FLEETWOOD, William, a learned English bishop, descended of an ancient family in Lancashire, was born in the Tower of London, Jan. 21, 1656. He received his education at Eton, and at King's College, Cambridge. About the time of the Revolution he entered into holy orders, and having soon become a distinguished preacher, was appointed chaplain to King William and Queen Mary. By the interest of Dr. Godolphin, vice-provost of Eton and residentiary of St Paul's, he was appointed rector of St Austin's, London, which is in the gift of the dean and chapter of St Paul's; and soon afterwards he also obtained the lectureship of St Dunstan's in the West. In 1691 he published his Inscriptionum Antiquarum Sylloge, in two parts; one containing remarkable pagan inscriptions, the other part ancient Christian monuments. In 1692 he published a translation of Jurieu's Plain Method of Christian Devotion, the twenty-seventh edition of which was printed in 1750. In 1701 appeared his Essay on Miracles, which called forth the animadversions of several writers, particularly Hoadly. In 1704 he published anonymously The Reasonable Communicant; and in 1705, Sixteen Practical Discourses on the relative duties of parents and children, husbands and wives, masters and servants, with three sermons on the case of self-murder. In the following year he was nominated to the see of St Asaph. In 1710 he published a vindication of the
thirteenth chapter to the Romans, upon the authority of which the regal dignity had been so magnified by some as to make tyranny seem an ordinance of God, and to represent the most abject slavery as founded upon the principles of religion. This degrading doctrine was highly offensive to Bishop Fleetwood, who in this tract contends that, in the chapter referred to, St Paul requires of no people any more submission to the higher powers than that which is enjoined by the laws of their several countries. In 1712 he published Four Sermons, one on the death of Queen Mary in 1694, another on that of the Duke of Gloucester in 1700, a third on that of King William in 1701, and a fourth on the accession of Queen Anne; and also, the same year, an anonymous tract on Lay Baptism, according to the Church of England, a subject which then engaged a good deal of attention. The Life and Miracles of St Wenfrede, together with her Litanies, appeared in 1713, likewise without his name; the object of which was to expose the absurd superstitions by which weak minds are apt to be influenced, and, in particular, to show the delusions which had been practised under the names of pretended saints. In 1714 he was translated from the see of St Asaph to that of Ely, and continued there till his death, which took place at Tottenham, Middlesex, on the 4th of August 1723.
The remaining works of Bishop Fleetwood are these:—1. The Chancellor's Plea in the Divorce of Sir G. Downing, 1715; 2. Papists Not Excluded from the Throne on Account of Religion, 1717; 3. A Letter from Mr T. Burdett, Executed at Tyburn for the Murder of Captain Falkner, to some Attorneys' clerks of his acquaintance, 1717; 4. A Letter to an Inhabitant of the Parish of St Andrews, Holborn, about New Ceremonies in the Church, 1717; and 5. A Defence of Praying Before Sermon, as directed by the fifty-fifth canon. All these tracts, however, were published without the author's name. Bishop Fleetwood's character stood deservedly high in general estimation. His virtue was without any alloy of fanaticism, and his piety wholly untinctured with superstition. He was the friend of liberty and learning, equally zealous in defending the one and in encouraging the other. He assisted Dr. Hickey in his great work Linguarum veterum Septentrionalium Theaurus; and Hearne also confesses himself to have been under many obligations to him. In a professional point of view, he was unquestionably the best preacher of his time; and his occasional sermons exhibit a felicity of adaptation to the circumstances that had called them forth, which we should perhaps seek for in vain in similar compositions of that period. (J. B.—E.)