COLLIER, JEREMY, was born on the 23rd of September 1650, at Stow Qui, in Cambridgeshire. He was educated under his father, who was master of the free school of Ipswich. In 1669 he was admitted of Caius College, Cambridge, and in 1676 took the degree of M.A. He resided some time as chaplain with the countess dowager of Dorset, and then received the small rectory of Ampton, in Suffolk.
In 1685 he resigned this living and came to London, when he was soon appointed lecturer of Gray's Inn. At the revolution of 1688 he put himself in opposition to the government and the church as established under William III., and engaged in a hot controversy with Burnet, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury. One of his publications, The Desertion Discussed, In a Letter to a Country Gentleman,' (4to, 1688) gave great offence to the new government, and Collier was sent a close prisoner to Nevrgate, where he remained some months, and whence be was, at last, discharged without ever being brought to triaL This persecution did not cool his zeal : during the four following years he published a number of works, which were all of a political and con troversial nature. Towards the end of 1692 Collier, with Newton, another non-juring clergyman, was arrested at a solitary place on the Kentish coast, whither he was supposed to have gone for the purpose of communicating with the partisans of the house of Stuart on the other side of the water. After a short examination before the Earl of Nottingham, secretary of state, he was committed to the Gate-house.
There was no evidence against him ; but in consequence of his questioning the legality of the courts, and refusing bail, he suffered a short imprisonment in the King's Bench.
In the course of 1692 and 1693 he published six more works, all hostile to government. In 1696 be was prosecuted for giving church absolution to Sir John Friend and Sir William Perkins, who were con victed of being accessariee in the plot to assassinate King William. Collier absconded and was outlawed. The outlawry was never re
voked, but the energetic divine, after the first rigour was abated, seems to have cared little for it. He lived in London or its suburbs till his death, supporting himself by his literary labours. In the course of the very year in which he was outlawed he put forth five political works. The next year he published the first volume of his 'Essays upon several Moral Subjects,' adding a second volume iu 1705, and a third in 1709. These essays were much admired at the time. It was however in 1698 that he produced the work by which he is now beat known : 'A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, together with the Sense of Antiquity upon this Argu ment,' I vol. 8vo. The 'Shout View ' was almost as severe upon theatres and theatrical writers as Prynne's famous Histrio-Maatix,' published about 65 years before. It led to a controversy with Congreve and Vanbrngb, in which many sheets were printed on both sides, many hard names exchanged, and in which Collier, to whom contest was a delight, is thought to have had the better of his adversaries. After three other defences of his View,' he published, in 1703, ' Mr. Collier's Dissuasive from the Play-honse, in a Letter to a Person of Quality, occasioned by the late calamity of the Tempest.' This literary combat lasted ten whole years; but Collier lived to see the English atago become much more decent than it had been—an improvement to which he had doubtlessly contributed.' Between the years 1701 and 1721 he translated and published Mercer, great Historical Dictionary,' and wrote and published Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain,' in two hugs folio volumes. The history was attacked by Bishop Burnet and others, to whom Collier replied with his usual vigour. He was the author of a few other religious and controversial papers. He died on the 26th of April 1726, in the 76th year of his age, and was buried in the church yard of St. Pancras, London.