Elizabeth Burnet

1707 portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller.
Not to be confused with Elizabeth Burnett.

Elizabeth Burnet (née Blake; 8 November 1661 – 3 December 1709) was an English philanthropist and author of a prayer book, A Method of Devotion.[1]

Life

Elizabeth Blake was born near Southampton in 1661 and brought up a Puritan by her parents Sir Richard and Elizabeth Blake. Her first husband, Robert Berkeley, was the ward of her godfather John Fell, the Bishop of Oxford. After her godfather died and the Catholic James II came to the throne, she persuaded her Protestant husband to move to the Netherlands. This proved a wise move, as they returned in 1688 as part of the court of William of Orange.[2]

Blake became known to John Locke and other religious thinkers such as Bishop Stillingfleet. It was she who told Locke of the Defense published by Catharine Trotter Cockburn. She acted as a go-between and she gave money to the poor philosopher before Locke also assisted her financially.[3]

Elizabeth's first husband died in 1694 and in 1700 she married Gilbert Burnet, the Bishop of Salisbury, who had been twice widowed. His second wife Mary Scott, fearing, rightly as it turned out, that she would soon die of smallpox, advised him in the event of her passing to marry Elizabeth, who was one of her closest friends.[4] One of the reasons she married him was because she thought that her new husband needed her advice on handling the politics of his position.[2] The marriage proved a happy one and Elizabeth was on good terms with her five stepchildren. After her second marriage, Burnet still had control of investments that gave her an annual income of £800. She disposed of this in charitable causes, including caring for the children of the poor of Worcester and Salisbury.[5]

Burnet's portrait, painted by Sir Gofrey Kneller in 1707, is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London.[6]

Burnet travelled abroad for her health with her stepchildren, as her own two daughters had died while young. She returned to England, but the appalling cold winter of 1708-9 caused the final decline of her health. Burnet died in London in 1709 and she was buried at Spetchley, Worcestershire. Near to the time of her death, the prayer book she had written after her first husband died, A Method of Devotion, was published in 1708 and went into several editions.[5]

References

  1. ↑  "Burnet, Elizabeth". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  2. 1 2 Burnet, Gilbert Bishop Burnet's History of His Own Time, ed. M. J. Routh (1823):Volume I,
  3. ↑ Waithe, edited by Mary Ellen (1991). A history of women philosophers. Dordrecht: Kluwer. p. 104-105. ISBN 0792309308. Retrieved 5 August 2014.
  4. ↑ Martin Greig, "Burnet, Gilbert (1643–1715)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online e., September 2013 Retrieved 6 August 2014
  5. 1 2 Frances Harris, ‘Burnet , Elizabeth (1661–1709)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online e., May 2008 Retrieved 5 August 2014
  6. ↑ Elizabeth Burnet, National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 5 August 2014.
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