Born, in Edinburgh, 18 Sept. 1643. To Marischal Coll., Aberdeen, 1653; M.A., 1657. Studied theology. Probationer for Presbyterian Ministry, 1661. Visited English Universities, 1663. Travelled in Holland and France, 1664; spent some time at Court on return. F.R.S., 1664. Inducted to living of Saltoun, 29 Jan. 1665. Clerk of Presbytery of Haddington, 9 May 1667. Prof. of Divinity, Glasgow Univ., 1669; resigned living of Saltoun. To London, 1671. Returned to Glasgow and married Lady Margaret Kennedy, 1672. To London, 1673. Chaplain to King. 1673–74. Chaplain to Rolls Chapel, 1675–84. In France, Sept. to Oct. 1683. Wife died, 1684. In France, Italy, and Holland, 1685–87. In favour at Court of William of Orange. Married Mary Scott, 25 May 1687. Returned to England with William of Orange, Nov. 1687. Bishop of Salisbury, 1688. Second wife died, 1698; married Mrs. Elizabeth Berkeley same year. Appointed Governor to Duke of Gloucester, 1698. Active part in ecclesiastical politics. Died, in London, 7 March, 1715; buried in St. James’s Church, Clerkenwell. Works: [A complete list in 1823 edn. of his “History of his Own Times.”] Chief Works: “Discourse on Sir Robert Fletcher of Saltoun,” 1665; “Conference between a Conformist and a Nonconformist,” 1669; “Vindication of the Authority … of Church and State of Scotland,” 1673; “The Mystery of Iniquity Unveiled,” 1673; “Rome’s Glory,” 1673; “Memories of … James and William, Dukes of Hamilton,” 1852; “History of the Reformation,” vol. i., 1679; vol. ii., 1681; vol. iii., 1714; “Some Passages in the Life and Death of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester,” 1680; “News from France,” 1682; “Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale,” 1682; “Life of Bishop Bedell,” 1685; “Essay on the Memory of Queen Mary,” 1695; “Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles,” 1699; “A Collection of Tracts and Discourses,” 1704; “Exposition of the Church Catechism,” 1710; “Speech on the Impeachment of Sacheverell,” 1710. Posthumous: “History of his Own Times,” with life (2 vols.), 1723–34.

Personal

  Dr. Burnet is like all men who are above the ordinary level, seldom spoken of in a mean—he must either be railed at or admired. He has a swiftness of imagination that no other comes up to; and, as our nature hardly allows us to have enough of anything without having too much, he cannot at all times so hold in his thoughts but that at some time they may run away with him, as it is hard for a vessel that is brimful when in motion not to run over; and therefore, the variety of matter that he ever carries about him may throw out more than an unkind critic would allow of. His first thoughts may sometimes require more digestion, not from a defect in his judgment, but from the abundance of his fancy, which furnishes too fast for him. His friends love him too well to see small faults, or, if they do, think that his greater talents give him a privilege of straying from the strict rules of caution, and exempt him from the ordinary rules of censure. He produces so fast, that what is well in his writings calls for admiration, and what is incorrect deserves an excuse. He may in some things require grains of allowance which those only can deny him who are unknown or unjust to him. He is not quicker in discerning other men’s faults than he is in forgiving them; so ready, or rather glad, to acknowledge his own, that from blemishes they become ornaments.

  During the five years he remained at Saltoun, he preached twice every Sunday, and once more on one of the weekdays; he catechised three times a week, so as to examine every parishioner, old or young, thrice over in the compass of a year; he went round his parish, from house to house, instructing, reproving, or comforting them, as occasion required; those that were sick, he visited twice a day; be administered the sacrament four times a year, and personally instructed all such as gave notice they intended to receive it; all that remained, above his own necessary subsistence (in which he was very frugal), he gave away in charity.

