An eminent prelate, was born in 1630, at Sowerby, in Yorkshire, and was educated at Clare Hall, Cambridge. In 1691, after fruitless attempts to avoid the honor, he accepted, with unfeigned reluctance, the see of Canterbury, which was become vacant by the deprivation of Sancroft. This promotion, however, he did not long survive, as his decease took place in 1694.

In his domestic relations, friendships, and the whole commerce of business, he was easy and humble, frank and open, tender-hearted and bountiful, to such an extent, that, while he was in a private station, he laid aside two tenths of his income for charitable uses. He despised wealth but as it furnished him for charity, in which he was judicious as well as liberal. His affability and candor, as well as abilities in his profession, made him frequently consulted in points relating both to practice and opinion. His love for the real philosophy of nature, and his conviction that the study of it is the most solid support of religion, induced him, not many years after the establishment of the Royal Society, to desire to be admitted into that assembly of the greatest men of the age; into which he was accordingly elected on the 25th of January, 1672. His kindness towards the dissenters was attended with the consequence intended by him, of reconciling many of them to the communion of the established church, and almost all of them to a greater esteem of it than they had before entertained.

He died poor, the copy-right of his Posthumous Sermons (which, however, sold for two thousand five hundred guineas) being all that his family inherited. His works form three folio volumes.