Bürger's character, in spite of his utter want of moral balance, was not lacking in noble and lovable qualities. He was honest in purpose, generous to a fault, tender-hearted and modest. His talent for popular poetry was very considerable, and his ballads are among the finest in the German language. BesidesLenore, Das Lied vom braven Manne, Die Kuh, Der Kaiser und der AbtandDer wilde Jägerare famous. Among his purely lyrical poems, but few have earned a lasting reputation; but mention may be made ofDas Blümchen Wunderhold, Lied an den lieben Mond, and a few love songs. His sonnets, particularly the elegies, are of great beauty.
Editions of Bürger'sSamtliche Schriftenappeared at Göttingen, 1817 (incomplete); 1829-1833 (8 vols.), and 1835 (one vol.); also a selection by E. Grisebach (5th ed., 1894). TheGedichtehave been published in innumerable editions, the best being that by A. Sauer (2 vols., 1884).Briefe von und an Burgerwere edited by A. Strodtmann in 4 vols. (1874). On Bürger's life see the biography by H. Prohle (1856), the introduction to Sauer's edition of the poems, and W. von Wurzbach,G.A. Burger(1900).
BURGERS, THOMAS FRANÇOIS(1834-1881), president of the Transvaal Republic, was born in Cape Colony on the 15th of April 1834, and was educated at Utrecht, Holland, where he took the degree of doctor of theology. On his return to South Africa he was ordained minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and stationed at Hanover in Cape Colony, where he exercised his ministrations for eight years. In 1862 his preaching attracted attention, and two years later an ecclesiastical tribunal suspended him for heretical opinions. He appealed, however, to the colonial government, which had appointed him, and obtained judgment in his favour, which was confirmed by the privy council of England on appeal in 1865. On the resignation of M.W. Pretorius and the refusal of President Brand of the Orange Free State to accept the office, Burgers was elected president of the Transvaal, taking the oath on the 1st of July 1872. In 1873 he endeavoured to persuade Montsioa to agree to an alteration in the boundary of the Barolong territory as fixed by the Keate award, but failed (seeBechuanaland). In 1875 Burgers, leaving the Transvaal in charge of Acting-President Joubert, went to Europe mainly to promote a scheme for linking the Transvaal to the coast by a railway from Delagoa Bay, which was that year definitely assigned to Portugal by the MacMahon award. With the Portuguese Burgers concluded a treaty, December 1875, providing for the construction of the railway. After meeting with refusals of financial help in London, Burgers managed to raise £90,000 in Holland, and bought a quantity of railway plant, which on its arrival at Delagoa Bay was mortgaged to pay freight, and this, so far as Burgers was concerned, was the end of the matter. In June 1876 he induced the raad to declare war against Sikukuni (Secocoeni), a powerful native chief in the eastern Transvaal. The campaign was unsuccessful, and with its failure the republic fell into a condition of lawlessness and insolvency, while a Zulu host threatened invasion. Burgers in an address to the raad (3rd of March 1877) declared "I would rather be a policeman under a strong government than the president of such a state. It is you—-you members of the raad and the Boers—who have lost the country, who have sold your independence for a drink." Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who had been sent to investigate the condition of affairs in the Transvaal, issued on the 12th of April a proclamation annexing the Transvaal to Great Britain. Burgers fully acquiesced in the necessity for annexation. He accepted a pension from the British government, and settled down to farming in Hanover, Cape Colony. He died at Richmond in that colony on the 9th of December 1881, and in the following year a volume of short stories,Tooneelen uit ons dorp, originally written by him for the CapeVolksblad, was published at the Hague for the benefit of his family. A patriot, a fluent speaker both in Dutch and in English, and possessed of unbounded energy, the failure of Burgers was due to his fondness for large visionary plans, which he attempted to carry out with insufficient means (seeTransvaal:History).
For the annexation period see John Martineau,The Life of Sir Bartle Frere, vol. ii. chap, xviii. (London, 1895).
BURGERSDYK,orBurgersdicius,FRANCIS(1590-1629), Dutch logician, was born at Lier, near Delft, and died at Leiden. After a brilliant career at the university of Leiden, he studied theology at Saumur, where while still very young he became professor of philosophy. After five years he returned to Leiden, where he accepted the chair of logic and moral philosophy, and afterwards that of natural philosophy. HisLogicwas at one time widely used, and is still valuable. He wrote alsoIdea Philosophiae Moralis(1644).
BURGES, GEORGE(1786-1864), English classical scholar, was born in India. He was educated at Charterhouse school and Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his degree in 1807, and obtaining one of the members' prizes both in 1808 and 1809. He stayed up at Cambridge and became a most successful "coach." He had a great reputation as a Greek scholar, and was a somewhat acrimonious critic of rival scholars, especially Bishop Blomfield. Subsequently he fell into embarrassed circumstances through injudicious speculation, and in 1841 a civil list pension of £100 per annum was bestowed upon him. He died at Ramsgate, on the 11th of January 1864. Burges was a man of great learning and industry, but too fond of introducing arbitrary emendations into the text of classical authors. His chief works are: Euripides'Troades(1807) andPhoenissae(1809); Aeschylus'Supplices(1821),Eumenides(1822) andPrometheus(1831); Sophocles'Philoctetes(1833); E.F. Poppo'sProlegomena to Thucydides(1837), an abridged translation with critical remarks;Hermesianactis Fragmenta(1839). He also edited some of the dialogues of Plato with English notes, and translated nearly the whole of that author and the Greek anthology for Bohn's Classical library. He was a frequent contributor to theClassical Journaland other periodicals, and dedicated to Byron a play calledThe Son of Erin, or,The Cause of the Greeks(1823).
BURGESS, DANIEL(1645-1713), English Presbyterian divine, was born at Staines, in Middlesex, where his father was minister. He was educated under Busby at Westminster school, and in 1660 was sent to Magdalen Hall, Oxford, but not being able conscientiously to subscribe the necessary formulae he quitted the university without taking his degree. In 1667, after taking orders, he was appointed by Roger Boyle, first Lord Orrery, to the headmastership of a school recently established by that nobleman at Charleville, Co. Cork, and soon after he became private chaplain to Lady Mervin, near Dublin. There he wasordained by the local presbytery, and on returning to England was imprisoned for preaching at Marlborough. He soon regained his liberty, and went to London, where he speedily gathered a large and influential congregation, as much by the somewhat excessive fervour of his piety as by the vivacious illustrations which he frequently employed in his sermons. He was a master of epigram, and theologically inclined to Calvinism. The Sacheverell mob gutted his chapel in 1710, but the government repaired the building. Besides preaching, he gave instruction to private pupils, of whom the most distinguished was Henry St John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke. His son, Daniel Burgess (d. 1747), was secretary to the princess of Wales, and in 1723 obtained aregium donumor government grant of £500 half-yearly for dissenting ministers.
BURGESS, THOMAS(1756-1837), English divine, was born at Odiham, in Hampshire. He was educated at Winchester, and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Before graduating, he edited a reprint of John Burton'sPentalogia. In 1781 he brought out an annotated edition of Richard Dawes'sMiscellanea Critica(reprinted, Leipzig, 1800). In 1783 he became a fellow of his college, and in 1785 was appointed chaplain to Shute Barrington, bishop of Salisbury, through whose influence he obtained a prebendal stall, which he held till 1803. In 1788 he published hisConsiderations on the Abolition of Slavery, in which he advocated the principle of gradual emancipation. In 1791 he accompanied Barrington to Durham, where he did evangelistic work among the poorer classes. In 1803 he was appointed to the vacant bishopric of St David's, which he held for twenty years with great success. He founded the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in the diocese, and also St David's College at Lampeter, which he liberally endowed. In 1820 he was appointed first president of the recently founded Royal Society of Literature; and three years later he was promoted to the see of Salisbury, over which he presided for twelve years, prosecuting his benevolent designs with unwearied industry. As at St David's, so at Salisbury, he founded a Church Union Society for the assistance of infirm and distressed clergymen. He strenuously opposed both Unitarianism and Catholic emancipation. He died on the 19th of February 1837.
