down to the presidency. Having benefited by the change, he was appointed to a command at Cuttack in 1821. Failing health, however, compelled him to relinquish further employment and to seek his native climate. He died at Notting Hill on 13 Sept. 1827, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. Of a placid disposition, kindly, even-tempered, and possessed of an intimate acquaintance with the habits, feelings, and prejudices of the natives, Burrell had the gift of winning the confidence and esteem of all with whom he came in contact. Under his rule, his regiment is said to have been a model of good order in the field and in cantonments, and whenever volunteers were called for, as in the cases of the expeditions to Mauritius and Java and the proposed occupation of Macao, the 15th native infantry was always ready with double or treble its quota.
[East India Military Calendar, vol. ii. (1823); Dodswell and Miles's Lists; East India Registers; Gent. Mag. xcvii. (ii.) 640; Rose's New Biog. Dict.]
BURRELL, Lady SOPHIA (1750?–1802), poetess and dramatist, was the eldest daughter of Charles Raymond of Valentines, Essex (Ladies' Mag. 1773; Home News, p. 223), and was born about 1750. On 13 April 1773 she married William Burrell, member of parliament for Haslemere [see Burrell, Sir William], and came into possession, it is said, of 100,000l. A baronetcy was granted to her father in 1774, the year after her marriage, with remainder to her husband and her male issue by him. From 1773 to 1782 Lady Burrell's pen was employed on vers de société, varied by such heavier matter as ‘Comala,’ from Ossian, in 1784. In 1787 her husband's health failed, and they retired to a seat at Deepdene. Lady Burrell published two volumes of collected poems anonymously in 1793; in 1794, the ‘Thymriad’ from Xenophon, and ‘Telemachus,’ with her name attached. In 1796 Sir William Burrell died, Lady Burrell having had two sons and two daughters by him; and on 23 May 1797 she was married, at Marylebone Church, by the Bishop of Kildare (Gent. Mag. lxvii. part i. 484), to the Rev. William Clay, a son of Richard Augustus Clay of Southwell, Nottinghamshire. In 1800 Lady Burrell produced two tragedies. The first was ‘Maximian,’ dedicated to Mr. William Lock; the second was ‘Theodora,’ dedicated by permission to Duchess Georgiana of Devonshire. Lady Burrell and Mr. Clay retired to West Cowes, Isle of Wight, where she died, 20 June 1802, aged about 52.
In 1814 Lady Burrell's tragedy ‘Theodora’ was reprinted in ‘The New British Theatre’ (vol. i.), a collection of rejected dramas.
[Biog. Dram. i. 79; Gent. Mag. lxvi. part i. 86, &c. (infra); Ladies' Mag. 1778; Home News, p. 223; Lady Burrell's own Works; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ix. 797; The New British Drama, i. 336.]
BURRELL, Sir WILLIAM (1732–1796), antiquary, third son of Peter Burrell of Beckenham, Kent, was born in Leadenhall Street 10 Oct. 1732 (Add. MS. Brit. Mus. 5691, fol. 50). He was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, whence he graduated as LL.B. in 1755, and LL.D. in 1760, and in the latter year (3 Nov.) was admitted as an advocate at Doctors' Commons. He practised chiefly in the admiralty court, and there are in the possession of his grandson, Sir Walter Burrell, two volumes of his own manuscript reports of cases decided in that court between the years 1766 and 1774. They were edited by Mr. R. G. Marsden in 1885. He was made chancellor of Worcester in 1764, and held the same office in the diocese of Rochester, continuing in both posts till his death, was elected M.P. for Haslemere in 1768, and became a commissioner of excise in 1774, being re-elected for Haslemere in that year. He was also F.R.S. and F.S.A., and a director of the South Sea Company. By his marriage in 1773 with Sophia [see Burrell, Lady Sophia], daughter of Charles Raymond, he not only acquired considerable wealth, but also the reversion to the baronetcy conferred upon his father-in-law in 1774. To this he succeeded in 1789. From an early period in life he was interested in antiquarian pursuits, and ultimately concentrated his attention upon the history of the county of Sussex. Nearly every parish was personally visited by him, and its records inspected and partly copied. Drawings were made for him of churches, houses, and sepulchral monuments, and he spared no labour in tracing the descent of the county families. He did not print any portion of his work, but bequeathed the entire collection to the British Museum Library, where it is now deposited among the Add. MSS. Burrell was seized with paralysis in August 1787, and, though he partially recovered, found it necessary to resign his public appointments. He retired to Deepdene in Surrey, and there died 20 Jan. 1796. He was buried at West Grinstead, Sussex, where a simple monument to his memory by Flaxman has been placed in the church.
[Gent. Mag. 1796; Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 5691 et seq.; Elwes and Robinson's Western Sussex, 110; information from Mr. R. G. Marsden.]