  Bishop Burnet was a man of the most extensive knowledge I ever met with; had read and seen a great deal, with a prodigious memory, and a very indifferent judgment: he was extremely partial, and readily took every thing for granted that he heard to the prejudice of those he did not like: which made him pass for a man of less truth than he really was. I do not think he designedly published any thing he believed to be false. He had a boisterous vehement manner of pressing himself, which often made him ridiculous, especially in the house of lords, when what he said would not have been thought so, delivered in a lower voice, and a calmer behaviour. His vast knowledge occasioned his frequent rambling from the point he was speaking to, which ran him into discourses of so universal a nature, that there was no end to be expected but from a failure of his strength and spirits, of both which he had a larger share than most men; which were accompanied with a most invincible assurance.

  With whose character and conduct we should have been perhaps better acquainted had he spoken less of them himself.

  The fame of Burnet has been attacked with singular malice and pertinacity. The attack began early in his life, and is still carried on with undiminished vigour, though he has now been more than a century and a quarter in his grave. He is, indeed, as fair a mark as factions animosity and petulant wit could desire. The faults of his understanding and temper lie on the surface, and cannot be missed. They were not the faults which are ordinarily considered as belonging to his country. Alone among the many Scotchmen who have raised themselves to distinction and prosperity in England, he had that character which satirists, novelists, and dramatists, have agreed to ascribe to Irish adventurers. His high animal spirits, his boastfulness, his undissembled vanity, his propensity to blunder, his provoking indiscretion, his unabashed audacity, afforded inexhaustible subjects of ridicule to the Tories. Nor did his enemies omit to compliment him, sometimes with more pleasantry than delicacy, on the breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of his calves, and his success in matrimonial projects on amorous and opulent widows! Yet Burnet, though open in many respects to ridicule, and even to serious censure, was no contemptible man.

  An able and well-read, but reckless and unscrupulous man, Burnet has been more violently assailed than most men, and his statements as to the history of his times have been often impugned. Certainly he cannot be acquitted of inaccuracy, and probably not of wilful misstatement, but he had many fine traits in his character, and must be allowed to have proved himself useful not only as a politician, but also, and much more markedly, as a bishop.

  No English bishop exhibited a greater activity in combating the evil of pluralities; in watching over the character and education of his clergy; in making himself intimately acquainted with the wants and circumstances of the parishes under his care, than this great scholar and active politician.

  The historical interest of Burnet’s character lies in the fact that from his entrance upon public life as a mere boy he was the consistent representative of broad church views both in politics and doctrine. Except in the two or three instances mentioned, his voice was ever for toleration, and his practice in his diocese was still more emphatically so. He was a man perfectly healthy and robust in body and in mind; a meddler, and yet no intriguer; a lover of secrets, which he was incapable of keeping; a vigorous polemist, but without either spite or guile; whatever the heart conceived the tongue seemed compelled to utter or the pen to write.

History of the Reformation, 1679–1714

  Burnet wrote the “History of the English Reformation” in a partial, caustic, but interesting manner: his greatest honour consists in having been refuted by Bossuet. Burnet was a blunderer and a factious man, of a spirit akin to that of the Frondeurs: neither the revolutionary candour of Whitelocke, nor the republican enthusiasm of Ludlow, is to be found in his memoirs.

  Written in a better style than those, who know Burnet by his later and more negligent work, are apt to conceive, and which has the signal merit of having been the first in English, as far as I remember, which is fortified by a large appendix of documents.

  No cautions need be suggested before the perusal of the laborious work of this impartial and liberal churchman, an ornament to his order, and who deserved the name of Christian.

  One of the most thoroughly digested works of the century.

History of My Own Time

  Learning is sunk so very low, that I am most certainly inform’d, that nothing is now hardly read but Burnett’s romance or libel, call’d by him “The History of his Own Times.” ’Tis read by men, women, and children. Indeed it is the common table-book for ladies as well as gentlemen, especially such as are friends to the revolution scheme…. Burnett must have been the greatest of villains, in writing such libells or romances, in order to poison present and future ages. For tho’ honest wise men will rightly judge of such performances, and be by no means byass’d by them, yet they bear no proportion to others, who will be sway’d by such books, and will greedily imbibe the principles in them, and instill them in their children and dependents.

