42 Facts About Gilbert Burnet

Gilbert Burnet was a Scottish philosopher and historian, and Bishop of Salisbury.

Gilbert Burnet was fluent in Dutch, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

Gilbert Burnet was always closely associated with the Whig party, and was one of the few close friends in whom King William III confided.

Gilbert Burnet was born at Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1643, the son of Robert Gilbert Burnet, Lord Crimond, a Royalist and Episcopalian lawyer, who became a judge of the Court of Session, and of his second wife Rachel Johnston, daughter of James Johnston, and sister of Archibald Johnston of Warristoun, a leader of the Covenanters.

Gilbert Burnet's father was his first tutor until he began his studies at the University of Aberdeen, where he earned a Master of Arts in Philosophy at the age of thirteen.

Gilbert Burnet did not enter into the ministry at that time, but travelled for several years.

Gilbert Burnet visited Oxford, Cambridge, London, the United Provinces and France.

Gilbert Burnet began his ministry in the rural church at East Saltoun, East Lothian, and served this community devoutly for four years.

Gilbert Burnet was later offered, but declined, a Scottish bishopric.

Gilbert Burnet himself recalled that they had been good friends for several years, but that in his view such a close friendship between a single man and a single woman could not continue indefinitely unless they married.

Gilbert Burnet was to have numerous children by later marriages.

Gilbert Burnet noted fairly that this attitude was quite understandable, given the King's experiences in the English Civil War and the Interregnum, which had shown him when he was still very young the "baseness of human nature".

Gilbert Burnet recognised the danger that innocent people might be falsely accused, and it is notable that he praised the Catholic martyr Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, who isadays probably the best-known victim of the Plot, as a good and innocent man who was destroyed by the malice of his personal enemies.

Gilbert Burnet argued strongly that the first victim of the Plot, the young Catholic banker William Staley, was innocent, although his narrative of Staley's trial was undoubtedly coloured by his detestation of William Carstares, the Crown's chief witness at Staley's trial.

Several of Gilbert Burnet's friends wished him to publish a rebuttal of the work, so in 1679 his first volume of The History of the Reformation of the Church of England was published.

Gilbert Burnet then travelled through Switzerland to Italy, where Pope Innocent XI offered him an audience, which Burnet declined on account of his poor knowledge of the Italian language.

Gilbert Burnet was sent letters from the court of William, Prince of Orange, and his wife Princess Mary inviting him to take up residence at The Hague.

In 1687, in light of James's policy of wanting to receive William and Mary's support for the repeal of the Test Act, Gilbert Burnet wrote a pamphlet against repeal.

Gilbert Burnet, who had long been resigned to being childless since as his first wife Lady Margaret Kennedy had been nearly twenty years his senior, quickly found himself the father of a growing family.

Gilbert Burnet translated an open letter written by Gaspar Fagel, William's grand pensionary, setting out a policy of lifting disabilities on non-conformists while retaining them on Catholics, which provided an alternative to the dissenters of an alliance with James's court.

When Gilbert Burnet came ashore he hastened to William and eagerly inquired of him what William now intended to do.

Gilbert Burnet was appointed tutor to the future Queen Anne's only surviving child, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, in 1698.

At Easter 1689, Gilbert Burnet was consecrated Bishop of Salisbury and three days later was sworn as Chancellor of the Order of the Garter.

Gilbert Burnet was indefatigable and at length successful in his attempts to obtain for them from the Crown that grant which is known by the name of Queen Anne's Bounty.

Gilbert Burnet was especially careful, when he travelled through his diocese, to lay no burden on them.

Gilbert Burnet always fixed his headquarters at a market town, kept a table there, and by his decent hospitality and munificent charities, tried to conciliate those who were prejudiced against his doctrines.

Gilbert Burnet was present at King William's deathbed, and with that knack for appearing absurd which sometimes detracted from his genuine gifts, he rushed in haste to be the first to break the news to the new Queen, and went on his knees in front of her, only to find himself "generally laughed at".

Gilbert Burnet was out of royal favour in the reign of Queen Anne: apart from Anne's reflexive hostility to anyone whom King William had favoured, she apparently thought Burnet to be something of a buffoon, although he could sometimes be an entertaining one.

In 1713 he warned her of an impending Jacobite invasion: the Queen, unimpressed, noted drily that while Gilbert Burnet apparently considered himself to be all-knowing, she could not help recalling that he had made a similar prophecy the previous year, which had proved to be entirely groundless.

Gilbert Burnet was nominated by John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury, to write answers to the works sponsored by Tillotson's friend, the Socinian businessman and philanthropist Thomas Firmin, who was funding the printing of Socinian tracts by Stephen Nye.

In 1714, as Queen Anne approached death, Gilbert Burnet became briefly, and in the opinion of his critics, somewhat hysterically concerned about the dire consequences for Protestants if her Catholic half-brother, the Old Pretender, succeeded to the throne.

Gilbert Burnet's will has been called one of those rare dispositions of one's property which please everyone: one-third of his estate was left to his eldest son and the rest was divided among the other four children.

Gilbert Burnet began Bishop Gilbert Burnet's History of His Own Time in 1683, covering the English Civil War and the Commonwealth of England to the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713.

Gilbert Burnet then rejected his Calvinist soteriology for an Arminian one.

Besides, Gilbert Burnet is counted among the Latitudinarian divines with distinctive theological characteristics of thought.

Gilbert Burnet married three times, firstly, c to Lady Margaret Kennedy, daughter of John Kennedy, 6th Earl of Cassilis and his wife Lady Jean Hamilton.

The marriage was kept secret for some time, and Gilbert Burnet renounced any claim to his wife's fortune.

Gilbert Burnet is said to have lost her memory completely some time before she died in 1685.

Gilbert Burnet was married, secondly, in 1687 to Mary Scott, a Dutch heiress of Scots descent: she was a granddaughter of the prominent statesman and jurist Apollonius Schotte.

Gilbert Burnet died of smallpox while visiting Rotterdam on business in 1698.

Gilbert Burnet married, thirdly, in 1700 Elizabeth Berkeley, widow of Robert Berkeley, and daughter of Sir Richard Blake of Clerkenwell; she was a religious writer of some note.

Gilbert Burnet was a devoted parent and all his children were deeply attached to him.