Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Burgon, John William
BURGON, The Very Rev. John William, B.D., son of a merchant of London, was born about 1819; entered Worcester College, Oxford, at a rather advanced age, and graduated there in 1848, having gained the Newdegate prize for English verse (subject Petra) in 1845. He was elected to a fellowship at Oriel College in 1848. He became vicar of the parish of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford (1863–76) and Professor of Divinity in Gresham College, London (1868). In Nov. 1875 he was appointed Dean of Chichester in succession to the late Dr. Hook. Mr. Burgon took an active part in the movement for supplying rural labourers with religious prints of good and tasteful design for their cottage walls; and in the year 1876 he made a spirited attack on the Oxford lodging-house system. Before going to Oxford, he prepared a translation of the Chevalier Brönsted's "Memoir on the Panathenaic Vases," 1833; "The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham," chiefly compiled from his correspondence in the State-Paper Office, 1839. Since then he has published "A Plain Commentary on the Four Gospels;" "Remarks on Art with reference to the University Studies;" "Oxford Reformers," 1854; "A Century of Verses in honour of the late Rev. Dr. Routh," 1856; "Historical Notices of the Colleges of Oxford," 1857; a memoir of the late Patrick Fraser Tytler, Esq., under the title of a "Portrait of a Christian Gentleman," 1861; "Inspiration and Interpretation: Seven Sermons preached before the University of Oxford," being an answer to "Essays and Reviews" 1861; "Letters from Rome to Friends in England," 1862; "Treatise on the Pastoral Office," 1864; "Ninety-one Short Sermons," 2 vols., 1867; "The Lambeth Conference and the Encyclical," 1867; "Disestablishment, the Nation's Formal Rejection of God and Denial of the Faith," 1868; "England and Rome," three letters to a convert, 1869; "The Roman Council," 1869; "Protest of the Bishops against the Consecration of Dr. Temple," 1870; "Dr. Temple's Explanation Examined," 1870; "The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel according to St. Mark Vindicated against Recent Critical Objectors and Established," 1872; "The Athanasian Creed to be retained in its Integrity, and Why?" 1872; "Plea for the Study of Divinity in Oxford," 1875; "Home Missions and Sensational Beligion: Humility," two sermons ad clerum, 1876; and "The Prayer-Book, a Devotional Manual and Guide," 1876. His two remarkable sermons, published early in Dec. 1873, on "Romanizing within the Church of England"—two months before Mr. Gladstone's sudden and singular dissolution of Parliament—may be said to have been the forerunner of the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874.