William Burnet (March 1687/88[1] – 7 September 1729) was a British civil servant and colonial administrator who served as governor of New York and New Jersey (1720–1728) and Massachusetts and New Hampshire (1728–1729).

Active for most of his life in intellectual pursuits (he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1705/6), he occupied no posts of importance until financial considerations and political connections brought him the governorships of New York and New Jersey.

His tenure in New Jersey was without major controversies, although he set a precedent there for accepting what were effectively bribes in exchange for his assent to legislation.

Although his New Hampshire tenure was inconsequential, he engaged in a nasty dispute with the Massachusetts assembly over the issue of his salary, holding the legislative body in session for six months and relocating it away from Boston.

The dispute held up other colonial business, and was ongoing in September 1729 when Burnet died; his death was apparently caused by illness contracted after his carriage overturned and dumped him in water.

Mary Scott Burnet was the heiress of a Scottish family which had settled in the Netherlands and acquired great wealth: her marriage to Gilbert however was generally agreed not to be for money, but a genuine love match on both sides.

Burnet's father gave the coronation sermon, was later elevated to Bishop of Salisbury, and was an ongoing influence in the English court during King William's reign.

[5] He was acquainted with the mathematician Gottfried Leibniz,[6] and was a regular correspondent on a wide array of scientific subjects with Philadelphia merchant and politician James Logan.

[7] He reported to the Royal Society observations of the Grindelwald Glacier in Switzerland,[8] and on an unusual instance of Hungarian conjoined twins he saw while resident in The Hague in 1708.

In this work he put forward a Millennialist argument that Jesus Christ would return to Earth in 1790, based on his numerological interpretation of the Book of Daniel.

He also invested heavily in the South Sea Company, whose collapse in 1720 led him to consider more lucrative positions in the North American colonies.

[13] Burnet's tenure as New Jersey governor was marked by disputes over the issuance of bills of credit and the granting of a permanent salary.

[16][15] When the assembly began appropriating funds from the bills in unapproved ways a few years later, Burnet was again convinced to sign in exchange for a grant of £500 for "incidental expenses".

Two vocal merchants, Adolph Philipse and Pieter Schuyler, sat on the governor's council, and were removed by Burnet in 1721.

[30] These policies caused protest not only in New York, but also in London, where British merchants argued that they were having a negative impact on trade volume to Europe.

[31] In 1723 Burnet was informed that the French had begun construction of Fort Niagara at the western end of Lake Ontario; this action presented a clear threat to British attempts to more directly access and control the fur trade.

George II decided to give the New York and New Jersey governorships to Colonel John Montgomerie, who had served him as a Groom of the Bedchamber.

[39] Burnet was only briefly in New Hampshire during his short tenure, where unlike Massachusetts he was readily granted a salary for three years or the duration of his administration.

[46] The dispute was still ongoing when Burnet, en route from Cambridge to Boston on 31 August, was thrown into the water when his carriage accidentally overturned.