The family of Burnett of Leys, with collateral - Electric Scotland

BURNETTS OF CRIMOND. 14!
complaint to the home government, and the recall of both
ambassador and consul. On his return he applied himself to a
more serious study, that of the law, and in November, 1741, was
made one of the Judges of the Common Pleas in room of Judge
Fortescue, who was appointed Master of the Rolls. On Novr.
23rd, 1745, when the Lord Chancellor, Judges, and legal profession
waited on the King with their address on the occasion of
the rebellion, Burnett received the honour of knighthood. Sir
Thomas was known as one of the best lawyers and most upright
judges on the English bench. He edited his father's work,
" The History of his own Time," and was author of a memoir
of the Bishop appended to that work. He died of gout in the
stomach at his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields on the 7th January,
1753. He was unmarried. Sir Thomas Burnet made the following
declaration in his will :
"
I think proper in this solemn act to
" declare that as I have lived so I trust I shall die in the true
" faith of Christ as taught in the Scriptures, but not as taught or
" practised in any one visible Church I know of, tho' I think the
" Church of England is as little stuffed with the inventions of
" man as any of them, and the Church of Rome is so full of
" them as to have destroyed all that is lovely in the Christian
" religion."
I. MARY, married, 1712, David Mitchell, nephew of Admiral Mitchell,
and had a son and a daughter. She and her children were dead
without issue in 1788.
II. ELIZABETH, married Lord Chancellor West of Ireland, and had a
son, Richard West, the poet, and friend of Gay and Horace
Walpole, who died without issue, and a daughter Mary, who
married John Williams of Pembroke, and had a son, who in 1789
was Vicar of Wellisbourne in Warwickshire, and father of three
children. If any of his descendents survive, they would seem to
be the sole remaining descendants of Bishop Burnet.