distinction in the wars in that country in the time of Elizabeth, and had been rewarded by grants of lands in Roscommon and elsewhere. Sir Robert was knighted in his father's lifetime and succeeded him as master-general. He entered parliament as member for Boyle in 1639, and in 1641 was appointed governor of Boyle castle, where he soon became conspicuous for his military skill and activity. He distinguished himself greatly at the battle of Ballintobber, and the success of the day was mainly owing to a brilliant manœuvre executed by him. Soon after this Sir Robert went to reside in London, leaving his son in command, and entered into the service of the parliament. He was sent over in 1645 to Ireland, with two others, as commissioners against the rebels. He was one of the five appointed in 1647 to receive the sword from the marquis of Ormonde, the viceroy of Charles. From this period he is found occupying a prominent place in all commissions and trusts for the settlement and improvement of Ireland; amongst others, as trustee for Trinity college, Dublin. He died in London in 1657.—J. F. W.
KING, Rufus, an American statesman, born in 1755 at Scarborough in the state of Maine; died in 1827. He was called to the bar in 1778, and elected member of congress in 1784. In 1787 he was sent by the legislature of Massachusetts to the general convention at Philadelphia. In 1788 he returned to New York, and the following year was elected member of the legislature. In 1796 Washington appointed him minister plenipotentiary from the United States to the court of Great Britain, which post he occupied till 1803. On his return to America he entered the senate for the state of New York, and in 1825 again represented the United States at the court of Britain.—P. E. D.
KING, William, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin, was born in 1650 in Antrim in Ireland, where his father, a Scotchman, had settled. Having received his elementary education at the royal school of Dungannon, he entered Trinity college, Dublin, as a sizar in his seventeenth year, obtaining a scholarship, and graduated in 1670. He was ordained in 1675, and the year following took full orders and became chaplain to Parker, archbishop of Tuam; and when that prelate was translated to Dublin he collated King to the chancellorship of St. Patrick's, with the parish of St. Werburgh's in that city He soon signalized himself as a champion of protestantism, and took a position in controversies then raging in Ireland. When the repeal of the act of settlement was proposed, he was earnest in persuading his fellow-countrymen to embrace the cause of the prince of Orange, and he was so prominent in his exertions that he was amongst the protestant clergymen who were thrown into prison by James in 1689. While in confinement, he wrote a history of the events of which he was a faithful and intelligent witness. His confinement was not of long duration, and on his liberation he applied himself, in conjunction with the bishop of Meath, to the care of the archdiocese from which Marsh had been driven to England. In the discharge of these duties he met with violence and hostility which might have deterred a less brave or devoted man. He was interrupted and threatened in the performance of divine service, assaulted in the streets, and again cast into prison; but the issue of the battle of the Boyne terminated his trials, and on the entry of William into Dublin, King preached before him in St. Patrick's. The virtues and services of King were rewarded by the bishopric of Derry in January, 1691. Repairing at once to his see, he found a state of things that required all his energy and ability to set in order. Liberally devoting his private means to the repair of churches and the sustentation of the clergy, he carried the work of reform through his diocese with a firm and unwearying hand, encountering at the same time much opposition. "I believe," he says in his MS. correspondence, "no bishop was ever more railed at for the first two years than I was at Londonderry, by both clergy and laity; but by good offices, steadiness in my duty, and just management I got the better of them, and they joined with me heartily in promoting those very things for which they opposed and condemned me at first." He now published "The State of the Protestants in Ireland under the late King James' Government." As a divine, too, his pen was actively employed in supporting the doctrine and principles of the established church both against dissenters and Roman catholics, and with that end published several valuable treatises. In his place in parliament also his voice was raised in the interests of the church of which he was ever a vigilant guardian, and he took a considerable share in the great political questions of his times. In 1702 he published his principal