Bourdet on the Dives Roll. Two brothers of this name came to England at the Conquest, Robert and Hugh, who both appear in Domesday as sub-tenants in Leicestershire, where Hugh held considerable estates of the Countess Judith. The wife and son of Robert are also on the list of land-owners. “The first of this name,” says Dugdale, “of whom I have found mention is Robert Burdet, one of the witnesses of that notable Charter made by Geoffrey de Wirce to the monastery of St. Nicholas at Angiers, which beareth date at Monks Kirby, in Warwickshire, in the twelfth year of King William the Conqueror’s reign. Whether the said Robert was paternal ancestor to those of this family of whom I am to speak, I cannot certainly affirm; but the next that I meet with, viz. William, who flourisht in Henry II.’s time, undoubtedly was.” He held of the Earl of Warwick, and founded Ancote Priory in 1159. “The said William Burdet being both a valiant and devout man, made a journey to the Holy Land for subduing of the Infidells in those parts; and his Steward, whilst he was thus absent, solicited the Chastitie of his Ladye, who resisted these his uncivil attempts with much scorn; whereupon he grew so full of envie towards her, that so soon as he had advertisement of his Master’s arrivall again in England, he went to meet him, and to shadow his own foul crime, complained to him of her looseness with others, which false accusation so enraged her husband, that when he came home, and that she approacht to receive him with joyful embraces, he forthwith mortally stab’d her; and to expiate this same unhappy Act, after he understood it, he built this Monastery.” She was, it is said, buried in Seckington Church, where her monument remained in Dugdale’s time, “a very ancient thynge, and her statue excellently cut out of free stone.” If, however, it in reality represents the murdered wife of the crusader, it must have been placed there long after her demise, for Seckington was not acquired by the Burdetts till the time of her great great grandson.

She left two sons: Hugh, whose line expired in the next generation, and Richard, who died in 1223, and was the father of Sir William Burdett, a commissioner for assessing the tillage upon all the King’s demesnes in Warwick and Leicestershire in 1251. “He bore for his Armes az. two barrs or, within the compass whereof the Cressant and Star are put, as a badge of his service in the Holy Land.” Sir William had four sons: 1. Richard, of Loseby and Newton Burdett in Leicestershire; 2. Robert, died s. p.; 3. William, of Shepey and Cosby; and 4. Hugh, married to Elizabeth Tuchet, the ancestor of the existing family. The two elder branches both died out during the reign of Edward III. Richard had a son, slain at Dundee in 1311 during the Scottish wars, whose grand-daughter Elizabeth carried Loseby to the Ashbys; and William’s last heir male died in 1338. Thus, of the four brothers, the posterity of Hugh alone endured.

His successor, Sir Robert, found a richly-dowered bride in Elizabeth, daughter and sole heiress of Sir Gerard de Camville, who brought him, with Arewe, &c., Seckington, in Warwickshire, where he took up his abode. It passed to their second son, Sir Gerard; while the elder brother held Huncote, also in the right of his mother; but in this case, again, the senior line soon collapsed, and its possessions were transferred through an only daughter to Sir Humphrey Stafford in 1400.

Of the surviving younger branch, being third in descent from Sir Gerard Burdett of Seckington, was Sir Nicholas, Great Butler of Normandy, who in 1427 “had a command under the Duke of Somerset, and laid waste the towns on the coast of Brittany.” He was slain in that country, at the battle of Pontoise, in 1439, leaving by his wife Joan Bruyn (who brought him Bramcote in Warwickshire) a son named Thomas. “This Thomas,” says Dugdale, “having in 17 Ed. IV. incurred the King’s displeasure for his good affection to the Duke of Clarence, so strict were the eyes and ears that were set over him, that an advantage was soon taken to cut off his Head; for, hearing that the King had killed a white Buck in his Parke at Arewe” (Arrow), “which Buck he set much store by, passionately wishing the Hornes in his Belly that moved the King so to do: being arraigned and convicted of high Treason for these Words, upon inference made that the meaning was mischievous to the King himself, he lost his life for the same, his Body being buried in the Chapell of All Saints within the Grey Friers Church near Newgate, with this memoriall in their Martyrologie, viz. that he was valens Armiger Dominii Georgii Ducis Clarenciæ.” Stowe, in his Annals, states that poor Thomas was attainted “for Poysoning, Sorcery, and Inchantment; which agreeth with what Mr. Trussel saith, that 17 Ed. IV. Richard Duke of Gloucester, in order to attaining the Crown after his Brother Ed. IV., began to withdraw the King’s Affections from his Brother George Duke of Clarence, and to that purpose whispered unto him that some of Clarence’s followers were Sorcerers and Necromancers.” It seems plain that the heedless words “spoken and so wrested were but the colour of his death, for the true cause was the hard conceit and opinion which the King had of him, for that he had ever been a faithful friend and true counsellor to George Duke of Clarence his brother, between whom there had been bitter enmity.”—Burton. He was beheaded at Tyburn, declaring his innocence with these parting words, “Ecce morior, cum nihil horum fecerim;” and “patiently and cheerfully took his death, affirming that he had a bird in his bosom (his own good conscience) that sung comfort to him.”

