Burley, or Burley-on-the-Hill, a large parish in Rutland, on the high ground to the N of the vale of Catmose, and 2 miles NE of Oakham station on the M.R. It has a post office under Oakham, which is the money order and telegraph office. Acreage, 3051; population, 252. The Duke of Buckingham in his mansion here entertained James I. with Ben Jonson's "Mask of the Gypsies," and had the dwarf Geoffrey Hudson served up at table, in the presence of Charles I. and his queen, in a great pasty. The mansion was burnt in the Civil Wars, but the stables belonging to it are still standing. Burley-on-the-Hill, a grecian edifice built by Daniel, Earl of Nottingham, and now the residence of the Finch family, occupies the site of the Duke of Buckingham's mansion, is 196 feet long, commands a beautiful extensive view, and contains many family portraits and some masterpiece pictures. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Peterborough; gross value, £290 with residence, in the gift of the Finch family. The church, a fine edifice of stone in the Norman style, is pleasantly surrounded with trees.
