Sir William Burroughs, 1st Baronet

Biography

Burroughs was born in Queen’s County, the son of a respectable clergyman and bred to the law. After ten years’ practice at the Irish bar, he was brought to ‘the brink of ruin’ by the loss of his wife’s property, following expensive litigation. He and his family became hostages to fortune: they were protected by the Earl Bishop of Derry. Burroughs was further rescued by the Whig magnate Lord Charlemont who, when Burroughs felt it necessary to leave Ireland and try his fortune in India, provided him with introductions to Burke and Francis in London, January 1789. Soon afterwards, meeting Burke, inadvertently so he maintained, outside Carlton House, Burroughs was represented by him to the Prince of Wales as ‘a man who had been very unfortunate, had a large family, great merit, and the good wishes of many of HRH’s friends in Ireland’. The Prince yielded to a hint that a letter from him to be conveyed by Burroughs to Cornwallis in Calcutta would make his prospects in India ‘secure’. Burroughs also received the blessing of Fox and letters of introduction from Lord Rawdon and from the Duke of Dorset, to whom his brother had been chaplain.1

Leaving his family to be provided for by the generosity of friends such as the Hickey family, who helped him to equip himself for India, Burroughs embarked. After the nightmare experience of being almost driven back to Ireland by contrary winds, he arrived at Calcutta in November 1789. He was described by William Hickey at this time as ‘a lively, sensible shrewd man, appearing to possess sound judgment, and a perfect scholar ... mild and unassuming’. Though taken aback by the contempt shown in India for ‘les gens de petits moyens’, and received with no more than ‘the most cordial civility’ by Cornwallis, who informed the Prince of Wales that, having ‘but little connexion with the government of the country’, Burroughs must depend ‘here as well as in England almost entirely on his own abilities’, he rented a hovel to live in, finding litigation ‘almost wholly evaporated’ on his arrival. Impressed by the wealth and prestige of Thomas Henry Davies, the advocate-general (i.e. first law officer of the Calcutta government), Burroughs aspired to succeed him. Meanwhile he became standing counsel: by 1791 he was making over £1,500 a year. In January 1792 he succeeded Davies on Cornwallis’s recommendation, which assured him an additional £2,000 p.a. By 1794, he informed Charlemont, he had made enough to ‘enable me to live at home in the style of a gentleman’ and was waiting only to make his annual income up to £2,000 to return home, not to ‘forensic brawling’, but perhaps to Parliament.

Other References

• Wikipedia contributors. "Sir William Burroughs, 1st Baronet." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.