John, an English divine of great learning and wit in the seventeenth century, was bred at Cambridge, and was the author of The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion inquired into, 1670. In 1675 he was chosen master of Catharine Hall upon the decease of Dr John Lightfoot; and the year following was created doctor in divinity by royal mandate. He died in 1697.

Laurence, an eminent English historian of the eighteenth century, was nearly related to Dr John Eachard. He was the son of a clergyman, who, by the death of his elder brother, became master of a good estate in Suffolk. He was educated in the university of Cambridge, entered into holy orders, and was presented to the living of Welton and Elkington in Lincolnshire, where he spent above twenty years of his life, and distinguished himself by his writings, especially his History of England, which was attacked by Dr Edmund Calamy and by Mr John Oldmixon. His General Ecclesiastical History, from the Nativity of Christ to the first Establishment of Christianity by Human Laws under the Emperor Constantine the Great, has passed through several editions. He was installed as archdeacon of Stowe and prebendary of Lincoln in 1712. He died in 1730.