John, D.D., a learned divine, born in 1696, at Wembworthy in Devonshire, of which parish his father was rector. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1725, being then proctor and master of the schools, he spoke before the determining bachelor a Latin oration, entitled "Heli, or an Instance of a Magistrate's erring through unseasonable Lenity;" and he afterwards treated the same subject still more fully in four Latin sermons before the university, and published them with appendices. He also introduced into the schools Locke and other eminent modern philosophers, as suitable companions to Aristotle, and printed a double series of philosophical questions for the use of the younger students. When the settling of Georgia was in agitation, Dr Bray, Dr Stephen Hales, Dr Berriman, and other learned divines, entreated Mr Burton's pious assistance in that undertaking. This he readily gave, by preaching before the society in 1732, and publishing his sermon, with an appendix on the state of that colony. About the same time, on the death of Dr Edward Littleton, whose widow he subsequently married, he was presented by Eton College to the vicarage of Maple-Derham, in Oxfordshire. In 1760 he exchanged his vicarage of Maple-Derham for the rectory of Worplestone in Surrey. He collected and published, in one volume, all his scattered pieces, under the title of Opuscula Miscellanea; and soon after died, on the 11th of February 1771.

Robert, known to the learned by the name of Democritus junior, was a younger brother of the William Burton who wrote the "Antiquities of Leicestershire." He was born of an ancient family at Lindley, in that county, on the 8th of February 1576. He received the rudiments of his education at the free school of Sutton Colefield, in Warwickshire; in the year 1593 he was sent to Brasenose College, Oxford, and in 1599 was elected student of Christ Church. In 1616 he was presented by the dean and canons of Christ Church to the vicarage of St Thomas, in the west suburb of Oxford, to the parishioners of which it is said that he always gave the sacrament in wafers; and this, with the rectory of Segrave in Leicestershire, given him some time afterwards by George Lord Berkeley, he held to the day of his death, which happened in January 1639. He was a man of great general learning, a distinguished philosopher, an exact mathematician, and, what constitutes the peculiarity of his character, a very curious calculator of nativities. Though he was extremely studious, and of a melancholy disposition, he was an agreeable companion, and possessed a large fund of humour. The Anatomy of Melancholy, by Democritus junior, as he calls himself, shows that these different qualities were strangely mixed together in his composition. This book was printed first in quarto, afterwards in folio, in 1624, 1632, 1638, and 1652, to the great emolument of the bookseller, who, as Wood tells us, got an estate by it. Some circumstances attending his death occasioned strange suspicions. He died in his chamber at or very near the time which, it seems, he had some years before predicted from the calculation of his nativity; and this exactness made it whispered about, that for the glory of astrology and rather than that his calculation should fail, he became a felo de se. This, however, was generally discredited. He was buried with due solemnity in the cathedral of Christ Church, and had a handsome monument erected to his memory. He left behind him a very choice collection of books, many of which he bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, along with L100 to Christ Church, the interest of which was to be laid out yearly in books for the library of that college.