[1] He was the son of Stremer Thomas, a colonel in the Guards Regiment, born on 17 August 1696 at Westminster, and educated at Charterhouse School.

In 1720 he was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and, having been disappointed of a living promised to him by a friend of his father, took a curacy in London.

In 1742 he had been made one of George II's chaplains, and preached the Boyle lectures, which he did not publish; and, having secured the favour of the king when Prince of Wales, he was given the bishopric of Peterborough, and consecrated a bishop at Lambeth Palace on 4 October 1747.

In 1757 he followed John Gilbert as Bishop of Salisbury (and ex officio Chancellor of the Order of the Garter) and also as clerk of the closet; and in 1761 was translated to Winchester in succession to Benjamin Hoadly.

There are portraits of the bishop at the palaces of Salisbury and Lambeth, and a fine mezzotint engraving (three-quarter length in robes of the Garter) by R. Sayer from a picture by Benjamin Wilson, published on 24 January 1771.