Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/375

  and of Overton in the diocese of Winchester. He was a canon and treasurer in the cathedral of St. David's. On 2 Aug. 1742 he was translated to Exeter, where also he held a canonry and the archdeaconry of Exeter. He died on 8 Dec. 1746, and was buried at St. Margaret's, Westminster, with no epitaph, and only the meagre words in the burials register — '11 Dec. 1746, Dr. Nicholas Clegett, L'd Bishop of Exeter.' The portraits at the Palace, Exeter, include his predecessor, Weston, and his successor, Lavington, but there is none of Clagett.

He published 'Articles of Enquiry for the Archdeaconry of Buckingham,' 1732, and eleven sermons. One was preached before the House of Lords on the anniversary of Charles I's martyrdom, another on the consecration of Bishop White. A 'Persuasive to an ingenuous trial of Opinions in Religion' (1685), sometimes ascribed to him, belongs rather to his father, Nicholas Clagett the younger [q. v.]

 CLAGETT, WILLIAM, D.D. (1646–1688), controversialist, was the eldest son of Nicholas Clagett the elder [q. v.], preacher at St. Mary's Church, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk. He was born in that parish on 24 Sept. 1646, and educated in the Bury grammar school under Dr. Thomas Stephens, author of the notes on Statius's 'Sylvæ' (Addit. MS. 19165, f. 270). Before he was fully thirteen years of age he was admitted a pensioner of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, on 5 Sept. 1659, under the tuition of Thomas Jackson (ib. 5865, f. 30 b), and he graduated B.A. in 1663, M.A. in 1667, D.D. in 1683 (Cantabrigienses Graduati, ed. 1787, p. 83). He was elected preacher at St. Mary's Church, Bury St. Edmunds, on 12 Dec. 1672, and resigned that office on 17 June 1680, on being appointed preacher at Gray's Inn, London, in succession to Dr. Cradock (, Account of the Church of St. Mary, Bury St. Edmunds, p. 129). He was presented also by the Lord-keeper North, who was his wife's kinsman, to the rectory of Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire, into which he was instituted on 14 May 1683; but what he most valued, next to his preacher's place at Gray's Inn, was the lectureship of St. Michael Bassishaw, to which he was elected about two years before his death (Life by Archbishop Sharp, prefixed to Clagett's Sermons). He was also chaplain in ordinary to his majesty. On Sunday evening, 16 March 1687-8, after having preached at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, in his Lent course there, he was seized with smallpox, of which disease he died on 28 March 1688, Relation of State Affairs, i. 436). He was buried in a vault under the church of St. Michael Bassishaw, and his wife, Thomasin North, who died eighteen days after him, was buried in the same grave.

Burnet ranks him among the worthy and eminent men whose lives and labours in a great measure rescued the church of England from those reproaches which the follies of others drew upon it (Own Times, fol. edit. i. 462, 674), and Dr. John Sharp, afterwards archbishop of York, who preached his funeral sermon, said he should not scruple to give Clagett a place among the most eminent and celebrated writers of the English church (, Life of Abp. Sharp, ed. Newcome, ii. 103). He took a leading part in the controversy carried on during the reign of James II respecting the points in dispute between protestants and catholics.

His works are: 1. 'A Discourse concerning the Operations of the Holy Spirit; with a confutation of some part of Dr. Owen's book upon that subject,' part i., London, 1677, 8vo; part ii., London, 1680, 8vo. In the second part there is an answer to John Humphreys's Animadversions on the first part. Clagett wrote a third part, to prove that the Fathers were not on Dr. Owen's side, but the manuscript was burnt by an accidental fire, and the author never had leisure to rewrite it. In 1719 Dr. Stebbing published an edition of the first two parts. 2. 'A Reply to a pamphlet called The Mischief of Impositions, by Mr. Alsop, which pretends to answer the dean of St. Paul's [Dr. Stillingfleet's] Sermon concerning the Mischief of Separation,' London, 1681, 4to. 3. 'An Answer to the Dissenters' Objections against. . . the Liturgy of the Church of England,' London, 1683, 4to. 4. 'The Difference of the Case between the Separation of the Protestants from the Church of Rome, and the Separation of Dissenters from the Church of England,' London, 1683, 4to. Reprinted in Gibson's 'Preservative against Popery,' fol. ed. vol. iii., 8vo ed. vol. xiv.; and in Cardwell's 'Enchiridion Theologicum,' vol. iii. 5. 'A Discourse concerning the Worship of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints,' London, 1686, 4to. Reprinted in Gibson's 'Preservative against Popery,' fol. ed. vol. ii., 8vo ed. vol. vii. 6. 'A Paraphrase, with Notes and Preface, upon the sixth chapter of St. John,' London, 1686, 4to. Reprinted in 1689 at the end of the second vol. of his 'Sermons;' also in Gibson's 'Preservative against Popery,' fol. ed. vol. ii.,