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Thomas Sprat

Thomas Sprat
Bishop of Rochester
Thomas Sprat by Michael Dahl.jpg
Installed 1684
Term ended 1713
Predecessor Francis Turner
Successor Francis Atterbury
Other posts Dean of Westminster
Personal details
Born 1635
Beaminster, Dorset
Died 20 May 1713
Bromley, Kent
Denomination Church of England
Alma mater Wadham College, Oxford

Thomas Sprat, FRS (1635 – 20 May 1713) was an English churchman, Bishop of Rochester from 1684.

Sprat was born at Beaminster, Dorset, and educated at Wadham College, Oxford, where he held a fellowship from 1657 to 1670. Having taken orders he became a prebendary of Lincoln Cathedral in 1660. In the preceding year he had gained a reputation by his poem To the Happie Memory of the most Renowned Prince Oliver, Lord Protector (London, 1659), and he was afterwards well known as a wit, preacher and man of letters.

In 1669 Sprat became canon of Westminster Abbey, and in 1670 rector of Uffington, Lincolnshire. He was chaplain to Charles II in 1676, curate and lecturer at St. Margaret's, Westminster, in 1679, canon of Chapel Royal, Windsor in 1681, Dean of Westminster in 1683 and Bishop of Rochester in 1684. He was appointed Dean of the Chapel Royal in 1685 and was Clerk of the Closet from 1685 to 1687.

Sprat was a member of James II's ecclesiastical commission, and in 1688 he read the Declaration of Indulgence to empty benches in Westminster Abbey. The suggestion was that he was playing at being Vicar of Bray. Although he opposed the motion of 1689 declaring the throne vacant, he assisted at the coronation of William and Mary. As dean of Westminster he directed Christopher Wren's restoration of the abbey.


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