His mother died in 1698: two years later his father remarried her best friend Elizabeth Berkeley, who proved to be a kindly stepmother to Thomas and his siblings.
[1] As a young man, Burnet's attention was on Whig politics; he was notorious about London for debauchery and wit.
[2] He published many pamphlets, for one of which, Certain information of a certain discourse, the Whigs, on their accession to power, rewarded him with the consulship at Lisbon, a post he held from 1719[3][4] to 1728[5] There he quarrelled with Charles O'Hara, 1st Baron Tyrawley, the English ambassador, and took revenge by appearing on a great occasion in a plain suit himself, but with lacqueys in suits copied from that which the ambassador was to wear.
[7][1] He prevailed upon Attorney General Philip Yorke for employment, and was successful in securing a position as Serjeant-at-Law in Easter term 1736,[8] and King's Serjeant in May 1740.
Burnet died unmarried, at his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, on 8 January 1753, of gout in the stomach, and was buried near his father at St. James's Church, Clerkenwell.