Sparrow, Anthony

, a learned prelate, successively bishop of Exeter and Norwich, was born at Depden in Suffolk, and was educated in Queen’s college, Cambridge, of which he became scholar and fellow, but was ejected in 1643, with the rest of the society, for their loyalty and refusing the Covenant. Soon afterwards he accepted the | rectory of Hawkedon in Suffolk, but before he had held it above five weeks, was again ejected for reading the Common Prayer. After the restoration he returned to his living, was elected one of the preachers at St. Edmund’s Bury, and was made archdeacon of Sudbury, and a prebendary of Ely. About 1577 he was elected master of Queen’s college, where he had been educated, and resigned his charge at St. Edmund’s Bury, and the rectory of Hawkedon, on which he had bestowed in repairs 200l. On Nov. 3, 1667, he was consecrated bishop of Exeter, and on the death of Dr. Reynolds in 1678 was translated to Norwich, where he died in May 1685. He is well known by a very useful book, and if we mistake not, the first of its kind, entitled the “Rationale of the Book of Common-prayer of the Church of England,” Lond. 1657, J2mo, often reprinted. The best edition is that of 1722, 8vo, with Downes’s Lives of the Compilers of the Liturgy, and bishop Sparrow’s sermon on “Confession of Sins and Absolution.” Bishop Sparrow also published another useful “Collection of Articles, Injunctions, Canons, Orders, Ordinances, &c.” 1671, 4to. ¹