His first education was at Wotton school, whence he removed to Lincoln College, Oxford, matriculating on 19 May 1681, but he left the university without taking a degree.
[2] Being a relative of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, whose mother, Abigail, was daughter of Nathaniel Stephens of Eastington, he was preferred by him to be chief solicitor of the customs, in which employment he continued till 1726, when he was appointed to succeed Thomas Madox in the place of historiographer-royal.
He died at Grovesend, near Thornbury, Gloucestershire, on 9 Nov. 1732,[3] and was buried at Eastington, where a monument with an English inscription was erected to his memory by his widow (and first cousin), Mary Stephens, daughter of Sir Hugh Cholmeley, 4th Baronet.
[5] After this volume had appeared Harley "was pleased to put into my hands some neglected manuscripts and loose papers, to see whether any of the Lord Bacon's compositions lay concealed there that were fit to be published."
Many of these documents cannot now be found, and a list of the missing papers is printed in Spedding, Ellis and Heath's edition of Bacon's Works, 1874, xiv.