Weston, Stephen, 1666-1742

Stephen Weston, bishop of Exeter, was born at Farnborough, Berkshire, on 25 Dec. 1665 or 1666. He was educated at Eton, and proceeded to King's College, Cambridge, where he was admitted scholar on 18 May 1683. He graduated B.A. in 1686-7, M.A. 1690, and became a fellow of his college. In 1698-9 he gave to the college the twelve folio volumes of Graevius's Thesaurus antiquitatum romanarum. Weston was an assistant master at Eton from about 1690, and from 1693, when he took orders, he held the post of usher or second master. Ill-health compelled him on 9 Oct. 1707 to retire from school life and to accept a fellowship at the college. Weston was installed as canon of Ely on 23 June 1715, and retained the canonry until 1717. In 1716 he was appointed to the vicarage of Mapledurham in Oxfordshire. Through the interest of Sir Robert Walpole, who had been a schoolboy under him at Eton, he was appointed to the bishopric of Exeter, being consecrated at Lambeth on 28 Dec. 1724. "Though long and severely afflicted with gout, he died of a malignant fever" at the palace, Exeter, on 8 Jan. 1741-2, and was buried in the south aisle of the cathedral on 12 Jan. Two posthumous volumes of sermons by the bishop were published in 1747 under the editorship of Thomas Sherlock, then bishop of Salisbury. Many of the school-books in use at Eton until about 1860 were composed by him.