His father, William (one of a family of thirty-nine children by the same father and mother), was a counsellor-at-law, who lived first in London and then retired to a family estate at Abbot's Langley, Hertfordshire, where Joseph was born and baptised in February 1703–4.
He was educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, graduated B.A.
These two short works he afterwards put together, and republished with the title An Essay on the Prophecies of the New Testament, more especially on the Prophecy of the Millennium, the most prosperous State of the Church of Christ here on Earth for a thousand Years, 7th edition, with additions, Canterbury, 1776.
[1] He was probably the last person who thought it his duty to denounce inoculation from the pulpit, a common habit with the clergy since its introduction in 1718.
He published A Sermon on the Presumptuous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation, Canterbury, 1778.