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GOTHIC HISTORY AND CATHOLIC ENLIGHTENMENT IN THE WORKS OF CHARLES DODD (1672–1743)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2011

GABRIEL GLICKMAN
GABRIEL GLICKMAN*
Affiliation:
Hertford College, Oxford
*
Hertford College, Oxford, OX1 3BWgabriel.glickman@hertford.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

The clergyman-scholar Charles Dodd used the study of the past to articulate a defence of the English Catholic community that enjoyed a rich legacy. His Church history proclaimed a vision of Catholic patriotism that appealed to the influence of medieval and Reformation history on contemporary religious debates, and informed the later push for civil emancipation. Dodd's work brought together two fashionable but seemingly contrary, historical sensibilities: grounded upon antiquarian recoveries of the gothic past, but shaped by a cosmopolitan spirit of ‘reason’ that drew upon continental reformist schools. Challenging the narratives forged through the Reformation, he pitched his works across a wide spectrum of English scholarly life, seeking dialogue with high-churchmen, constitutionalists, and supporters of religious toleration. But Dodd's later reputation as a herald of Catholic Enlightenment belied the controversies roused in his career. In delivering his view of history, Dodd was forced to suppress radical thoughts on the nature of English monarchy, stumbled into conflicts with fellow clergymen, and risked the taint of heresy with reflections upon the Holy See. Conceived to construct a new intellectual platform for his co-religionists within their national community, his works served inadvertently to reveal the complexity and fragility of English Catholic life.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , June 2011 , pp. 347 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

I would like to express my gratitude to Mark Goldie for his comments on an earlier draft of this article, and also for the advice and suggestions received from the anonymous readers for the Historical Journal, and the editor, Julian Hoppit. I have benefited further from conversations with Stephen Taylor, Geoffrey Scott, Kendra Packham, and Bill Sheils. In the notes below, Charles Dodd, The church history of England (3 vols., Brussels, 1737–42) will appear as CH.

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11 The manuscript works are contained within Birmingham Archdiocesan Archives (BAA), Dodd MSS.

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24 Weldon, ‘Collection’, BL, Add. MSS, 10,118, fo. 332.

25 Ralph Benet Weldon, ‘Memorials’ (5 vols., Douai Abbey, Woolhampton MS), iv, p. 9.

26 Printed as Ralph Benet Weldon, Chronological notes concerning the rise, growth and present state of the English congregation of the order of St. Benedict (London, 1881).

27 Charles Eyston, The history and antiquities of Glastonbury (Oxford, 1722); Charles Eyston to Thomas Hearne, 13 Oct. 1718, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson Letters, 5, fo. 26.

28 Murphy, Martin, ‘A Jacobite antiquary in Grub Street: Captain John Stevens’, Recusant History, 24 (1998–9), pp. 437–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Stevens's work offered an English translation and expansion of William Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanaum (3 vols., London, 1655–73).

29 Godfrey Anstruther, The seminary priests (3 vols., London, 1976), iii, p. 141.

30 Joseph Berington, Memoirs of Panzani (London, 1775), Preface, p. x.

31 J. Kirk, Biographies of English Catholics in the eighteenth century, ed. J. H. Pollen and E. Burton (London, 1909), p. 157; Thomas Hearne, 3 MS Diaries, in Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS, K/100.

32 Mitchell, C. J., ‘Robert Manning and Thomas Howlatt: English Catholic printing in the early eighteenth century’, Recusant History, 17 (1984–5), pp. 38–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Like the works of Manning, Dodd's Church history displayed such conventional English print ornaments as press figures and catchwords at the foot of every page.

33 Charles Dodd, An apology for the church history of England (London, 1742), pp. xii–xiii.

34 Dodd's patronage is recalled in Reminiscences of Charles Butler (London, 1822), p. 339, while the members of Sir Robert Throckmorton's reading circle can be gleaned from Eyston to Hearne, 17 Oct. 1718, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson Letters, 5, fo. 29. Dodd's support among the secular clergy is revealed in Robert Witham to Lawrence Mayes, 4 Mar. 1716, Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster, Epistolae Variorum (AAW, EV), vi/4, and among the Jacobite exiles by William Dicconson to Matthew Beare, 21 Jan. 1742, Lancashire CRO, Scarisbrick MSS, DDSc/44/14.

35 E. H. Burton, The life and times of Bishop Challoner, 1691–1781 (3 vols., London, 1909), i, p. 7.

36 Frank Tyrer and J. J. Bagley, eds., The Great Diurnal of Nicholas Blundell (3 vols., 1958–62), ii, p. 161; History of the chapel at Fernyhalgh, Lancashire CRO, RCFE2/1, fo. 3; Charles Butler, Historical memoirs of the English, Irish, and Scottish Catholics since the Reformation (4 vols., London, 1822), iv, pp. 451–3.

