Cornelius Burges - Later Life

Later Life

About 1650 Burges obtained an appointment at Wells as preacher in the cathedral. In July 1656 there was a warm dispute about his exclusive right to officiate there. Burges objected to an arrangement by which the inhabitants of St. Cuthbert's parish were to hold their services in the cathedral. The ground of his objection does not appear; Stoughton conjectures that the other congregation was of the independent sort. His preaching was unwelcome. The citizens walked up and down the cloisters all sermon-time, and the constables had to be called in. About this time Burges invested his property in the purchase of alienated church lands, including the manor of Wells and the deanery which he rebuilt. He is said to have behaved with great rapacity, to have stripped the lead from the cathedral, to have used the proceeds to enlarge the deanery in which he lived, and to have let out the gate-houses as cottages. At the Restoration his investment (for which he had been offered over £12,000 in the previous year) was taken from him without recompense. Hence he was reduced to want, his pension was gone, he was suffering from cancer in the neck and cheek. He still had a house at Watford, and there he lived, attending the church in which he had formerly preached; he was compelled to part with his library for bread. He made application to Sir Richard Browne, Lord Mayor of London in 1660, who promised to provide for him if he would preach a recantation sermon in St. Paul's, and on his refusal flung him a gratuity of £3. Calamy describes him as ejected from St. Andrew's, Wells (which is the cathedral); this must have taken place before the Act of Uniformity. He was a worn-out man, yet, but for his maladies, he might have kept his old lead. It was his hand that drew up the 'Reasons' of the country ministers desiring reforms in the church at the Restoration, to which the authorities turned a deaf ear. He died at Watford, where he was buried in the church on 9 June 1665. He was married and left a son. By his will, dated Watford, 16 May 1665, he bequeathed his collection of prayer-books, the sole treasures saved from his library, to his 'dear and much-honoured mother, the renowned university of Oxford'.