Gibson, Edmund Dd

Gibson, Edmund D.D., bishop of London, was born at Bampton in 1669, and was educated at Queen's College, Oxford. He early devoted himself to the study of the languages of North Britain and of British antiquities. At twenty-two he prepared an edition of The Saxon Chronicle, with Latin translation and Indexes (Oxford, 1692, 4to). In 1694 he became M.A., and soon after was ordained,eand made fellow of his collegre. In 1695 he published an English translation of Camden's Britannia (2 volumes, fol.). Is 1696 he was appointed librarian at Lambeth by Tenison, archbishop of Canterbury; and in 1697 he was appointed morning, preacher at Lambeth church. In the same year he published Vita Thomae Bodleii, together with Historia Bibliotheca Bodeleianae, both prefixed to the Catalogi Librorum Manuscriptorum, in Anglia et Hibernia, in unum collecti (2 volumes, fol.). In 1698 he published Reliquiae Spelmanniane, together with the life of the author (fol.). He was now made domestic chaplain to the archbishop, through whose means he obtained, about the same time, the lectureship of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and in 1700 he was presented to the rectory of Stisted, in Essex, a rectory still the seat of learning. In 1703 he was made rector of Lambeth, and residentiary of the cathedral of Chichester. He was soon after appointed master of the hospital of St. Mary and in 1710 he was promoted to the arch-deaconry of Surrey. While he was chaplain to archbishop Tenison he engaged in the controversy between the two houses of Convocation. SEE ATTERBURY. Gibson enlisted on the side of the upper house, and published ten pamphlets on the subject in three years, to which he added another in 1707. And to the interest he took in this controversy we may trace the origin of his greal work, Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani, or the Statutes, Constitution, Canons, Rubrics, and Articles of the Church of England, etc. (1713, fol.; reprinted at Oxford in 1761). In 1715 he succeeded Wake as bishop of Lincoln, and in 1723 he was translated to the see of London. He subsequently became chief adviser of Sir Robert Walpole in ecclesiastical affairs, and woefully disappointed his former Whig friends by his intolerant support of the Test Act, and of the severe measures adopted against the Quakers. His better qualities appeared in his opposition to the demoralizing masquerades of the time, by which he lost the favor of George II. Towards the close of his life he made a collection of the best treatises that were written against Popery during the reign of James It, and published of these with a preface in 1738 (3 volumes, fol.); recently republished under the title of A Preservative against Papry, etc., edited by Dr. Cumming (London, 1489, 18 volumes, 8vo); there is also a Supplement (Lond. 1849, 8 volumes, 8vo). He died at Bath in 1743. — Hook, Eccl. Biog. 5:314; Darling, Cyclop. Bibliographica, 1:1250.