Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/11

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Burton
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Burton

city with every demonstration of joy. On 30 Nov. Burton appeared before the house, and on 5 Dec. presented a petition setting forth his sufferings. The house on 12 March 1640-1 declared the proceedings against him illegal, and cast Laud and others in damages. On 24 March his sentence was reversed, and his benefice ordered to be restored; on 20 April a sum of 6,000l. was voted to him; on 8 June a further order for his restoration to his benefice was made out. He recovered his degrees, and received that of B.D. in addition. The money was not paid, nor did he get his benefice, to which Robert Chestlin had been regularly presented. But on 5 Oct. 1642 his old parishioners petitioned the house that he might be appointed Sunday afternoon lecturer, and this was done. Chestlin, who resisted the appointment, was somewhat hardly used, being imprisoned at Colchester for a seditious sermon; he escaped to the king at Oxford. Left thus in possession at St. Matthew's, Friday Street, Burton organised a church on the independent model. Gardiner says of Burton's 'Protestation Protested,' published in July 1641, that it 'sketched out that plan of a national church, surrounded by voluntary churches, which was accepted at the revolution of 1688.' He published a 'Vindication of Churches commonly called Independent,' 1644 (in answer to Prynne), and exercised a very strict ecclesiastical discipline within his congregation. Marsden says 'it was not in the power of malice to desire, or of ingenuity to suggest, a weekly spectacle so hurtful to the royal cause' as that of Burton preaching in Friday Street without his ears. He had enjoyed the honour of preaching before parliament, but did not approve the course which events subsequently took. He was for some time allowed to hold a catechetical lecture every Tuesday fortnight at St. Mary's, Aldermanbury, but on his introducing his independent views the churchwardens locked him out in September 1645. This led to an angry pamphlet war with the elder Calamy, rector of the parish [see Calamy, Edmund, 1600-1666]. Wood, who remarks that he 'grew more moderate,' thought he lived to witness the execution of Charles, but he died a year before that event. During his imprisonment he had contracted the disease of the stone, which was probably the cause of his death. He was buried on 7 Jan. 1647-8. By his first wife, Anne, he had two children: 1. Anne, bapt. 21 Sept. 1621. 2. Henry, bapt. 13 May 1624, who married Ursula Maisters on 30 Nov. 1647, and is described as a merchant. His second wife, Sarah, and son, Henry, survived him, and on 17 Feb. 1652 petitioned the house for maintenance; the son got lands of 200l. yearly value from the estate of certain delinquents, out of which the widow was to have 100l. a year for life. Granger describes a rare print of Laud and Burton, in which the archbishop vomits his works while the puritan holds his head.

Burton's chief publications in addition to those mentioned are: 1. 'A Censvre of Simonie,' 1624, 4to. 2. 'A Plea to an Appeale,' 1626. 3. 'The Seven Vials; or a briefe Exposition upon the 15 and 16 chapters of the Revelation,' 1628. 4. 'A Tryall of Private Devotion,' 1628. 5. 'England's Bondage and Hope of Deliverance,' 1641, 4to (sermon from Psalm liii. 7, 8, before the parliament on 20 June). 6. 'Truth still Truth, though shut out of doors,' 1645, 4to (distinct from 'Truth shut out of doores,' a previous pamphlet of the same year); and, from the catalogue of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, 7. 'The Grand Impostor Unmasked, or a detection of the notorious hypocrisie and desperate impiety of the late Archbishop (so styled) of Canterbury, cunningly couched in that written copy which he read on the scaffold,' &c. 4to, n.d. 8. 'Conformities Deformity,' 1646, 4to.

[Narration of the Life, &c., 1643 (portrait); Biog. Brit. 1748, ii. 1045, ed. Kippis, iii. 43; Wood's Ath. Ox. 1691, i. 814, 828, &c.; Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, 1714, ii. 165; Brook's Lives of the Puritans, 1813, iii. 40; Fisher's Companion and Key to Hist. of Eng. 1832, pp. 515, 610; Marsden's Later Puritans, 1872, pp. 122 sq.: Gardiner's Hist. England, vii. viii. ix. x.; Hook's Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, xi. 1875 (Laud), 292 sq.; extracts from parish registers of Birdsall, per Rev. L. S. Gresley, and of St. Matthew's, Friday Street, per Rev. Dr. Simpson.]

A. G.

BURTON, HEZEKIAH (d. 1681), divine, was a fellow of Magdalen College, Cambridge, and eminent as a tutor. He was entered as a pensioner in 1647, was elected Wray fellow 1651, graduated as M.A. 1654, was incorporated at Oxford the same year, was B.D. 1661, and D.D. by royal mandate 1669. He was known to Samuel Pepys, Richard Cumberland, and Orlando Bridgeman, all of his college, and to Henry More, the Platonist. More sent him a queer story of a ghost, as circumstantial as Mrs. Veal's, which appeared in Yorkshire about 1661 (Lightfoot, Remains, li; Kennet, Register, 763). Bridgeman, on becoming chancellor in 1667, gave a chaplaincy to his college friend, and appointed him to a prebendal stall at Norwich. He was intimate with Tillotson and Stillingfleet, and had been associated with them and Bishop Wilkins in an abortive proposal for a com-