BURLEY, or Burley-on-the-Hill, a parish in Oakham district, Rutland; in the vale of Catmose, 2 miles NE of Oakham r. station. Post Town, Oakham. Acres, 3,390. Real property, £4,572. Pop., 237. Houses, 40. The manor belonged to the Segraves, the De Lisles, the Spencers, and others; passed to Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; and belongs now to G. Finch, Esq. The Duke of Buckingham, in his mansion here, entertained James I. with Ben Jonson's mask of the Gypsies, and had the dwarf Geoflrey 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. 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. Value, £350. Patron, G. Finch, Esq The church is pleasantly surrounded with trees. There is a free school.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))