Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/193

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OF CELEBRATED WOMEN.
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band[1]. She was buried in the abbey church of Westminster, where a magnificent monument is erected to her memory.

Five days after her decease, lord Burleigh wrote, what he calls, A Meditation on the Death of his Lady, 'written in sorrow;' in which he praised her zeal for the maintenance of learning; by her many benefactions to Cambridge, Oxford, and Westminster; her widely extended benevolence; and the secresy with which she did all these things, so that even he knew them not during her life.

New Annual Register; Female Worthies.


BURNETT, (ELIZABETH), Born 1661; died 1708-9, Eldest Daughter of Sir Richard Blake, and of Elizabeth, Daughter of Dr. Bathurst, a Physician in London, a Gentleman of eminent Piety, and one of the most considerable Men of his Profession.

At eleven years of age she began to have a true sense of religion, and read, with great application, the books that were put into her hand; but was not quite satisfied, aspiring after more solid and sublime notions than what she found in them. On this account, more than ordinary care was taken to make her think meanly of herself, she being bred up in the greatest privacy possible.

At little more than seventeen, she was married to Robert Berkley, of Spetchley, in the county of Worcester, Esq; grandson of Sir Robert Berkley, who was a judge in the time of king Charles I. This match was procured chiefly by the means of doctor Fell, lord

  1. See Mr. Cart's General History of England, vol. iii. p. 670.
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bishop