THOMAS, Bishop of Rochester, was born in 1636 at Tallaton in Devonshire. He received his education at Oxford, and after the Restoration entered into holy orders. In 1659 he published two indifferent poems, on the Death of O. Cromwell, and on the Plague of Athens. He became fellow of the Royal Society, chaplain to George Duke of Buckingham, and chaplain in ordinary to King Charles II. In 1677 he published the History of the Royal Society, and a Life of Cowley, who, by his last will, left to his care his printed works and MSS., which were accordingly published by him. In 1668 he was installed prebendary of Westminster; in 1680, he was appointed canon of Windsor; in 1683, dean of Westminster; and in 1684, consecrated to the bishopric of Rochester. He was clerk of the closet to King James II., and in 1685 was made dean of the chapel-royal; and the year following was appointed one of the commissioners for ecclesiastical affairs. In 1692 his lordship, with several other persons, was charged with treason by two men, who drew up an association, in which they whose names were inscribed declared their resolution to restore King James, to seize the Princess of Orange, dead or alive, and to be ready with 30,000 men to meet King James when he should land. To this they put the names of Sancroft, Sprat, Marlborough, Salisbury, and others. The bishop was arrested, and kept at a messenger's, under a strict guard, for eleven days. His house was searched, and his papers seized, among which nothing was found of treasonable appearance, except one memorandum, in the following words: "Thorough-paced doctrine." Being asked at his examination the meaning of the words, he said, that about twenty years before, curiosity had led him to hear Daniel Burgess preach; and that being struck with his account of a certain kind of doctrine, which he said "entered at one ear, and pacing through the head went out at the other," he had inserted the memoranda in his table-book, that he might not lose the substance of so strange a sermon. His innocence being proved, he was set at liberty, when he published an account of his examination and deliverance, which made such an impression upon him that he commemorated it through life by a yearly day of thanksgiving. He lived till the 77th year of his age, and died May 20, 1713. His other works are—An Answer to Sorbiere; The History of the Rye-House Plot; The Relation of his own Examination; and a volume of Sermons. The following favourable estimate of Sprat's abilities by the late Lord Macaulay deserves to be recorded. Thomas Sprat "was a man to whose talents posterity has scarcely done justice. Unhappily for his fame, it has been usual to print his verses in collections of the British poets; and those who judge of him by his verses must consider him as a servile imitator, who, without one spark of Cowley's admirable genius, mimicked whatever was least commendable in Cowley's manner; but those who are acquainted with Sprat's prose writings will form a very different estimate of his powers. He was indeed a very great master of our language, and possessed at once the eloquence of the orator, of the controversialist, and of the historian." (Hist. of England, vol. ii., p. 95, 1858.)