Henry Compton (c. 1632 – 7 July 1713) was an Anglican clergyman who served as the Bishop of London from 1675 to 1713.
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Early life
Compton was born the sixth and youngest son of the 2nd Earl of Northampton. He was educated at The Queen's College, Oxford, but left in 1654 without a degree, and then travelled in Europe. After the restoration of Charles II in 1660 he became a cornet in his brother Charles's troop of the Royal Regiment of Horse, but soon quit the army for the church. After a further period of study at Cambridge and again at Oxford, he graduated as a D.D. in 1669. He held various livings, including rector of Cottenham, and Witney.
Episcopal career
He was made Bishop of Oxford in 1674, and in the following year was translated to the see of London, and also appointed Dean of the Chapel Royal. He was also appointed a member of the Privy Council, and entrusted with the education of the two princesses, Mary and Anne. He showed a liberality most unusual at the time to Protestant dissenters, whom he wished to reunite with the established church. He held several conferences on the subject with the clergy of his diocese; and in the hope of influencing candid minds by means of the opinions of unbiased foreigners, he obtained letters treating of the question (since printed at the end of Edward Stillingfleet's Unreasonableness of Separation) from Le Moyne, professor of divinity at the University of Leiden, and the famous French Protestant divine, Jean Claude.