a learned divine and writer, was the son of Henry Wotton, B.D., rector of Wrentham in Suffolk, where he was born on the 13th of August 1666. He was educated by his father, a gentleman well skilled in the learned languages, under whom he made such amazing proficiency, that at five years of age it is said he could read several chapters of the gospels out of Latin and Greek, and many psalms in Hebrew, into his mother tongue. When he was very young he remembered the whole of almost every discourse he had heard, and often surprised a preacher by repeating his sermon to him. He was admitted into Catharine Hall in Cambridge some months before he was ten years old; when the progress he made in learning that university engaged Dr Duport, then master of Magdalen College, and dean of Peterborough, to write an elegant copy of Latin verses in his praise. In 1679 he took the degree of A.B. when he was but twelve years and five months old; and the winter following he was invited to London by Dr Burnet, then preacher at the Rolls, who introduced him to most of the learned men in that city, and particularly to Dr Lloyd, bishop of St Asaph, to whom he recommended himself by repeating to him one of his sermons, as Dr Burnet had engaged he should. In 1691 he commenced B.D. The same year Bishop Lloyd gave him the sinecure of Llandrillo, in Denbighshire. He was afterwards made chaplain to the earl of Nottingham, then secre-