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.

Burges was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, and graduated at that university as B.A. in 1586. He was rector of the small living of St. Peter Hungate in Norwich as early as 1590; it has been conjectured that he was a Norfolk man.

When proceedings were taken against Thomas Cartwright and his supporters, Burges identified with the Puritan party of Cartwright. He accepted their position on the surplice and the cross in baptism: they were not unlawful, but they were inexpedient. He left himself in the hands of his congregation; if they would not be scandalised by his wearing the surplice and using the ceremonies, he would conform; if their consciences would be wounded by his submission, he would not. They answered that if he wore the surplice they would not profit by his ministry; and accepting the verdict he resigned.

Not long after this Burges moved into the diocese of Lincoln, and had for his diocesan William Chadderton, who was translated from Chester in 1595. Chadderton seems to have left him unmolested during the remainder of Queen Elizabeth's reign. 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.

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