PETER FRANCIS, a Roman Catholic clergyman, distinguished for great moderation, charity, and temper concerning religious affairs, as well as for learning, was born at Vernon, in Normandy, in 1681. While canon regular and librarian of the abbey of St Genevieve at Paris, he applied to Archbishop Wake for the resolution of some doubts concerning the episcopal succession in England, and the validity of our ordinations; having been encouraged to this by the friendly correspondence which had passed between the archbishop and M. Dupin of the Sorbonne. The archbishop sent him exact copies of the proper records; and on these he built his Defence of English Ordinations, which was published in Holland in 1727. This exposed him to a prosecution in his own country; he therefore took refuge in England, where he was well received, and presented the same year by the university of Oxford with a doctor's degree. As it is somewhat uncommon for a Roman Catholic clergyman to be admitted to degrees in divinity by Protestant universities, the curious will find the diploma, with the doctor's letter of thanks, in The present State of the Republic of Letters, for June 1728. In 1736 he translated into French and published Father Paul's History of the Council of Trent, in 2 vols. folio, and dedicated it to Queen Caroline, who augmented to L300 a pension of L100 a year, which he had previously obtained from the court. The learned Jeremy Markland, in a letter to his friend Bowyer, in September 1736, says, "Mr Clarke has given me F. Courayer's translation of the History of the Council of Trent, with whose preface I am so greatly pleased, that if he be no more a papist in other tenets than he is in those he mentions, which are many, and of the most distinguishing class, I dare say there are very few considerate Protestants who are not as good Catholics as he is." His works are many, and all in French. He translated Sleidan's History of the Reformation. Courayer died in 1776, after two days' illness, at the age of ninety-five, and was buried in the cloister of Westminster Abbey. In his will, dated 3d February 1774, he declares that he "dies a member of the Catholic church, but without approving of many of the opinions and superstitions which have been introduced into the Romish church, and taught in their schools and seminaries, and which they have insisted on as articles of faith, though to him they appear to be not only not founded in truth, but also to be highly improbable. And his practice was conformable to this declaration; for at London he constantly went to mass, and at Ealing, in the country, whither he often retired, he as constantly attended the service of the parish church, declaring at all times that he had great satisfaction in the prayers of the church of England.