HUNTINGTON, ROBERT, D.D., was born in February 1636, at Deorhyrat in Gloucestershire, where his father, of the same names, was parish clergyman. After having received the rudiments of a classical education at the free-school of Bristol, he was admitted iu 1652 a portioniet of Merton College, Oxford ; and, having taken his Ilachelor's degree in 1653, he was soon after elected to a fellowship in that college. He took his degree of Master of Arta in 1663; and, having then applied himself with great success to the study of the oriental languages, he was in 1670 appointed to the situation of chaplain to the English factory at Aleppo. This post be held for above eleven years, during which time he visited Jerusalem, Galilee, Samaria, Cyprus in 1677, and Egypt in 1630, and again in 1681, besides making an unsuccessful attempt in 1678 to reach Palmyra. Ho returned home in 1682, through Italy and France, and, resuming his college life, accumulated the degrees of Bachelor and Doctor in Divinity in June of the following year. In the latter part of that year he was prevailed upon with much reluctance to accept the place of provost or master of Trinity College, Dublin ; but after first taking flight on the invasion of Ireland by the deposed king after tho revolution, and then returning to that country for a short time, he resigned in 1691, and once more came over to England. In August 1692 be was presented by Sir Edward Turner to the rectory of Great Hallingbury, in Essex; and while there he married a sister of Sir John Powell, one of the justices of tho King's Bench. Ho seems still however to have felt uncomfortable in what be describes in some of his printed letters as a rustic solitude, where he was banished alike from books, and friends, from the living and the dead; and, although be had some years before refused tho bishopric of Kilmore in Ireland, his aversion to that country gave way so far that iu 1701 he commuted to accept that of Raphoe. But ha died there on the 2nd of September in the same year, twelve days after his consecration.
The only literary performance that Bishop Huntington published was a short paper in the 'Philosophical Transactions' (No. 161), entitled ' A Letter from Dublin concerning the Porphyry Pillars iu Egypt.' The writer of his Life io the Biographia Britanniest states that some of his observatioua are printed in hay's ' Collection of Curious Travels and Voyages,' 2 vols. 8vo, 1693 ; but all which that
work contains is the 'Letter on the Porphyry Pillars,' which is in vol. ii., pp. 149.155. At the cud of the reprint is a notice extracted from the 'Journal des Seavans' (No. 25, 1692), of a latter from M. Cuper to the Abbe Nicaire, intimating that ho had just heard from Aleppo "that some English gentlemen, out of curiosity going to visit the ruins of Palmyra, had found 400 marble columns, of a sort of porphyry, and also observed some temples yet entire, with tombs, monuments, Greek and Latin inscriptions," of all of wilds lie hoped to got copies. This would probably be the earliest information received by the English public of the successful accomplishment of the first modern journey to Palmyra, which was achieved by aouse gentlemen of the factory at Aleppo in 1691, and of which a full account was given in the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1695. Ray's book may have been printed in the latter part of 1692, though not published till May 1693, on the 3rd of which month the imprimatur is dated.
Dr. Huntington is principally remembered for the numerous oriental manuscripts which ha procured while In the eclat and brought with him to this country. Besides those which he purchased fur Arch bishop Marsh and Bishop Fell, he obtained batmen' six and eevou hundred for himself, which are now in the Bodleiau Library, to which ho first presented thirty-five of them, and then sold the rest in 1691 for the small sum of TOOL Huntington however missed what was the principal object of his search, the very important Syriac versiou of the epistles of St. Ignatius, a large portion of which was at length recovered in 1813 by Mr. Tattam from one of the very monasteries in Nitria which Huntington had visited in the course of his inquiries, and having been deposited by bins in the British Museum, was pub.
lisped under the care of the Rev. William Carsten, keeper of the oriental manuscripts in that eatablishmeut. Several of Huntiugtou's hitters, which are addressed to the Archbishop of Mount Sinai, contain inquiries about the manuscript of St. Ignatius; and the same earnest inquiries are made in his letters to the Patriarch of Antioch.
There is a 'Life of Bishop Huntington,' io Latin, by Dr. Thomas Smith, at the end of which are thirty-nine of his letters, all in Latin, published in Svo, at London, in 1701; and he is the subject of an article in the 'Biographic" Britannia'?