Leighton Library, Dunblane

Scotland's oldest purpose-built independent library founded in 1687

Leighton Library has 1680 first edition of "Some passages of the life and death of the Right Honourable John Earl of Rochester" by Gilbert Burnet

Added at 07:18 on 26 July 2025

The Leighton Library has a first edition of 1680 of "Some passages of the life and death of the Right Honourable John Earl of Rochester" by Scottish cleric Gilbert Burnet, who later became Bishop of Salisbury.

This biography of John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, who died #OnThisDay 26 July 1680, gave Gilbert Burnet’s view on what would come to be regarded as a spectacular deathbed conversion and repentance for a debauched life, a life which was the subject of the 2005 movie "The Libertine" starring Johnny Depp.

The Earl of Rochester was a notorious Restoration figure who wrote some of the most widely praised satire of the period, some with uninhibitedly lewd verses which contributed to his rakish reputation (and to the heavy hand of censors in later years).

The biography by Gilbert Burnet (a good friend of Robert Leighton, and indeed Gilbert Burnet was with Robert Leighton when he died), described by Samuel Johnson as a book "the critick ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety", was immensely popular (translated into French and German, and appearing in more than 30 editions over the following 200 years).

< Leighton Library has 1813 edition of "An authentic narrative of some remarkable and interesting particulars in the life of John Newton" by John Newton