John Burges

John Burges (Burgess) (1563–1635) was an English clergyman and physician. He held nuanced reformist views on the vexed questions of the time, on clerical dress and church ceremonies. His preaching offended James I of England, early in his reign, and Burges went abroad for medical training. He spent many years building up a practice, and only resumed a relationship of conformity within the Church of England in the 1620s.

Early years John was born in Peterborough the son of John Burges (fl. 1561-89) and his wife Ales (d. 1588). After attending Peterborough Grammar School, he continued his education at St. John's College, Cambridge, and graduated at that university as B.A. in 1586.

Early career

He was rector of the small living of St Peter Hungate, Norwich in 1589, when he married Ursula Pecke, the daughter of William Pecke, JP.

He was appointed Ipswich Town Preacher in 1592, an appointment for life which he relinquished after 1601 when he was appointed as rector to the third portion ( De la Grene) the parish of Waddesdon, William Chadderton, was Bishop of Lincoln. Throughout the first year after James I's accession the nonconformist party gave the king no peace. On 16 July 1604 a proclamation was issued requiring all ministers to conform to the new book of ecclesiastical canons before the last day of November following. Burges was regarded as a leading man among the conscientiously disaffected. While the Convocation was deliberating on the canons, he was called upon to explain the ground he took and to preach before the king at Greenwich on 19 June 1604. Burges chose his text from Psalm cxxii. 8, 9. One particular passage seems to have provoked the king. Burges likened the ceremonies to Vedius Pollio's glasses, "which were not worth a man's life or livelihood," and for this and other expressions he was sent to the Tower of London. Burges died 31 August 1635, and was buried in the chancel of Sutton Coldfield church, where a monument exists to his memory. He perhaps never quite relinquished his medical practice, and as late as August 1634 he was admitted an extra licentiate of the College of Physicians.

The sermon he preached before James I, with accompanying correspondence was published several years after his death in 1642 by Thomas Brudenell: A sermon preached before the late King James His Majesty at Greenwich the 19 of Iuly 1604 together with two letters in way of apology for his sermon: the one to the late King Iames His Majesty: the other to the Lords of His Majesties then Privie Councell / by John Burges ..., London :: Printed by Thomas Brudenell, 1642.

Family Burges married Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Wilcox, whose works he edited in folio in 1624. By her he had at least three daughters, one of them married to William Ames.