It was scarcely possible for the Countess to possess a more valuable friend, nor the Duke of Gloucester a more enlightened preceptor, than this able, uncompromising advocate of civil and religious freedom—this pious divine, this disinterested, scrupulous, and zealous man. Burnet was of Scotch descent, and his character exhibited some of the noblest features which distinguish the inhabitants of the north of the Tweed, in all varieties of situation and circumstance. Like many great men, he owed much of his eminence, and most of his religious impressions, to his mother. She was a Presbyterian, a sister of the famous Sir Alexander Johnston, Lord Warristoun, who headed the Presbyterians during the civil wars, and whom no alliance nor kindred could bend to show any lenity to those who refused the solemn league and covenant. Dr. Burnet’s father, differing from these opinions, from the conviction that the Presbyterians did not intend to reform abuses in the Episcopal church, but to destroy that church itself, resolutely rejected the league and covenant; and was, on that account, at three several times, obliged to fly from his native county of Aberdeen; and, during one occasion, to remain five years in exile. Such were some of the consequences of fanatic zeal, in those disturbed and uncomfortable times. By his father, himself a barrister, Burnet was educated, until he attained ten years of age, when, being a master of the Latin tongue, he was removed to Aberdeen College, and at fourteen began to study for the bar; such was the precocity of his intellect; in some respects, the effect of the custom of the day.