Mr. John Gilbert, whose name suggests some relationship to Raleigh. The quarrel resulted in a challenge sent by Burgh, in which he desired his antagonist not to use boyish excuses, or he would beat him like a boy (March 1593-4; Cal. S. R Dom. 1591-4, p. 477). Gilbert accepted the challenge, claiming the choice of weapons and choosing single rapiers. In default of exact evidence the agreement of dates leads to the conclusion that the duel took place, and that Burgh was killed. He was buried in St. Andrew’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, where, in the following year, a tablet was erected to his memory. This has now disappeared; but, according to a copy of the inscription preserved by Croll (The Antiquities of St. Peter’s or the Abbey Church of Westminster, by J. C. 1711, p. 198), Burgh is said to have been taken away ‘morte immaturâ,' in the thirty-second year of his age, on 7 March 1594, The inscription seems to imply, and-by Croll and others, including the late Dean Stanley-has been understood to imply, that Burgh was slain in boarding the Great Carrack. It distinctly states, however, that he brought the Carrack to England, and was most honourably received. The hold and crafty enemy whom Burgh despised, and at whose hands he fell, may very well have been Mr. Gilbert. Burke (Extinct and Dormant Peerages, 1846), giving an English version of this inscription, renders it ‘he fell by an untimely death in the fifty-third year of his age;’ and it is so repeated in later editions. This evidently is a mistake. The age of fifty-three seems incompatible with the ‘morte immaturâ præreptus,’ as well as with the known age of William, lord Burgh, born in or about 1525 (Nicolas, Historic Peerage), of whom Sir John was the third son. Burgh‘s name has been spelt in different ways. Mr. Edwards, who in most points is scrupulously accurate, gives it as Borough, and that while immediately referring to a holograph letter with a clear and legible signature, Jo. Burgh. It may therefore be well to say that if John Burgh was a distinct person from that William Burroughs, the comptroller of the navy, who commanded the Lion in Drake’s expedition to Cadiz in 1587.
[Calendars of State Papers, Domestic, 1585-1594; Brit. Mus. Lansdowne MS. 70, many of the papers of which are abstracted in Edwards’s Life of Raleigh, ii. et seq.]
BURGH, RICHARD de (d. 1243), Irish settler, is said to have been the son of William FitzAldelm, one of the early invaders of Ireland (Dugdale, Baronage, ‘Burgh;’ Lodge, Peerage of Ireland, ‘Clanricarde,' Benedictus, i. 25); he is, however, described in the Close Rolls (Calendar, p. 551) as the son of William de Burgh, who received a large grant in Connaught from John, and was afterwards disseised by him. Richard appears to have made a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James at Compostella in 1222 (Close Rolls), The order of St. James had been founded about fifty years before; the saint was held in high estimation by the chivalry of England, and pilgrimages to his shrine were popular, for they had the character of military adventures, aswell as of acts of devotion. On Richard`s return he received grants of all the lands in Connaught, of which he ond his father had been disseised by John, and thus became lord of a great part of the province. In 1223 the king sent him a Bristol ship laden with supplies, to help him
in his war there (Close Rolls, 1223-5; Excerpt. Rot. Fin. p. 128). In the war with Aedh of Connaught in 1230 he led one of the divisions of the army under the command of Geoffrey de Marisoo, and took part in a battle in which the Irish were defeated and Aedh was taken prisoner. When Peter des ltoches succeeded in driving Richard, the Earl Marshall, into rebellion by his unjust treatment of him, he determined to draw him into Ireland that he might destroy him there. Accordingly he and his party wrote to the lords in Ireland, and excited them against him. This letter, which was scaled by the king, came, among others, to Richard, who joined the conspiracy made against the earl, and invaded his lands. The earl went over to Ireland to defend his lands, and Richard went with Geoffrey de Marisco and the rest to meet him. They offered to be his allies, and incited him to make war against the king’s possessions that they might destroy him and didde his inheritance. None sought his life more eagerly than Richard. When the conspirators openly turned against him and prepared to give him battle (1 April 1234), Richard armed one of his Irish followers, a man of great strength, with his own armour, and charged him to slay the earl. The Irishman failed in his attempt, but the earl was mortally wounded somewhat later in the battle. During the expedition of Henry III to Poitou Richard and other Irish lords were persuaded by Maurice Fitzgerald to fit out a fleet and sail to join the king. They were met by the ships that guarded the coast of France. A storm separated the fleets, but the barons evidently had the worst of the engagement. Frightened alike by the rough weather and the attack of the French, they landed on a
