Theophilus Dorrington (1654–1715) was a Church of England clergyman. Initially a nonconforming minister, he settled at Wittersham in The Weald, an area with many Dissenters, particularly Baptists. He became a controversialist attacking nonconformity.[1] He also warned that the Grand Tour could create Catholic converts, by aesthetic impressions.[2]

Theophilus Dorrington, 1703 engraving by Gaspar Bouttats

Life

The son of nonconformist parents, Dorrington was educated for the ministry. In 1678 he ran, with three other young nonconformist ministers (Thomas Goodwin, the younger, James Lambert and John Shower),[3] evening lectures at a coffee-house in Exchange Alley, London, which attended by merchants in the City of London. On 13 June 1680 he entered himself as a medical student at Leiden University.[4]

John Williams, the bishop of Chichester, encouraged Dorrington to take be ordained in the Church of England. In 1698 he travelled in Holland and Germany, and in 1699 published an account of his journeys. In November 1698 he was presented by Archbishop Thomas Tenison to the rectory of Wittersham, in Kent. He was awarded a Master of Arts degree at Magdalen College, Oxford on 9 March 1710.[4]

Dorrington died on 30 April 1715 at Wittersham.[4]

Works

Dorrington was a prolific author and controversialist. His publications included:[4]

Dorrington translated from the Latin of Samuel Pufendorf The Divine Feudal Law, London, 1703, which is based on the late work Ius feciale divinum (1695);[12] and a new edition under the variant title A View of the Principles of the Lutheran Churches, London, 1714, which had a second edition in the same year.[4] The subtitle of the first work goes further than Pufendorf's original, and shows that Dorrington was in 1703 angling at the Hanoverian succession, in stressing unity between Anglicans and Lutherans. Some Jacobites took him to be proposing that the Lutheran church of Hanover should join the Church of England.[13]

References

  1. ^ Jeremy Gregory (20 April 2000). Restoration, Reformation, and Reform, 1660-1828 : Archbishops of Canterbury and their Diocese: Archbishops of Canterbury and their Diocese. Clarendon Press. p. 209. ISBN 978-0-19-154313-5. Retrieved 12 September 2013.
  2. ^ Jeremy Black; Jeremy Gregory (1991). Culture, Politics and Society in Britain, 1660-1800. Manchester University Press. p. 87. ISBN 978-0-7190-3435-0. Retrieved 12 September 2013.
  3. ^ Spivey, Jim. "Dorrington, Theophilus". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/7843. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1888). "Dorrington, Theophilus" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 15. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  5. ^ Blom, J. and F. "Austin, John". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/908. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. ^ John Wickham Legg, English Church Life from the Restoration to the Tractarian Movement, considered in some of its neglected or forgotten features (1914), p. 350;archive.org.
  7. ^ Roundell Palmer, Hymns: their history and development in the Greek and Latin churches, Germany and Great Britain (1892), pp. 166–7; archive.org.
  8. ^ Christine Roulston (2010). Narrating Marriage in Eighteenth-century England and France. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 18. ISBN 978-1-4094-0439-2. Retrieved 12 September 2013.
  9. ^ Kevin Sharpe (23 July 2013). Rebranding Rule: The Restoration and Revolution Monarchy, 1660-1714. Yale University Press. p. 390. ISBN 978-0-300-16201-1. Retrieved 12 September 2013.
  10. ^ Theophilus Dorrington (1696). The honour due to the civil magistrate stated and urg'd; a sermon. p. i. Retrieved 12 September 2013.
  11. ^ Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1889). "Edwards, Thomas (1652-1721)" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 17. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  12. ^ T. Hochstrasser; P. Schröder (31 October 2003). Early Modern Natural Law Theories: Context and Strategies in the Early Enlightenment. Springer. p. 245 note 12. ISBN 978-1-4020-1569-4. Retrieved 12 September 2013.
  13. ^ Nick Harding (2007). Hanover and the British Empire, 1700-1837. Boydell & Brewer. p. 39. ISBN 978-1-84383-300-0. Retrieved 12 September 2013.
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1888). "Dorrington, Theophilus". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 15. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

Categories