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Between 1737 and 1742 appeared his well-known work the "Church History of England from 1500 to 1688, chiefly with regard to Catholicks," bearing the imprint of Brussels, but evidently printed with English type. It is written, of course, from a Roman catholic point of view, but is valued by historical students of all creeds for its communication of facts not to be found elsewhere. Of its author, little more is known than that he was long Roman catholic priest at Harvington in Worcestershire, and that the composition of his history, which he copied out three or four times in different forms, was the labour of thirty years. He is supposed to have died about 1745. A Rev. Mr. Tierney commenced in 1839 the publication of a reconstructed edition, with additions, of the "Church History;" the fifth volume appeared in 1843, leaving the work a considerable way from completion.—F. E.

DODD, Ralph, a civil engineer and projector, born in Northumberland in 1756; died on the 11th of April, 1822, at Cheltenham, from injuries received by the bursting of a boiler. He published towards the close of last century various projects for a Thames tunnel, a bridge over the Thames at Vauxhall, &c., &c.—some of which have since been carried out. He contributed, too, towards the development of steam navigation on the Thames, by taking out a patent for a steamboat to ply between London and Gravesend.—F. E.

DODD, Robert, the English marine painter, was born in 1748; died about 1810. His representations of sea-views (often assuming gigantic extent) are exceedingly striking, especially when dealing with a tempest, or a battle, or a fire, or any other subject of this nature. Dodd proved also a good engraver in mezzotinto, but many of his paintings were reproduced in print by other artists.—R. M.

DODD, Rev. William, LL.D., a gifted, and ill-fated ecclesiastic, was born at Bourne in Lincolnshire in 1729, of which his father was for many years vicar. Educated at a private school, he was admitted a sizar of Clare hall, Cambridge, and studied with distinction, taking his bachelor's degree in 1750. While yet an under-graduate he had distinguished himself as an author, by the publication of pieces both grave and gay, light poems, and abridgments of Locke, Clarke, and Grotius. But at the university he appears to have acquired habits of dissipation and expense, which marred all the results of his talents and industry. His first step in life on attaining manhood, was an unfortunate one. The year after he took his bachelor's degree, he married a young person (daughter of the verger of a cathedral) every way below him—"Lord Sandwich's mistress," according to Horace Walpole. He entered the church in 1753, having previously given to the world his well-known "Beauties of Shakspeare," almost the only one of his very numerous publications which still keeps its ground; and the year after there appeared—anonymously, it is true—his prurient novel, "The Sisters," a work of very doubtful morality. Settling in London, with some preferment in the country, he at once took a position as a popular preacher. Two lectureships were conferred on him, one of them that of the Magdalen, where he preached the inaugural sermon at its opening in 1758; and Walpole has described the deep impression produced by him, not only on the unfortunate inmates of the charity, but on the female aristocracy who crowded to hear the young and eloquent preacher. His patron, Dr. Squire, Bishop of St. David's, made him his chaplain in 1763, and in the same year procured his appointment as tutor to the Hon. Philip Stanhope, afterwards earl of Chesterfield, then a boy of twelve. On this matter a strange blunder, it may be noted, has crept into most biographical dictionaries. Dr. Dodd is represented as having been tutor to the celebrated earl of Chesterfield, and the pupil has been reproached with handing over his preceptor to the gallows. Nothing can be more inaccurate. When Dr. Dodd became tutor to young Philip Stanhope, the celebrated earl was in his seventieth year, and his death occurred in 1773, four years before Dr. Dodd's arrest on the capital charge which led to his execution! For nearly twenty years after the commencement of his residence in London, Dr. Dodd (he received in 1766 the degree of LL.D. from his own university) was unweariedly prolific in the pulpit and with his pen. He published numerous sermons, original and translated; he was the author of poems; he edited religious magazines, and produced large commentaries on the bible; finding time meanwhile to write politics in the newspapers of the day. With money procured by a hit in the lottery, he started two chapels on his own account, and conducted them successfully. His income was a large one, but he squandered it in riotous living, and was tempted to have recourse to unscrupulous means for still further augmenting it. In 1772 his character was blasted by himself. The valuable rectory of fashionable St. George's, Hanover Square, became vacant, and in an evil hour Dr. Dodd despatched a letter to Lady Apsley, wife of the lord chancellor (afterwards Lord Bathurst), the patron of the living, offering a bribe of £3000 to procure its bestowal on him. The letter was anonymous, but its authorship was traced. The king struck Dodd off the list of his chaplains. The press took the matter up, and even Foote introduced it on the boards of the Haymarket. Dodd was now a man disgraced, and his subsequent social downfall was rapid. Bankrupt in character, he was soon afterwards bankrupt in purse, and retired for a time to the continent, where, in 1778, he was seen flaunting on the race-course of Sablons in a phaeton and the costume of a French maccaroni. Returning to London, he preached his last sermon at the Magdalen on the 2nd of February, 1777, and two days afterwards he negotiated a bond for £4200, in which he had forged the name of his former pupil, then earl of Chesterfield. Detection and condemnation quickly ensued, but the execution of the sentence (forgery was then a capital offence) was delayed for some time, in consequence of doubts thrown on the legal admissibility of a portion of the evidence on which he was convicted. Dr. Dodd was sentenced at the Old Bailey on the 24th February, 1777; he was not executed at Tyburn until the ensuing 29th of June. The interval was partly spent in attempts to procure a royal pardon, but the king was inexorable. The tenderhearted Samuel Johnson was one of the foremost to exert himself on behalf of the prisoner, composing petitions for a pardon, and, among other pieces, the sermon delivered by Dr. Dodd in the chapel of Newgate, afterwards published as "The Convict's Address to his Unhappy Brethren."—F. E.