A list of his works, which are very numerous, will be found in his biography by J.S. Harford (2nd ed., 1841). In addition to those already referred to may be mentioned hisEssay on the Study of Antiquities,The First Principles of Christian Knowledge;Reflections on the Controversial Writings of Dr Priestley,Emendationes in Suidam et Hesychium et alios Lexicographos Graecos;The Bible, and nothing but the Bible, the Religion of the Church of England.
BURGESS(Med. Lat.burgensis, fromburgus, a borough, a town), a term, in its earliest sense, meaning an inhabitant of a borough, one who occupied a tenement therein, but now applied solely to a registered parliamentary, or more strictly, municipal voter. An early use of the word was to denote a member elected to parliament by his fellow citizens in a borough. In some of the American colonies (e.g.Virginia), a "burgess" was a member of the legislative body, which was termed the "House of Burgesses." Previously to the Municipal Reform Act 1835, burgess was an official title in some English boroughs, and in this sense is still used in some of the states of the United States, as in Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.The Burgess-rollis the register or official list of burgesses in a borough.
BURGH[Bourke, Burke], the name of an historic Irish house, associated with Connaught for more than seven centuries. It was founded by William de Burgh, brother of Hubert de Burgh (q.v.). Before the death of Henry II. (1189) he received a grant of lands from John as lord of Ireland. At John's accession (1199) he was installed in Thomond and was governor of Limerick. In 1199-1201 he was supporting in turn Cathal Carrach and Cathal Crovderg for the native throne, but he was expelled from Limerick in 1203, and, losing his Connaught, though not his Munster estates, died in 1205. His son Richard, in 1227, received the land of "Connok" [Connaught], as forfeited by its king, whom he helped to fight. From 1228 to 1232 he held the high office of justiciar of Ireland. In 1234 he sided with the crown against Richard, earl marshal, who fell in battle against him. Dying in 1243, he was succeeded as lord of Connaught by his son Richard, and then (1248) by his younger son Walter, who carried on the family warfare against the native chieftains, and added greatly to his vast domains by obtaining (c. 1255) from Prince Edward a grant of "the county of Ulster," in consequence of which he was styled later earl of Ulster. At his death in 1271, he was succeeded by his son Richard as 2nd earl. In 1286 Richard ravaged and subdued Connaught, and deposed Bryan O'Neill as chief native king, substituting a nominee of his own. The native king of Connaught was also attacked by him, in favour of that branch of the O'Conors whom his own family supported. He led his forces from Ireland to support Edward I. in his Scottish campaigns, and on Edward Bruce's invasion of Ulster in 1315 Richard marched against him, but he had given his daughter Elizabeth in marriage to Robert Bruce, afterwards king of Scotland, about 1304. Occasionally summoned to English parliaments, he spent most of his forty years of activity in Ireland, where he was the greatest noble of his day, usually fighting the natives or his Anglo-Norman rivals. The patent roll of 1290 shows that in addition to his lands in Ulster, Connaught and Munster, he had held the Isle of Man, but had surrendered it to the king.
His grandson and successor William, the 3rd earl (1326-1333), was the son of John de Burgh by Elizabeth, lady of Clare, sister and co-heir of the last Clare earl of Hertford (d. 1314). He married a daughter of Henry, earl of Lancaster, and was appointed lieutenant of Ireland in 1331, but was murdered in his 21st year, leaving a daughter, the sole heiress, not only of the de Burgh possessions, but of vast Clare estates. She was married in childhood to Lionel, son of Edward III., who was recognized in her right as earl of Ulster, and their direct representative, the duke of York, ascended the throne in 1461 as Edward IV., since when the earldom of Ulster has been only held by members of the royal family.
On the murder of the 3rd earl (1333), his male kinsmen, who had a better right, by native Irish ideas, to the succession than his daughter, adopted Irish names and customs, and becoming virtually native chieftains succeeded in holding the bulk of the de Burgh territories. Their two main branches were those of "MacWilliam Eighter" in southern Connaught, and "MacWilliam Oughter" to the north of them, in what is now Mayo. The former held the territory of Clanricarde, lying in the neighbourhood of Galway, and in 1543 their chief, as Ulick "Bourck,aliasMakwilliam," surrendered it to Henry VIII., receiving it back to hold, by English custom, as earl of Clanricarde and Lord Dunkellin. The 4th earl (1601-1635) distinguished himself on the English side in O'Neill's rebellion and afterwards, and obtained the English earldom of St Albans in 1628, his son Ulick receiving further the Irish marquessate of Clanricarde (1646). His cousin and heir, the 6th earl (1657-1666) was uncle of the 8th and 9th earls (1687-1722), both of whom fought for James II. and paid the penalty for doing so in 1691, but the 9th earl was restored in 1702, and his great-grandson, the 12th earl, was created marquess of Clanricarde in 1789. He left no son, but the marquessate was again revived in 1825, for his nephew the 14th earl, whose heir is the present marquess. The family, which changed its name from Bourke to de Burgh in 1752, and added that of Canning in 1862, still own a vast estate in County Galway.
In 1603 "the MacWilliam Oughter," Theobald Bourke, similarly resigned his territory in Mayo, and received it back to hold by English tenure. In 1627 he was created Viscount Mayo. The 2nd and 3rd viscounts (1629-1663) suffered at Cromwell's hands, but the 4th was restored to his estates (some 50,000 acres) in 1666. The peerage became extinct or dormant on the death of the 8th viscount in 1767. In 1781 John Bourke, a Mayo man, believed to be descended from the line of "MacWilliam Oughter," was created Viscount Mayo, and four years later earl of Mayo, a peerage still extant. In 1872 the 6th earl was murdered in the Andaman Islands when viceroy of India.
The baronies of Bourke of Connell (1580) and Bourke of Brittas (1618), both forfeited in 1691, were bestowed on branchesof the family which has also still representatives in the baronetage and landed gentry of Ireland.
The lords Burgh or Borough of Gainsborough (1487-1599) were a Lincolnshire family believed to be descended from a younger son of Hubert de Burgh. The 5th baron was lord deputy of Ireland in 1597, and his younger brother, Sir John (d. 1594), a distinguished soldier and sailor.
(J. H. R.)
BURGH, HUBERT DE(d. 1243), chief justiciar of England in the reign of John and Henry III., entered the royal service in the reign of Richard I. He traced his descent from Robert of Mortain, half brother of the Conqueror and first earl of Cornwall; he married about 1200 the daughter of William de Vernon, earl of Devon; and thus, from the beginning of his career, he stood within the circle of the great ruling families. But he owed his high advancement to exceptional ability as an administrator and a soldier. Already in 1201 he was chamberlain to King John, the sheriff of three shires, the constable of Dover and Windsor castles, the warden of the Cinque Ports and of the Welsh Marches. He served with John in the continental wars which led up to the loss of Normandy. It was to his keeping that the king first entrusted the captive Arthur of Brittany. Coggeshall is our authority for the tale, which Shakespeare has immortalized, of Hubert's refusal to permit the mutilation of his prisoner; but Hubert's loyalty was not shaken by the crime to which Arthur subsequently fell a victim. In 1204 Hubert distinguished himself by a long and obstinate defence of Chinon, at a time when nearly the whole of Poitou had passed into French hands. In 1213 he was appointed seneschal of Poitou, with a view to the invasion of France which ended disastrously for John in the next year.
