Thomas Sprat, FRS (163520 May 1713) was an English churchman and writer,

Bishop of Rochester The Bishop of Rochester is the ordinary of the Church of England's Diocese of Rochester in the Province of Canterbury. The town of Rochester has the bishop's seat, at the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was fo ...

from 1684.

Life

Sprat was born at Beaminster, Dorset, and educated at

Wadham College, Oxford Wadham College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is located in the centre of Oxford, at the intersection of Broad Street and Parks Road. Wadham College was founded in 1610 by Dorothy ...

, where he held a fellowship from 1657 to 1670. Having taken

orders Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of ...

he became a

prebendary A prebendary is a member of the Roman Catholic or Anglican clergy, a form of canon with a role in the administration of a cathedral or collegiate church. When attending services, prebendaries sit in particular seats, usually at the back of th ...

Lincoln Cathedral Lincoln Cathedral, Lincoln Minster, or the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lincoln and sometimes St Mary's Cathedral, in Lincoln, England, is a Grade I listed cathedral and is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Lincoln. Construc ...

in 1660. In the preceding year he had gained a reputation by his poem ''To the Happie Memory of the most Renowned Prince Oliver, Lord Protector'' (London, 1659), and he was afterwards well known as a wit, preacher and man of letters. In 1669 Sprat became canon of

Westminster Abbey Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the United ...

, and in 1670 rector of Uffington, Lincolnshire. He was chaplain to Charles II in 1676,

curate A curate () is a person who is invested with the ''care'' or ''cure'' (''cura'') ''of souls'' of a parish. In this sense, "curate" means a parish priest; but in English-speaking countries the term ''curate'' is commonly used to describe clergy ...

and lecturer at St. Margaret's, Westminster, in 1679, canon of

Chapel Royal The Chapel Royal is an establishment in the Royal Household serving the spiritual needs of the sovereign and the British Royal Family. Historically it was a body of priests and singers that travelled with the monarch. The term is now also appl ...

, Windsor in 1681,

Dean of Westminster The Dean of Westminster is the head of the chapter at Westminster Abbey. Due to the Abbey's status as a Royal Peculiar, the dean answers directly to the British monarch (not to the Bishop of London as ordinary, nor to the Archbishop of Canterbu ...

in 1683 and

in 1684. He was appointed Dean of the Chapel Royal in 1685 and was Clerk of the Closet from 1685 to 1687. Sprat was a member of James II's ecclesiastical commission, and in 1688 he read the ''

Declaration of Indulgence The Declaration of Indulgence, also called Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, was a pair of proclamations made by James II of England and Ireland and VII of Scotland in 1687. The Indulgence was first issued for Scotland on 12 February and ...

'' to empty benches in Westminster Abbey. The suggestion was that he was playing at being Vicar of Bray. Although he opposed the motion of 1689 declaring the throne vacant, he assisted at the coronation of

William William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

and Mary. As

he directed

Christopher Wren Sir Christopher Wren PRS FRS (; – ) was one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history, as well as an anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 church ...

's restoration of the abbey. In 1692 a bizarre attempt was made to implicate Sprat in a plot to restore the deposed king James II. This became known as the "flowerpot plot" because it involved a conspirator—a man named Robert Young—forging Sprat's signature on a document, smuggling it into the Bishop's manor and hiding the paper under a flowerpot. The authorities were contacted about the document, which led to the Bishop's arrest for high treason and the searching of his house—the forged document was eventually found where Young had said it would be. However, Sprat was soon freed when it became clear that there was no case to answer. He died of apoplexy in 1713 at the Bishop's Palace in Bromley, Kent and was buried on the south side of St Nicholas' Chapel in

. The monument is by

Francis Bird Francis Bird (1667–1731) was one of the leading English sculptors of his time. He is mainly remembered for sculptures in Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral. He carved a tomb for the dramatist William Congreve in Westminster Abbey and ...

Works

A History of the Royal Society, by Thomas Sprat (frontispiece)

Sprat's major prose works are the ''Observations upon Monsieur de Sorbier's Voyage into England'' (London, 1665), a satirical reply to the strictures on Englishmen in Samuel de Sorbière's book ''Relation d'un voyage en Angleterre'' (Paris, 1664), and a
History of the Royal Society of London
' (London, 1667), which Sprat had helped to found. The ''History of the Royal Society'' elaborates the scientific purposes of the academy and outlines some of the strictures of scientific writing that set the modern standards for clarity and conciseness. A collection of ten of his sermons was published in 1710. For his work on the history of science he was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemati ...

in 1663.

Family

He married Helen, the daughter of Devereux Wolseley of Ravenstone, Staffordshire and was the father of Thomas Sprat, Archdeacon of Rochester and Fellow of the Royal Society. Shortly after the elder Sprat's death, his son was made a canon of Westminster Abbey.Westminster Abbey – Thomas Sprat
(Accessed 16 April 2013)

Notes

References

* *Clinch, George.
Antiquarian Jottings: relating to Bromley, Hayes Keston, and West Wickham, in Kent
' (1889). *Johnson, Samuel.
The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: Vol. 2
' (1821). *Sprat, Thomas.
History of the Royal Society of London, for the Improving of Natural Knowledge
' (London, 1667).

External links

Bibliographic directory
from

Project Canterbury Project Canterbury (sometimes abbreviated as PC) is an online archive of material related to the history of Anglicanism. It was founded by Richard Mammana, Jr. in 1999 with a grant from Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold, and is ho ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spratt, Thomas 1635 births 1713 deaths People from Beaminster Alumni of Wadham College, Oxford Deans of Westminster Bishops of Rochester 17th-century Church of England bishops 18th-century Church of England bishops Original Fellows of the Royal Society Canons of Windsor Canons of Westminster Clerks of the Closet 17th-century English historians 17th-century Anglican theologians 18th-century Anglican theologians