the first edition, 4to, Woodbridge, 1786; a second edition was issued in 1818. Other transcripts were taken in which the scribes are found to vary considerably in their reading of the original manuscript. Loder's edition of the ‘Journal’ was afterwards reprinted by Parker as a supplement to Dr. Edward Wells's ‘The Rich Man's Duty to contribute liberally to the Building … and Adorning of Churches’ [edited by J. H. Newman], 8vo, Oxford, 1840; and in a separate form, 8vo, London, 1844. In the admirable edition of the Rev. C. H. Evelyn White (4to, Ipswich, 1885) we have, mainly for the first time, all that can be gleaned of Dowsing's personal history.
The destruction wrought by Dowsing in Suffolk was by no means the only task of the kind which he performed. In 1643 he had been employed on a like mission in Cambridgeshire. Here, as in Suffolk, he kept a daily register of his observations and proceedings, which is preserved in vol. xlii. ff. 455–8, 471–3, of the Baker MSS. deposited in the university library, Cambridge (Cat. v. 473). It was printed for the first time by Dr. Zachary Grey, in the appendix to his anonymous pamphlet, ‘Schismatics Delineated from Authentic Vouchers,’ 8vo, 1739; partially in Carter's ‘History of the County,’ and ‘History of the University,’ 8vo, 1753; and thirdly, in the sixth appendix to ‘The Ornaments of Churches considered,’ 4to, 1761 (Gough, British Topography, i. 193). The part relating to the colleges is also printed in Cooper's ‘Annals of Cambridge,’ iii. 364–7. From 21 Dec. 1643 to 3 Jan. 1643–4 Dowsing was occupied in working his ‘godly thorough reformation’ upon the several college chapels in the university. He commenced operations ‘At Benet Temple [St. Benedict's Church], 28 Dec. There was vij superstitious Pictures, 14 Cherubims and 2 Superstitious Ingraveings; one was to pray for the soul of John Canterbury & his Wife, … & an Inscription of a Mayd praying to the Sonne & the Virgin Mary, thus in Lating, “Me tibi—Virgo Pia Gentier comendo Maria” [Me tibi Virgo pia Genetrix commendo Maria]; “A Mayde was born from me which I comend to the oh Mary” (1432). Richard Billingford did comend thus his Daughter's Soule.’ Dowsing's acquaintance with ‘Lating’ (on which he evidently prided himself) led him to metamorphosise Dr. Billingford into a maid recommending her daughter's soul to the Virgin Mary. An eye-witness of Dowsing's doings in the town and university describes him as one who ‘goes about the Country like a Bedlam breaking glasse windowes, having battered and beaten downe all our painted glasse, not only in our Chapples, but (contrary to Order) in our publique Schooles, Colledge Halls, Libraryes, and Chambers, mistaking perhaps the liberall Arts for Saints … and having (against an Order) defaced and digged up the floors of our Chappels, many of which had lien so for two or three hundred yeares together, not regarding the dust of our founders and predecessors, who likely were buried there; compelled us by armed Souldiers to pay forty shillings a Colledge for not mending what he had spoyled and defaced, or forthwith to go to Prison’ (Barwick, Querela Cantabrigiensis, 1646, pp. 17–18).
At the Restoration Dowsing was allowed to return unpunished to his original obscurity. He survived nearly twenty years, if indeed he be the man of his name who was buried at Laxfield on 14 March 1679. He was twice married: first to Thamar, daughter of John Lea of Coddenham, Suffolk, by whom he had two sons and eight daughters; and secondly, before 31 July 1652, to Mary, widow of John Mayhew, and daughter of a Mr. Cooper, a physician of Bildeston, Suffolk, who bore him a son and two daughters. Full pedigrees of the family, compiled by Mr. J. J. Muskett, are appended to the 1885 edition of the ‘Journal’ referred to above.
[Authorities cited in the text; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. viii. 53, 3rd ser xii. 324, 379, 417, 490; Kirby's Suffolk Traveller, 2nd edit. p. 39; Masters's Hist. Corpus Chr. Coll. (Lamb), p. 47; manuscript notes by D. E. Davy in a copy of Dowsing's Journal, ed. 1844, in the Brit. Mus.; Willis and Clark's Architectural Hist. of Univ. of Cambridge, i. ii.]
DOWSON, JOHN (1820–1881), orientalist, was born at Uxbridge in 1820, studied Eastern languages under his uncle, Edwin Norris, whom he assisted for some years in his labours at the Royal Asiatic Society, and subsequently became tutor at Haileybury, and finally, in 1855, professor of Hindustani both at University College, London, and at the, Staff College, Sandhurst, an office he held till 1877. His duties as professor suggested the publication of his well-known and useful ‘Grammar of the Urdu or Hindustani Language’ (1862), and he also translated one of the tracts of the ‘Ikhwānu-s-Safa,’ or Brotherhood of Purity, which, in its Hindustani version, is a popular reading-book in India. His chief work was the ‘History of India as told by its own Historians,’ which he edited from the papers of Sir H. M. Elliott. These eight substantial volumes (1867–77), which must have demanded a vast amount of labour and research, lay the solid foundations of a detailed history of India during the Moham-
