Apthorp, East

Apthorp, East D.D., a minister of the Church of England, was born at Boston in 1733, died in England, April 16, 1816. Having been educated at Cambridge, he was settled as missionary at Cambridge, Mass. in 1761. Four years after he returned to England, and was appointed to the vicarage of Croydon, afterward receiving high dignities in the Church, and even an offer of the bishopric of Kildare. About 1793 he retired to Cambridge, where he spent the remaining years of his life. Dr. Apthorp published a Letter on the Prevalence of Christianity before its civil Establishment, with Observations on a late History of the Decline of the Roman Empire (Lond. 1778); Discourses on Prophecy (2 vols. 1786); and several other writings, chiefly sermons, which show him to have been a man of vigorous intellect and sound scholarship. — Sprague, Annals, 5, 174; Gentleman's Magazine, 1816.