Essayist and politician, born in Milston, Wiltshire, S England, UK. A student at Oxford, he was a distinguished Classical scholar and fellow of Magdalen College (1698–1711), beginning his literary career in 1693 with a poetical address to Dryden. In 1699 he obtained a pension to train for the diplomatic service, and spent four years abroad. While under-secretary of state (1706–8) he produced his opera Rosamond (1706), and in 1708 was elected to parliament for Lostwithiel and then Malmesbury (1709–19). He became a member of the Kit-Cat Club, and contributed to the Tatler, started by his friend Richard Steele in 1709. In 1711 he and Steele founded the Spectator, 274 numbers of which were his own work. In 1716 he became a lord commissioner of trade, and married Charlotte, Countess of Warwick. In the Hanoverian cause, he issued (1715–16) a political newspaper, the Freeholder, which cost him many of his old friends, and he was satirized as ‘Atticus’ by Alexander Pope. In 1717 he was appointed secretary of state under Sunderland, but resigned his post because of failing health.