Swift, whom he sent to London in 1707 to further the project. Four years later the matter was satisfactorily settled through Swift's exertions and his influence with Harley. The result raised Swift in King's estimation, but King only saw in him a clergyman of very unclerical habits, of considerable ability, but of ill-regulated ambition and of overweening egotism. His advice to him to turn his attention seriously to the study of theology, although well-intentioned, was unaccompanied by any substantial preferment, and consequently appeared to Swift impertinent, and even slightly malicious. Though there was no open breach, the friendly correspondence that had existed between them was interrupted between 1711 and 1716.
On 15 May 1709, after a severe attack of gout, King preached before the lord-lieutenant, the Earl of Wharton, at the opening of parliament, on ‘Divine Predestination and Foreknowledge, consistent with the Freedom of Man's Will,’ King attempting to reconcile the doctrine of predestination with that of free will. Our knowledge of God being of necessity limited, is, he argues, like the knowledge that a man born blind has of colour, only by way of analogy. This doctrine of analogical knowledge was attacked by Anthony Collins [q. v.] in his ‘Vindication of the Divine Attributes,’ 1710, and by Dr. John Edwards (1637–1716) [q. v.] in ‘The Divine Perfections Vindicated,’ 1710. On the death of Archbishop Marsh in 1713, King's whiggism led the English ministry to pass over his claims to the primacy in favour of Thomas Lindsay [q. v.], bishop of Raphoe. But at the time of Queen Anne's death he was joined with the Earl of Kildare and the Archbishop of Tuam in the commission for the government of Ireland, and it was, according to Harris, largely due to his prudence and influence ‘that the city of Dublin was preserved steady … to the succession of the royal family of Hanover.’ In 1717 he was reappointed one of the lords justices, and again in 1718; but having by his opposition to the Bill of Toleration incurred the displeasure of government, he was omitted from the commission in 1719. He manifested no resentment, and during the absence of the Duke of Grafton in 1721–3 was again included in the commission. On the death of Archbishop Lindsay, 13 July 1724, King was chosen administrator of the spiritualities of the see by the dean and chapter of Armagh, and the compliment was the more gratifying to him by reason of the appointment by the government for political considerations of Hugh Boulter [q. v.] to the primacy.
Though a whig, King was also an Irish patriot, that is to say, an advocate of the doctrines enunciated by William Molyneux [q. v.], and he was in effect the leader of the opposition to the party of the English interest in Ireland. His own suit with the London Society, in which the judgment of the Irish House of Lords had finally, in 1708, been reversed by that of England, had given point to Molyneux's argument. He had supported Swift's agitation against Wood's halfpence, and by his amendment to the address upon the lord-lieutenant's speech in September 1725, adding the words ‘great wisdom’ to his majesty's ‘goodness and condescension’ in putting an end to Wood's patent, he drew down upon himself the wrath of Archbishop Boulter. King was at the same time a high churchman; and having laboured all his life to advance the welfare of the church in Ireland by improving its revenues, and by raising up a body of efficient clergymen, he was indignant at the callous indifference with which the English ministry conferred the best preferments in the church on Englishmen, as rewards for their own or their friends' political subserviency. His protests proving unavailing, and old age and disease pressing heavily upon him, he gradually retired from active life. Since 1716 he had again been on terms of friendly if not very cordial intercourse with Swift, but an attempt on his part in 1727 to interfere in the affairs of the deanery, which Swift regarded as an encroachment on his personal liberty, led to a fresh explosion, and an open quarrel was only averted by King's timely withdrawal of his claim. In April 1728 he emerged from his retirement in order to support the Privileges of Parliament Bill. He died on 8 May 1729, and was buried on the 10th (his funeral sermon being preached by R[ichard] D[aniel], dean of Armagh) in the north side of St. Mary's Church, Donnybrook, near Dublin, but, according to a wish expressed by him in his lifetime, no monument or memorial slab was erected. King was unmarried, and by his will he left all his property, amounting to nearly 17,000l., to public charities (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. ix. 329, 5th ser. xi. 217). He founded in 1718 the Archbishop King's lectureship in divinity at Trinity College, Dublin.
At the time of his death there were at least three portraits of King in existence, in the possession respectively of Lord Carteret, Sir Hans Sloane, and Mr. Annesley. One of these was engraved by Faber. Mention also is made (Notes and Queries, 1st ser. vii. 430) of a small and rather curious engraving by Kane O'Hara, the celebrated burletta writer, published on 20 Sept. 1803 in London.