Both before and after the issue of the Great Charter Hubert adhered loyally to the king; he was rewarded, in June 1215, with the office of chief justiciar. This office he retained after the death of John and the election of William, the earl marshal, as regent. But, until the expulsion of the French from England, Hubert was entirely engaged with military affairs. He held Dover successfully through the darkest hour of John's fortunes; he brought back Kent to the allegiance of Henry III.; he completed the discomfiture of the French and their allies by the naval victory which he gained over Eustace the Monk, the noted privateer and admiral of Louis, in the Straits of Dover (Aug. 1217). The inferiority of the English fleet has been much exaggerated, for the greater part of the French vessels were transports carrying reinforcements and supplies. But Hubert owed his success to the skill with which he manœuvred for the weather-gage, and his victory was not less brilliant than momentous. It compelled Louis to accept the treaty of Lambeth, under which he renounced his claims to the crown and evacuated England. As the saviour of the national cause the justiciar naturally assumed after the death of William Marshal (1219) the leadership of the English loyalists. He was opposed by the legate Pandulf (1218-1221), who claimed the guardianship of the kingdom for the Holy See; by the Poitevin Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, who was the young king's tutor; by the foreign mercenaries of John, among whom Falkes de Bréauté took the lead; and by the feudal party under the earls of Chester and Albemarle. On Pandulf's departure the pope was induced to promise that no other legate should be appointed in the lifetime of Archbishop Stephen Langton. Other opponents were weakened by the audacious stroke of 1223, when the justiciar suddenly announced the resumption of all the castles, sheriffdoms and other grants which had been made since the king's accession. A plausible excuse was found in the next year for issuing a sentence of confiscation and banishment against Falkes de Bréauté. Finally in 1227, Hubert having proclaimed the king of age, dismissed the bishop of Winchester from his tutorship.
Hubert now stood at the height of his power. His possessions had been enlarged by four successive marriages, particularly by that which he contracted in 1221 with Margaret, the sister of Alexander II. of Scotland; in 1227 he received the earldom of Kent, which had been dormant since the disgrace of Odo of Bayeux. But the favour of Henry III. was a precarious foundation on which to build. The king chafed against the objections with which his minister opposed wild plans of foreign conquest and inconsiderate concessions to the papacy. They quarrelled violently in 1229, at Portsmouth, when the king was with difficulty prevented from stabbing Hubert, because a sufficient supply of ships was not forthcoming for an expedition to France. In 1231 Henry lent an ear to those who asserted that the justiciar had secretly encouraged armed attacks upon the aliens to whom the pope had given English benefices. Hubert was suddenly disgraced and required to render an account of his long administration. The blow fell suddenly, a few weeks after his appointment as justiciar of Ireland. It was precipitated by one of those fits of passion to which the king was prone; but the influence of Hubert had been for some time waning before that of Peter des Roches and his nephew Peter des Rievaux. Some colour was given to their attacks by Hubert's injudicious plea that he held a charter from King John which exempted him from any liability to produce accounts. But the other charges, far less plausible than that of embezzlement, which were heaped upon the head of the fallen favourite, are evidence of an intention to crush him at all costs. He was dragged from the sanctuary at Bury St Edmunds, in which he had taken refuge, and was kept in strait confinement until Richard of Cornwall, the king's brother, and three other earls offered to be his sureties. Under their protection he remained in honourable detention at Devizes Castle. On the outbreak of Richard Marshal's rebellion (1233), he was carried off by the rebels to the Marshal stronghold of Striguil, in the hope that his name would add popularity to their cause. In 1234 he was admitted, along with the other supporters of the fallen Marshal, to the benefit of a full pardon. He regained his earldom and held it till his death, although he was once in serious danger from the avarice of the king (1239), who was tempted by Hubert's enormous wealth to revive the charge of treason.
In his lifetime Hubert was a popular hero; Matthew Paris relates how, at the time of his disgrace, a common smith refused with an oath to put fetters on the man "who restored England to the English." Hubert's ambition of founding a great family was not realized. His earldom died with him, though he left two sons. In constitutional history he is remembered as the last of the great justiciars. The office, as having become too great for a subject, was now shorn of its most important powers and became politically insignificant.
See Roger of Wendover'sFlores Historiarum, edited for the English Historical Society by H.O. Coxe (4 vols., 1841-1844); theChronica Majoraof Matthew Paris, edited by H.R. Luard for the Rolls Series (7 vols., 1872-1883); theHistoire des ducs de Normandie, edited by F. Michel for the Soc. de l'Hist. de France (Paris, 1840); theHistoire de Guillaume le Marechal, edited by Paul Meyer for the same society (3 vols., Paris, 1891, &c.); J.E. Doyle'sOfficial Baronage of England, ii. pp. 271-274; R. Pauli'sGeschichte von England, vol. iii.; W. Stubbs'sConstitutional History of England, vol. ii.
(H. W. C. D.)
BURGHERSH, HENRY(1292-1340), English bishop and chancellor, was a younger son of Robert, Baron Burghersh (d. 1305), and a nephew of Bartholomew, Lord Badlesmere, and was educated in France. In 1320 owing to Badlesmere's influence Pope John XXII. appointed him bishop of Lincoln in spite of the fact that the chapter had already made an election to the vacant bishopric, and he secured the position without delay. After the execution of Badlesmere in 1322 Burghersh's lands were seized by Edward II., and the pope was urged to deprive him; about 1326, however, his possessions were restored, a proceeding which did not prevent him from joining Edward's queen, Isabella, and taking part in the movement which led to the deposition and murder of the king. Enjoying the favour of the new king, Edward III., the bishop became chancellor of England in 1328; but he failed to secure the archbishopric of Canterbury which became vacant about the same time, and was deprived of his office of chancellor and imprisoned when Isabella lost her power in 1330. But he was soon released and again in a position of influence. He was treasurer of England from 1334 to 1337, and high in the favour and often in the company of Edward III.; he was sent on several importanterrands, and entrusted with important commissions. He died at Ghent on the 4th of December 1340.
The bishop's brother, Bartholomew Burghersh (d. 1355), became Baron Burghersh on the death of his brother Stephen in 1310. He acted as assistant to Badlesmere until the execution of the latter; and then, trusted by Edward III., was constable of Dover Castle and warden of the Cinque Ports. He filled other important positions, served Edward III. both as a diplomatist and a soldier, being present at the battle of Crecy in 1346; and retaining to the last the royal confidence, died in August 1355. His son and successor, Bartholomew (d. 1369), was one of the first knights of the order of the Garter, and earned a great reputation as a soldier, specially distinguishing himself at the battle of Poitiers in 1356.
BURGHLEY, WILLIAM CECIL,Baron(1521-1508), was born, according to his own statement, on the 13th of September 1521 at the house of his mother's father at Bourne, Lincolnshire. Pedigrees, elaborated by Cecil himself with the help of Camden, the antiquary, associated him with the Cecils or Sitsyllts of Altyrennes in Herefordshire, and traced his descent from an Owen of the time of King Harold and a Sitsyllt of the reign of Rufus. The connexion with the Herefordshire family is not so impossible as the descent from Sitsyllt; but the earliest authentic ancestor of the lord treasurer is his grandfather, David, who, according to Burghley's enemies, "kept the best inn" in Stamford. David somehow secured the favour of Henry VII., to whom he seems to have been yeoman of the guard. He was serjeant-at-arms to Henry VIII. in 1526, sheriff of Northamptonshire in 1532, and a justice of the peace for Rutland. His eldest son, Richard, yeoman of the wardrobe (d. 1554), married Jane, daughter of William Heckington of Bourne, and was father of three daughters and Lord Burghley.
William, the only son, was put to school first at Grantham and then at Stamford. In May 1535, at the age of fourteen, he went up to St John's College, Cambridge, where he was brought into contact with the foremost educationists of the time, Roger Ascham and John Cheke, and acquired an unusual knowledge of Greek. He also acquired the affections of Cheke's sister, Mary, and was in 1541 removed by his father to Gray's Inn, without, after six years' residence at Cambridge, having taken a degree. The precaution proved useless, and four months later Cecil committed one of the rare rash acts of his life in marrying Mary Cheke. The only child of this marriage, Thomas, the future earl of Exeter, was born in May 1542, and in February 1543 Cecil's first wife died. Three years later he married (21st of December 1546) Mildred, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, who was ranked by Ascham with Lady Jane Grey as one of the two most learned ladies in the kingdom, and whose sister, Anne, became the wife of Sir Nicholas, and the mother of Sir Francis, Bacon.
