Maria (Campbell) Burton (1752-c.1837)

Her portrait showed her to have a "pear-shaped face" and "regular Bourbon traits". Her grandson, Richard, recalled: "Although the wife of a country clergyman, she never seemed to have attained the meekness of feeling associated with that peaceful calling... On one occasion during the absence of her husband, the house at Tuam was broken into by thieves, probably some of her petted tenantry. She lit a candle and went upstairs to fetch some gunpowder, loaded her pistols, and ran down to the hall, when the robbers decamped. She asked the raw Irish servant girl who had accompanied her what had become of the light, and the answer was that it was standing on the barrel of 'black salt' upstairs; thereupon Grandmamma Burton had the pluck to walk up to the garret and expose herself to the risk of being blown to smithereens".