Series 1 > Miscellany of the Scottish History Society (Second volume)

316
BURNET-LEIGHTON PAPERS
sentative at the close of the sixteenth century, Alexander, had
six sons; of whom the eldest surviving, Thomas Burnet of
Leyes, was created in 1626 a baronet of Nova Scotia; while
the fourth (third surviving) was the Robert Burnet with
whom we are immediately concerned.
Of Robert Burnet’s youth little seems to be known. He
was born in 1592 and on 24th November 1611, we find
him at Castres, ostensibly prosecuting legal studies, but
reduced, by the extreme niggardliness of supplies from home,
to teach for a living.2 We learn from his son, that he spent
seven years in France;3 and it is stated that he was admitted
to the Scottish Bar on the 204h February 1617.4 A learned
and a conscientious, rather than a brilliant lawyer, he did not,
as his son Gilbert admits, ‘rise up to the first form in practice’;
for though ‘ his judgment was good,’ he had neither ‘a lively
imagination nor a ready expression ’; while his ‘ abilities ’
were still further ‘ depressed ’ by an ‘ excessive modesty.’ His
uprightness and integrity, his candour and beneficence were
carried to lengths which cynicism would regard as unusual in his
profession, and as not very compatible with success. ‘When
he found a cause morally unjust’ (so his son assures us) ‘ he
would not plead in it, but pressed his client to consider his
conscience more than his interest, in which he often succeeded,
for he spoke with great authority on those occasions : he was
always ready to plead the causes of the poor, and instead of
taking fees from them, he supplied such as he saw were un¬
justly oppressed very liberally. He never took any fee from
a clergyman who sued for the rights of his church, and . . .
he told me the full half of his practice went for charity or
1 Family of Burnett, p. 130.
2 Letter to his brother printed, ibid. pp. 130-1.
3 Supplement to Burnet’s History, Clarendon Press, 1902, p. 452 {Gilbert
Burnet's Autobiography). ’
4 Family of Burnett, p. 131. The counter-statement in Brunton and Haig’s
Senators of the College of Justice, p. 373, confuses him with a nephew of the same
name. See Family of Burnett, p. 61.