Educated at Oxford University, Atterbury took holy orders in 1687 and soon earned renown as a preacher in London. He led the campaign for the renewal of convocations (assemblies of Anglican churchmen), which were resumed in 1701. In 1704 Atterbury was made dean of Carlisle, and in 1710 he helped defend the High Church preacher Henry Sacheverell, who was impeached by Parliament for undermining the principles of the English Revolution of 1688–89. Queen Anne appointed Atterbury bishop of Rochester in 1713, and he associated closely with Viscount Bolingbroke, but his Jacobite sympathies cost him the favour of Anne's Hanoverian successor, King George I (ruled 1714–27). By 1717 he was in correspondence with the exiled Stuart claimant, James Edward, the Old Pretender. Five years later Atterbury was arrested for alleged complicity in a Jacobite plot against George. Exiled, he spent most of the rest of his life in James's service.

Atterbury befriended many major English writers of his day, including the poet Alexander Pope and the satirist Jonathan Swift. His own literary contribution lay in his topical polemical writings.