In 1751 the family had moved from London to King's Lynn, Norfolk, where Charles Burney was the organist at St. Margaret's Church. Frances was named after the wife of Charles's early patron, Fulke Greville. In writing her memoirs of her father, Frances Burney was to omit references to dates of marriages and births because her elder sister Hester was born about a month before the parents' wedding took place. Charles Burney's insistence on feminine propriety concealed a guilty secret of which his daughters must have been fully aware.
Several of the Burney children were to distinguish themselves: James became a well-known sea captain, companion of the famous explorer Captain Cooke; and Fanny's younger brother Charles became an eminent classical scholar. Fanny's best friend within the family was her sister Susanna, three years her junior. The Burneys moved back to London, where Mrs. Burney died not long after Fanny's tenth birthday. The little girl spent a good deal of her time with her grandmother Sleepe, a French Roman Catholic; Fanny's later marriage to a Frenchman who was a Roman Catholic can be seen as a natural resort to her other inheritance. Double identities and mixed inheritances figure prominently in her novels.
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