of eighty-two manors; of which no less than twenty-one were in Shropshire, eight in Somersetshire, eight in Worcesters ire, and thirteen in Kent and Surrey, where a series of his estates extended from Woolwich and Bexley to Sheen and Wickham, almost encompassing South London (Cal. Inquis. post Mortem, i. 115). When we add to these vast estates the ecclesiastical preferments lavished on his kinsmen, the vast portions assigned to his daughters, whom he married to great nobles, all that he himself held despite the laws against pluralities, and the ‘mirabilis munificentia’ (Wykes, A. M. iv. 262) that marked all his expenditure, we can hardly wonder that the archbishop, a zealous upholder of the mendicant orders, objected to his further promotion.
Burnell was not very successful in his efforts to found a family. Two of his brothers were slain on the Menai Straits by the Welsh in 1282 (Trivet, p.305; Rishanger, p. 102). His third brother, Sir Hugh, died in 1286, leaving a son, Philip, who wasted the uncle’s patrimony, and was one of the first persons of distinction to suffer by the facilities for recovering trader’s debts which the statute of Acton Burnell had alforded (see Eyton, Shropshire). He died in 1294, only two years after his uncle. Twice his descendants were summoned by writ to the House of Lords, but before the fourteenth century was over the peerage became extinct (Courthope, Historic Peerage, p. 85). Only a few ruins now remain of the great hall at Acton in which the parliament held its session, and modern alterations have almost destroyed the identity of Burnell‘s great house, built with timber from the royal woods, strengthened with a wall of stone and lime, and crenellated hy special royal license (Rot. Pat. 12 E. I, mm. 17 and 6).
Burnell’s faithfulness, wisdom, and experience must be set against the greediness and the licentiousness and the nepotism that stained his private character (An. Dunst. in An. Mon. iv. 873). His kindness of heart, his liberality, affability, love of peacemaking,' and readiness in giving audience to his suitors brought him a good share of his master’s popularity. The intimate friend of Edward I could hardly have been lacking in some elements of justice. The confidential minister of the greatest of the Plantagencts was almost necessarily a great statesman. The ecclesiastic who stood up for the crown against the Franciscan primate prepared the Way for the later assertions of national independence. The author of the statute of Rhuddlan and the ordinance De Statu Hiherniæ played an important part in the process of unifying the British islands. The monk of Worcester was full justified in saying that his peer would not lie found in those days (An. Wig. A. M. iv. 510; cf. An. Dunst. A. M. iv. 373; Rymer, i. 559, Canonicus Wellensis in Anglia Sacra, i. 566).
[The chief authorities for the various aspects of Burnell’s career have been already enumerated in the course of this article. Of his family, early history, and relations with Shropshire, everything known has been judiciously collected by Eyton. His political career can be traced in the calendars of the Close and Patent Rolls, in Rymer’s Foedara, and in the clam allusions of las chroniclers, particularly those included in Luard’s Annales Monastician the Rolls Series. The Canon of Wells is the best authority for what he did in his own diocese. The Register of Peckham gives, with his relations to the airchbisllop, his general ecclesiastical policy. Short modern lives are to be found in Godwin’s Catalogue of Bishops of Bath and Wells, Cassan's Bishops of Bath and Wells, and a skeleton of facts and dates in Le Neve’s Fasti Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ; of the longer lives, that of Lord Campbell (Lives of the Chancellors, vol. i.) is careless and inaccurate, and much inferior to the biography in Foss (Judges of England, iii. 63-7; Biographia Juridica, p. 143).]
BURNES, Sir ALEXANDER (1805–1841), an Indian political officer, was the fourth son of James Burnes, writer of the signet and provost of Montrose. He belonged to the same family as Robert Burns, the poet, his great-grandfather and the poet's father having been brothers. Through the influence of Joseph Hume, he was appointed, at the age of sixteen, to an Indian cadetship, and joined the Bombay native infantry in 1821. Devoting himself, immediately after his arrival in India, to the study of the native languages, he was selected, while still an ensign, for the post of regimental interpreter, and shortly afterwards for that of adjutant. His subsequent advancement was rapid. In 1825 he was appointed to the quartermaster-general's department, and four years later was transferred to the political department as assistant to the political resident in Cutch. In 1830 he was despatched on a complimentary mission to Lahore, in charge of a present, consisting of a batch of English horses, which had been sent by the king of England to Ranjít Singh. In combination with this duty, he was instructed to explore the countries on the lower Indus, and to this end was entrusted with presents for the amírs of Sind. The journey was not accomplished without some difficulties, for the amírs distrusted its object; but the obstacles offered to Burnes's progress through Sind were
