William Burdon

William Burdon (1764–1818) was an English academic, mineowner and writer.

Life

Burdon was born at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the son of George Burdon, was educated at Newcastle grammar school, and went to Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1782. He graduated B.A. 1786, and M.A. 1788, when he was elected a Fellow of his college.^[1][2]

In the early times of the French Revolution, Burdon's views were republican, but he later modified them.^[3] He resigned his fellowship in 1806, on declining to take holy orders, and moved to London; it is thought he had suffered a crisis of faith.^[4] He was later an associate of George Cannon, and published in his Theological Enquirer as W.B.^[5]

Hartford Hall near Bedlington today, consisting of apartments

A wealthy man, Burdon owned coalmines at Hartford, near Morpeth, where he lived for part of each year.^[1] Hartford Hall was built there for him around 1807 by William Stokoe. Alterations were later made to the house, about 1875.^[6]

Burdon died at his London house in Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square, on 30 May 1818.^[1] He was a patron of the writer Hewson Clarke.^[7]

Works

Burdon wrote extensively on political and literary topics. His major works were:^[1]

• Examination of the Merits and Tendency of the Pursuits of Literature, 1799. Against Thomas James Mathias.^[8]
• A Vindication of Pope and Grattan from the Attacks of an anonymous Defamer, 1799.
• Various Thoughts on Politicks, Morality, and Literature, 1800. Based on letters published in the Cambridge Intelligencer.^[9]
• Materials for Thinking, 1803, 1812. A work of advocacy for liberalism, in a broad sense.^[10] The Lacon of Charles Caleb Colton was thought to draw on this work, as well as Bacon's Essays.^[11]
• The Life and Character of Buonaparte, 1804. Burdon had praised Napoleon in Various Thoughts, but this was a critical biography.^[12]
• Letters on the Affairs of Spain, 1809.
• Cobbett and the Reformers impartially examined, 1813, in which he proposed a moderate reform programme.^[1] In private Burdon wrote in more extreme terms, and was an atheist.^[13]

In 1795 Burdon wrote letters in the Cambridge Intelligencer against Richard Watson, the absentee Cambridge Regius Professor of Divinity, claiming his deputy Thomas Kipling was incompetent. These were then published in book form by Benjamin Flower as Three Letters Addressed to the Bishop of Llandaff, later in the same year. In 1807 he wrote on reform in Flower's Political Review and Monthly Register.^[4]

Burdon wrote pamphlets on political questions of the day, and translated in 1810, from the Spanish of Álvaro Flórez Estrada, A Constitution for the Spanish Nation, and an Introduction to the History of the Revolution in Spain, besides circulating an Examination of the Dispute between Spain and her Colonies. He was the editor of the Memoirs of Józef Boruwłaski (1820).^[1]

Family

Burdon married in 1798 Jane Dickson, a daughter of Lieutenant-general Dickson, coalmine owner;^[14] they had five children.^[15] She died in 1806.^[1] Their daughter Hannah Burdon (born 1800) achieved fame as a writer of novels.^[16]

Notes

1.  Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1886). "Burdon, William". Dictionary of National Biography. 7. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
2. "Burdon, William (BRDN781W)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
3. The New Monthly Magazine. Colburn. 1818. p. 278.
4. Timothy D. Whelan, ed. (2008). Politics, Religion and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould Flower, 1794–1808. National Library of Wales. p. 328 note 115. ISBN 9781862250703.
5. Iain McCalman (1988). Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840. CUP Archive. p. 79. ISBN 978-0-521-30755-0.
6. english-heritage.org.uk, Hartford Hall List entry Number: 1041423.
7. Hinings, Jessica. "Clarke, Hewson". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/5500. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
8. Rolf P. Lessenich (2012). Neoclassical Satire and the Romantic School 1780 - 1830. V&R unipress GmbH. p. 66. ISBN 978-3-89971-986-4.
9. Stuart Semmel, British Radicals and "Legitimacy": Napoleon in the Mirror of History, Past & Present No. 167 (May, 2000), pp. 140-175, at p. 148 note 30.Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/651256
10. Gavin Budge et al. (editors), The Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century British Philosophers (2002), Thoemmes Press (two volumes), article Burdon, William, p. 168.
11.  Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1887). "Colton, Charles Caleb". Dictionary of National Biography. 11. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
12. J. E. Cookson (January 1982). The Friends of Peace: Anti-war Liberalism in England, 1793-1815. Cambridge University Press. p. 282 note 16. ISBN 978-0-521-23928-8.
13. Iain McCalman (1988). Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries, and Pornographers in London, 1795-1840. CUP Archive. p. 254. ISBN 978-0-521-30755-0.
14. Oxford Index, Overview, William Burdon (1764—1818), writer.
15. Memoir of William Burdon. From Mackenzie's History of Newcastle. 1826. p. 7.
16. "Author Information At the Circulating Library". At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction. Retrieved 8 April 2015.

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1886). "Burdon, William". Dictionary of National Biography. 7. London: Smith, Elder & Co.