Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 07.djvu/338

 numbered among the principal patrons of the York association for parliamentary reform, but on the outbreak of the French revolution he joined the ranks of the tories. With Wilberforce he was on the closest terms of intimacy, and advocated with enthusiasm the abolition of the slave trade, but he opposed with equal ardour the union of Great Britain and Ireland. William Mason was another of his friends, and Burgh edited at York in 1783 a new edition of Mason’s poem, the ‘English Garden,' to which he added a commentary and notes. The poet desired Burgh to see through the press a complete edition of this work, but the wish was never gratified. After having lived at York for nearly forty years, Burgh died there in his home on the north side of Buotham Street on 26 Dec. 1808, aged 66, and was buried in the lady chapel of the minster, where there is still standing a monument, by Richard Westmacott, to his memory, representing a woman holding in her left hand a book and in her right a cross, with a poetical inscription by J. B. S. Morritt of Rokeby. His wife, Mary Warburton, daughter and heiress of George Warburton, an Irish gentleman, outlived her husband and was buried in the same vault with him, when his sisters became the principal legatees. In compliance with her husband's wish, several hundred volumes from his library were added to the collections of York Minster Library. The fine miniature of Milton by Samuel Cooper passed by successive bequests from Sir Joshua Reynolds to Mason, then to Burgh, and next to Morritt.

Burgh's name leaped into notoriety on the publication, in 1774, of ‘A Scriptural Confutation of the Arguments against the one Godhead of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost produced by the Rev. Mr. Lindsey in his late Apology.' The first edition was issued under the disguise of ‘A Layman,' but the authorship was soon known, and was formally acknowledged on the appearance of the second edition in 1775 in the words ‘By Wil1iam Burgh’ on the title-page. This issue was dedicated to Edmund Burke, and in Burke’s ‘Works and Correspondence’ (1852, i. 265-7) there is included a long letter, dated February 1776, returning the proofs of a ‘most ingenious and most obliging dedication,' and setting out Burke’s views on toleration. Some ‘Remarks’ on this work ‘by a member of the church of Christ’ were published at York in 1775 and republished with ‘addenda’ in the same year. A sequel to the ‘Scriptural Confutation’ was thereupon written by Burgh and printed at York in 1778 under the title of ‘An Inquiry into the Belief of the Christians of the first three centuries respecting the one Godhead.' His publications provoked the criticism of the unitarians, but he was rewarded for his efforts on behalf of the trinitarian system of religion with the degree of D.C.L. by the university of Oxford, 9 April 1788. Burgh is referred to in the preface to Dr. Alexander Hunter's edition of Evelyn’s ‘Si1va,’ and one of its illustrations, a ‘Winter View of Cowthorpe Oak,’ was engraved from a drawing by Burgh.

 BURGHALL, EDWARD (d. 1665), puritan, left behind him a diary, called ‘Providence improved,' which throws much light on the state of Cheshire throughout the period of the great rebellion. From this diary the main facts of Burghall's life can also be gathered. Before the civil war he was schoolmaster at Bunbury in Cheshire, and was probably appointed to the post about 1632 (Diary, 12 May 1632, ‘Mr. Cole, schoolmaster of Bunbury, departed this life'). As early as 1556 the name of Burghall is connected with Bunbury, a William Burghall being on the list of pensioners of the chauntry of Bunbury dissolved in 1546 ( Chesire, ii. 140). The parish school at Bunbury, of which Burghall was master, was founded in 1594, and was endowed with ‘£20 per annum, one house and some land' (ib, 141). The vicar of Bunbury till the year 1629 was William Hinde, a celebrated puritan and biographer of John Bruen of Stapleford. Barlow, who has inserted Burghall/s ‘Diary’ in his ‘Cheshire,’ states that Burghall was the author of Bruen's life (, Cheshire, p. 150). But there is no mention of Burghall either on the title-page of Bruen's life or in the work itself. It was undoubtedly written by William Hinde, and edited after his death by his son Stephen Hinde, as indeed Barlow in a subsequent note points out (p. 151, n.; see also, Athenæ, ii. 431 , , Introd. to Nicholas Assheton, vol. xv. of Chetham Society). In 1643, during the siege of Nantwich, Burghall says that his goods were seized and himself driven from his home by Colonel Marrow; he thereupon went to Haslington in Cheshire, ‘where he had a call,' and tarried there from 1 May 1644 till 1646 (Diary for 18 March 1644). In the latter year he became vicar of Acton in Cheshire, taking the place of Hunt, who was sequestered (, iii. 187).