PRIDEAUX, HUMPHRY, a very learned clergyman of the Church of England, was born at Padstow in Cornwall in 1648. He studied three years at Westminster under Dr Busby, and was then removed to Christ Church, Oxford. Here, in 1676, he published his Marmora Oxoniensia. This introduced him to the Lord Chancellor Finch, afterwards Earl of Nottingham, who in 1679 presented him to the rectory of St Clement's, near Oxford, and in 1681 bestowed on him a prebend of Norwich. Some years afterwards he was engaged in a controversy with the Catholics at Norwich concerning the validity of the orders of the Church of England, which produced his book upon that subject. In 1688 he was installed in the archdeaconry of Suffolk, to which he was collated by Dr Lloyd, then bishop of Norwich. In 1691, upon the death of Dr Edward Pococke, the Hebrew professorship at Oxford, being vacant, was offered to Dr Prideaux; but he refused it. In 1697 he published his Life of Mohammed; and in 1702 he was installed dean of Norwich. Some time after his return to London he proceeded with his Connection of the History of the Old and New Testament, which he had commenced when he laid aside the design of writing the History of Appropriations. He died in 1724.