User:Funck77/Burnaby

Portrait by Jakob Emanuel Handmann (1748)

John Burnaby (1701–1774) was a British diplomat. He was Resident minister to the Swiss cantons.

Burnaby was the son John Burnaby, of Kensington, and his wife Clara Wood. His brother was Sir William Burnaby, 1st Baronet.He served as secretary to James Waldegrave, 1st Earl Waldegrave as Ambassador to Austria and then in France. He was recalled from Stockholm in 1741 and sent to Bern in 1743, where he served as Minister Resident to the Swiss cantons until 1750. The ferry Reichenbach-Engehalbinsel was established for Burnaby, who had rented Reichenbach Castle in Zollikofen as his summer residence in 1743. In December 1749, the Bernese authorities presented Burnaby with a golden chain with a Sechzehnerpfennig (coin) as a thank you for his services.

Burnaby's daughter Maria had a relationship with the Bernese cloth merchant Daniel Zeerleder (1731-1793). They had a son together, Johann Daniel Zeerleder (1765-1774).

In a memorandum with the subject Traduction des Loix de Berne, Burnaby mentions that he had procured an enclosed manuscript with great difficulty and that it would be useful to have it translated for future Ministers. The manuscript had never appeared in print, did not yet exist as a copy in England and could not be acquired in Bern. The manuscript mentioned is either a copy of the Rotes Buch or the Burgerspunkten. Both were the fundamental laws of the Republic of Bern and never appeared in print during the Ancien Régime.

Burnaby died in September 1774.

Further reading

• John Debrett: Debrett's Baronetage of England. With Alphabetical Lists of Such Baronetcies as Have Merged in the Peerage, Or Have Become Extinct, and Also of the Existing Baronets of Nova Scotia and Ireland. 1835
• Thomas Freivogel: Emanuel Handmann 1718–1781 – Ein Basler Porträtist im Bern des ausgehenden Rokoko. Murten 2002.
• H.L. Rabino Di Borgomale: Les armoiries des représentants diplomatiques britanniques en Suisse de 1617 à 1947. In: Schweizerisches Archiv für Heraldik. vol. 61, 1947, p. 49–56.
• Hans Utz: Liberty and Property. England im 18. Jahrhundert nach Berichten von Bernern. In: Berner Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Heimatkunde. vol. 54, 1992, p. 97–150