work, "De Origine Mali" (An Inquiry concerning the Origin of Evil). This great and elaborate work, written in Latin, excited much interest and provoked considerable discussion. Bayle assailed it, and Leibnitz replied to it, though admitting it to be a work full of elegance and learning. That a work upon a speculation so profitless, if not worse, should have errors is not surprising; but the errors are chiefly those of the philosophy of his times—the merits are all his own. "Through the whole inquiry," says a modern commentator, "there is perceivable the underworking of a sagacity superior to the entanglements in which it lay involved." King did not answer these attacks, but he has left in his MSS. answers to the reasonings of his opponents, which have been published by Law, bishop of Carlisle, the translator of the treatise "De Origine Mali." A discourse which he preached on predestination in 1709 has since taken a higher place in public estimation than the more elaborate treatise. In 1703 King was translated to the archiepiscopal see of Dublin, and here as in Derry he exercised his talent, liberality, and zeal; he repaired fourteen churches, rebuilt seven, and built nineteen in new places, supplying them with clergy, and assigning glebe lands. Upon the death of Marsh in 1713 it was expected King would have been raised to the primacy; but his political views debarred him from the elevation due to his piety, learning, and efficiency. After the death of Queen Anne, King was appointed one of the lords justices on three occasions. As his health declined he withdrew by degrees from political affairs, devoting his remaining strength and energies to the duties of his see. He died in Dublin on the 8th of May, 1729. King was as estimable in private as in public life. The patron of Parnell and Philips, the friend and constant correspondent of Swift, whether we regard him as a prelate, a scholar, or a man of genius, he holds a high place amongst the men of his times.—J. F. W.
KING, William, LL.D., a satirical and miscellaneous writer, was born in London in 1663. He was of good family, and educated at Westminster and Oxford. He came early into possession of a small patrimonial estate, which allowed him to escape from the necessity of strenuous exertion. His first work, published in 1688, was a defence of Wickliffe from the charges brought against the English reformer in Varillas' History of Heresy. After a little more dabbling in authorship he was admitted in 1692 an advocate of Doctors' commons. By his "Animadversions on the Pretended Account of Denmark," published in 1694, in reply to Molesworth's Account of Denmark as it was in the year 1692, he procured the favour of Prince George of Denmark, and was appointed secretary to the princess, afterwards Queen Anne. He engaged in the Phalaris controversy, taking part with Boyle against Bentley, and among his contributions to it was his bantering "Dialogues of the Dead." A little afterwards he published the work of which he seems to have been proudest, "A Journey to London in the year 1678," written in ridicule of the minute trifling of Dr. Martin Lister's account of a visit to France and Paris. An idle and jovial man, he quitted Doctors' commons and retired to literary leisure at Oxford, where he seems to have remained several years. In 1700 he published anonymously a satire on Sir Hans Sloane, or on t he Philosophical Transactions, entitled "The Transactioner." The state of his finances, impaired by a gay and idle life, led him to accept official employment in Ireland, where we find him about 1702 judge of the high court of admiralty, with which he combined the occupancy of some other posts. Returning to England in 1708 as poor as he had left it, he published some more prose satires, among them "Useful Transactions in Philosophy and other sorts of learning," a title which speaks for itself; an adaptation of Ovid's Art of Love; and the "Art of Cookery," an imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry. When the Examiner was founded in 1710 as the organ of the tory ministry, Dr. King seems to have been put forward as its editor, and to have contributed to some of its numbers. He published, too, several anonymous pamphlets in defence of Sacheverell. For these and similar services he was appointed, through the influence of Swift, and at the close of 1711, editor of the London Gazette, but soon threw up the post because he had to attend at the office till three or four in the morning, an exceptional pressure of advertisements having marked, it seems, his entrance on his brief editorial career. He now devoted himself to books and the bottle, and died in 1712. Nichols of the Literary Anecdotes edited in 1776, with a memoir of the author, Dr. King's "Original Works in Verse and Prose," in which is still dimly traceable the
