Francis Atterbury, born in 1662; took orders after the Revolution; became a Royal Chaplain, but still lived usually at Oxford; took part in the great controversy between Boyle and Bentley, on the Epistles of Phalaris; successively Archdeacon of Totnes, Dean of Carlisle, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and finally in 1713 Bishop of Rochester; in 1710 composed the speech for Sacheverell’s defence before the House of Lords; a Tory, but, though he had tried to procure the proclamation of James III., he assisted at George I.’s coronation; deprived, for Jacobitism, of his see and banished in 1723; retired to Brussels and then for his health’s sake to Paris; served James almost as a prime minister; in 1728 he left this service owing to bad treatment, but re-entered it before his death, after nine years of exile, in 1731-2.
Samuel Bradford, refused the see of St. David’s in 1710; accepted that of Carlisle in 1718; translated to Rochester in 1723; in 1725 first dean of the revised Order of the Bath; his “Discourse concerning Baptismal and Spiritual Regeneration” (1709) had great popularity; died in 1731 at the Deanery, Westminster; buried in the Abbey.
Joseph Wilcocks, translated in 1731, from Gloucester, which see he had held since 1721; the new west front of Westminster Abbey finished in his time; he refused the Archbishopric of York before his death in 1756.
Zachary Pearce, succeeded in 1756; previously Dean of Winchester in 1739, and Bishop of Bangor in 1747; in 1768 he resigned the Deanery of Westminster, which he had held with his bishopric, but was not allowed to resign the see; died in 1774. While a fellow of Trin. Coll., Camb., he edited Longinus’ works and Cicero’s “De Oratore” and “De Officiis.”
John Thomas was then bishop from 1774 until his death in 1793.
Samuel Horsley, born in 1733; a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1767, and one of its secretaries in 1773; Archdeacon of St. Alban’s in 1782; resigned his membership of the Royal Society on account of the dispute, in 1783-4, with Sir Joseph Banks about its management; in 1785 he completed his edition of Newton’s works; Prebendary of Gloucester, in 1787; Bishop of St. David’s in 1788; translated to Rochester, with the deanery Westminster, in 1793, and thence to St. Asaph in 1802; died in 1806, showing his carelessness in money matters by letting a life policy for £5,000 lapse two days before his death; had engaged much in controversy with Priestley.
The Bishops of Rochester during this century have been Thomas Dampier, from 1802 to 1808, when he was translated to Ely; Walter King, from 1809 to 1827; Hugh Percy, appointed in 1827 but translated in the same year to Carlisle; George Murray, from 1827 to 1860; Joseph Cotton Wigram, from 1860 to 1867; Thomas Legh Claughton, from 1867 until his transfer to the new see of St. Alban’s in 1877; Anthony Wilson Thorold, from 1877 until his translation to Winchester in 1891; Dr. Randall Thomas Davidson, who succeeded Dr. Thorold at Rochester, and again, on his death, at Winchester in 1895, and Dr. Edward Stuart Talbot, appointed in 1895, and still governing the diocese. These have all been worthy of their distinguished position and of their predecessors in the see.
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