Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/12

  communicated by Bridgeman to Baxter and others in the beginning of 1668. Wood says that a club formed by Wilkins to promote comprehension used to meet at the 'chambers of that great trimmer and latitudinarian, Dr. Hezekiah Burton.' He afterwards became minister of St. George's, Southwark, where he was especially charitable to imprisoned debtors, and in 1680 was appointed, through Tillotson's influence, vicar of Barnes in Surrey, by the dean and chapter of St. Paul's. He died there of a fever, which carried off several of his family, in August or September 1681. His only writings were an 'Alloquium ad lectorem' prefixed to his friend Bishop Cumberland's book, 'De Legibus Naturae;' and two posthumous volumes of 'Discourses' (1684 and 1685), to the first of which is prefixed a notice by Tillotson, speaking warmly of his friendliness and sweetness of temper. A portrait is engraved in the same volume.

[Tillotson's Preface to Discourses; Birch's Life of Tillotson, 42,77, 93, 124-126; Knight's Life of Dean Colet (1823), 366; Sylvester's Baxter, iii. 24; Neal's Puritans, iv. 432; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 513; Fasti, ii. 184; Pepys's Diary (24 April 1659-60, and 1 Feb. 1661-62), where is also a letter to Pepys of 9 April 1677.]  BURTON, JAMES. [See .]  BURTON, JAMES DANIEL (1784–1817), Wesleyan minister, was the son of Daniel Burton, of Rhodes, near Manchester, and was born at Manchester 25 July 1791. He received a good education, but one not purposely intended to fit him for the office of minister. At the age of sixteen he was in the habit of attending the theatre at Manchester, but was soon turned from 'the snares connected with that place of gay resort and destructive pastime,' and, as the result of his 'effectual awakening,' prepared himself for the Wesleyan ministry, and devoted a considerable portion of his time among the poor in the neighbourhood of Middleton. He became a methodist itinerant preacher at the age of twenty-one. In the tenth year of his ministry his health failed, and he died, 24 March 1817, in his thirty-third year. In 1814 he published, at Bury, in Lancashire, 'A Guide for Youth, recommending to their serious consideration Vital Piety, as the only rational way to Present Happiness and Future Glory,' 12mo.

[Methodist Mag. 1817, pp. 708, 881; Osborn's Methodist Literature, p. 78.]  BURTON, JOHN, D.D. (1696–1771), theological and classical scholar, was born at Wembworthy, Devonshire, of which parish his father, Samuel Burton, was rector, in 1696, and was educated partly at Okehampton and Tiverton in his native county and partly at Ely, where he was placed on his father's death by the Rev. Samuel Bentham, the first cousin of his mother. In 1713 he was elected as a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and took his degree of B. A. on 27 June 1717, shortly after which he became the college tutor. He proceeded M.A. 24 March 1720-1, was elected probationary fellow 6 April following, and admitted actual fellow 4 April 1723. As college tutor he acted with great zeal, and acquired a greater reputation than any of the Oxford 'dons' of his day, but in consequence of an incurable recklessness in money matters he was little richer at the end than at the beginning of his collegiate career. The particulars of his teaching are set out in his friend Edward Bentham's 'De Vita et Moribus Johannis Burtoni. . . epistola ad Robertum Lowth,' 1771. In logic and metaphysics he passed from Sanderson and Le Clerc to Locke; in ethics from Aristotle to Puffendorf's abridgment and Sanderson's lectures. Twice a week he lectured on Xenophon and Demosthenes, and occasionally he taught on some Latin author. It was through Burton that the study of Locke was introduced into the schools, and he printed for the use of the younger students a double series of philosophical questions, with references to the authors to be consulted under each head. This is probably lost, but a set of exercises which he gave the undergraduates of his college for employment during the long vacation was printed under the title of 'Sacræ Scripturæ locorum quorundam versio metrica,' 1736, and a copy is at the British Museum. In the progress of the university press he took great interest, and obtained for it a gift of 100l. from Mr. (afterwards Lord) Rolle, and a legacy of 200l. from Dr. Hodges, the provost of Oriel. Through the circumstance that Burton had been tutor to a son of Dr. Bland, a fellowship at Eton College was bestowed upon him on 17 Aug. 1733, and when the valuable vicarage of Mapledurham, on the Oxfordshire bank of the Thames, became vacant by the death of Dr. Edward Littleton on 16 Nov. 1733, Burton was nominated thereto by the college and inducted on 9 March 1734. Dr. Littleton had married a daughter of Barnham Goode, under-master of Eton School, and left her a widow 'with three infant daughters, without a home, without a fortune.' The new vicar, in his pity for their 