Cecil, meanwhile, had obtained the reversion to the office ofcustos rotulorum brevium, and, according to his autobiographical notes, sat in parliament in 1543; but his name does not occur in the imperfect parliamentary returns until 1547, when he was elected for the family borough of Stamford. Earlier in that year he had accompanied Protector Somerset on his Pinkie campaign, being one of the two "judges of the Marshalsea,"i.e.in the courts-martial. The other was William Patten, who states that both he and Cecil began to write independent accounts of the campaign, and that Cecil generously communicated his notes for Patten's narrative, which has been reprinted more than once.
In 1548 he is described as the protector's master of requests, which apparently means that he was clerk or registrar of the court of requests which the protector, possibly at Latimer's instigation, illegally set up in Somerset House "to hear poor men's complaints." He also seems to have acted as private secretary to the protector, and was in some danger at the time of the protector's fall (October 1549). The lords opposed to Somerset ordered his detention on the 10th of October, and in November he was in the Tower. On the 25th of January 1550 he was bound over in recognizances to the value of a thousand marks. However, he soon ingratiated himself with Warwick, and on the 15th of September 1550 he was sworn one of the king's two secretaries. He was knighted on the 11th of October 1551, on the eve of Somerset's second fall, and was congratulated on his success in escaping his benefactor's fate. In April he became chancellor of the order of the Garter. But service under Northumberland was no bed of roses, and in his diary Cecil recorded his release in the phraseex misero aulico factus liber et mei juris. His responsibility for Edward's illegal "devise" of the crown has been studiously minimized by Cecil himself and by his biographers. Years afterwards, he pretended that he had only signed the "devise" as a witness, but in his apology to Queen Mary he did not venture to allege so flimsy an excuse; he preferred to lay stress on the extent to which he succeeded in shifting the responsibility on to the shoulders of his brother-in-law, Sir John Cheke, and other friends, and on his intrigues to frustrate the queen to whom he had sworn allegiance. There is no doubt that he saw which way the wind was blowing, and disliked Northumberland's scheme; but he had not the courage to resist the duke to his face. As soon, however, as the duke had set out to meet Mary, Cecil became the most active intriguer against him, and to these efforts, of which he laid a full account before Queen Mary, he mainly owed his immunity. He had, moreover, had no part in the divorce of Catherine or in the humiliation of Mary in Henry's reign, and he made no scruple about conforming to the religious reaction. He went to mass, confessed, and out of sheer zeal and in no official capacity went to meet Cardinal Pole on his pious mission to England in December 1554, again accompanying him to Calais in May 1555. It was rumoured in December 1554 that Cecil would succeed Sir William Petre as secretary, an office which, with his chancellorship of the Garter, he had lost on Mary's accession. Probably the queen had more to do with the falsification of this rumour than Cecil, though he is said to have opposed in the parliament of 1555—in which he represented Lincolnshire—a bill for the confiscation of the estates of the Protestant refugees. But the story, even as told by his biographer (Peck,Desiderata Curiosa, i. 11), does not represent Cecil's conduct as having been very courageous; and it is more to his credit that he found no seat in the parliament of 1558, for which Mary had directed the return of "discreet and good Catholic members."
By that time Cecil had begun to trim his sails to a different breeze. He was in secret communication with Elizabeth before Mary died, and from the first the new queen relied on Cecil as she relied on no one else. Her confidence was not misplaced; Cecil was exactly the kind of minister England then required. Personal experience had ripened his rare natural gift for avoiding dangers. It was no time for brilliant initiative or adventurous politics; the need was to avoid Scylla and Charybdis, and avia mediahad to be found in church and state, at home and abroad. Cecil was not a political genius; no great ideas emanated from his brain. But he was eminently a safe man, not an original thinker, but a counsellor of unrivalled wisdom. Caution was his supreme characteristic; he saw that above all things England required time. Like Fabius, he restored the fortunes of his country by deliberation. He averted open rupture until England was strong enough to stand the shock. There was nothing heroic about Cecil or his policy; it involved a callous attitude towards struggling Protestants abroad. Huguenots and Dutch Were aided just enough to keep them going in the struggles which warded danger off from England's shores. But Cecil never developed that passionate aversion from decided measures which became a second nature to his mistress. His intervention in Scotland in 1559-1560 showed that he could strike on occasion; and his action over the execution of Mary, queen of Scots, proved that he was willing to take responsibility from which Elizabeth shrank. Generally he was in favour of more decided intervention on behalf of continental Protestants than Elizabeth would admit, but it is not always easy to ascertain the advice he gave. He has left endless memoranda lucidly setting forth the pros and cons of every course of action; but there are few indications of the line which he actually recommended when it came to a decision. How far he was personally responsible for the Anglican Settlement, the Poor Laws, and the foreign policy of the reign, how far he wasthwarted by the baleful influence of Leicester and the caprices of the queen, remains to a large extent a matter of conjecture. His share in the settlement of 1559 was considerable, and it coincided fairly with his own somewhat indeterminate religious views. Like the mass of the nation, he grew more Protestant as time wore on; he was readier to persecute Papists than Puritans; he had no love for ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and he warmly remonstrated with Whitgift over his persecuting Articles of 1583. The finest encomium was passed on him by the queen herself, when she said, "This judgment I have of you, that you will not be corrupted with any manner of gifts, and that you will be faithful to the state."
From 1558 for forty years the biography of Cecil is almost indistinguishable from that of Elizabeth and from the history of England. Of personal incident, apart from his mission to Scotland in 1560, there is little. He represented Lincolnshire in the parliament of 1559, and Northamptonshire in that of 1563, and he took an active part in the proceedings of the House of Commons until his elevation to the peerage; but there seems no good evidence for the story that he was proposed as speaker in 1563. In January 1561 he was given the lucrative office of master of the court of wards in succession to Sir Thomas Parry, and he did something to reform that instrument of tyranny and abuse. In February 1559 he was elected chancellor of Cambridge University in succession to Cardinal Pole; he was created M.A. of that university on the occasion of Elizabeth's visit in 1564, and M.A. of Oxford on a similar occasion in 1566. On the 25th of February 1571 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Burghley of Burghley[1](or Burleigh); the fact that he continued to act as secretary after his elevation illustrates the growing importance of that office, which under his son became a secretaryship of state. In 1572, however, the marquess of Winchester, who had been lord high treasurer under Edward, Mary and Elizabeth, died, and Burghley succeeded to his post. It was a signal triumph over Leicester; and, although Burghley had still to reckon with cabals in the council and at court, his hold over the queen strengthened with the lapse of years. Before he died, Robert, his only surviving son by his second wife, was ready to step into his shoes as the queen's principal adviser. Having survived all his rivals, and all his children except Robert and the worthless Thomas, Burghley died at his London house on the 4th of August 1598, and was buried in St Martin's, Stamford.
Burghley's private life was singularly virtuous; he was a faithful husband, a careful father and a considerate master. A book-lover and antiquary, he made a special hobby of heraldry and genealogy. It was the conscious and unconscious aim of the age to reconstruct a new landed aristocracy on the ruins of the old, and Burghley was a great builder and planter. All the arts of architecture and horticulture were lavished on Burghley House and Theobalds, which his son exchanged for Hatfield. His public conduct does not present itself in quite so amiable a light. As the marquess of Winchester said of himself, he was sprung from the willow rather than the oak, and he was not the man to suffer for convictions. The interest of the state was the supreme consideration, and to it he had no hesitation in sacrificing individual consciences. He frankly disbelieved in toleration; "that state," he said, "could never be in safety where there was a toleration of two religions. For there is no enmity so great as that for religion; and therefore they that differ in the service of their God can never agree in the service of their country." With a maxim such as this, it was easy for him to maintain that Elizabeth's coercive measures were political and not religious. To say that he was Machiavellian is meaningless, for every statesman is so more or less; especially in the 16th century men preferred efficiency to principle. On the other hand, principles are valueless without law and order; and Burghley's craft and subtlety prepared a security in which principles might find some scope.
