He took troops from Lincolnshire to serve in the Netherlands in 1585; was subsequently knighted; made governor of Doesburg; and governor of the Briel in early 1588; commanded one of the English regiments which helped Henry IV of France in 1589–90, and was knighted on the field at Ivry in 1590; finally commanded the squadron which captured the great Spanish treasure-ship off the Azores in 1592, and was killed in a duel respecting the plunder.

The first mention of him that has been reserved is in 1585, when he raised a body of men in Lincolnshire for service beyond the sea, embarked with them at Hull on 25 August, and commanded them in the campaigns in the Netherlands, under the Earl of Leicester, and afterwards under Lord Willoughby.

On 3 August Burgh (near the Azores) fell in with the Madre de Dios, or, as she was then called, the Great Carrack, and captured her after a running fight of some sixteen hours' duration near Flores Island.

Of irregular plunder Sir John's share was but small, and was declared by the commissioners to be within reason; but the disappointed men refused to accept this decision, and much recrimination followed.

Burke, giving an English version of this inscription, renders it 'he fell by an untimely death in the fifty-third year of his age';[7] and it is so repeated in later editions.

It may therefore be likely that if John Burgh was a distinct person from that William Burroughs, the comptroller of the navy, who commanded the Lion in Francis Drake's expedition to Cadiz in 1587.