Dr William, an English philosopher and divine, born at Shoughton, near Worcester, in November 1657, educated at Blockley in that county, and admitted of Trinity College, Oxford, in 1675. In 1682 he was presented to the vicarage of Wargrave in Berkshire, and in 1689 to the valuable rectory of Upminster in Essex; which being situated at a convenient distance from London, afforded him an opportunity of conversing and corresponding with the most eminent philosophers of his time. Having applied himself with great eagerness to natural and experimental philosophy, he soon became a distinguished member of the Royal Society, and its Philosophical Transactions contain a variety of curious and valuable pieces, the fruits of his industry and research. In his younger years he published his Artificial Clockmaker, which has been often printed; and in 1711, 1712, and 1714, he preached those sermons at Boyle's lecture which he afterwards digested under the well-known titles of Physico-Theology and Astro-Theology, enriched with valuable notes, and illustrated by copperplates. The next thing of consequence which he published was Christo-Theology, or a demonstration of the divine authority of the Christian religion, being the substance of a sermon preached at Bath in 1729. The last work of his own composition which appeared was a Defence of the Churches Right in Leasewold Estates, written in answer to an Inquiry into the customary estates and tenant-rights of those who hold lands of the church and other foundations, and published under the name of Everard Fleetwood. Besides his own productions, he also published some works of Mr Ray, and gave new editions of others, with considerable additions from the author's manuscripts. This good man, having spent his life in the agreeable and improving study of nature, and made all his researches subservient to the cause of religion and virtue, died at Upminster on the 5th of April 1735, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. Dr Derham, though a man of learning and merit, had but a poor figure; and to his other defects was added that of an ungainly appearance, arising from his being wry-necked. Lord Kames accuses him of not having paid sufficient attention to one subject which came properly before him in his Physico-Theology; namely, the natural history of animals, with relation to pairing and the care of their progeny, considering that to display the conduct of Providence constituted the sole cause of his writing on subjects of natural science.