WILLIAM, a learned English bishop in the beginning of the eighteenth century, was born in the year 1638, and educated in St John's College, Cambridge, where he distinguished himself very early by his extensive learning, and particularly by his knowledge of the oriental languages. Upon the deprivation of Dr Thomas Ken, bishop of Bath and Wells, for not taking the oaths to the government in 1691, he refused the offer of that see, although he was then chaplain to King William and Queen Mary. In 1704 he was consecrated to the bishopric of St Asaph, and in his high function he discharged his duty so exemplary a manner, that he approved himself a truly primitive prelate. He died at his lodgings in the Cloisters in Westminster Abbey in 1707, aged sixty-nine. As his whole life was spent in acts of piety and charity, so he gave remarkable instances of both at his death, leaving the bulk of his estate for the propagation of the gospel and the promotion of Christian knowledge, at home as well as abroad. His Private Thoughts upon a Christian Life is a very popular, though in some points a very exceptionable, book. He wrote several other works on various subjects, particularly on the oriental tongues.