Elizabeth Burnet

Elizabeth Burnet (née Blake; 8 November 1661 – 3 December 1709) was an English philanthropist and author of a prayer book, A Method of Devotion.

Elizabeth Blake was born near Southampton in 1661 and brought up a Puritan by her parents Sir Richard and Elizabeth Blake. Her first husband, Robert Berkeley, was the ward of her godfather John Fell, the Bishop of Oxford. After her godfather died and the Catholic James II came to the throne, she persuaded her Protestant husband to move to the Netherlands. This proved a wise move, as they returned in 1688 as part of the court of William of Orange.

Blake became known to John Locke and other religious thinkers such as Bishop Stillingfleet. It was she who told Locke of the Defense published by Catharine Trotter Cockburn. She acted as a go-between and she gave money to the poor philosopher before Locke also assisted her financially.

Elizabeth's first husband died in 1694 and in 1700 she married Gilbert Burnet, the Bishop of Salisbury, who had been twice widowed. His second wife Mary Scott, fearing, rightly as it turned out, that she would soon die of smallpox, advised him in the event of her passing to marry Elizabeth, who was one of her closest friends. One of the reasons she married him was because she thought that her new husband needed her advice on handling the politics of his position. The marriage proved a happy one and Elizabeth was on good terms with her five stepchildren. After her second marriage, Burnet still had control of investments that gave her an annual income of £800. She disposed of this in charitable causes, including caring for the children of the poor of Worcester and Salisbury.

Burnet's portrait, painted by Sir Gofrey Kneller in 1707, is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

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