DODDRIDGE, Sir John, born in 1555, and died in 1628. Educated at Oxford, from which he passed in 1576 to the middle temple, Doddridge was called early to the bar, and became a laborious and successful lawyer, known for his fondness for antiquarian pursuits. He ran the usual course of a lawyer, whose merit was recognized and rewarded by the public and the crown. He served the office of solicitor-general; was knighted; and finally, in 1613, he was made one of the justices of the king's bench. He published a "History of Wales and Cornwall," and several law books. Some books bearing other names have been ascribed to him—among them Wentworth's Executors, and Shepherd's Touchstone.—J. A., D.

DODDRIDGE, Philip, D.D., an eminent English dissenting minister, born in London on the 26th June, 1702. His father was an oilman in London; but his paternal grandfather was one of the ejected ministers of the church of England, and his maternal a Bohemian of Prague, an exile from his native country for conscience sake; and Doddridge always deemed it a high honour that he could trace his descent from such confessors. He was educated at several private schools, the last of them at St. Albans, where he came under the notice of Mr., afterwards Dr., Samuel Clarke, to whom he attributed, under Providence, the choice of his course in life. At school he was distinguished alike for his piety and for his diligence and progress in learning. He had already conceived the desire of devoting himself to the christian ministry; but he lost both his parents in his youth, and any patrimony he had was soon dissipated by the imprudence of the person into whose hands the care of it fell after his father's death. At this juncture the duchess of Bedford, having been informed of his character and circumstances, offered, if he would renounce his nonconformity, to bear the expense of his education for orders in the English church, and to provide him with a living in that church. This offer he respectfully declined; and soon after, through the generous kindness of Dr. Clarke, arrangements were made by which he was enabled to prosecute his studies with a view to the ministry in the dissenting interest. In 1719 he was placed under the tuition of the Rev. John Jennings, in his academy at Kibworth, Leicestershire. Mr. Jennings died in 1723, and his pupil, now only in the twentieth year of his age, succeeded him as pastor at Hinkley, to which the tutor had removed about a year before. For six years he ministered successively, first at Hinkley, then at Kibworth, and then at Market Harborough, declining several urgent invitations to larger churches in more populous places. He was chosen tutor in 1729,