37 Dodd, Apology, p. vii.

38 CH, i, pp. xiii, 38, iii, p. 419.

39 Dodd, ‘Observations’, BAA, Dodd MSS, C351.

40 CH, i, pp. viii–ix.

41 CH, i, p. 107.

42 CH, iii, pp. 417, 440, 446–8.

43 CH, i, pp. 100–1.

44 CH, i, pp. 461–2, 475–6.

45 CH, I, p. 470, II, pp. 18, 54, 334.

46 CH, i, p. 470, ii, pp. 333–4.

47 CH, iii, p. 330.

48 For Dodd's definition of ‘popery’, see his anonymous work Pax vobis: an epistle to the three churches (London, 1723), pp. 112–13.

49 Charles Dodd, History of the English College at Doway (London, 1713), pp. 16–20; Duffy, Eamon, ‘“A rubb-up for old soares”: Jesuits, Jansenists and the English secular clergy, 1705–1717’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 28, (1972), pp. 291–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Dodd, History of Doway, pp. 16–17.

51 ‘An historical catechism’, BAA, Dodd MSS, Z5/2/35/41, fo. 19.

52 John Stevens, The royal treasury of England (London, 1725), p. 318.

53 The Revolution is considered in CH, iii, pp. 439–48.

54 Duffy, ‘“Englishmen in vaine”’, pp. 345–67; ‘A form of an oath’, 1716, Warwickshire CRO, Throckmorton MSS, CR1998/ box 86/16.

55 P.R. [Charles Dodd], A Roman Catholick system of allegiance in favour of the present establishment (London, 1716), p. 4. ‘The free man or loyall papist’ is printed in Catholicon, 3, (1816), pp. 161–4Google Scholar and 275–9. Both works are foreshadowed in an ‘Historical essay in favour of providential allegiance’, BAA, Dodd MSS, Z5/2/35/5.

56 ‘Historical essay’, BAA, Dodd MSS, Z5/2/35/5, fo. 14.

57 Catholick system, pp. 4, 34, 70–1, 77.

58 ‘Free man’, p. 164.

59 Catholick system, pp. 91–2.

60 Tutino, Stefania, ‘The Catholic church and the English Civil War: the case of Thomas White’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58, (2007), pp. 232–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jeffrey Collins, R., ‘Thomas Hobbes and the Blackloist conspiracy of 1649’, Historical Journal, 45, (2002), pp. 305–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 CH, iii, pp. 257, 285–6.

62 John Talbot Stonor to Laurence Mayes, 23 Oct. 1721, AAW, EV, vii/82.

63 A True Briton [Charles Dodd], Remarks on Bp Burnet's history of his own time … with a vindication of the family of the Stuarts, and the clergy, nobility and gentry that adhered to them (London, 1724), pp. 19, 20, 28, 40–1. For Dodd's attempt to distance himself from the Catholick system, see Apology, pp. 65–6.

64 CH, iii, pp. 446–8.

65 Catholick system, pp 58, 87–90.

66 Edward Dicconson to Mayes, 17 Mar. 1714, AAW, EV, v/48; Dicconson to Mayes, 5 May 1715, AAW, EV, v/93. The affinity with Dodd is testified in Dicconson's letter-book, Lancashire CRO, RCWB/5.

67 CH, i, pp. 122, 145; Dodd, Apology, p. 106.

68 CH, i, pp. iii–iv, 27, ii, p. 334.

69 Daniel Woolf, ‘From hystories to the historical: five transitions in thinking about the past, 1500–1700’, in Kewes, ed., Uses of history, pp. 33–70; Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, Works (4 vols., London, 1967 edn), ii, p. 186.

70 CH, i, pp. ii–iii.

71 CH, ii, p. 17.

72 Pax vobis, pp. 19–20; CH, i, pp. iv, vii.

73 CH, i, p. iii.

74 CH, i, p. vi. See also Dodd, Apology, p. 57

75 CH, ii, p. 335.

76 Dodd, Apology, p. 57.

77 Simon Berington, The great duties of life (London, 1738), pp. xxxii–xxxiii.

78 CH, i, pp. 99–100.

79 CH, i, p. ix, iii, p. 285.

80 Gabriel Glickman, The English Catholic community, 1688–1745: politics, culture and ideology (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 37–8, 204–9.

81 BAA, Dodd MSS, ‘Miscellaneous fragments’, c. 1720–30, Z5/2/35/36.

82 Norman Sykes, William Wake (2 vols., Cambridge, 1957), i, pp. 261–75.

83 For the French education of the Throckmorton family, see ‘Letters and accounts of William Phillips’, Warwickshire RO, CR 1998/CD/Folder 44/ 34. For the family libraries, see ‘Inventories’, Warwickshire RO CR 1998/LCB/ 62. For Withie and Greenwood, see ‘Devotional papers’, Warwickshire RO CR 1998/CD/Folder 44/1–3, 5–39, and Scott, ‘Home and abroad’, pp. 182–3.

84 Thomas O'Connor, Irish Jansenists, 1600–1670 (Dublin, 2008).

85 Thomas Innes, A critical essay on the ancient inhabitants of the northern parts of Britain, or Scotland (London, 1729), Preface, pp. 34–5.

