John, an eminent English divine, was born at Sheffield in Yorkshire in August 1686. He was admitted of St John's College, Cambridge, in 1702, and in 1705-6 took his bachelor's degree, soon after which he quitted the university. In 1711 he obtained a small living, and in 1729 was preferred to the vicarage of Northallerton, in which preferment he remained till his death in 1748. Besides Sermons, an Essay on Redemption, a treatise entitled Divine Rectitude, or a brief Inquiry concerning the Moral Perfections of the Deity, and some other theological tracts, he published a philosophical piece on the Foundation of Moral Goodness, written in answer to Dr Hutcheson's work on the Origin of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. Some of these pieces were, by the author himself, collected into one volume, and published with a dedication to Bishop Hoadley.

Thomas, D.D., son of the above, was born in 1716. After studying at St John's College, Cambridge, where he took his first degree in 1737, he was in 1746 presented to the rectory of North Stoke in Lincolnshire. He afterwards became archdeacon, first of Salisbury, and thereafter of Winchester. He was offered the bishopric of Gloucester in 1781, but was prevented from accepting it by the declining state of his health. He was afterwards afflicted with blindness, and died at Winchester in January 1795. Besides Sermons and Charges, he was the author of a very able and well-known work, entitled Divine Benevolence Asserted and Vindicated from the Reflections of ancient and modern Sceptics. It was published in 8vo, in 1782.