The sources and authorities for Burghley's life are endless. The most important collection of documents is at Hatfield, where there are some ten thousand papers covering the period down to Burghley's death; these have been calendared in 8 volumes by the Hist. MSS. Comm. At least as many others are in the Record Office and British Museum, the Lansdowne MSS. especially containing a vast mass of his correspondence; see the catalogues of Cotton, Harleian, Royal, Sloane, Egerton and Additional MSS. in the British Museum, and the Calendars of Domestic, Foreign, Spanish, Venetian, Scottish and Irish State Papers.
Other official sources are theActs of the Privy Council(vols. i.-xxix.); Lords' and Commons' Journals, D'Ewes' Journals, Off. Ret. M.P.'s; Rymer'sFoedera; Collins'sSydney State Papers; Nichols'sProgresses of Elizabeth. See also Strype's Works (26 vols.), Parker, Soc. Publ. (56 vols.); Camden'sAnnales; Holinshed, Stow and Speed'sChron.; Hayward'sAnnals; Machyn'sDiary, Leycester Corr., Egerton Papers (Camden Soc.). For Burghley's early life, see Cooper'sAthenae Cantab.; Baker'sSt John's Coll., Camb., ed. Mayor;Letters and. Papers of Henry VIII.; Tytler'sEdward VI.; Nichols'sLit. Remains of Edward VI.; Leadam'sCourt of Requests, Chron. of Queen Jane(Camden Soc.) and throughout Froude'sHist.No satisfactory life of Burghley has yet appeared; some valuable anonymous notes, probably by Burghley's servant Francis Alford, were printed in Peck'sDesiderata Curiosa(1732), i. 1-66; other notes are in Naunton'sFragmenta Regalia. Lives by Collins (1732), Charlton and Melvil (1738), were followed by Nares's biography in three of the most ponderous volumes (1828-1831) in the language; this provoked Macaulay's brilliant but misleading essay. M.A.S. Hume'sGreat Lord Burghley(1898) is largely a piecing together of the references to Burghley in the same author'sCalendar of Simancas MSS.The life by Dr Jessopp (1904) is an expansion of his article in theDict. Nat. Biog.; it is still only a sketch, though the volume contains a mass of genealogical and other incidental information by other hands.
(A. F. P.)
[1]This was the form always used by Cecil himself.
[1]This was the form always used by Cecil himself.
BURGKMAIR, HANSorJohn(1473-? 1531), German painter and engraver on wood, believed to have been a pupil of Albrecht Dürer, was born at Augsburg. Professor Christ ascribes to him about 700 woodcuts, most of them distinguished by that spirit and freedom which we admire in the works of his supposed master. His principal work is the series of 135 prints representing the triumphs of the emperor Maximilian I. They are of large size, executed in chiaroscuro, from two blocks, and convey a high idea of his powers. Burgkmair was also an excellent painter in fresco and in distemper, specimens of which are in the galleries of Munich and Vienna, carefully and solidly finished in the style of the old German school.
BURGLARY(burgi latrocinium; in ancient English law,hamesucken[1]), at common law, the offence of breaking and entering the dwelling-house of another with intent to commit a felony. The offence and its punishment are regulated in England by the Larceny Act 1861. The four important points to be considered in connexion with the offence of burglary are (1) the time, (2) the place, (3) the manner and (4) the intent. Thetime, which is now the essence of the offence, was not considered originally to have been very material, the gravity of the crime lying principally in the invasion of the sanctity of a man's domicile. But at some period before the reign of Edward VI. it had become settled that time was essential to the offence, and it was not adjudged burglary unless committed by night. The day was then accounted as beginning at sunrise, and ending immediately after sunset, but it was afterwards decided that if there were left sufficient daylight or twilight to discern the countenance of a person, it was no burglary. This, again, was superseded by the Larceny Act 1861, for the purpose of which night is deemed to commence at nine o'clock in the evening of each day, and to conclude at six o'clock in the morning of the next succeeding day.
Theplacemust, according to Sir E. Coke's definition, be a mansion-house,i.e.a man's dwelling-house or private residence. No building, although within the same curtilage as the dwelling-house, is deemed to be a part of the dwelling-house for the purposes of burglary, unless there is a communication between such building and dwelling-house either immediate or by means of a covered and enclosed passage leading from the one to the other. Chambers in a college or in an inn of court are the dwelling-house of the owner; so also are rooms or lodgings in a private house, provided the owner dwells elsewhere, or enters by a different outer door from his lodger, otherwise the lodger is merely an inmate and his apartment a parcel of the one dwelling-house.
As to themanner, there must be both a breaking and an entry. Both must be at night, but not necessarily on the same night, provided that in the breaking and in the entry there is an intent to commit a felony. The breaking may be either an actual breaking of any external part of a building; or opening or lifting any closed door, window, shutter or lock; or entry by means of a threat, artifice or collusion with persons inside; or by means of such a necessary opening as a chimney. If an entry is obtained through an open window, it will not be burglary, but if an inner door is afterwards opened, it immediately becomes so. Entry includes the insertion through an open door or window, or any aperture, of any part of the body or of any instrument in the hand to draw out goods. The entry may be before the breaking, for the Larceny Act 1861 has extended the definition of burglary to cases in which a person enters another's dwelling with intent to commit felony, or being in such house commits felony therein, and in either casebreaks outof such dwelling-house by night.
Breaking and entry must be with theintentto commit a felony, otherwise it is only trespass. The felony need not be a larceny, it may be either murder or rape. The punishment is penal servitude for life, or any term not less than three years, or imprisonment not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.
Housebreakingin English law is to be distinguished from burglary, in that it is not essential that it should be committed at night, nor in a dwelling-house. It may, according to the Larceny Act 1861, be committed in a school-house, shop, warehouse or counting-house. Every burglary involves housebreaking, but every housebreaking does not amount to burglary. The punishment for housebreaking is penal servitude for any term not exceeding fourteen years and not less than three years, or imprisonment for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.
In the United States the common-law definition of burglary has been modified by statute in many states, so as to cover what is defined in England as housebreaking; the maximum punishment nowhere exceeds imprisonment for twenty years.
Authorities.—Pollock and Maitland,History of English Law; Stephen,History of Criminal Law; Archbold,Pleading and Evidence in Criminal Cases; Russell,On Crimes and Misdemeanours; Stephen,Commentaries.
[1]In Scots law, the wordhamesuckenmeant the feloniously beating or assaulting a man in his own house.
[1]In Scots law, the wordhamesuckenmeant the feloniously beating or assaulting a man in his own house.
BURGON, JOHN WILLIAM(1813-1888), English divine, was born at Smyrna on the 21st of August 1813, the son of a Turkey merchant, who was a skilled numismatist and afterwards became an assistant in the antiquities department of the British Museum. His mother was a Greek. After a few years of business life, Burgon went to Worcester College, Oxford, in 1841, gained the Newdigate prize, took his degree in 1845, and won an Oriel fellowship in 1846. He was much influenced by his brother-in-law, the scholar and theologian Henry John Rose (1800-1873), a churchman of the old conservative type, with whom he used to spend his long vacations. Burgon made Oxford his headquarters, while holding a living at some distance. In 1863 he was made vicar of St Mary's, having attracted attention by his vehement sermons againstEssays and Reviews. In 1867 he was appointed Gresham professor of divinity. In 1871 he published a defence of the genuineness of the twelve last verses of St Mark's Gospel. He now began an attack on the proposal for a new lectionary for the Church of England, based largely upon his objections to the principles for determining the authority of MS. readings adopted by Westcott and Hort, which he assailed in a memorable article in theQuarterly Reviewfor 1881. This, with his other articles, was reprinted in 1884 under the title ofThe Revision Revised. His biographical essays on H.L. Mansel and others were also collected, and published under the title ofTwelve Good Men(1888). Protests against the inclusion of Dr Vance Smith among the revisers, against the nomination of Dean Stanley to be select preacher in the university of Oxford, and against the address in favour of toleration in the matter of ritual, followed in succession. In 1876 Burgon was made dean of Chichester. He died on the 4th of August 1888. His life was written by Dean E.M. Goulburn (1892). Vehement and almost passionate in his convictions, Burgon nevertheless possessed a warm and kindly heart. He may be described as a high churchman of the type prevalent before the rise of the Tractarian school. His extensive collection of transcripts from the Greek Fathers, illustrating the text of the New Testament, was bequeathed to the British Museum.
