(Francis), bishop of Chester, was born in 1662, appointed preacher to the society of Lincoln's Inn in 1694, and made bishop of Chester in 1714. He preached a course of sermons for Boyle's lectures; engaged in the Trinitarian controversy with Mr Collins and Dr Clarke; and published two excellent pieces, the one, intitled, Christian Institutes, and the other, A Moral Proof of a Future State. He vindicated the rights of the university of Oxford against the archbishop of Canterbury, in the appointment of the warden of Manchester college; and opposed the violent proceedings against bishop Atterbury in the house of lords, though he disliked the bishop as a man of arbitrary principles. He died in 1725.