Other McBurneys

For a period, Charles Burney and his family lived in Isaac Newton's former house at 35 St Martin's Street, Leicester Square, London. Among Charles' children were Esther (1749-1832), harpsichordist, who married her cousin Charles Rousseau Burney (1747-1819), also a keyboardist and violinist; Fanny (Madame d'Arblay, 1752-1840), novelist and playwright; Rear Admiral James Burney, FRS (1750-1821), naval historian and sailor (he twice sailed around the world with Captain James Cook RN); Rev. Charles Burney FRS (1757-1817), classical scholar; Charlotte Ann (Mrs Broome, 1761-1838), novelist; and Sarah Harriet (1772-1844), novelist. Charles' nephew, Edward Francisco Burney (1760-1848), artist and violinist, was a brother to Charles Rousseau Burney, both sons of Richard Burney (1723-1792), an elder brother to Charles. (Main sources: ODNB and K. S. Grant: "Charles Burney", Grove Music Online, Accessed 2006-12-10.)

In 1793, Fanny Burney married Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste Piochard D'Arblay (1754-1818), an emigre French aristocrat and soldier, and adjutant-general to Lafayette. Their son, Alexander d'Arblay (1794-1837), was a poet and keen chess-player, and was 10th wrangler in the Mathematics Tripos at Cambridge in 1818, where he was a friend of fellow-student Charles Babbage. He was also a member of Babbage's Analytical Society (forerunner of the Cambridge Philosophical Society), which sought to introduce modern analysis, including Leibnizian notation for the differential calculus, into mathematics teaching at Cambridge. d'Arblay was ordained and served as founding minister of Camden Town Chapel (later, All Saints Camden) from 1824-1837, and then served briefly at Ely. The founding organist at Camden Town Chapel was Samuel Wesley (1766-1837).

Not everyone was a fan of clan Burney. Here is William Hazlitt:

"There are whole families who are born classical, and are entered in the heralds' college of reputation by the right of consanguinity. Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood. There is the Burney family. There is no end of it or its pretensions. It produces wits, scholars, novelists, musicians, artists in 'numbers numberless.' The name is alone a passport to the Temple of Fame. Those who bear it are free of Parnassus by birthright. The founder of it was himself an historian and a musician, but more of a courtier and man of the world than either. The secret of his success may perhaps be discovered in the following passage, where, in alluding to three eminent performers on different instruments, he says: 'These three illustrious personages were introduced at the Emperor's court,' etc.; speaking of them as if they were foreign ambassadors or princes of the blood, and thus magnifying himself and his profession. This overshadowing manner carries nearly everything before it, and mystifies a great many. There is nothing like putting the best face upon things, and leaving others to find out the difference. He who could call three musicians 'personages' would himself play a personage through life, and succeed in his leading object. Sir Joshua Reynolds, remarking on this passage, said: 'No one had a greater respect than he had for his profession, but that he should never think of applying to it epithets that were appropriated merely to external rank and distinction.' Madame d'Arblay, it must be owned, had cleverness enough to stock a whole family, and to set up her cousin-germans, male and female, for wits and virtuosos to the third and fourth generation. The rest have done nothing, that I know of, but keep up the name." (On the Aristocracy of Letters, 1822)