Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Burnaby, Andrew
BURNABY, ANDREW (1734?–1812), divine and traveller, was the eldest son of the Rev. Andrew Burnaby of Brampton Manor House, Huntingdonshire, by Hannah, daughter of George Beaumont of Darton, Yorkshire. His father was vicar of St. Margaret’s, Leicester, rector of Asfordby (where his eldest son was born), and a prebendary of Lincoln (16 Sept. 1737). Andrew was admitted into Westminster School in 1748, at the age of fourteen, and proceeded thence to Queens College, Cambridge, where he took the degrees of B.A. (1754) and M.A. (1767). In 1759 and 1760 Burnaby made an extended tour ‘through the middle settlements of North America,’ and afterwards (1775) published an account of his travels, with ‘Observations on the State of the Co1onies,’ which reached a second edition within a year of its first publication, and was reissued a third time in a much enlarged form in 1798. Burnaby's work indicates close observation, but he omits all reference to current politics. About 1762 Burnaby became chaplain to the British factory at Leghorn, and in the absence of Sir John Dick, the English consul, from 1764 discharged the functions of the consulate, with the title of proconsul. He resigned the st about 1767. During the five years of lift sojourn in Italy he explored all parts of the country, and in 1766 travelled in Corsica, and made the acquaintance of Paoli. He published in a very limited edition, dated 1804, an account of the tour, together with the letters that Paoli addressed to him between 1769 and 1802. In 1769, soon after his return from Leghorn, Burnaby was nominated to the vicarage of Greenwich, and in 1786 he was presented to the archdeaconry of Leicester, in the Lincoln diocese. He succeeded to large paternal estates in Huntingdunshire on his father’s death, about 1767; but Baggrave Hall, Leicestershire, the inheritance of his wife Anna, daughter of John Edwyn, whom he married 20 Feb. 1770, was his favourite place of residence. He died at Blackheath 9 March 1812, and his wife died ten days later. Arthur Collins describes him as ‘a person of address and affable behaviour’ (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. viii. 394). He had four sons and one daughter. The third son of his heir, Edwyn Andrew Burnaby, was the father of Frederick Gustavus Burnaby [q. v.] Burnaby was the author of many published sermons and charges. A collective edition was issued in 1805.
[Burke’s Landed Gentry, s.v. ‘Burnaby of Baggrave Hall;’ Nichols’s Lit. Anecd. ix. 675-80; Gent. Mag., 1812, pt, i. 301-2; Welch's Alumni Westmonast. p. 348.]