[A.D. 1660-1662.] The first Bishop of Worcester after the Restoration was GEORGE MORLEY, translated to Winchester 1662. (See that Cathedral, Pt. II.)
[A.D. 1662, died the same year.] JOHN GAUDEN, translated from Exeter. (See that Cathedral, Pt. II.)
[A.D. 1662, translated to Salisbury 1663.] JOHN EARLE. (See SALISBURY, Pt. II.)
[A.D. 1663-1670.] ROBERT SKINNER, had been consecrated to the see of Bristol in 1637, and had been translated to Oxford in 1641. During the civil war he was imprisoned by the Puritans. He died at the age of eighty, the last English bishop who had been consecrated before the Great Rebellion.
[A.D. 1671-1675.] WALTER BLANDFORD, Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, translated from Oxford.
[A.D. 1675-1683.] JAMES FLEETWOOD, Provost of King’s College, Cambridge. Bishop Fleetwood was the seventh son of Sir George Fleetwood of Lancashire, and whilst all the rest of his family joined the Puritans, he alone remained a Royalist.
[A.D. 1683-1689.] WILLIAM THOMAS, translated from St. David’s. Bishop Thomas was a Nonjuror; and, with the other nonjuring bishops, would have been deprived of his see, had not his death occurred, June 25, 1689.
[A.D. 1689-1699.] EDWARD STILLINGFLEET, “a man deeply versed in ecclesiastical antiquity, of an argumentative mind, excellently fitted for polemical dispute.... In the critical reign of James II. he may be considered as the leader on the Protestant side[120].” Stillingfleet was, however, strongly tenacious of the authority of the Church, and was decidedly opposed to the “latitudinarian” theology of his time. He was born, 1635, at Cranbourne, in Dorsetshire, was educated at St. John’s, Cambridge, and afterwards became Rector of Sutton, in Nottinghamshire, where he wrote and published his _Irenicum_, and (1662) his “_Origines Sacræ_, or, A Rational Account of the Grounds of Natural and Revealed Religion;” a book of considerable importance, which brought him into great notice. Passing from one preferment to another, he became in 1689 Bishop of Worcester. In 1699 he died at his house in Westminster. His body was conveyed to his own cathedral for interment, when the monument which still remains (Pt. I. § VI.) was erected by his son. The inscription was written by Dr. Bentley, who had been the Bishop’s chaplain.