Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 31.djvu/170

 prebend of Kilmainmore on 14 July in the same year, and to the provostship of the cathedral church of Tuam on 26 Oct. 1676. On the translation of Parker to the see of Dublin in 1678, King was on 27 Oct. 1679 collated to the chancellorship of St. Patrick's and the parish of St. Werburgh's annexed, where he laboured zealously to prevent the spread of Roman catholicism in the metropolis. Shortly after his appointment he was involved in a dispute with Dean Worth as to the right of the dean to visit independently of the chapter. Judgment was finally given against King in 1681, and as a punishment for his ‘contentiousness’ he was required to build a number of stalls in the chapter-house (ib. pp. 201–2). In 1687 King entered upon a prolonged controversy with Peter Manby [q. v.], sometime dean of Derry, who had been lately converted to the church of Rome. Manby's ‘Considerations which obliged Peter Manby to embrace the Catholic Religion’ drew from King an ‘Answer to the Considerations,’ in which Manby's motives were ascribed to a desire to curry favour with James II. Manby thereupon replied with ‘A Reformed Catechism,’ which King answered in ‘A Vindication of the Answer to the Considerations,’ 1688. Subsequently Manby, according to Harris (, Bishops), ‘dispersed a short paper, artfully written,’ under the title ‘A Letter to a Friend, shewing the vanity of this opinion, that every man's sense and reason is to guide him in matters of Faith,’ which led to King's ‘Vindication of the Christian Religion and Reformation against the Attempts of a late Letter.’ Owing to some disparaging remarks about presbyterianism made by him during this controversy, King was vigorously attacked by Joseph Boyse [q. v.], a presbyterian minister in Dublin. On the death of Dean Worth in 1688, King was elected his successor, and was formally installed on 1 Feb. 1688–9, taking his degree of D.D. shortly afterwards. Hitherto he had been noted as a strenuous advocate of the doctrine of passive resistance (, Answer, p. 113), but the government of Tyrconnel converted him into an ardent whig. He openly espoused the cause of the Prince of Orange, and falling under the suspicion of the Jacobite government he was arrested and confined to the castle. He was liberated after a short imprisonment by the good offices of Lord-chief-justice Sir Edward Herbert [q. v.], but continued to suffer insults and indignities in public till the beginning of 1690, when he was recommitted on a charge of having furnished treasonable information to the Duke of Schomberg (ib. p. 105). The battle of the Boyne, however, put an end to his sufferings. On 16 Nov. he preached before the lords justices Sidney and Coningsby in St. Patrick's Cathedral on the occasion of the thanksgiving for ‘the preservation of his Majesty's person, his good success in our deliverance, and his safe and happy return into England,’ and on 9 Jan. 1690–1 he was promoted to the see of Derry. In 1691 he published his ‘State of the Protestants of Ireland under the late King James's Government,’ for which he had partly collected the materials during his imprisonment. Though more of a party pamphlet than an impartial history, it is a powerful vindication of the principles of the revolution, and was, as Bishop Burnet described it, ‘not only the best book that hath been written for the service of the government, but without any figure it is worth all the rest put together, and will do more than all our scribblings for settling the minds of the nation.’ Three editions were at once exhausted. An ‘Answer’ was published anonymously in 1692 from the pen of the nonjuror, Charles Leslie [q. v.] The charge of inconsistency in the matter of passive resistance was pressed home against King with considerable skill, and from certain memoranda still extant (Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. p. 236) it would seem as if King at one time meditated a reply to Leslie's book. Immediately after his consecration (25 Jan. 1690–1) King proceeded to his diocese, where he busied himself in repairing the ravages created by the war, in restoring and rebuilding parish churches, towards which he himself contributed liberally, in enforcing the residence of his clergy, in augmenting the revenues of the see, and generally in endeavouring to restore the church under his care to a position of efficiency and respectability. In December 1693 he was appointed, along with Dopping, bishop of Meath, and Wiseman, bishop of Dromore, ecclesiastical commissioner for the visitation of the bishop and clergy of the diocese of Down and Connor, in consequence of which Bishop Hacket, satirically styled the bishop of Hammersmith, the archdeacon of Down, and several other clergymen were suspended (Lansdowne MS. 446, f. 36).

The prevalency of nonconformity in his diocese, and particularly in the city of Derry, where, as he expressed it, the presbyterians were ‘mighty insolent,’ caused King much annoyance. Mainly with the intention of repressing the growth of sectarianism he entered upon a lawsuit with the London Society in order to prevent the letting of waste lands to presbyterians. The case raised the whole question of the judicial independence of the Irish House of Lords, and led to much wider consequences than King had anticipated. Pending its settlement he published in 1694 a tract entitled ‘A Discourse concerning the Inventions of Man in the Worship of God.’ The pamphlet, according to Reid (Hist. of the Presbyterian Church, iii. 27),