86 For the absolutist mainstream of the Gallican tradition under Louis XIV, see Steve Pincus, 1688: the first modern revolution (Yale, CT, 2009), pp. 122–42; John McManners, Church and society in eighteenth-century France, i: The clerical establishment and its social ramifications (Oxford, 1998), pp. 594–6, 605.

87 Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, Œuvres (Versailles, 1817), xxx, p. 475; McMillan, James F., ‘Thomas Innes and the bull “Unigenitus”’, Innes Review, 33, (1982), pp. 23–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Glickman, Catholic community, pp. 224–6.

88 CH, i, pp. 9–10.

89 CH, i, p. 112.

90 Dodd, Apology, pp. xii–xiii.

91 CH, i, pp. 2–7; Parry, Trophies of time, pp. 169–71.

92 Robert Persons, A Treatise of Three Conversions (London, 1583), pp. 11–15; Felicity Heal, ‘Appropriating history: Catholic and Protestant polemics and the national past’, in Kewes, ed., Uses of history, pp. 105–28.

93 CH, i, pp. 10, 13, 18, 21, 23–5.

94 CH, i, pp. 26–8, 30–3.

95 CH, i, p. 35.

96 CH, i, pp. 42, 59–60, 85.

97 CH, i, pp. 70–1.

98 CH, i, pp. 7–18.

99 Robert Manning, England's conversion and reformation compared: or, the young gentleman directed in the choice of his religion (Brussels, 1725), p. 205.

100 Dodd, Apology, p. 119.

101 Michael Altham, A vindication of the Church of England (London, 1687), p. 22. I owe this reference to Gabriel Martindale.

102 The complexity of Anglican views concerning the pre-Reformation past is considered in Tony Claydon, Europe and the making of England, 1660–1760 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 67–74, 101–20.

103 CH, i, pp. 99–100.

104 CH, i, p. 97.

105 Douglas, English scholars, pp. 89–96, 182–94; Andrew Starkie, ‘Contested histories of the English church: Gilbert Burnet and Jeremy Collier’, in Kewes, ed., Uses of history, pp. 329–45.

106 Andrew Starkie, The birth of the modern church of England: the Bangorian Controversy, 1716–1721 (Woodbridge, 2007).

107 CH, i, pp. 32–3.

108 Christine Gerrard, The patriot opposition to Walpole: politics, poetry and national myth, 1725–1742 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 217–21.

109 CH, i, pp. 106–7, 117–18.

110 CH, ii, pp. 9, 20.

111 CH, i, pp. iii–iv, viii.

112 A catalogue of the library of the Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1742); A catalogue of the remaining stock in trade, of Thomas Osborne, bookseller, of Gray's-Inn, lately deceased (London, 1768). I have located Dodd's Church history inside nine Anglican clerical libraries, sold in London between 1762 and 1789.

113 Berington, Memoirs, Preface, p. x.

114 Gloucester Ridley, The life of Dr. Nicholas Ridley, sometime Bishop of London: shewing the plan and progress of the Reformation (2 vols., London, 1763), ii, pp. 141, 146–8; Timothy Neve, Animadversions upon Mr. Phillips's History of the life of Cardinal Pole (3 vols., London, 1766), i, pp. 187, 289, ii, pp. 229–30.

115 George Reynolds, An historical essay upon the government of the Church of England (London, 1743), Preface, pp. iii, xiv.

116 For an Anglican critique of Collier, see William Nicolson, The English, Scotch and Irish historical libraries (London, 1736), pp. 117–18.

117 Ridley, Life, ii, p. 213.

118 Edward Dicconson, 19 Sept. 1738, letter-book, Lancashire CRO, RCWB/5, fo. 96.

119 Clerophilius Alethes [John Constable], A specimen of amendments candidly proposed to the compiler of a work, which he calls The church history of England (London, 1741), pp. 26–8.

120 Ibid., p. 16.

121 Ibid., pp. 20–2.

122 Dodd, Apology, pp. 21, 65–6, 70–1.

123 Dodd, Apology, p. vi.

124 Berington Memoirs, Preface, p. x.

125 James Brown, ‘Concerning the pardon sought by the late Mr Charles Dodd’, BAA, Dodd MSS, Z5/2/35/61.

126 Joseph Chinnici, The English Catholic Enlightenment: John Lingard and the Cisalpine Movement, 1780–1850 (Shepherdstown, WV, 1980); Eamon Duffy, ‘Joseph Berington and the English Catholic Cisalpine Movement, 1772–1803’ (Ph.D., Cambridge, 1973).

127 Sir John Throckmorton, A letter addressed to the Catholic clergy of England (London, 1792), pp. vii–viii, 144, 165.

128 Butler, Reminiscences, p. 339; Berington, Memoirs, Preface, pp. ix–xi.

129 M. Haile and E. Bonney, eds., Life and letters of John Lingard, 1771–1851 (London, 1912), p. 166.

130 Catholicon, or the Christian Philosopher, 4 (1817), pp. 12, 120–2.