Bingham, JOSEPH

Bingham, JOSEPH, a learned English scholar and divine, was born at Wakefield in Yorkshire, September 1668. Educated at University College, Oxford, he was elected fellow in 1689 and college tutor two years later, but was obliged to resign his fellowship owing to an unfounded accusation of heresy in a sermon which he had preached in St Mary's on the meaning of the word 'Person' in the Fathers. He was at once, however, presented to the rectory of Headbournworthy in Hampshire, and here he commenced his laborious and learned Origines Ecclesiasticæ, or Antiquities of the Christian Church (10 vols. 1708–22). In 1712 he was preferred to the rectory at Havant in Portsmouth, and in 1720 he lost all his property in the great South Sea bubble. He died August 17, 1723.