Philip Stubbs (priest)

Philip Stubbs (1665–1738) was an English churchman and author, the archdeacon of St Albans and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

He was then chaplain successively to Robert Grove, bishop of Chichester, and to George Hastings, 8th Earl of Huntingdon.

From 1694 to 1699 he was rector of St Mary Magdalene Woolwich in Kent (now London), and was chosen first chaplain of Greenwich Hospital, an office which he held until his death.

Richard Steele, present one Sunday in St James Garlickhithe when Stubbs was officiating, eulogised him in The Spectator.

In 1715 Stubbs was preferred to the archdeaconry of St Albans, and four years later the bishop of London collated him to the rectory of Launton, Oxfordshire.

He was one of the earliest promoters of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and drew up the first report of its proceedings in 1703.

Finally, Stubbs took an active part in the development of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Mary survived her husband by twenty-one years, during which she lived in the Bromley College for clergymen's widows.

The archdeacon's only sister, Elizabeth, married Ambrose Bonwicke, the elder, a nonjuror, and headmaster of Merchant Taylors' School.