  I would willingly live to give that rascal the lie in half his history.

  This author is, in most particulars, the worst qualified for an historian that ever I met with. His style is rough, full of improprieties, in expressions often Scotch, and often such as are used by the meanest people. He discovers a great scarcity of words and phrases, by repeating the same several hundred times, for want of capacity to vary them. His observations are mean and trite, and very often false. His Secret History is generally made up of coffeehouse scandals, or at best from reports at the third, fourth, or fifth hand…. He is the most partial of all writers that ever pretended so much to impartiality; and yet I, who knew him well, am convinced that he is as impartial as he could possibly find in his heart; I am sure more than I ever expected from him; particularly in his accounts of the Papist and fanatic plots. This work may more properly be called A History of Scotland during the Author’s Time, with some Digressions relating to England, rather than deserve the title he gives it; for I believe two-thirds of it relates only to that beggarly nation, and their insignificant brangles and factions…. After all, he was a man of generosity and good-nature, and very communicative; but, in his ten last years, was absolutely party-mad, and fancied he saw Popery under every bush. He has told me many passages not mentioned in his history, and many that are, but with several circumstances suppressed or altered. He never gives a good character without one essential point, that the person was tender to dissenters, and thought many things in the church ought to be amended.

  Thus piously ends the most partial, malicious heap of scandal and misrepresentation, that was ever collected, for the laudable design of giving a false impression of persons and things to all future ages.

  Burnet’s “History of his Own Times” is very entertaining. The style, indeed, is mere chit-chat. I do not believe that Burnet intentionally lied; but he was so much prejudiced, that he took no pains to find out the truth. He was like a man who resolves to regulate his time by a certain watch; but will not inquire whether the watch is right or not.

  Did you ever read that garrulous, pleasant history? He tells his story like an old man past political service, bragging to his sons on winter evenings of the part he took in public transactions, when his “old cap was new.” Full of scandal, which all true history is. No palliatives; but all the stark wickedness, that actually gives the momentum to national actors. Quite the prattle of age, and outlived importance. Truth and sincerity staring out upon you perpetually in alto relievo. Himself a party man—he makes you a party man. None of the cursed philosophical Humeian indifference, so cold, and unnatural, and inhuman! None of the cursed Gibbonian fine writing, so fine and composite! None of Dr. Robertson’s periods with three members. None of Mr. Roscoe’s sage remarks, all so apposite, and coming in so clever, lest the reader should have had the trouble of drawing an inference. Burnet’s good old prattle I can bring present to my mind; I can make the revolution present to me: the French revolution, by a converse perversity in my nature, I fling as far from me.

  We are apt to mistake, or dissemble at least, even to ourselves, our true principles of action. Bishop Burnet professes to write his “History of his Own Time” for public ends, pro bono publico. This might be one inducement; but who sees not that the main motive for engaging in that work was a love of prate, a busy, meddling humour to pry into State secrets, and the vanity of disclosing the part which he had, or fancied he had, in them? He had sense and honesty; but was warped in his judgment of men and things, as most men are, by strong prejudices, and a heat of temper that sometimes looks fanatical. As a writer, he is not very respectable. A vague, general, indistinct expression, and a slovenly neglect of grammar make the reading of his works uninstructing and unpleasant. He neither informs us clearly and precisely, nor entertains us agreeably. He wrote too much and too hastily to write well.

  Arbuthnot, Swift and Pope directed their merciless satire against him; their satire is still read, but so is his history; and the history will continue to increase in estimation when the satire will be perused only by a few curious readers, and by them chiefly because it relates to so eminent a man. The personal faults and weaknesses of the historian were undisguised, he wore them on his Sleeve, for daws to peck at; but they were proofs rather of simplicity of character than of worldliness, and both in his life and writings the good predominated greatly.

  Burnet’s “History of his own Times” is a truly valuable book. His credulity is great, but his simplicity is equally great; and he never deceives you for a moment.

