Cornelius Burges
Burges had brothers James and John, who remained at Stanton Drew, and a sister Hester who married Samuel Sherman of Dedham, Essex.
Clarendon in his History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England goes so far as to say that the influence of Burges and Stephen Marshall was greater with both houses of parliament than that of Laud had ever been with the court, a statement which, as Edmund Calamy the Elder observes, 'carries a pretty strong figure in it'.
Of seventeen divines who answered the summons six, headed by William Twisse, and including Burges, Marshall, and Calamy, constituted the section most opposed to the existing ecclesiastical system or its abuses.
John Hacket, afterwards bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (a member of the sub-committee), was put forward on 12 May to defend the menaced corporations at the bar of the house.
His speech is said to have contained invective; he shared the puritan objection to instrumental music in church services, and made a point of the dissoluteness of cathedral singing-men.
At the close of his reply he gave it as his opinion that, while necessary to apply the cathedral foundations to better purposes, 'it was by no means lawful to alienate them from public and pious uses, or to convert them to any private person's profit'.
Burges declared that he had spoken in haste; his mature judgement was in favour of the right of the state to apply to its own purposes the lands which had been assigned for the support of offices since abolished.
On 8 July the assembly appointed Burges one of the two assessors or vice-presidents,[6] and as Twisse was in feeble health, and John White, the other assessor, had fits of gout, on Burges, 'a very active and sharpe man' (as Baillie calls him), fell a good deal of the duty of keeping the assembly in order, at least until the appointment of Charles Herle to succeed Twisse, who died 19 July 1646.
His liturgical knowledge (he had a fine collection of the various issues of the common prayer-book) may be traced, Alexander Ferrier Mitchell thinks, in the composition of the 'Directory'.
[1] Burges was one of the few who, in 1643, opposed the imposition of the Solemn League and Covenant, and he carried his opposition so far as to petition the House of Commons to be heard against it.
John Lightfoot on this occasion abused Burges as 'a wretch to be branded to all posterity, seeking for some devilish ends, either of his own or others, or both, to hinder so great a good of the two nations'.
Four shillings a day was assigned by the ordinance to each assembly-man; but the allowance was paid in irregular driblets, and Burges was one of those who declined their share, that the poorer members might come somewhat better off.
[1] On 12 March 1644 he was appointed (on the petition of the common councillors of London, December 1643) lecturer at St.Paul's, with a pension of £400 a year, and the dean's house as a residence.
Around 1645–6, according to Trevor-Roper,[7] the new kind of radical preacher exemplified by Hugh Peter becomes prominent, and Burges was in the group dropping away from the close supporters of Oliver Cromwell.
[1] When King Charles was brought to trial, Burges was the foremost, at great personal risk, in protesting against the proceeding with his usual freedom and vigour.
On 14 January 1649, the day preceding that on which the king was brought from Windsor to be arraigned before the high court of justice, Burges preached at Mercers' Chapel, denouncing the measure in the strongest terms.
About this time Burges invested his property in the purchase of alienated church lands, including the manor of Wells and the deanery which he rebuilt.
He is said to have behaved with great rapacity, to have stripped the lead from the cathedral, to have used the proceeds to enlarge the deanery in which he lived, and to have let out the gate-houses as cottages.
He made application to Sir Richard Browne, Lord Mayor of London in 1660, who promised to provide for him if he would preach a recantation sermon in St. Paul's, and on his refusal flung him a gratuity of £3.
By his will, dated Watford, 16 May 1665, he bequeathed his collection of prayer-books, the sole treasures saved from his library, to his 'dear and much-honoured mother, the renowned university of Oxford'.
