BISHOP NEWTON.

THOMAS NEWTON, late lord bishop of Bristol, and dean of St. Paul's, London, was born in this City, January the 1st, 1704. His father, John Newton, was a brandy merchant, who by his industry and integrity having acquired a competent fortune, retired from business some years before his death.

Bishop Newton received the first part of his education in the free grammar-school of this City; a school which, he observes, had at all times sent forth several persons of note and eminence; from bishop Smalridge and Mr. Woollaston, to Dr. Johnson and Mr. Garrick.

From Lichfield he was removed to Westminster-school in 1717. He continued six years at Westminster-school, five of which he passed in the college. He afterward went to Cambridge, and entered at Trinity-college. Here he resided eight months in each year, till he had taken his bachelor of arts degree. Being chosen fellow of his college he went afterward

to

to settle in London. He was ordained deacon in December 1729, and priest in the February following,

At his first setting out in his ministry he was curate at St. George's Hanover-square, and continued for several years assistant-preacher to Dr. Trebeck. His first preferment was that of reader and afternoon-preacher at Grosvenor chapel, in South-Audley street. This introduced him to the family of Lord Tyrconnel.

In the spring of 1744, he was, through the interest of his great friend and patron the earl of Bath, presented to the rectory of St. Mary-le-bow. In the year following he took his Doctor's degree; and, the Rebellion breaking out soon after, he was so strenuous in the pulpit for his king, that he received some threatening letters, which lord Bath advised him to lay before the privy council. In 1747 he was chosen lecturer of St. George's, Hanover-square; and the same year married the daughter of Dr. Trebeck, the rector. In 1749 he published an edition of "Milton's Paradise Lost," which he dedicated to lord Bath. In 1751 he was appointed chaplain to the princess dowager of Wales, in Q consequence

consequence of his having preached a sermon on the death of Frederic the prince.

In 1754 he lost his father, aged 83, and his wife aged 38. This was the period when he was busily engaged in writing his " Dissertations on the Prophecies." He published the first volume the following winter, and the other two in the two subsequent years. In 1756 he was made chaplain to the king, prebendary of Westminster, and precentor of York,

In

1761 he married a second wife, of whom he gives a most excellent character. In the same year he kissed the king's hand for the bishoprick of Bristol; to which was annexed a residentiaryship of St. Paul's; which residentiaryship he exchanged for the deanery in 1768. After struggling many years with a complication of illness, he died in his deanery house, Feb. 14, 1782, in his 79th year,

Account

Account of Villages, which, though in the Parishes of St. Chad and St. Michael, Lichfield, are without the Boundaries of the City, and in the County of Stafford.

ST. CHAD's.

CURBOROUGH, a small village, two miles from the city of Lichfield, anciently the seat of Zachary Babington, esq. and his ancestors.

ELMHURST, a village about the same distance, formerly the seat of the Biddulphs, lately of Francis Percival Eliot, esq.

Dr. Plot, in his Natural History of Staffordshire, says, he discovered a tremulous echo on the terrace-walk in the garden behind the house, where the various windings and angles of the wall, in calm weather, return a hum, or clap with the hands, ten or a dozen times, so thick and close, that it admits of nothing articulate intervening, unless a monosyllable may be accounted so. Dr. Plot also mentions a polysyllabical echo, in a meadow South-east of the hall.

In this township there is a Roman tumulus, near which, level with the circumjacent soil, appears a moist blackish sort of earth, without 'any mixture of gravel or stone, about two yards diameter, lying much in the same form as the tumulus; on the edges whereof the same author observed ashes and charcoal in their natural colours, and several pieces of bones intermixed, so friable that they would, upon a gentle compressure, crumble into dust: this plainly proves it to be Roman, unless the Saxons and Danes may be also supposed to have burnt the bodies of their deceased.

STICHBROOKE-HOUSE, near which is the field called Christian-field, remarkable from being the place where Saint Amphibalus taught the British Christians, who, it is said, were massacred at Lichfield in the Dioclesian persecution.

In the time of king Charles II, Stichbrooke was the property of Matthew Dyott, esq. recently of the late John Dyott, gentleman, one of the magistrates of Lichfield; and lately of F. P. Eliot, esq.

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