  Whatever he reports himself to have heard or seen, the reader may be assured he really did hear or see. But we must receive his representations and conclusions with that caution which must ever be observed when we listen to the relation of a warm and busy partisan, whatever be his natural integrity and good sense. He is often censured, and sometimes corrected; but the fact seems to be, that, without his original, and certainly honest account, we should know little about the wants and affairs he professes to explain. Many of the writers who are not very willing to receive his assistance, would be totally at a loss without it.

  Is gossiping and garrulous, but honest. No reader can doubt that the author might easily have been misled by his own prejudices and the misrepresentations of others. As little would it be denied by any one that this history is in the main a faithful picture of the men and scenes which it portrays.

  His words are generally well chosen, his illustrations appropriate, and his diction copious without being in any way extravagant; but his dry correctness is not made up for by fluent melody or by happy originality of combination. The great charms of his “History of my own Times” lie in the gossip from behind the scenes, and the skilful delineation of character. He had something of Boswell’s faculty for noting characteristic incidents, besides the power of showing them briefly in a connected portraiture. None of our historians surpass, if any equal him, in this respect. When we compare his vivid delineations of the men of the Revolution with Macaulay’s jumble of characteristic traits and high-flown moral commonplaces, we at once recognise the hand of a natural master of the art.

  To literary style or to eloquence Burnet has no pretensions, nor is there even the slightest appearance of an attempt at style; his epithets are often clumsy, and his constructions ungainly. From this criticism, however, the most admirable “conclusion” must be excepted. This gives Burnet at his very best; the thoughts are matured and noble, and the diction is elevated and impressive. The whole work has been subject to the acrimonious criticism of Dartmouth and the pungent satire of Swift, to whom he was especially obnoxious, and who is no doubt the author of a satirical epitaph upon him (Hist. MSS. Comm. of the Rep. 468b); but while the former of these, who frequently accuses him of deliberate falsehood through party feeling (e.g. 6th Rep. 245 note), has now and again hit undoubted blots, the value of the “History of his own Time” as a candid narrative and an invaluable work of reference has continually risen as investigations into original materials have proceeded.

  Whatever the subject in hand, a battle or a revolution, the character of a great statesman or the untimely death of a dear friend, Burnet’s narrative jogs along at the same slow apathetic pace. The lack of eloquence is not compensated by clearness or method, for the arrangement is careless and the impression left on the reader is one of confusion. Still less is the uncouthness of the form compensated by the profundity of the thought.

  Burnet’s “History of his Own Times” actually deserves the character which Clarendon incorrectly gives of his own; it is rather the material for history than history itself. This is not a consequence of crude treatment, for all is well arranged and lively, nor from the encumbrance of original documents, of which it is nearly destitute. It arises rather from the predominance of the autobiographic tone, much more marked than in Clarendon, though Clarendon also relates as an eyewitness, which almost brings the book down to the level of personal memoirs. It must nevertheless be classed with histories, and, if not one of the most dignified, it is undoubtedly one of the most entertaining.

  A Whig Clarendon, without the genius and the art.

General

  This mitred historian, who seems to know more personal secrets than any that ever writ before him.

  When the nation was no longer agitated by domestic faction, literature was again cultivated and restored with unexampled success. During the civil wars, the classical learning for which the Scots were early distinguished, was absorbed and lost in the controversial vortex of religion and liberty; two names ever dear to mankind, with which the world has alternately been guided or deceived. From the restoration down to the union, the only author of eminence whom Scotland produced, was Burnet, the celebrated bishop of Sarum, who, when transplanted into England, was conspicuous as a political writer, an historian, and a divine. As an historian alone he descends to posterity; and his curious research into facts, the unaffected ease and simplicity of his dramatic narrative, his bold and glowing delineations of character, are far superior to every historical production of the period.

