BURNET, Robert Minister of Newhills, Reverend Mr 1 2
- Born: About 1666
- Marriage (1): THOMSON, Elizabeth on 28 October 1708 in Newhills parish, Aberdeenshire, Scotland 1
- Died: 1715 3
Other names for Robert were BURNET, Rob. Minister at Newhills, Mr 1 4 and BURNET, Robert.
General Notes:
(at Newhills in 1702)
'ROBERT BURNETT, born about 1655, eldest son of Thomas B., merchant, Rotterdam, afterwards in Aberdeen; educated at Marischal College; M.A. (? 1682); adm. to Monigaff between 20th March and 26th Oct. 1694; called 23rd Aug., and adm. 10th Sept. 1702. The General Assembly, 28th March 1704, remitted to the Commission to use their utmost diligence for removing his grievances and to assist him in his process anent his stipend. He went out of his mind and hanged himself in the church with the bell rope, between 20th May and 22nd June 1715. In the popular belief he was deemed the victim of witchcraft. Tradition says that the pulpit Bible was found open beside his body with the passage from Job vii., 13, marked by his own hand "Thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions; so that my soul chooseth strangling rather than my life." He marr. Elizabeth Thomson, who died 2nd Dec. 1728, and had issue-Thomas, apprenticed to Dr James Gregory, Aberdeen, 1st July 1732, died April 1737; Robert; Janet, bapt. 28th Sept. 1708; Elizabeth, bapt. 24th April 1710; Isobel, bapt. 25th Oct. 1711; Christian. [Aberdeen Tests.; Morgan's Annals of Newhills, 144.]'
from Fasti Ecclesiae
'The place is said to have been haunted. The ministers could not live in the manse \emdash a continued horror of uneasiness possessed them. It was subsequently pulled down and sold. The writer well remembers standing in the old churchyard of Newhills when a boy, and listening to the tragic tale of a venerable friend whose grandfather had been church-officer in the time of Mr Robert Burnett, one of the earliest Presbyterian ministers of the parish, 1702- 1715, how that, one Sunday morning, when the officer entered the church, he found, to his horror, that Mr Burnett had hung or strangled himself with the bell-rope suspended from the gallery. Before doing so, he opened the pulpit Bible and stuck a pin at the verse, Job vii. 14, 15 \emdash " Thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions: so that my soul chooseth strangling and death rather than my life." '
from Family of Craven 3 5
Robert married Elizabeth THOMSON, daughter of Robert THOMSON Advocate in Aberdeen and Isobell DUN, on 28 October 1708 in Newhills parish, Aberdeenshire, Scotland.1 (Elizabeth THOMSON was born about 1676 and died on 2 December 1728 3.)
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