WILLIAM, descended of an ancient family in Staffordshire, was born in 1659. He was in 1674 admitted a pensioner in Sidney college, Cambridge, where, notwithstanding several disadvantages, he acquired a great degree of reputation. In 1682, seeing no prospect of preferment, he became assistant to the head master of Birmingham school. Some time after, he got a small lecture about two miles distant, but did the duty the whole Sunday; which, together with the business of a great free-school for about four years, began to break his constitution. During this space he likewise underwent a great deal of trouble and uneasiness, in order to extricate two of his brothers from some inconveniences, to which their own imprudence had subjected them. In 1688 affairs took a new turn. He found himself by a cousin's will entitled to a very ample estate; and came to London that same year, where he settled; choosing a private, retired, and studious life. Not long before his death, he published his treatise, entitled The Religion of Nature Delineated; a work for which so great a demand was made, that more than 10,000 were sold in a very few years. He had scarcely completed the publication of it, when he unfortunately broke an arm; and this adding strength to distempers that had been growing upon him for some time, accelerated his death; which happened upon the 29th of October 1724. He was a tender, humane, and in all respects worthy man; but is represented to have had something of the irascible in his constitution and temperament. His Religion of Nature Delineated exposed him to some censure, as if he had put a flight upon Christianity, by laying so much stress, as he does in this work, upon the obligations of truth, reason, and virtue; and by making no mention of revealed religion. But this censure must have been the offspring of ignorance or envy, since it appears from the introduction to his work, that he intended to treat of revealed religion in a second part, which he lived not to finish.