BURGONET,orBurganet(from Fr.bourguignote, Burgundian helmet), a form of light helmet or head-piece, which was in vogue in the 16th and 17th centuries. In its normal form the burgonet was a large roomy cap with a brim shading the eyes, cheek-pieces or flaps, a comb, and a guard for the back of the neck. In many cases a vizor, or other face protection, and a chin-piece are found in addition, so that this piece of armour is sometimes mistaken for an armet (q.v.), but it can always be distinguished by the projecting brim in front. The morion and cabasset have no face, cheek or neck protection. The typical head-piece of the 17th-century soldier in England and elsewhere is a burgonet skull-cap with a straight brim, neck-guard and often, in addition, a fixed vizor of three thin iron bars which are screwed into, and hang down from, the brim in front of the eyes.
BURGOS,a province of northern Spain; bounded on the N.E. by Biscay and Álava, E. by Logroño, S.E. by Soria, S. by Segovia, S.W. by Valladolid, W. by Palencia, and N.W. by Santander. Pop. (1900) 338,828; area, 5480 sq. m. Burgos includes the isolated county of Treviño, which is shut in on all sides by territory belonging to Álava. The northern and north-eastern districts of the province are mountainous, and the central and southern form part of the vast and elevated plateau of Old Castile. The extreme northern region is traversed by part of the great Cantabrian chain. Eastwards are the highest peaks of the province in the Sierra de la Demanda (with the Cerro de San Millan, 6995 ft. high) and in the Sierra de Neila. On the eastern frontier, midway between these highlands and the Cantabrian chain, two comparatively low ranges, running east and west of Pancorbo, kave a gap through which run the railway and roads connecting Castile with the valley of the Ebro. This Pancorbo Pass has often been called the "Iron Gates of Castile," as a handful of men could hold it against an army. South and west of this spot begins the plateau, generally covered with snow in winter, and swept by such cold winds that Burgos is considered, with Soria and Segovia, one of the coldest regions of the peninsula. The Ebro runs eastwards through the northern half of the province, but is not navigable. The Douro, or Duero, crosses the southern half, running west-north-west; it also is unnavigable in its upper valley. The other important streams are the Pisuerga, flowing south towards Palencia and Valladolid, and the Arlanzón, which flows through Burgos for over 75m.
The variations of temperature are great, as from 9° to 20° of frost have frequently been recorded in winter, while the mean summer temperature is 64° (Fahr.). As but little rain falls in summer, and the soil is poor, agriculture thrives only in the valleys, especially that of the Ebro. In live-stock, however, Burgos is one of the richest of Spanish provinces. Horses, mules, asses, goats, cattle and pigs are bred in considerable numbers, but the mainstay of the peasantry is sheep-farming. Vast ranges of almost uninhabited upland are reserved as pasture for the flocks, which at the beginning of the 20th century contained more than 500,000 head of sheep. Coal, china-clay and salt are obtained in small quantities, but, out of more than 150 mines registered, only 4 were worked in 1903. The other industries of the province are likewise undeveloped, although there are many small potteries, stone quarries, tanneries and factories for the manufacture of linen and cotton of the coarsest description. The ancient cloth and woollen industries, for which Burgos was famous in the past, have almost disappeared. Trade is greatly hindered by the lack of adequate railway communication, and even of good roads. The Northern railways from Madrid to the French frontier cross the province in the central districts; the Valladolid-Bilbao line traverses the Cantabrian mountains, in the north; and the Valladolid-Saragossa line skirts the Douro valley, in the south. The onlyimportant town in the province is Burgos, the capital (pop. 30,167). Few parts of Spain are poorer; education makes little progress, and least of all in the thinly peopled rural districts, with their widely scattered hamlets. The peasantry have thus every inducement to migrate to the Basque Provinces, Catalonia and other relatively prosperous regions; and consequently the population does not increase, despite the excess of births over deaths.
BURGOS,the capital formerly of Old Castile, and since 1833 of the Spanish province of Burgos, on the river Arlanzón, and on the Northern railways from Madrid to the French frontier. Pop. (1900) 30,167. Burgos, in the form of an amphitheatre, occupies the lower slopes of a hill crowned by the ruins of an ancient citadel. It faces the Arlanzón, a broad and swift stream, with several islands in mid-channel. Three stone bridges lead to the suburb of La Vega, on the opposite bank. On all sides, except up the castle hill, fine avenues and public gardens are laid out, notably the Paseo de la Isla, extending along the river to the west. Burgos itself was originally surrounded by a wall, of which few fragments remain; but although its streets and broad squares, such as the central Plaza Mayór, or Plaza de la Constitucion, have often quite a modern appearance, the city retains much of its picturesque character, owing to the number and beauty of its churches, convents and palaces. Unaffected by the industrial activity of the neighbouring Basque Provinces, it has little trade apart from the sale of agricultural produce and the manufacture of paper and leathern goods.
But it is rich in architectural and antiquarian interest. The citadel was founded in 884 by Diego Rodriguez Porcelos, count of Castile; in the 10th century it was held against the kings of Leon by Count Fernan Gonzalez, a mighty warrior; and even in 1812 it was successfully defended by a French garrison against Lord Wellington and his British troops. Within its walls the Spanish national hero, the Cid Campeador, was wedded to Ximena of Oviedo in 1074; and Prince Edward of England (afterwards King Edward I.) to Eleanor of Castile in 1254. Statues of Porcelos, Gonzalez and the Cid, of Nuño Rasura and Lain Calvo, the first elected magistrates of Burgos, during its brief period of republican rule in the 10th century, and of the emperor Charles V., adorn the massive Arco de Santa Maria, which was erected between 1536 and 1562, and commemorates the return of the citizens to their allegiance, after the rebellion against Charles V. had been crushed in 1522. The interior of this arch serves as a museum. Tradition still points to the site of the Cid's birthplace; and a reliquary preserved in the town hall contains his bones, and those of Ximena, brought hither after many changes, including a partial transference to Sigmaringen in Germany.
Other noteworthy buildings in Burgos are the late 15th century Casa del Cordón, occupied by the captain-general of Old Castile; the Casa de Miranda, which worthily represents the best domestic architecture of Spain in the 16th century; and the barracks, hospitals and schools. Burgos is the see of an archbishop, whose province comprises the diocese of Palencia, Pamplona, Santander and Tudela. The cathedral, founded in 1221 by Ferdinand III. of Castile and the English bishop Maurice of Burgos, is a fine example of florid Gothic, built of white limestone (seeArchitecture, Plate II. fig. 65). It was not completed until 1567, and the architects principally responsible for its construction were a Frenchman in the 13th century and a German in the 15th. Its cruciform design is almost hidden by the fifteen chapels added at all angles to the aisles and transepts, by the beautiful 14th-century cloister on the north-west and the archiepiscopal palace on the south-west. Over the three central doorways of the main or western façade rise two lofty and graceful towers. Many of the monuments within the cathedral are of considerable artistic and historical interest. The chapel of Corpus Christi contains the chest which the Cid is said to have filled with sand and subsequently pawned for a large sum to the credulous Jews of Burgos. The legend adds that he redeemed his pledge. In the aisleless Gothic church of Santa Agueda, or Santa Gadéa, tradition relates that the Cid compelled Alphonso VI. of Leon, before his accession to the throne of Castile in 1072, to swear that he was innocent of the murder of Sancho his brother and predecessor on the throne. San Estéban, completed between 1280 and 1350, and San Nicolás, dating from 1505, are small Gothic churches, each with a fine sculptured doorway. Many of the convents of Burgos have been destroyed, and those which survive lie chiefly outside the city. At the end of the Paseo de la Isla stands the nunnery of Santa Maria la Real de las Huelgas, originally a summer palace (huelga, "pleasure-ground") of the kings of Castile. In 1187 it was transformed into a Cistercian convent by Alphonso VIII., who invested the abbess with almost royal prerogatives, including the power of life and death, and absolute rule over more than fifty villages. Alphonso and his wife Eleanor, daughter of Henry II. of England, are buried here. The Cartuja de Miraflores, a Carthusian convent, founded by John II. of Castile (1406-1454), lies 2 m. south-east of Burgos. Its church contains a monument of exceptional beauty, carved by Gil de Siloë in the 15th century, for the tomb of John and his second wife, Isabella of Portugal. The convent of San Pedro de Cardeña, 7 m. south-east of Burgos, was the original burial-place of the Cid, in 1099, and of Ximena, in 1104. About 50 m. from the city is the abbey of Silos, which appears to have been founded under the Visigothic kings, as early as the 6th century. It was restored in 919 by Fernan Gonzalez, and in the 11th century became celebrated throughout Europe, under the rule of St Dominic or Domingo. It was reoccupied in 1880 by French Benedictine monks.
