He was educated at The Royal School, Dungannon, County Tyrone, and thereafter at Trinity College Dublin, graduating BA on 23 February 1670 and MA in 1673.

King's years as a bishop were marked by reform and the building of churches and glebe houses, and by the dispensing of charity.

He was generally regarded as a man of sense and good judgment, and his political influence was considerable: he was always consulted on judicial appointments and at times seems to have had an effective veto over candidates he considered unsuitable.

[2] As a man of letters and philosopher, he wrote The State of the Protestants in Ireland under King James's Government in 1691 and De Origine Mali in 1702.

This faculty, criticized by Leibniz as an unfounded magical power ("puissance magique"[5]), can, for King, generate value in the world.