on the 17th of April
1635, and received his early education in the grammar schools of
Cranborne and Ringwood. In his fifteenth year he was admitted into St.
John's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a Fellowship in 1653. For
several years after leaving college he was engaged as a private tutor,
first in the family of Sir Roger Burgoyne of Wroxall in Warwickshire,
and afterwards in that of the Hon. Francis Pierrepoint of Nottingham,
during which period he was ordained by Ralph Brownrig, the deprived
Bishop of Exeter. In 1657 he was presented by Sir R. Burgoyne to the
rectory of Sutton, Bedfordshire, and in 1665 the Earl of Southampton
gave him the rectory of St. Andrew's, Holborn. He was also appointed
Preacher at the Rolls Chapel, and shortly afterwards Reader of the
Temple, and Chaplain in Ordinary to Charles II. In 1667 he was collated
to a Canonry in St. Paul's, London; in 1669 he became a Canon 'in the
twelfth prebend' in Canterbury Cathedral; in 1677 Archdeacon of London;
in 1678 Dean of St. Paul's; and on the 13th of October 1689 he was
consecrated Bishop of Worcester. He died at his residence in Park
Street, Westminster, on the 27th of March 1699, and was buried in
Worcester Cathedral, where a monument was erected to his memory by his
son, with a Latin epitaph by Richard Bentley, who had been one of his
chaplains.

Bishop Stillingfleet collected 'at a vast expence of time, pains and
money' a very choice and valuable library, which contained a
considerable number of manuscripts, and upwards of nine thousand five
hundred printed volumes, besides many pamphlets. It is stated that there
were over two thousand folios in it, and that it cost the Bishop six
thousand pounds. Evelyn in a letter to Pepys, dated August 12th, 1689,
writes: 'The Bishop of Ely[49] has a well stor'd library; but the very
best is what Dr. Stillingfleete, Deane of St. Paule's, has at Twicknam,
ten miles out of towne.' After Stillingfleet's death his library was
offered for sale. Entries in Evelyn's diary[50] show that great efforts
were made to persuade William III. to buy it, but they evidently failed,
as the historical manuscripts were purchased by Robert Harley
(afterwards Earl of Oxford), while the remainder of the collection was
acquired by Narcissus Marsh, Archbishop of Armagh, who bought the books
for a public library in Dublin which he had founded. He is said to have
paid two thousand five hundred pounds for them. Stillingfleet, who on