near Thetford, Norfolk, and of Snailwell, Cambridgeshire, and a prebend in Hereford Cathedral on 20 Jan. 1603–4. His wide learning, which embraced a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, attracted the attention of Sir Walter Raleigh, who received assistance from him in the composition of his ‘History of the World’ (Oldys, Life of Walter Raleigh). He died at Northwold in October 1641, and was buried in the chancel of the church there. A monument was erected to his memory by Samuel Knight, archdeacon of Berkshire, about 1740. He was a voluminous contributor to controversial divinity. He intervened in 1606 in a controversy between John Howson (bishop of Oxford, 1619–28) and Dr. Thomas Pye as to the marriage of divorced persons. In a Latin tractate (Oxford, 1606) Burhill supported Howson's contention that marriage in such cases was unlawful, and refuted Pye's opposite arguments. His pamphlet was bound up with a second edition of Howson's ‘Thesis.’ To the controversy excited by Bishop Andrewes's ‘Tortura Torti,’ a reply to Cardinal Bellarmine, Burhill contributed ‘Responsio pro Tortura Torti contra Martinum Becanum Jesuitam,’ London, 1611; ‘De Potestate regia et Usurpatione papali pro Tortura Torti contra Parellum Andr. Eudæmon,’ Oxford, 1613; and ‘Assertio pro Jure regio contra Martini Becani Jesuitæ Controversiam Anglicanam,’ London, 1613, together with a defence of John Buckeridge's answer to Cardinal Bellarmine's apology. Burhill's printed works also include a Latin panegyric on James I, inviting him to visit Oxford (Oxford, 1603), and a preface to a sermon (London, 1602) of Miles Smith, bishop of Gloucester, 1612–24. In Corpus Christi College Library at Oxford is a manuscript commentary by Burhill on the difficult passages in Job; in the Bodleian are another manuscript tractate in support of monarchy and episcopacy, and a manuscript Latin poem in ten books, entitled ‘Britannia Scholastica, vel de Britanniæ rebus scholasticis.’
[Wood's Athenæ, ed. Bliss, iii. 18–19; Fasti, ed. Bliss, i. 250, 267, 299, 466; Edwards's Life of Raleigh, i. 543–4.]
BURKE, EDMUND (1729–1797), statesman, the second son of Richard Burke, an attorney resident in Dublin, appears to have been born—for the exact date is not absolutely certain—on 12 Jan. 1729, N. S. There is no ground for the often-repeated statement that his family belonged to Limerick. His father was a protestant; his mother, whose maiden name was Nagle, was a Roman catholic. Although brought up in his father's religion, Burke was accustomed to look on Roman Catholicism as the religion of many he loved, and thus early learnt the lesson of toleration. This lesson must have been still further impressed on him when, in 1741, he was sent to a school at Ballitore, co. Kildare, kept by Abraham Shackleton, a member of the Society of Friends, from whom he declared that he gained all that was really valuable in his education. With Shackleton's son Richard he formed a friendship which lasted through life. In 1743 he entered Trinity College, Dublin, and remained there until 1748. He seems to have studied diligently, but in a desultory fashion, taking up various subjects with eagerness, and dropping each in turn for some new pursuit (Works, i. 12). He made himself familiar with Latin authors, and especially with Cicero, 'the model on which he laboured to form his own character, in eloquence, in policy, in ethics, and philosophy' (Sir P. Francis to Lord Holland, p. 17). Although it has been asserted that he knew little of Greek, a letter of C. J. Fox states that he knew as much of that language as men usually do who have neglected it since their school or college days, and that the writer had heard him quote Homer and Pindar (Dilke, Papers of a Critic, ii. 312). He gained a scholarship by examination in 1746. His letters to Richard Shackleton during this period are such as any earnestly minded and ambitious youth might have written, and the verses sent with them do not show any special power. As in after life, his favourite recreation was to be among trees and gardens. He took his B.A. degree in the spring commencements of 1748, having been entered at the Middle Temple the year before, and in 1750 came up to London to study law. He did not apply himself steadfastly to work. His health was weak, and he seems to have spent much time in travelling about in company with his kinsman William Burke [q. v.], staying at Monmouth, at Turley House, Wiltshire, more than once at Bristol, and at other places. We scarcely know anything of this period of his life; for with the exception of one rather obscure fragment (Prior, 41), there is not a letter of his extant between 1752 and 1757. He seems to have broken off all communication even with R. Shackleton, for writing to him, 10 Aug. 1757, he says that he sends him a copy of his 'Philosophical Inquiry' 'as a sort of offering in atonement,' and speaks of himself as having been 'sometimes in London, sometimes in remote parts of the country, sometimes in France, and shortly, please God, to be in America' (Works, i. 17).
