Pearce was born the son of Thomas or John Pearce, a distiller, in 1690 in the parish of St Giles,
High Holborn. He first attended
Great Ealing School and then
Westminster School. He graduated BA from
Trinity College, Cambridge in 1713/4 and MA in 1717. He was Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge (1716–1720) and chaplain to the Lord Chancellor,
Thomas Parker, 1st Earl of Macclesfield. Parker became his patron, to whom Pearce dedicated an edition of the
De oratore of
Cicero. He became rector of Stapleford Abbotts, Essex (1719–1722) and St Batholemew, Royal Exchange (1720–1724) He was vicar of
St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, in 1726. He was then
Dean of Winchester in 1739,
Bishop of Bangor in 1748, and
Bishop of Rochester in 1756. In 1761 he turned down the position of
bishop of London. Towards the end of
Isaac Newton's life, Pearce assisted him on
chronology. There is a monument to Pearce in the
Church of St Peter and St Paul, Bromley. He had married Mary, daughter of Benjamin Adams, a distiller, of Holborn. ==Works==