The known history of Burgos begins in 884 with the foundation of the citadel. From that time forward it steadily increased in importance, reaching the height of its prosperity in the 15th century, when, alternately with Toledo, it was occupied as a royal residence, but rapidly declining when the court was finally removed to Madrid in 1560. Being on one of the principal military roads of the kingdom, it suffered severely during the Peninsular War. In 1808 it was the scene of the defeat of the Spanish army by the French under Marshal Soult. It was unsuccessfully besieged by Wellington in 1812, but was surrendered to him at the opening of the campaign of the following year.
Of the extensive literature relating to Burgos, much remains unedited and in manuscript. A general description of the city and its monuments is given by A. Llacayo y Santa Maria inBurgos, &c.(Burgos, 1889). See alsoArchitectural, Sculptural and Picturesque Studies in Burgos and its Neighbourhood, a valuable series of architectural drawings in folio, by J.B. Waring (London, 1852). The following are monographs on particular buildings:—Historia de la Catedral de Burgos, &c., by P. Orcajo (Burgos, 1856);El Castillo de Burgos, by E. de Oliver-Copons (Barcelona, 1893);La Real Cartuja de Miraflores, by F. Tarin y Juaneda (Burgos, 1896). For the history of the city seeEn Burgos, by V. Balaguér (Burgos, 1895);Burgos en las comunidades de CastillaandCosas de la vieja Burgos, both by A. Salvá (Burgos, 1895 and 1892). The following relate both to the city and to the province of Burgos:—Burgos, &c., by R. Amador de los Ríos, in the series entitledEspaña(Barcelona, 1888);Burgos y su provincia, anon. (Vitoria, 1898);Intento de un diccionario biográfico y bibliográfico de autores de la prov. de Burgos, by M. Anibarro and M. Rives (Madrid, 1890).
BURGOYNE, JOHN(1722-1792), English general and dramatist, entered the army at an early age. In 1743 he made a runaway marriage with a daughter of the earl of Derby, but soon had to sell his commission to meet his debts, after which he lived abroad for seven years. By Lord Derby's interest Burgoyne was then reinstated at the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, and in 1758 he became captain and lieutenant-colonel in the foot guards. In 1758-1759 he participated in expeditions made against the French coast, and in the latter year he was instrumental in introducing light cavalry into the British army. The two regiments then formed were commanded by Eliott (afterwards Lord Heathfield) and Burgoyne. In 1761 he sat in parliament for Midhurst, and in the following year he served as brigadier-general in Portugal, winning particular distinction by his capture of Valencia d'Alcantara and of Villa Velha. In 1768 he became M.P. for Preston, and for the next few years he occupied himself chiefly with his parliamentary duties, in which he was remarkable for his general outspokennessand, in particular, for his attacks on Lord Clive. At the same time he devoted much attention to art and drama (his first play,The Maid of the Oaks, being produced by Garrick in 1775), and gambled recklessly. In the army he had by this time become a major-general, and on the outbreak of the American War of Independence he was appointed to a command. In 1777 he was at the head of the British reinforcements designed for the invasion of the colonies from Canada. In this disastrous expedition he gained possession of Ticonderoga (for which he was made a lieutenant-general) and Fort Edward; but, pushing on, was detached from his communications with Canada, and hemmed in by a superior force at Saratoga (q.v.). On the 17th of October his troops, about 3500 in number, laid down their arms. The success was the greatest the colonists had yet gained, and it proved the turning-point in the war. The indignation in England against Burgoyne was great, but perhaps unjust. He returned at once, with the leave of the American general, to defend his conduct, and demanded, but never obtained, a trial. He was deprived of his regiment and a governorship which he held. In 1782, however, when his political friends came into office, he was restored to his rank, given a colonelcy, and made commander-in-chief in Ireland and a privy councillor. After the fall of the Rockingham government in 1783, Burgoyne withdrew more and more into private life, his last public service being his participation in the impeachment of Warren Hastings. In his latter years he was principally occupied in literary and dramatic work. His comedy,The Heiress, which appeared in 1786, ran through ten editions within a year, and was translated into several foreign tongues. He died suddenly on the 4th of June 1792. General Burgoyne, whose wife died in June 1776 during his absence in Canada, had several natural children (born between 1782 and 1788) by Susan Caulfield, an opera singer, one of whom became Field Marshal Sir J.F. Burgoyne. HisDramatic and Poetical Worksappeared in two vols., 1808.
See E.B. de Fonblanque,Political and Military Episodes from the Life and Correspondence of Right Hon. J. Burgoyne(1876); and W.L. Stone,Campaign of Lieut.-Gen. J. Burgoyne, &c.(Albany, N.Y., 1877).
BURGOYNE, SIR JOHN FOX,Bart. (1782-1871), British field marshal, was an illegitimate son of General John Burgoyne (q.v.). He was educated at Eton and Woolwich, obtained his commission in 1798, and served in 1800 in the Mediterranean. In 1805, when serving on the staff of General Fox in Sicily, he was promoted second captain. He accompanied the unfortunate Egyptian expedition of 1807, and was with Sir John Moore in Sweden in 1808 and in Portugal in 1808-9. In the Corunna campaign Burgoyne held the very responsible position of chief of engineers with the rear-guard of the British army (seePeninsular War). He was with Wellesley at the Douro in 1809, and was promoted captain in the same year, after which he was engaged in the construction of the lines of Torres Vedras in 1810. He blew up Fort Concepcion on the river Turones, and was present at Busaco and Torres Vedras. In 1811 he was employed in the unsuccessful siege of Badajoz, and in 1812 he won successively the brevets of major and lieutenant-colonel, for his skilful performance of engineer duties at the historic sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. He was present in the same year (1812) at the siege and battle of Salamanca, and after the battle of Vittoria in 1813 he became commanding engineer on Lord Wellington's staff. At the close of the war he received the C.B., a reward which, he justly considered, was not commensurate with his services. In 1814-1815 he served at New Orleans and Mobile. Burgoyne was largely employed, during the long peace which followed Waterloo, in other public duties as well as military work. He sat on numerous commissions, and served for fifteen years as chairman of the Irish board of public works. He became a major-general and K.C.B. in 1838, and inspector-general of fortifications in 1845. In 1851 he was promoted lieutenant-general, and in the following year received the G.C.B. When the Crimean War broke out he accompanied Lord Raglan's headquarters to the East, superintended the disembarkation at Old Fort, and was in effect the principal engineer adviser to the English commander during the first part of the siege of Sevastopol. He was recalled early in 1855, and though he was at first bitterly criticized by the public for his part in the earlier and unsuccessful operations against the fortress the wisdom of his advice was ultimately recognized. In 1856 he was created a baronet, and promoted to the full rank of general. In 1858 he was present at the second funeral of Napoleon I. as Queen Victoria's representative, and in 1865 he was made constable of the Tower of London. Three years later, on resigning his post as inspector-general of fortifications, he was made a field marshal. Parliament granted him, at the same time, a pension of £1500. He died on the 7th of October 1871, a year after the tragic death of his only son, Captain Hugh Talbot Burgoyne, V.C. (1833-1870), who was in command of H.M.S. "Captain" when that vessel went down in the Bay of Biscay (September 7, 1870).