He was twice married, and had a son by each wife; but it was again through the younger, Sir John, who was restored in blood in 1510, that the Succession was carried on. “The said Thomas (by licence from the Crown) had alienated his lands to his younger son, of which he became afterwards so sensible, that, as he was drawn from the Tower to the place of his execution, espying his eldest son in Westcheap, over against St. Thomas Beckett’s hospital, he caused himself to be staid, and then asked his said son forgiveness, and acknowledging the wrong he had done him, concluded that to be the cause of God’s vengeance against him.”—W. Betham. The mother of this first-born son had been divorced from him “for nearness of kindred” in 1464. He contested the property with his younger brother, and obtained Arrow and some other lands, which passed through his daughter Anne to the Conways. But on the accession of Henry VIII., Sir John, finding himself “in no small favour” at Court, petitioned the King for their restoration; and a tedious succession of costly lawsuits ensued, which long out-lasted his own life. At length they were closed by a division of the disputed property. The next heir, Thomas, had a bitter quarrel with Thomas Cockayne of Poley, near Polesworth, “who so irritated him that Burdett killed him in Polesworth churchyard.” Sixth in descent from him was another Thomas, who received a baronetcy in 1618. His wife, Jane Fraunceys, brought him Formark, in Derbyshire, since the chief residence of the family, where her son, Sir Francis, built and endowed a church. She was an accomplished woman, the correspondent of some of the most eminent divines of the day: “particularly the famous Archbishop Sheldon, who found an agreeable sanctuary at Bramcote during the exile of King Charles II.” Sir Robert, the fourth baronet, married the heiress of Sir Charles Sedley of Nuthall, Notts., and lost both his sons in early life. The elder, Sedley, who had inherited a large fortune from his mother, was drowned with young Lord Montague in 1793, in a fool-hardy attempt to shoot the falls of the Rhine at Laufenberg.—(See Browne.) Francis, the younger, was the father of the well-known Sir Francis Burdett, “the pride of Westminster, and England’s glory,” who succeeded his grandfather in 1797, and for many years represented Westminster and Middlesex in Parliament. He used to say that he had spent ₤90,000 on his Middlesex elections alone. As a politician he was intrepid, zealous, and uncompromising—not to say violent. “In 1809 he revived the question of Parliamentary Reform. Only fifteen members supported his motion; and a reference to the House of Commons in a pamphlet which he subsequently published, as ‘a part of our fellow-subjects collected together by means which it is not necessary to describe,’ was met by his committal to the Tower, where he remained till the prorogation of Parliament.” —Green. He married Sophia, daughter of the rich banker, Mr. Coutts, by whom he had one son, Sir Robert, who died unmarried, and five daughters. The youngest, Angela, inherited her grandfather’s great fortune under the will of his widow, Harriet (afterwards Duchess of St. Albans), and added the name of Coutts to her own. Thirty-four years afterwards—in 1871—she was created Baroness Burdett Coutts, of Highgate and Brookfield, in Middlesex, in recognition of the princely beneficence and public spirit with which she dispensed her wealth. Her cousin, Sir Francis, seventh baronet, now represents, as head of the house, the ancient and honourable name that has been upheld, in unbroken male succession, from the time of the Conquest to our own.

But there is yet another existing line, which branched off from the parent stock at so early a period that the date is obliterated. Wotton commences its pedigree with John Burdet of Hasilthorpe, in Lincolnshire, whose posterity removed to Yorkshire. His descendant in the fourteenth generation, Francis Burdett of Burthwaite, in that county, received a baronetcy from Charles II. in 1665. Their arms are differenced with a band Gules bearing three martlets Or.

The Bordets, or Burdetts, were Barons of Cuilly in Normandy. For some account of the family in their native Duchy, see Cuilly.