  The Spirit of Party has touched with its plague-spot the character of Burnet; it has mildewed the page of a powerful mind, and tainted by its suspicions, its rumours, and its censures, his probity as a man. Can we forbear listening to all the vociferations which faction has thrown out? Do we not fear to trust ourselves amid the multiplicity of his facts? And when we are familiarised with the variety of his historical portraits, are we not startled when it is suggested that “they are tinged with his own passions and his own weaknesses?” indeed made “his humble appeal to the Great God of Truth” that he has given it as fully as he could find it; and he has expressed his abhorrence of “a lie in history,” so much greater a sin than a lie in common discourse, from its lasting and universal nature. Yet these hallowing protestations have not saved him! A cloud of witnesses, from different motives, have risen up to attaint his veracity and Burnet has his candour; while all the Tory wits have ridiculed his style, impatiently inaccurate, and uncouthly negligent, and would sink his vigour and ardour, while they expose the meanness and poverty of his genius. Thus the literary and the moral character of no ordinary author have fallen a victim to party-feeling.

  With all his talents and integrity, was sometimes rather hasty than wise.

  A writer, whose voluminous works, in several branches of literature, find numerous readers a hundred and thirty years after his death, may have great faults, but must also have had great merits; and Burnet had great merits, a fertile and vigorous mind, and a style far indeed removed from faultless purity, but always clear, often lively, and sometimes rising to solemn and fervid eloquence.

  Burnet’s writings are still popular. His “History of the Reformation” is in the hands of every student of religious progress. The lives of Hale and Wilmot are widely read. The “History of his Own Times” is a work of unusual interest. Even its great faults lend it a peculiar charm. The innocent vanity, the earnest sincerity, his fear and hatred of tory principles, his blind approval of those of the Whigs, lend to Burnet’s narrative a vigor and an artlessness that win the attention of the reader. His learning, upon any single topic, was not great, but his knowledge extended over a wide circle of subjects peculiarly well suited to the designs upon which he entered. His chief works had a political and controversial bearing. They were intended to serve the purposes of his party in the government or the church. They were written hastily, and seem rather to satisfy the understanding than the taste. It is a sufficient test, therefore, of his real ability, that notwithstanding many faults, they have attained a reputation with posterity that has not yet died out…. His histories are arranged without art, and with none of those philosophic views which indicate a reflective power. He thought justly but not deeply; he wrote clearly but too hastily; and the only trait that will give vitality to his writings is the constancy with which they defend freedom of thought in politics and religion.

  Fox considered Burnet’s style to be perfect. We were once talking of our historian’s introducing occasionally the words of other writers into his work without marking them as quotations, when Fox said, “that the style of some of the authors so treated might need a little mending, but that Burnet’s required none.”

  Bishop Burnet was very strenuous for the passing of the Comprehension Bill. Having been all his life connected with the Church, but able to look at her condition and wants with eyes of one who had looked at her from a distance, and had mingled much with men of other churches, he seemed to have discerned better than any other prelate, at least of his time, wherein her true policy lay. By no means a Puritan himself, in the strict sense of the word—too much a courtier for that—he yet saw the reasonableness of many of the objections of the Puritans, and marvelled at the obstinacy of many of his brethren to retain, simply out of pride, many of those things whose removal would have been every way a gain to the Church. But the good bishop in this matter was a man in advance of his age, and had to pay the penalty of failing to aid those whom he wished to serve, and not failing to incur the odium of his own friends.

  Bishop Burnet was the greatest name in literature which Scotland produced in the seventeenth century…. He had a wide and ready command of language, and his historical method and style are equal, if not superior, to the best English writers of his day. His narrative is always methodical, and runs on naturally with much simplicity and ease. His chief historical works are still valuable as sources of information, and they are also more interesting reading than almost any writings on the same subjects of that generation or the succeeding one.

  Burnet’s prejudices were at least those of a great mind and a benevolent heart, and his narrative is perhaps as fair as it was possible for a man of that generation to pen.

  Burnet had talent and merit, but was hot-headed, pragmatical, and injudicious.

  The active, fussy, good-natured Whig partisan.