SeeLife and Correspondence of F.M. Sir John Fox Burgoyne(edited by Lt.-Col. Hon. G. Wrottesley, R.E., London, 1873); Sir Francis Head,A Sketch of the Life and Death of F.M. Sir John Burgoyne(London, 1872);Military Opinions of General Sir John Burgoyne(ed. Wrottesley, London, 1859), a collection of the most important of Burgoyne's contributions to military literature.
BURGRAVE,the Eng. form, derived through the Fr., of the Ger.Burggrafand Flem.burgorburch-graeve(med. Lat.burcgraviusorburgicomes),i.e.count of a castle or fortified town. The title is equivalent to that of castellan (Lat.castellanus) orchâtelain(q.v.). In Germany, owing to the peculiar conditions of the Empire, though the office of burgrave had become a sinecure by the end of the 13th century, the title, as borne by feudal nobles having the status of princes of the Empire, obtained a quasi-royal significance. It is still included among the subsidiary titles of several sovereign princes; and the king of Prussia, whose ancestors were burgraves of Nuremberg for over 200 years, is still styled burgrave of Nuremberg.
BURGRED,king of Mercia, succeeded to the throne in 852, and in 852 or 853 called upon Æthelwulf of Wessex to aid him in subduing the North Welsh. The request was granted and the campaign proved successful, the alliance being sealed by the marriage of Burgred to Æthelswith, daughter of Æthelwulf. In 868 the Mercian king appealed to Æthelred and Alfred for assistance against the Danes, who were in possession of Nottingham. The armies of Wessex and Mercia did no serious fighting, and the Danes were allowed to remain through the winter. In 874 the march of the Danes from Lindsey to Repton drove Burgred from his kingdom. He retired to Rome and died there.
SeeSaxon Chronicle(Earle and Plummer), years 852-853, 868, 874.
BURGUNDIO,sometimes erroneously styledBurgundius, an Italian jurist of the 12th century. He was a professor at the university of Paris, and assisted at the Lateran Council in 1179, dying at a very advanced age in 1194. He was a distinguished Greek scholar, and is believed on the authority of Odofredus to have translated into Latin, soon after the Pandects were brought to Bologna, the various Greek fragments which occur in them, with the exception of those in the 27th book, the translation of which has been attributed to Modestinus. The Latin translations ascribed to Burgundio were received at Bologna as an integral part of the text of the Pandects, and form part of that known asThe Vulgatein distinction from the Florentine text.
BURGUNDY.The name of Burgundy (Fr.Bourgogne, Lat.Burgundia) has denoted very diverse political and geographical areas at different periods of history and as used by different writers. The name is derived from the Burgundians (Burgundi, Burgondiones), a people of Germanic origin, who at first settled between the Oder and the Vistula. In consequence of wars against the Alamanni, in which the latter had the advantage, the Burgundians, after having taken part in the great invasion of Radagaisus in 407, were obliged in 411 to take refuge in Gaul, under the leadership of their chief Gundicar. Under the title of allies of the Romans, they established themselves in certain cantons of the Sequani and of upper Germany, receiving a part of the lands, houses and serfs that belonged to the inhabitants. Thus was founded the first kingdom of Burgundy, the boundaries of which were widened at different times by Gundicar and his sonGunderic; its chief towns being Vienne, Lyons, Besançon, Geneva, Autun and Mâcon. Gundibald (d. 516), grandson of Gunderic, is famous for his codification of the Burgundian law, known consequently asLex Gundobada,in FrenchLoi Gombette. His son Sigismund, who was canonized by the church, founded the abbey of St Maurice at Agaunum. But, incited thereto by Clotilda, the daughter of Chilperic (a brother of Gundibald, and assassinated by him), the Merovingian kings attacked Burgundy. An attempt made in 524 by Clodomer was unsuccessful; but in 534 Clotaire (Chlothachar) and his brothers possessed themselves of the lands of Gundimar, brother and successor of Sigismund, and divided them between them. In 561 the kingdom of Burgundy was reconstructed by Guntram, son of Clotaire I., and until 613 it formed a separate state under the government of a prince of the Merovingian family.
After 613 Burgundy was one of the provinces of the Frankish kingdom, but in the redistributions that followed the reign of Charlemagne the various parts of the ancient kingdom had different fortunes. In 843, by the treaty of Verdun, Autun, Chalon, Mâcon, Langres, &c., were apportioned to Charles the Bald, and Lyons with the country beyond the Saône to Lothair I. On the death of the latter the duchy of Lyons (Lyonnais and Viennois) was given to Charles of Provence, and the diocese of Besançon with the country beyond the Jura to Lothair, king of Lorraine. In 879 Boso founded the kingdom of Provence, wrongly called the kingdom of Cisjuran Burgundy, which extended to Lyons, and for a short time as far as Mâcon (seeProvence).
In 888 the kingdom of Juran Burgundy was founded by Rudolph I., son of Conrad, count of Auxerre, and the German king Arnulf could not succeed in expelling the usurper, whose authority was recognized in the diocese of Besançon, Basel, Lausanne, Geneva and Sion. For a short time his son and successor Rudolph II. (912-937) disputed the crown of Italy with Hugh of Provence, but finally abandoned his claims in exchange for the ancient kingdom of Provence,i.e.the country bounded by the Rhône, the Alps and the Mediterranean. His successor, Conrad the Peaceful (93 7-993), whose sister Adelaide married Otto the Great, was hardly more than a vassal of the German kings. The last king of Burgundy, Rudolph III. (993-1032), being deprived of all but a shadow of power by the development of the secular and ecclesiastical aristocracy—especially by that of the powerful feudal houses of the counts of Burgundy (seeFranche-Comté), Savoy and Provence—died without issue, bequeathing his lands to the emperor Conrad II. Such was the origin of the imperial rights over the kingdom designated after the 13th century as the kingdom of Arles, which extended over a part of what is now Switzerland (from the Jura to the Aar), and included Franche-Comté, Lyonnais, Dauphiné, Savoy and Provence.
The name of Burgundy now gradually became restricted to the countship of that name, which included the district between the Jura and the Saône, in later times called Franche-Comté, and to theduchywhich had been created by the Carolingian kings in the portion of Burgundy that had remained French, with the object of resisting Boso. This duchy had been granted to Boso's brother, Richard the Justiciary, count of Autun. It comprised at first the countships of Autun, Mâcon, Chalon-sur-Saône, Langres, Nevers, Auxerre and Sens, but its boundaries and designations changed many times in the course of the 10th century. Duke Henry died in 1002; and in 1015, after a war which lasted thirteen years, the French king Robert II. reunited the duchy to his kingdom, despite the opposition of Otto William, count of Burgundy, and gave it to his son Henry, afterwards King Henry I. As king of France, the latter in 1032 bestowed the duchy upon his brother Robert, from whom sprang that first ducal house of Burgundy which flourished until 1361. A grandson of this Robert, who went to Spain to fight the Arabs, became the founder of the kingdom of Portugal; but in general the first Capet dukes of Burgundy were pacific princes who took little part in the political events of their time, or in that religious movement which was so marked in Burgundy, at Cluny to begin with, afterwards among the disciples of William of St Bénigne of Dijon, and later still among the monks of Cîteaux. In the 12th and 13th centuries we may mention Duke Hugh III. (1162-1193), who played an active part in the wars that marked the beginning of Philip Augustus's reign; Odo (Eudes) III. (1193-1218), one of Philip Augustus's principal supporters in his struggle with King John of England; Hugh IV. (1218-1272), who acquired the countships of Châlon and Auxonne, Robert II. (1272-1309), one of whose daughters, Margaret, married Louis X. of France, and another, Jeanne, Philip of Valois; Odo (Eudes) IV. (1315-1350), who gained the countship of Artois in right of his wife, Jeanne of France, daughter of Philip V. the Tall and of Jeanne, countess of Burgundy.