ADVERTISEMENT. T HE Author of the following excellent little Tract, was Dr. WILLIAM STANLEY, a man eminently distinguished by his literary attainments, and by the active exercise of those dispositions which reflect the highest lustre on the Christian character. Dr. Stanley was son of William Stanley, Gent. of Hinckley in Leicestershire; was educated at Ashley in Lancashire, and in the year 1663, at the age of sixteen, was sent to St. John's, Cambridge, of which college Bishop Beveridge, who married his Aunt, was a member. In 1669 he was elected Fellow of Corpus Christi College, on the joint recommendation of his Tutor, and Bishop Gunning, then Master of St. John's. He was ordained Priest by Bishop Compton in 1672, became an University Preacher in 1676, and commenced B. D. in 1678. From the University he removed to the Curacy of Much-Hadham, in Hertfordshire, that eminent Divine, Dr. Goodman, being then Rector; and he was soon after presented by the Earl of Essex to the Rectory of Raine-Parva, in in Essex. This living he resigned in 1682, for St. Mary Magdalen, in Old Fish-Street, London; which he also quitted in 1690, on being collated by Bishop Compton to the Rectory of Much-Hadham, void by the death of his friend Dr. Goodman. In 1684 he was collated to the Prebend of Cadington Major, in St. Paul's Cathedral; in 1689, became Canon Residentiary of St. Paul's; in 1691-2, was promoted to the Archdeaconry of London, on Dr. Tenison's removal to the Bishopric of Lincoln; and in 1706 was advanced by his Uncle Bishop Beveridge, to the Deanry of St. Asaph, which dignity he retained till his death, in October 1731, in the 85th year of his age. He was buried in the vaulting of St. Paul's Cathedral, under the South wing of the Choir, among his old Friends, Bishop Beveridge, Dean Sherlock, Dean Younger, Dr. Holder, and Sir Christopher Wren. He was married to Mary, second daughter of Sir Francis Pemberton, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and King's Bench, by whom he had three sons, William, Francis, and Thomas.* William, the eldest son, was Official of the Archdeaconry of London. Francis, the second, was Fellow of C.C.C. Cambridge, and afterwards Vicar of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, till his father resigned to him the Rectory of Hadham, in 1723; "a person," says the Dean's Biographer, "in every respect worthy to be his Successor." Thomas, the youngest, died at an earlier age. About |