CHRISTOPHER, a learned English divine, was born in 1591, and bred at Oxford. In 1633, he published his Answer to a late Popish Plot, entitled Charity Mistaken, which he wrote by special order of Charles I., whose chaplain he was. In 1634, he was promoted to the deanery of Worcester; and, in 1640, was constituted vice-chancellor of the university of Oxford, in the execution of which office he met with some trouble from the members of the Long Parliament. Upon the breaking out of the civil wars, he sent all his plate to the king, declaring that he would rather, like Diogenes, drink in the hollow of his hand, than that his majesty should want; and he afterwards suffered much for the royal cause. In consideration of this he was nominated to the deanery of Durham in 1646, but was prevented from being installed by his death, which happened about two months thereafter.

JOHN, D.D., Archbishop of Canterbury, was the son of a linen-draper at Wakefield in Yorkshire, where he was born about the year 1674. He studied at University College, Oxford; and at the age of nineteen he published, Variantes Lectiones et Notae ad Plutarchi librum ad audiendis poetis; et ad Basili Magni orationem ad juvenes, quomodo cum fractu legere possint Graecorum libros, 1693, 8vo. In 1697, came out his edition of Lyceophron, in folio, which is reckoned the best of that obscure writer; and soon after, he published his antiquities of Greece, in two vols. 8vo. These works established his literary reputation, and engaged him in a correspondence with Gravinius and other learned foreigners. In 1706, he was made chaplain to the queen; in 1715, bishop of Oxford; and in 1737, he succeeded Archbishop Wake in the see of Canterbury, which high station he supported with much dignity until his death in 1747. He was a learned and exemplary churchman; but not of an amiable disposition, being too strongly tinctured with the pride of office. Nor is it to his credit that he disdained his eldest son for marrying below his rank in life. His theological works, containing sermons, charges, discourses on church government, and divinity lectures, were printed at Oxford in 3 vols. 8vo, 1753.