Richard Willis (bishop)

[1] He was educated at Bewdley Grammar School and Wadham College, Oxford, where he matriculated in 1684 and graduated BA in 1688.

[2] Willis became a curate at Cheshunt and then, in 1692, lecturer at St Clement, Strand, where he acquired a reputation as a preacher.

[3] He gave in 1702 the first of the annual sermons on behalf of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG).

It proposed an influential set of theories about evangelical missionary work in connection with the Anglican church settlement, commercial life and colonization.

[6] He gave a thanksgiving sermon 23 August 1705, for victories of the Duke of Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Succession.