WILLIAM, D.D., author of a famous treatise on the Origin of Evil, was born at Antrim in 1650. Taking orders in 1674, he was, five years afterwards, promoted to the chancellorship of St Patrick's, Dublin. When the persecution of the Anglican clergy began under James II., King, though a rigid Protestant, warmly inculcated the duty of passive obedience. "It was only," in the words of Macaulay (Hist., vol. iii., p. 222), "after he had been repeatedly imprisoned by the government, to which he was devotedly attached; after he had been insulted and threatened in his own choir by the soldiers; after he had been interdicted from burying in his own churchyard, and from preaching in his own pulpit; after he had narrowly escaped with his life from a musket-shot fired at him in the streets, that he began to think the Whig theory of government less unreasonable and unchristian than it had once appeared to him." Adopting the principles of the revolution, he gave them his earnest support; and his constancy was rewarded with the deanery of St Patrick's, and, three years later, with the see of Derry. In 1702 he became Archbishop of Dublin, and held that office till his death in 1729.

As an author, King ranks among the most learned and able men of the Irish Church. After peace had been restored to Great Britain by William of Orange, he published his State of the Protestants of Ireland under the late King James' Government, Lond., 4to; pronounced by Burnet to be a "history as truly as it is finely writ." A far higher effort, however, was his Discourse on the Inventions of Men in the Worship of God, the object of which was to reconcile the Presbyterians of Ireland to the Episcopal form of church government. But the greatest of all his works was his essay On the Origin of Evil, published in Latin at Dublin in 1702. In this essay, he advocated what is known as the optimist view, which, with differences on subordinate points, is that adopted by Augustin and Leibnitz. According to this view, King, in common with these great thinkers, attempts to reconcile the existence of evil within the government of a perfectly holy, good, and powerful being, by treating it as the necessary result of creature limitation. His work attracted great attention both at home and abroad. Among its assailants were Leibnitz, who, while holding the monolistic hypothesis, denied much of King's reasoning and many of his conclusions on minor points; and Bayle, the last and greatest defender of the dualistic hypothesis. King did not publish any reply to either of his assailants, but left notes of a defence, which, after his death, were given to the world by Edmund Law, Bishop of Carlisle, along with an English version of the De origine Mali. Of his other works may be mentioned his Discourse on Predestination, which has been edited, and with valuable annotations, by Archbishop Whately. King's personal character stood very high through life; and his correspondence with Swift shows him to have been a man of fine wit and great general accomplishment.