Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Douglas, Thomas (fl.1661)

1246342Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 15 — Douglas, Thomas (fl.1661)1888Alsager Richard Vian

DOUGLAS, THOMAS (fl. 1661), divine, whose parentage is not known, was rector of St. Olave's, Silver Street, London. He was one of the ministers ejected at the Restoration, after which event he gave rise to some scandal and left the country. He travelled abroad for some time, and then settled at Padua, where he took the degree of M.D. He returned to London and practised medicine, but running into debt he went to Ireland, where he died in obscurity. In 1661, while still minister at St. Olave's, Douglas published ‘Θεάνθροπος, or the great Mysterie of Godlinesse, opened by way of Antidote against the great Mysterie of Iniquity now awork in the Romish Church.’ It is possible that he is identical with the Thomas Douglas who published in 1668 a translation from the French entitled ‘Vitis Degeneris, or the Degenerate Plant, being a treatise of Ancient Ceremonies,’ a work which was reissued in the following years under the name of ‘A History of Ancient Ceremonies.’

[Calamy and Palmer's Nonconform. Mem. i. 171; Brit. Mus. Cat.]

A. V.