William Burton (antiquary, died 1645)

William Burton (24 August 1575 – 6 April 1645) was an English antiquarian, best known as the author of the Description of Leicester Shire (1622).

Burton was the son of Ralph Burton, and elder brother of Robert Burton, born at Lindley in Leicestershire on 24 August 1575. At the age of nine he went to school at Nuneaton, and on 29 September 1591 entered Brasenose College, Oxford (B.A. 22 June 1594). He was admitted, on 20 May 1593, to the Inner Temple. He was one of a group of antiquaries there, including Sir John Ferne, Thomas Gainsford, and Peter Manwood.

On 20 May 1603 he was called to the bar, but soon afterwards, owing to weak health, he retired to the village of Falde in Staffordshire, where he owned an estate. Among his particular friends were Sir Robert Cotton and William Somner. In his account of Fenny Drayton he speaks of his "old acquaintance" Michael Drayton. When the First English Civil War broke out, Burton sided with the royalists, and endured persecution. He died at Falde on 6 April 1645, and was buried in the parish church at Hanbury.

He wrote in 1596 an unpublished Latin comedy, De Amoribus Perinthii et Tyanthes. In 1597 he published with Thomas Creede a translation of Cleitophon and Leucippe from the Greek of Achilles Tatius, with a dedication to the Earl of Southampton. Burton knew Spanish and Italian, and studied the emblem-writers, but his interest lay chiefly in heraldry and topography. In 1602 he issued a corrected copy, printed at Antwerp, of Christopher Saxton's map of the county of Leicester.

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