William King (archbishop)
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William King, D.D. (1650-1729) was an Anglican divine in Ireland, who was Archbishop of Dublin from 1702 to 1729. He was also well known as an author and for his support of the Glorious Revolution.
William was born in May of 1650 in County Antrim and was educated at Trinity College at Dublin. He was ordained in 1679, became the bishop of Derry in 1691. He died in May of 1729.
As a man of letters his best known works were "The State of the Protestants in Ireland under King James's Government" from 1691 and "De Origine Mali" in 1702. He established a lectureship in divinity at Trinity College in 1718, and the post still carries his name. Much of his correspondence survives and provides a key historic resource for the study of the Ireland of his time.
William King was friends with a number of the leading Tory satirists of the day, including Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Alexander Pope, John Arbuthnot, and their political allies, including Francis Atterbury, Robert Harley (Earl of Oxford), and Henry St. John (Viscount Bolingbroke). King was briefly implicated in the Atterbury affair, which was an invitation to the Pretender (James III of England) to the throne at the death of Queen Anne of England. This affair resulted in the exile of Atterbury, the temporary exile of Bolingbroke, and the loss of power of Oxford, but King emerged unharmed. During the leadership of Robert Walpole, King contributed some dissenting political material but generally confined himself to matters in Dublin.
Additional reading
- Philip O'Regan; "Archbishop William King, 1650-1729 and the Constitution in Church and State"; 2000, Four Courts Press, ISBN 1851824642.
- Robert S. Matteson, A large private park: the collection of Archbishop William King 1650–1729. Cambridge: LP Publications, 2003. (Libri Pertinentes, no. 7) 2 vols. £60.00. ISBN 0-9518811-6-7; co-published with Tempe (Arizona): Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2003. ISBN 0-86698-304-x