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 name of the Trinity. He died of apoplexy in the palace at Bromley on the morning of 20 May 1713, and on 25 May was buried in Westminster Abbey, on the south side of St. Nicholas's Chapel. A monument, with a long inscription by John Freind, M.D. [q. v.], to the memory of the bishop and his son, Thomas Sprat, was placed in that chapel, but afterwards, for greater publicity, moved to the south aisle, near the west door. A portrait by M. D6ahl of the bishop and his son Thomas is at the Bodleian Library, and a copy of it was made in 1825 for Wadham College. It was engraved by John Smith in 1712, and was included in 1811 in Boydell's ‘Illustrious Heads’ (, British Portraits, iii. 1225). Another portrait of him, probably by Sir Peter Lely, is at the deanery, Westminster, and a third and larger portrait is in the chapter-house at Rochester. That by Lely was engraved by Vandergucht. Another portrait of him by Loggan was also engraved.

Sprat married at the Charterhouse, where his friend Martin Clifford [q. v.] was master, Helen, eldest daughter and coheiress of Devereux Wolseley of Ravenstone, Staffordshire, by Elizabeth, third daughter and at length coheiress of Sir John Zouch, knight, of Codnor Castle, Derbyshire. His wife was born at Ravenstone on 15 May 1647, died 26 Feb. 1725–6, and was also buried in the chapel of St. Nicholas at Westminster. A monument to their child, George Sprat, buried 4 Oct. 1683, is in St. Benedict's Chapel near the Poets' Corner. Their only surviving son, Thomas Sprat, archdeacon of Rochester, was buried in the abbey on 15 May 1720 (cf. Notes and Queries, 4th ser. i. 415).

When Sprat was dean the extensive repairs to the abbey, under the direction of his old friend Sir Christopher Wren, were commenced. On his application a marble altar-piece, which had for some time lain among the stores of Hampton Court, was granted by Queen Anne to the abbey and erected there. As soon as he heard of Dryden's death he ‘undertook to remit all the fees and offered himself to perform the rites of interment in the abbey,’ but the larger inscription intended for Shadwell's bust in the abbey was suppressed by him, as some of the clergy had objected to its terms as ‘too great an encomium on plays to be set up in a church,’ and the lines in Dr. Freind's epitaph on John Philips (1676–1709) [q. v.], ‘Uni in hoc laudis genere Miltono secundus, primoque pæne par,’ were omitted by his orders (, Life of Philips, 1715, p. 34). In 1699 he pulled down and rebuilt the old chapel at Bromley Palace, and made considerable improvements in the building. The bishop's profuseness in spending money did not permit him to die wealthy. He left his money to his son Thomas, but the widow was to enjoy the interest during her life.

As a popular preacher Sprat's talents were in frequent demand on public occasions, at least eleven of such sermons being separately printed between 1677 and 1695. That before the king at Whitehall on 24 Dec. 1676, the subject being ‘Unfeigned Simplicity,’ was No. 21 of the ‘Bishops' Tracts,’ published at Edinburgh about 1840. The ‘discourse to his clergy at his visitation in 1695,’ printed in the ensuing year, inculcated the duty of good reading and preaching, and the necessity for liberality in the payment of curates. It was reprinted in 1710, 1729, and 1761, and included in the ‘Clergyman's Instructor’ (1807, 1824, and 1843). A volume containing five of his collected sermons was struck off in 1697, and a second, with ten sermons, appeared in 1710 and 1722.

‘Maxime semper valuit authoritate,’ says the inscription on Sprat's monument in the abbey, and that was a leading trait in his character. He also loved ease and good living, and was warped in his views by the advantages of the position which he had acquired. Macaulay calls him ‘a great master of our language, who possessed at once the eloquence of the preacher, of the controversialist, and of the historian.’ Dr. Johnson had heard it observed, ‘and with great justness,’ that every book by him is of a different kind, ‘and that each has its distinct and characteristical excellence.’ His name is connected with a masterpiece in English literature, for he assisted Dean Aldrich in revising for original publication Lord Clarendon's ‘History of the Civil War.’

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. iii. 675, 1080, 1260, iv. 727–30; Wood's Fasti, ii. 213; Wood's Life (Oxford Hist. Soc.), ii. 505–7, iii. 116, 173; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Gardiner's Wadham College, i. 194; Jackson's Wadham College, p. 185; Welch's Westminster School (ed. 1852), pp. 27–8, 143, 233, 289; Neale's Westminster Abbey, i. 174–9, ii. 150, 173, 234, 301; Chester's Westminster Abbey Registers, pp. 217, 276–7, 316; Stanley's Westminster Abbey, pp. 302–7, 525–7, 550; Walcott's St. Margaret's, Westminster, pp. 77–87; Walcott's Memorials of Westminster, p. 121; Le Neve's Fasti, ii. 125, 574, iii. 349, 361, 405; Spence's Anecdotes (1858 ed.), pp. 10, 51; Addison's Works, vi. 132; Swift's Works (1883 ed.), xii. 198; Johnson's Poets (ed. Napier) ii. 41–7, (ed. Cunningham) ii. 73–8; Notes and Queries 1st ser. x. 84, 6th ser. iii. 152–3, vii. 106, 395, 9th ser. i. 323–4; Biogr. Brit. (1763) vi. 3814–20; Luttrell's Historical Relation, i. 368, 383, ii. 605, iii. 31, v. 251, vi. 558; Burnet's