[5] His career at the Bar was so successful, that in 1628 he acquired Banachtie and Mill of Bourtie from William Seton of Meldrum, and, in 1634, Crimond, in Aberdeenshire, which afterwards became his residence.
[5] In that year he wrote to his brother-in-law, Archibald Johnston of Warristoun, protesting against the injustice of the sentence passed upon the bishop Thomas Sydserf.
[6] After his return he was urged by Oliver Cromwell to act as a judge, but declined, and lived in retirement on his estate at Crimond until the restoration of King Charles II of England.
[2] He was nominated a Senator of the College of Justice on 19 January 1661 and took his seat in the Court of Session under the judicial title Lord Crimond on 1 June, an office he enjoyed scarcely three months before dying at Edinburgh on 24 August.
I heard that the good Mr Robert Burnet, Crimond, was removed by death; 'The righteous are taken away and perishing, none considering or laying it to hart, that they are taken away from the euel to come"...[10][11] His grandson Thomas Burnet gave the following description of his character ..."His excessive modesty so far depressed his abilities, that he never made a showy figure at the bar, though he was universally esteemed a man of judgement and knowledge in his profession; he was eminent for probity and generosity in his practice; in so much that nearly one half of it went in acts of charity and friendship; from the poor he never took a fee, nor from a clergyman when he sued in the right of his church"...[12]