WILLIAM, an eminent divine of the church of England, was born at Oxford in 1602, and educated at the same place. Being of a very quick genius, he early made great proficiency in his studies; and he became an expert mathematician, as well as an able divine and a respectable poet. As study and conversation at the university turned much upon the controversy between the church of England and that of Rome, on account of the king's marriage with Henriette, daughter of Henry IV. king of France, Mr Chillingworth was induced to abandon the church of England and to embrace the Roman Catholic religion. Dr Laud, then bishop of London, hearing of his conversion, and being greatly concerned at it, wrote Mr Chillingworth; and as the latter in reply expressed much candour and impartiality, the prelate continued to correspond with him. This set Mr Chillingworth upon a new inquiry; and the result was, that he at length determined to return to his former religion. In 1634 he wrote a confutation of the arguments which had induced him to join the communion of the church of Rome; but, at the same time, he spoke freely to his friends of all the difficulties which had occurred to him; a circumstance which gave rise to a groundless report that he had turned Catholic a second time, and then Protestant again. His return to the communion of the church of England made a great noise, and engaged him in several disputes with persons of the Catholic persuasion. But in 1635 he engaged in a work which gave him a better opportunity of confuting the principles of the church of Rome, and of vindicating the Protestant religion. This was, The Religion of Protestants a safe way to Salvation. About the same time Sir Thomas Coventry, lord keeper of the great seal, offered him preferment; but Mr Chillingworth refused to accept it on account of his scruples with regard to the subscription of the thirty-nine articles. At last, however, he surmounted these scruples; and being promoted to the chancellorship of the church of Sarum, with the prebend of Brixworth in Northamptonshire annexed to it, he complied with the usual subscription. Mr Chillingworth was zealously attached to the royal party; and, in August 1643, he was present in Charles's army at the siege of Gloucester, where he suggested and directed the construction of certain engines for assaulting the town. Soon afterwards, having accompanied Lord Hopton, general of the king's forces in the west, to Arundel Castle, in Sussex, he was there taken prisoner by the parliamentary forces under the command of Sir William Waller, who obliged the castle to surrender. But his illness increasing, he was conveyed to Chichester, where, after a short sickness, he died in 1644. His character has been delineated by Anthony Wood, by Archbishop Tillotson, and, with his usual facility of discrimination, by Lord Clarendon. There is a collection of his theological and controversial pieces, comprised in a folio volume, of which the tenth edition appeared in 1742.