Cornelius Burges

Cornelius Burges
Born	1589 Somerset, England
Died	1665 England
Education	Oxford
Church	Church of England
Ordained	prior to 1613

Cornelius Burges or Burgess, D.D. (1589? – 1665), was an English minister. He was active in religious controversy prior to and around the time of the Commonwealth of England and The Protectorate, following the English Civil War. In the years from 1640 he was a particularly influential preacher.

Burges was descended from the Burges or Bruges family of Batcombe, Somerset, was probably born in 1589. He was a son of Robert Burges (d. 1626) of Stanton Drew, Somerset and Alice Benbrick. Burges had brothers James and John, who remained at Stanton Drew, and a sister Hester who married Samuel Sherman of Dedham, Essex. In 1611 he was entered at Oxford, but at what college is unknown. He was transferred to Wadham College, Oxford, and graduated B.A. on 5 July 1615, and thence migrated to Lincoln College, Oxford, of which he was a member when he graduated M.A. on 20 April 1618. He must have taken orders before graduation, if it be true that on 21 Dec. 1613 he obtained the vicarage of Watford, Hertfordshire, on the presentation of Sir Charles Morison. On 16 Jan. 1626 he was allowed to hold, along with Watford, the rectory of St. Magnus, London Bridge. This latter he resigned in 1641, his successor being admitted on 20 July. Soon after the accession of Charles I he was made one of the king's chaplains in ordinary, and on 16 June 1627 he was made B.D. and D.D. by his university.

Wood represents him as being at this time a zealous son of the church, and as only taking to schismatical courses through the disappointment of his eagerness for preferment.

The Calvinistic views held by Burges are shown in his Baptismal Regeneration of Elect Infants, published at Oxford in 1629. A Latin sermon, preached in 1635 to the London clergy at St. Alphage's, London Wall, brought him before the Court of High Commission. In this discourse he had blamed the connivance of bishops at the growth of Arminianism and popery. The proceeding caused him trouble and expense, and deepened his hostility to the party of William Laud.

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