Zachary Pearce Explained

Honorific-Prefix:Right Reverend
Zachary Pearce
Bishop Of:Bishop of Rochester
Enthroned:1756
Ended:1774
Predecessor:Joseph Wilcocks
Successor:John Thomas
Other Post:Bishop of Bangor, Dean of Westminster
Birth Date:8 September 1690
Death Date:29 June 1774
Nationality:English/British
Religion:Church of England
Alma Mater:Trinity College, Cambridge

Zachary Pearce, sometimes known as Zachariah (8 September 1690 – 29 June 1774), was an English Bishop of Bangor and Bishop of Rochester. He was a controversialist and a notable early critical writer defending John Milton,[1] attacking Richard Bentley's 1732 edition of Paradise Lost the following year.

Life

Pearce was born the son of Thomas or John Pearce, a distiller, in 1690 in the parish of St Giles, High Holborn. He first attended Great Ealing School[2] and then Westminster School. He graduated BA from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1713/4 and MA in 1717.

He was Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (1716–1720) [3] and chaplain to the Lord Chancellor, Thomas Parker, 1st Earl of Macclesfield.Parker became his patron, to whom Pearce dedicated an edition of the De oratore of Cicero. He became rector of Stapleford Abbotts, Essex (1719–1722) and St Batholemew, Royal Exchange (1720–1724) He was vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, in 1726.[4] He was then Dean of Winchester in 1739, Bishop of Bangor in 1748, and Bishop of Rochester in 1756. In 1761 he turned down the position of bishop of London.[3] He was Dean of Westminster (1756–1768).

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June 1720.[5] Towards the end of Isaac Newton's life, Pearce assisted him on chronology[6]

There is a monument to Pearce in the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Bromley.[7] He had married Mary, daughter of Benjamin Adams, a distiller, of Holborn.

Works

The Miracles of Jesus Vindicated (1729) was written against Thomas Woolston. A Reply to the Letter to Dr. Waterland was against Conyers Middleton, defending Daniel Waterland; Pearce engaged in this controversy as a former student of William Wake.[8]

Other works were:

He also published sermons; he preached at the funeral of Sir Hans Sloane.[9]

References

Notes and References

  1. [Christopher Ricks]
  2. Hole. Robert. Pearce, Zachary (1690–1774). 2004. 10.1093/ref:odnb/21693. 2008-06-04 .
  3. Concise Dictionary of National Biography
  4. http://westminster.lovesguide.com/martin_fields.htm St Martin in the Fields, Trafalgar Square
  5. Web site: Lists of Royal Society Fellows 1660–2007 . The Royal Society . 16 July 2010 . London . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20100324095152/http://royalsociety.org/Lists-of-Royal-Society-Fellows-1660-2007/ . 24 March 2010 .
  6. http://www.shugborough.org.uk/AcademyThomasAnsonNew-187 Academy Thomas Anson New
  7. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45479#n22 Bromley
  8. David B. Ruderman, Connecting the Covenants: Judaism and the Search for Christian Identity in Eighteenth-Century England, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007, p. 47.
  9. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45407#n45 Chelsea – (part 2 of 3) | British History Online