Did you know... Death of Benjamin Burgess
On 24 November 1673, Benjamin Burgess, former Vicar of St Thomas’s Church, Portsmouth died. His family was offered and accepted burial in the church. This is believed to be the only instance of a Presbyterian minister being buried in a church which would become an Anglican cathedral. His ledger stone is now to be found on the floor, in the centre of the East wall of the Chancel.
Little is known of his early years. Born in Dorset, he gained an MA at Christ Church, Oxford in 1650 and a reputation for sincerity, wisdom and religious conviction. He married Susanna Dummer in Dorset in 1654, accepted the living of the Church of St Thomas in 1657 and became a Burgess of Portsmouth Corporation in 1659.
Oliver Cromwell’s death (1658) had led to political upheaval. When the Rump Parliament was recalled in 1659, Benjamin Burgess was invited to preach before Parliament at the commemorative service in London, acquitting himself admirably. After the Restoration of the Monarchy, Burgess was ejected from his living in 1662 by the Act of Uniformity, and was one of the 90 burgesses expelled from the Corporation of Portsmouth.
Despite the Declaration of Breda in 1659, preceding the Restoration, which declared ‘liberty to tender consciences in matters of religion not disturbing the peace of the realm’, non-Anglicans holding public office were considered a threat to the kingdom’s stability. Roman Catholics, Puritans and Presbyterians were excluded from local and national politics. All clergy had to accept the sole use of the Book of Common Prayer and swear allegiance to the Crown. Nonconformist clergy were banned from preaching within five miles of their original parish.
After leaving St Thomas’s, Burgess was reported in 1667 to be preaching in Gosport - outside the Borough of Portsmouth. Unauthorised religious meetings of more than five persons were banned. Such preaching was dangerous, taking place in private houses and barns, until the 1672 Declaration of Indulgence allowed Burgess to obtain a licence to preach to Nonconformists. He then preached in rooms in Penny Street and St Thomas’s Street, gathering a growing following. He died in 1673, aged only 44, and held in high regard according to his epitaph for ‘his learning, holiness and good sense - a faithful herald of the gospel and a vigilant pastor’.
There is an interesting reference to Benjamin Burgess in 1661, in the papers of the French Roman Catholic chaplain to the Queen Dowager, Queen Henrietta Maria, mother of Charles II. In February of that year the Queen Dowager - escorted by the King and accompanied by her daughter, Henrietta, and her chaplain - embarked at Gravesend to return to France for Henrietta’s marriage. Henrietta became so ill that the ship had to put in at Portsmouth, and the party remained there for 15 days while she recovered.
The chaplain, Père Cyprien de Gamache, was not enthusiastic about Portsmouth; ‘the place has nothing agreeable about it but a fine harbour, being destitute of all other amusing things’, he wrote. He did, however, go several times to hear the minister of ‘that Huguenot town’ preach – with a view to converting him to the Roman Catholic faith. chaplain alleged that in conversations with Benjamin Burgess, Burgess admitted that ‘there was error in his religion, that the Catholic was the safest but he could not follow it, having a wife and children and no other means of supporting them but his living’.
Père Cyprien reported this to the Queen Dowager, who agreed to settle an annuity, equal to his living, on Burgess – if he would convert. Burgess declined, but said that he would consider the matter further and write to the chaplain when the latter reached Paris. No letter was received... and Burgess was driven out of the church in August of the following year.
